London Summer Festivals : Sunday 11th July 2004 seemed to be a day of festivals in London and I spent some time at three of them, walking between Trafalgar Square, Denmark Street and St Paul’s Covent Garden and taking a few pictures on the way.
Back then I was still working with the rather primitive Nikon D100 DSLR, with probably the dullest and smallest viewfinder of any camera I’ve used (though I have used deveral with no viewfinder at all.)
But although it only gave 6.1Mp files, (3012X2008 pixels) and the DX sensor was only half the size of a 35mm frame these were of remarkable quality and could be extrapolated to make decent large prints – one taken on another day was blown up to 2.3m wide for a public exhibition.
Nikon at the time and for some years were saying that the DX format was all that was needed for its cameras, and the later decision to move to ‘full-frame’ was driven by marketing – keeping up with Canon – rather than technical considerations.
Of course like most other photographers followd sheep-wise to move to full-frame when these new cameras came out, though most of the time when working with telephoto lenses I switched down to DX format for the greater equivalent focal length this gave.
At first the DX format with its 1.5x focal length multiplier meant I was working without any real wide angle lens. The 24-85mm worked as a 36-127 lens, But by July 2004 I had acquired the remarkable Sigma 12-24mm lens, “the world’s first ultra-wide-angle zoom for DSLRs with full-frame sensors” – 18-36mm equivalent on DX, solving that issue. And since on DX it was not using the corners of the frame it was a better performer than on full-frame.
I put the pictures in this post on the web in 2004, when most of us were still accessing the internet on dial-up modems and even the fastest connections were only 512kbs. To get web pages to load at a sensible speed the jpg image files had to be drastically cut in size to around 50-70kb. Now I would upload the same files the same size at two or three times the size to get visibly better quality.
Here- with some corrections is the text I wrote about the day in 2004:
Sunday I walked into Trafalgar Square to find it full of young Indian girls carrying ornamental jars and dancing with them, rehearsing for the Trafalgar Shores event that afternoon.
I left and went up to Denmark St for a set by 50hz, electrifying the first Tin Pan Alley Festival, organised with Shelter. Great Indie Rock and supporting charity without running. more pictures
Then on to a garden party in St Pauls Covent Garden, which was sprinkled with celebrities, actors (female) and others I’ve not heard of and didn’t recognise. And a picture I didn’t post in 2004
Back in Trafalgar Square the girls had donned traditional garb and were now recognisably the Saraswati Dance Academy in a colourful South Asian show. After this we were treated to some water puppetry from the Vietnamese National Puppetry Theatre (not very photogenic and hard to photograph) so i went back to catch Billy Thompson playing Grapelli to Tim Robinson’s Django with rhythm support from Dukato. Finally back in the square I watched the superb Irie! Caribbean Dance Fusion from Deptford/New Cross, London. Then home for a slightly dark and chilly alfresco dinner with family. more pictures
