I had a few days off from real photography at Easter, and went for a couple of walks with some of my family. They’ve been making day trips by public transport to walk the Thames Path, starting from London and working their way upstream, and I’ve managed to join them for most sections.
Of course I can’t bring myself not to take a camera, but usually I manage to cut the gear to a minimum, just one camera with one lens, and with the D300 and the 18-200mm (which is equivalent to 27-300mm) is a pretty powerful combination, though I do sometimes slip in the relatively tiny 10.5mm fisheye in case I really want a wide-angle.
But today the forecast was for rain, and the 18-200 is very much a fair-weather lens, steaming up inside with the slightest touch of moisture in the air. When you zoom from wide to telephoto it more than doubles in length, drawing in large amounts of air, and water vapour often condenses on some of the internal elements.
So instead I took the rather heavier and less versatile 16-35mm on the D700 as both camera and lens are pretty waterproof. The lens doesn’t change in length when you either zoom or focus – just moves a few bits of glass around inside. And just in case I should feel the need for anything longer I also slung in the lightweight 55-200 Sigma – though only 2 or 3 of the roughly 70 pictures from the walk on My London Diary were taken with it
We took a train to Cholsey which until our walk ended there in the New Year I’d never heard of, and I still can’t tell you much more about, because all we saw was the station. When we still had an railway system, this was also the start of a short branch line that used to run the 3 miles or so to Wallingford, but it closed to passenger traffic in 1959 and for goods a little later.
I got dragged to see Ivor the Engine by my wife
It now is a “preserved railway” which runs rather expensive special services on some days from a primitive station on the outskirts of Wallingford and is of no use to anyone wanting to get anywhere.
In any case we needed to walk back a mile or so in the direction the main line had brought us to Cholsey to join the Thames path at Moulsford, and go under the rather splendid bridge that Brunel built for the railway over the Thames.
There was a little bit of fence in the way when I wanted to take this picture. With the old Olympus OM series cameras the lenses were considerably smaller and it was usually possible to poke a lens through the gaps in most fences. With the Nikon this is seldom possible and you have to find other ways.
Towards the end of the walk we went over a fairly impressive weir at Benson Lock, and there was a rather inviting triangle of grass from which I photographed it. It was only as I was coming out through the gate – which was wide open – that I happened to notice it said “authorised persons only” on it.
But by then it was too late, and I’d taken my pictures. This one is with the lens at 16mm and I think something about the perspective and the way the water seems to me to bend down at the bottom right makes it feel rather more dangerous than it was at the time.
