An awesomely small and feature-packed flash head, the MeiKe MK320 is an affordable flash for both on and off camera uses.  To summarise (in case you didn't want to read everything) the flash is: small, well constructed for the price however, it's not going to be weatherproof, has a quick charging USB port, many modes (i.e. TTL, S1, etc...), useful modelling lamps and an unreliable battery warning.  There you go, if you want more detail then carry on scrolling, if not then I would recommend this flash to nearly everyone, with the main drawback being its lack of 'waterproofedness' - which easily fixed with a plastic bag being thrown over it!

Personally, I will be using this head (along with a second one) for macro photography.  In the image that you can see below they are mounted on a macro flash bracket and a D810 with Sigma 150mm F/2.8 OS.  This post will be about my impressions of the flash as I've only had a couple of weeks to play with it, however I will cover the flash fully in a later post and the set-up as a whole in a another review too.

When you first open the box you are greeted by the flash and diffuser which are in a well padded foam.  Once you remove this you'll find a few booklets about MeiKe and their products, a cloth, a small bag and a foot for the flash.  One thing I appreciate, not for any important reason, is that the flash foot has a metal tripod screw instead of the usual cheap plastic ones.  

The first impressions are really positive.  The flash feels well made, the plastic feel as sturdy as you'd imagine for £50 (~$70), the screw to tighten the flash to the hotshoe has good grip, but there is only one problem...  The USB port for charging the flash (which I'll cover below).

• GN 32 (Iso-100)
• 5-second recycle time (NiMH)
• Powered by 2 AAs
• Tilts –7° to 90°
• Swivels 60° left, 90° right
• TTL, manual and stroboscopic modes
• Optical slave S1/S2
• LCD control panel
• LED modelling lamp
• Dimensions: 110 x 65 x 36mm

* information taken from: http://www.lightingrumours.com/

So, I mentioned the USB charging port earlier and said that it was a problem.  The first reason for this being a problem is that the port is exposed.  It surely wouldn't have cost them much to add a bit of rubber to cover the port?  Secondly, they don't provide a USB lead; most people have one laying around and so it's no big deal, but again, it would have been nice of them to throw one in.  Getting past those two problems and it's actually a fantastic feature.  If you aren't shooting in rain/sand/dirt very much then you'll be fine and probably appreciate the convenience of charging the batteries without needing a separate charger.

​The best feature in my opinion (as they are being used for macro photography) is that there is an LED modelling lamp.  Incredibly useful for focussing in dark and close-up situations, I don't really see how much use it would be for your everyday shooting or portrait shooting; as the likelihood is, if you need a modelling light for your work, you have more powerful lights for this specific purpose.  Also they will be quite demanding on the battery life.  The picture below was taken with just the modelling lights.  I found that whilst in slave mode, the LED modelling light won't turn off and fire the flash when you take a picture, instead you simply have the full power modelling light - which is not adjustable by the way...

The flash has several settings; TTL (for the brand of camera you use), S1, S2, Manual and repetitive firing mode.  These have all been pictured below, other than the repetitive firing mode.  The next part is another problem unfortunately.  When you want to change the output of the flashes, each press of the button will take the output up or down by only 1/3rd of a stop.  This could be a really good feature, if you were also able to change the output by full stops when you wanted - but you can't.  

These pictures also show another problem I have with the flash.  When I first turned it on, I was surprised and very happy to find that it has a battery percentage display.  However, I've found that it is completely useless at displaying the actual amount of battery left.  Any other flash I've owned hasn't had a battery display and so the fact that this one doesn't work doesn't bother me at all and probably wouldn't bother you!

The flash is quite moveable/flexible - by which I mean it has a 90 degree up and down tilt and about 160-170 degree left-right swivel.  The last thing to mention is that all of the buttons have good feedback; it's not a huge deal but it's nice to not be unsure about whether or not you actually pressed the button.  

If you are considering purchasing this flash, it'd much appreciated if you would follow the Amazon affiliate link below.  It comes at no extra cost to you, but I will receive a commission equal to a percentage of your purchase!

 After returning from the Cairngorms I've started editing some of the panoramas that I shot and after finalising the one above, I realised that it would be a great example of how to achieve the effect that you might have pictured in your head whilst standing behind the camera on location, by using layer masks.  When I was there, a brief window of light cast some warmth to the tops of the trees closest to the water, however I was facing the other way and so I missed the opportunity for the sake of a different image.  Once I was ready to shoot this scene the light was still brightest on the tops of the trees and so when it came to post processing, the effect I wanted was to make the tops of the trees glow a little more than the rest of the image - to do this I played with layer masks and selecting specific colour ranges.  

This blog will cover the whole edit of the image so if you have never used masks before, then don't worry I will cover everything as though the reader hasn't used masks before.  However, if you are used to masking and just want to see the part about selecting specific colours then you can scroll to the bottom and read the last section.

So, how did I get from the panorama below to the shot above?

Well, I'll start with how I shot it, because that makes the biggest difference (there's only so much Photoshop can do).  The nine image panorama was photographed underexposed as I was shooting on a D800e and knew that I could shoot for the highlights and capture some detail in the mountain that you can see on the far right of the image.  In the end I didn't use that part of the photograph, but with the D800e's ability to capture such a large dynamic range I was able to brighten the image and start to see the results that you see above.  If you are shooting on a crop sensor, then it may be worth (if you were in the same situation) shooting the scene slightly brighter and getting less noise in the shadows.

As I said before, you can't (or I personally don't want to) capture a scene and then completely change the 'light' to achieve a new look - I would say that is starting to branch a more 'digital art' type of picture.  So I start by opening the panorama in CameraRaw and using the basic adjustments to get as close to the final result as possible.

After quite a lot of deliberating I found that the three small trees at the water's edge made a nice focal point and so I cropped down to make them central (shown below).  Usually central is where you may not want the focal point of an image to be, but with this picture being based on symmetry I felt that it worked well!

This is how it was imported in Photoshop and now comes the part when  you chose which bits of the image you want brighter/darker, which colours you want more/less saturated and make the final global adjustments like brightness/contrast.

So, I'll start from the bottom and cover the important layers.  But in case you have never used masks before, each time you apply an adjustment from the panel that (by default) should show above the layers panel, it comes with a mask attached - if you can't see the box then make sure the drop down box at the top right of Photoshop is set to 'photography' and not anything else.  The box looks like the image I have posted on the right.  The masks allow you to paint the areas that you want to be adjusted and leave the rest untouched.

this did to the already bright grasses and rocks at the edge of the water.  One of the most simple way to mask is with a brush, which is what I used for this layer.  I used a brush that was slightly larger than the area I wanted to affect and set it 100% opacity, 0% hardness and the colour to black, then by clicking on the left of the screen and dragging the brush across the grasses all the way to the right of the frame, I had removed the effect of the curves from the bright grasses.  The next layer was the same type of adjustment, I used a brightness/contrast layer to darken the grasses and rocks even further and it was masked using the same technique.

I should quickly explain how the colour of your brush effects the mask.  Basically, black means that it won't show up and white means that you will see the changes you've made.  In this first case, I left the layer as white and painted black because I wanted that small area to not be affected by the adjustment.  If I only wanted a small portion to show through, then it would make sense to make the mask black and paint the area that I wanted in white.  You can make the mask black by inverting it, this is done by using 'CTRL i' or 'command' on a mac.

                                                                                                  ***********
​
Now comes the part when I used selective masking by picking certain colours.  I don't need to cover each layer from now on, because you'll understand the concept if I just explain the mask I used to make the trees 'pop'.

I started by making a vibrance adjustment and making the effect quite strong - I overdid the effect so that I could easily tell the areas that I had changed and then I went back and lowered the adjustment after completing the mask.  Once you have done the adjustment, double click on the mask (white box) and another box will appear that looks like the one below.

 By using your little eyedropper tool, you can click on  any colour in your image and the mask will change to be white anywhere that the same colour is present.  As you can see from my masking, I selected a bright green and so only the tops of the trees are white.  Your mask is now done and you can go back to your adjustment and change it to how you want it to look, because right now it'll be very strong. 

I used exactly the same technique to brighten the trunks of the trees.  If I didn't know about selecting colours I would have increased the brightness and made a mask on which I would have to paint each trunk that I wanted to be brighter.  That technique would have taken a long time, but by using the colour range tool, you can just click on one of the trunks and the adjustment will instantly apply to all the trunks and only the trunks!

By using layer masks you should  see a big improvement in your images, mostly because you will find them looking very close to how you pictured the image at the time you took the shot.  The changes will seem minimal, like all of the ones that I made on this example, but overall it adds another level to your picture.  That extra something might not be noticeable to other viewers, but I personally am much happier with my images since I learnt about this method of masking!

Thanks for reading and I hope that it helps you somehow!

I couldn't send a blog out on the last day as it was mine and Anthony's turn in the black grouse hide and so I'm writing it in the minibus on the way home!

During the day we walked up Ladder Hills to find, stalk and photograph mountain hare.  As a group of 10 the stalking was a difficult task, but most people managed to get some images.  One of the biggest challenges when we started was the rain.  We were facing up the slope and the rain was driving down towards us, this meant frequently having water on the front element if you weren't careful. 

The image below is by Isabelle Price (www.isabellepricephotography.weebly.com).  The changing around of who was at the front of the group changed often and at the time that we were around 15 metres from this hare, Isabelle was at the front and managed to capture this image!

After this stalk, we had some time to split off and find subjects of our own if we wanted to.  Myself, Anthony, Toby and Ellie separated from the group and walked straight up the hill.  Seeing as the hill had small plateaus, we thought that we would approach the edge of the plateau, slowly look over the brow and hopefully there would be some mountain hare.  We tried several times, but with the amount of hares that were around (and to our eyes, unnoticeable) we kept startling a hidden hare which in turn would cause most to run off.  We gave up facing uphill and still had about an hour left so headed back down towards the cabin.  On the way down we were very lucky to find a hare which wasn't too scared of us getting near.
​
After we spotted it, got low down and waited, it started to feed.  Each time it put it's head down to feed we could move a metre or so forward, we kept this same technique until about 10 metres away from the hare.  I captured this image as it looked up from feeding.

​A slight change of position down the slope and I took this second image.  The low angle of the first image makes it my favourite of the two; the blurring of the foreground and background help to bring focus onto the subject, I would also say that the head position is much nicer as it's looking towards us.

​The other three got some fantastic images as we carried on stalking for a while, but they aren't edited yet, but they may make it into the final 'gallery' blog in a week or so!

***********

After Ladder Hills we headed home and prepared for the night in the black grouse hide.  You are given a sleeping bag, roll mat, pillow and obviously the hide (which is set up by David Newland ).  You just need to take your camera equipment and a lot of layers.  I obviously can't say where the hide is located, but it is at the foot of mountain and (if you get a bad night) is very open to the elements.  Myself and Anthony were very lucky in that when we set-up it was very windy, but after a couple of hours had passed the wind had died down and we managed to get more sleep than on most of the other nights this week!  

The hide is in such a nice location, obviously it needs to be next to a lekking site, but the dark skies at night were stunning.  I woke up at around 04:30 to check that the equipment was all ready to go and see whether the grouse had already arrived.  I have no idea what time the grouse came down because they were already there by the time I was awake.  I knew that I wouldn't be able to capture any images in that light and so I went back to sleep until 05:30.  We were entering the blue hour and the sky was looking like there would a great sunrise, but still I couldn't get any images.  I set up the stool, tripod and camera, sat  behind the camera and watched the grouse and listened to the birds flying around overhead.  Another great part of staying in the hide that I forgot to mention was that when you first get in (prepared the groundsheet, sleeping bag and made sure nothing is going to get wet overnight) and first wake up in the morning, you can lay back and hear the grouse, lapwing, snipe, curlew and oystercatches calling and probably a lot more that I couldn't recognise.

Anyway, I decided not to shoot at too high an ISO and instead just watch the lek until the light was good enough to capture some images.  I was shooting on a D810, which I don't like to shoot over ISO2000 with - I know that it'll do more but I don't like the quality and although the image is usable it is always on my mind that the quality isn't of that high a standard.  So I set my camera to ISO2000, F/2.8, 1/100th of a second and waited for the light to reach that level.  At around half 6 the light was looking very nice and I was shooting from then until when we picked up at about quarter past 8.  

The difficulty with photographing the black grouse is the amount of rushes and tall grasses around them - a lot of the time they are concealed.  After shooting some portraits of one grouse which spent a lot of time near the hides, I moved on to trying to capture the males fighting.  They weren't particularly active on that morning but there were quite a few opportunities.  If I was shooting them in landscape orientation then (due to the distance and focal length) I would be cropping a lot and because of the high ISO value I didn't want to deteriorate the quality of the final image too much.  Therefore I decided to shoot portrait and try to include the fields and mountains in the background.  This image below was my favourite frame, as it looks like one has kicked the other to ground.  Looking at it now I would have liked to use a smaller aperture to show more background, as I was only on F/4.  Yet I needed the larger aperture because the action happens very quickly and I wanted to try and freeze it as much as I could.  As the morning went on I did go to F/8 but I didn't get that kind of action again. 

Closer action is what I really wanted, but it wasn't very likely which is why I went for the format you can see above.  However a few minutes before we were picked up the grouse all flew off and left just one on its own.  It started to call and was jumping around (I imagine to attract the attention of any other grouse that were left - although there weren't any).  It did this a couple of times and allowed me to capture this image.  Two males would have been more impactful but it was nice to have an image with some action in it.
​

***********
​

So... This might the end of the day blogs, but we have more coming over the next couple of weeks.  I'll be compiling each photographers favourite images and make a large gallery for everybody to look at!

Once again, if you are interested in any image that you have seen on the blog then feel free to get in contact with me and I can point you in the direction of the photographer.  Also, here's the list of photographers who have online portfolios/galleries that you can browse.

Isabelle Price - www.isabellepricephotography.weebly.com
Anthony Slocombe - www.anthonyslocombephotography.weebly.com
Richard Winter-Alsop  - www.rjwaphotography.co.uk
Gail Forest Harland  - www.gailforestharland.com
Ellie Bearcroft - www.ebphotography95.wix.com
Jasmine Beveridge - www.jbeveridgewildlife.weebly.com

Thanks to everybody who has been reading, we had a fantastic trip and it was made so much better to see you all reading and enjoying our photography!  

The main task for the whole group today was photographing six bird of prey species.  Beforehand, myself and three others went looking for red grouse in a spot that we have done before.  We found one pair amongst the heather on the way to the location and after spending a couple of minutes stalking them we were going to jump back into the van and carry on.  Luckily, Anthony spotted a grouse another grouse sat atop a fence.  We got low and stayed along the fence line which allowed us to get quite close.  

​
​5 minutes later and we were photographing the next pair of red grouse.  In total there were around three pairs in the area and so we had a fair amount of choice of which to stalk.  By the end of the session (just over and hour) we had found a pair which didn't mind us being too near them.  We (three of us) stalked them and got well within 10 metres, which gave us images like these!

Below - (c) Ellie Bearcroft

*************
​

​As I said at the top, the main task was photographing the captive birds.  The species we had to photograph were; Golden Eagle, Goshawk, Peregrine, Kestrel, Eurasian Eagle Owl, Barn Owl.  As you can see from the group picture below.  As you can see from the group shot, we had varied backgrounds to shoot the subjects on.

The golden eagle is a stunning bird, using the trees and grasses around you can be a great way to not only show the viewer some habitat, but also help conciel the jessies.
​

​************

After we stopped for a lunch break, the kestrel came out and it was arranged to sit on a grassy bank around 10 feet above ground level.  It was a really good idea to have it up this high because we could frame the bird with long grass in the foreground and hide the jessies whilst having a blue/white/green background from the sky and trees.  I would say that the kestrel was the most active species, constantly moving around.  Which worked great for changing backgrounds between frames, but it made it less easy to compose the image as the previous species had been.

Below - ​(c) Ellie Bearcroft

Thanks for reading, feel free to check out the galleries of the other photographers that are in this blog:
Jasmine Beveridge - www.jbeveridgewildlife.weebly.com
Ellie Bearcroft - www.ebphotography95.wix.com/elliebearcroft
Anthony Slocombe - www.anthonyslocombephotography.weebly.com

Unfortunately, there wont be a blog tomorrow as I am in a hide overnight and so there won't be any time to write it.  I'll write tomorrows blog on saturday on the way back to Falmouth, so look out for that!

We headed up Ben Rinnes today, to look for ptarmigan and mountain hare.  Before that, a group of three were photographing red grouse in the morning.  They were very lucky to have a grouse within two metres of them for a good half hour.  At first it was apprehensive as they usually are, however the group left the van and the male started becoming quite territorial.  After sitting and waiting for a while, the grouse came very close and the guys managed to capture some great images.  

*************
​

At 11 o'clock we left the cottages for Ben Rinnes and made the summit at 13:30.  On the way up we spotted some mountain hare and ptarmigan, but waited until we reached the top and ate lunch before stalking and photographing the subjects.

It was a task I set myself to try and make use of the snow fall in images.  To do that I was using a slightly slower shutter speed than I would typically.  This was shot at 1/80th of a second, to give the snow some movement and add context to the subject.
​

We spotted roughly 10 mountain hare  from the summit to the top of the mountain.  As there were 10 of us the stalking of the subjects was difficult but we managed to get within 15 metres, which allowed some 'in habitat' images like the one below. 

Below I am going to create a few galleries of the other photographers' work from the trip so far. There has been little time to edit and so I will create more extensive galleries after the trip.
​

************

Others Galleries

Eleanor Hilsdon
​

Richard Winter-Alsop
www.rjwaphotography.co.uk
​

As promised yesterday, I have edited some of my red squirrel and ptarmigan images.  I've placed them in a gallery below for you to browse!

​***********

Now, on to todays shoots!

We left the cottages at 5 o'clock to make Loch Morlich for sunrise.  The cloud was thick and only displaced slightly for about 5 minutes which gave a nice warm light to the clouds, however I was photographing mainly panoramic format to capture the mountains, forests and their reflections.  As you may imagine the post processing on these files takes a little longer.  I have a couple to show you below, however 

There are a couple more which are currently being edited and these aren't finished, but I thought I would give you an idea of some images.  

After the Loch, we travelled to Inverness to an area which we thought there may be some otter activity.  One was spotted a few hundred yards out but it wasn't for long.  However we walked around the area just to see what we could find.  I captured these two swans in flight, above the water which was incredibly still and giving great reflections.

*********
​

The final stop for the day was a red kite feeding station.  For around 20 minutes we had three kites in the area flying across a background of pine trees which provided some great contrast against the red kites' colours.  The added benefit was that at the distance they were feeding, you started to introduce some of the trees.  I like how they came out as I am a fan of showing the subject amongst their habitat.  Anyway, here's a couple of pictures to end today's blog!

​Thanks for reading and I'm sorry for not posting much yesterday, but I hope this made up for it!

There's no break today to be able to edit and write a blog and so this is being written between locations and unfortunately the only images are phone shots of the locations and backs of cameras.

This mornings sunrise shoot was for red squirrels! Myself and Anthony headed out to be setup at 06:30 and then wait for the sun to rise and the red squirrels to emerge. It was 7o'clock when the squirrels came out, but the light was a long way away from being at its best (just after 8).

Here's a shot from the back of the camera of a red squirrel.

***********

The main task for the group today was Ptarmigan on CairnGorm mountain.

We have a few phone shots to show you the amazing views and some of the Ptarmigan images that we managed to capture.

​The images are those of; Myself, Jasmine, Gail, Ellie, Emma and Isabelle. Please find the first blog if you wish to look at there personal portfolios, there's some great work over there!

Once again, I apologise for the lack of images on this post. If I have to time to write one tomorrow, then I'll make a section for today's images before.

Thanks for reading and stick around for tomorrow's blog which will hopefully have edited images!

I'm afraid there won't be too much writing on this blog, as it's quite late and I'm trying to post this around the time I promised!

The first sunrise seen from our cottages and it was stunning.  There was some great colour at first light (which I may have been asleep for), but I managed to get up just in time to get the morning light hitting the fells opposite.  Using an ND 6 stop on 70-200mm and D800e, to have a shutter speed of around 10 seconds and a very high resolution final file (150mp).

​
For two hours at 07:30 we found red grouse and used the mini-bus as a 'hide' to get close to the subjects.  

                                                                                                         *********

After each arriving back from our morning shoots (some doing red squirrels, others black grouse etc), we all headed out to Loch Garton in search of crested tits and landscapes.

It started off positive!  We heard that a crested tit had been visiting the feeding area only ten minutes before we arrived, however it was quite a wait for it to return.  After an hour or so it was back, but with only a couple of fleeting visits before a few of us went for a walk through the caledonian forest.

This was one of my favourite captures - there are more, but I'll save them to post another day.  Shooting these small birds on a full frame camera (even at 500mm), I am still having to crop to around 50% unfortunately.  

                                                                                                         *********

So; Red Squirrels, Black Grouse, Red Grouse, Crested Tits and loads of other small birds made for a great morning.  The final stop of the day was at Loch Eilean.

**********
Other's Galleries

​
Anthony Slocombe
 www.anthonyslocombephotography.weebly.com

Thanks for reading - I hope you're all enjoying the updates and thank you for all of the shares, likes and comments!

It's day two since we left Falmouth and the final leg of the journey is complete!

 We left Burton service station at 06:00 in order to make it to our accommodation for 15:00.  On the way up we make one stop at Bruar waterfalls, a stunning waterfall system in a Larch and Scots Pine forest.  
​
(We took the opportunity to get a slightly better group photograph than yesterday)

 
                                                                                                       **********

As you walk up the falls you first reach a small stone bridge which makes a great focal point for landscapes.  As most woodland scenes are the area is fairly dark, pair this with the fast moving water and heavy cloud that we had today and long exposures were the obvious choice.

At the moment I don't have my watermark available as I'm on a new laptop, therefore I'll be posting these image very low res and non-expandable, but don't worry because they'll all be posted separately once I get back home.

​The final subject we found were, common frogs. There were approximately 10 frogs within a small few metre square pond off the side of the track, which were great models that didn't mind lenses being stuck in their faces.  With my lack of a macro lens, I resorted to my next best option, my Nikon 200-500mm F/5.6E which has a minimum focussing distance of 2.2 metres.  It may seem like another plug for this lens but it performed awesomely once again!

Thanks for any likes, shares and comments!

​The annual trip to Cairngorms National Park in Scotland is underway!  

The first day is spent travelling from Falmouth up to a Travelodge at Burton service station and then the final leg of the journey is completed tomorrow. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to introduce some the photographers on the trip and give you the option to check out their portfolios.
There are 11 photographers from the course who are on the trip (including myself); however not all have online portfolios. I have listed those who do and feel free to check all of them out; there is fantastic work to be seen on all the sites!

Isabelle Price - www.isabellepricephotography.weebly.com
Anthony Slocombe - www.anthonyslocombephotography.weebly.com
Richard Winter-Alsop - www.rjwaphotography.co.uk
Gail Forest Harland - www.gailforestharland.com
Ellie Bearcroft - www.ebphotography95.wix.com
Jasmine Beveridge - www.jbeveridgewildlife.weebly.com

Those without a website (whose images you may see over the next week) are Toby Cowell, Megan Houseman, Elle Hilsdon and Emma Kirk. If you see any work by these photographers that you have any questions about or are interested in, then send me a message and I can give you their information.

I'll be writing a post at the end of each day, probably going live at around 9pm. The blogs will be a run-down of the day, the photographic activities and the images captured (if time allows). As it is not only me on the trip, I will have a section at the bottom of each post that the other photographers can post in; so look out for that and stay attentive to the image credits as they likely will not only be mine!

Thanks for any likes, comments and shares!