Jewellery Quarter Gems

Birmingham is a great city for photography, especially the Jewellery Quarter.  The Quarter is packed with history, and contains some fantastic architecture, listed buildings, and industrial relics.  The Farmer’s Bridge flight of Locks on the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal plunges down between tall buildings and under roads on its way down to Spaghetti Junction, revealing glimpses of it’s former role as major industrial transportation network.  I paid a visit to give my latest acquisition – the Canon EOS M3, a thorough test.

One of the beauties of the mirrorless system is the ability to adapt legacy lenses from years back, using adapters.  While not totally exclusive to these types of cameras (most DSLRS can be fitted with old lenses too), they do have a distinct advantage as many of them have focussing aids, and one of the most useful of these is something called focus peaking.  Put simply, in-focus areas are outlined in red on the LCD, making it a quick job to nail focus.

EOS M3 fitted with a Chinon 35mm f/2.8 manual focus lens.

Armed with a suitable selection of lenses, I set about capturing some images of this fascinating area.

I can highly recommend visiting this corner of Birmingham City Centre, especially at night where long exposure photography is particularly effective.