Lenslocker and the Bristol Balloon Fiesta 2012

The 2012 Bristol Balloon Fiesta took place 9-12th in the beautiful August sunshine. The 34th year of the balloon Fiesta didn't disappoint with an estimated 500,000 visitors over the four days (300,000 attending on the Saturday alone!).  Visitors were treated to amazing balloon ascents (193 balloons ascended on the Friday), parachute displays and a sky dive, the RAF Falcons, the Blades and of course the famous Night Glow.

We were really proud to be one of the sponsors of this year's event and it was lovely to be able to host our competition winner, Allan Kendall and his wife Kirsty on the Saturday and Sunday and give them the opportunity to experience the event, test out some of our Canon cameras and equipment that we usually hire out and enjoy an overnight stay in a Bristol Hotel.

The overall 2012 sponsor for the event was Jones Lang LaSalle, they were lucky enough to be 'pulled out of the hat' at the 100 Club Gala Dinner back in June of this year.  We had everything crossed that we would get chosen and were very excited at the thought of having a hot air balloon with our logo on that could be seen from across the Ashton Court site....it wasn't to be this year but maybe next....!

The event kicked off for us with the Business Breakfast networking event at 6am Friday morning debating how sport and business can work together, the followed the mass balloon ascent into the early morning August sunshine.  There were over 190 balloons that took to the skies over the course of Friday and they provided a fantastic photo opportunities for everyone attending.

Saturday, despite glorious sunshine, proved to be a little blustery for the full mass ascent. As a 100 club member we were privileged to be able to walk through and get photos of the balloons as they were inflated. A small number of balloons did manage to take off at 6am and the pictures on this page capture the colour, shapes and the process of getting these fabulous balloons inflated and into the sky.

The rest of our weekend followed a very similar pattern and it really was a wonderful experience to be able to support this great event, enjoy a weekend of beautiful sunshine, meet some of our customers as well as some of the other sponsors and enjoy just a little bit of relaxation time ourselves!

We are already looking forward to adding our name to the sponsor list for 2013.

Jo,  LensLocker Director. DSLR Camera Hire and Camera Lens Hire UK. We stock Sigma, Canon and Nikon lenses.

File Compression

Many years ago, when I was the cheapest and most inexperienced programmer in a small software house I was given a little boring job. I had to type in a program, written in a book, into a computer. The program was for file compression (LZW). The program was to be used to shrink the size of scanned documents. These were big images and they needed to be small. They needed to be small for two reasons. Firstly they needed to take up less room when stored and the also written and read from storage quickly. Strangely enough compressing and uncompressing a file is much faster than writing or reading an uncompressed file to/from a disk. The same is still true today. Most of the little gadgets in your pocket and also in your home compress and uncompress files for exactly the same reasons.

Compression works by breaking the image down to small chunks with the assumption that there will be many chunks that are identical. That chunk will be stored once and then all the places on the image where the same chunk would be, are stored too. The compressed file would simply be an instruction of how to recreate (uncompress) to a file that was an exact copy of the original. We call this ZIPPING/UNZIPPING.　 If the original file was "uncomplicated" then the compressed file would be very much smaller than the original.

We can make these files more useful by attaching information to file. For example which camera was used and the date that the photograph was taken etc... The most common type of this file is called Lossless TIFF. A Lossless TIFF file can be uncompressed to recreate a exact copy of the original saved image.

If you reduce the detail in an image, for example, the number of colours and resolution of the image then you can easily end up with a file which will compress to a much smaller size. However, you'll never be able to recreate the detail of the original file.

The most common type of this type of file is the JPG. The clever part of making a JPG is to reduce the detail without it being noticeable. This is why its the most popular image file format for the internet.

As photographers we like to use Camera RAW so we don't loose any of the detail within the picture. The problem with this is that as cameras develop and sensors get bigger we not only have to think about the size of our memory card but the amount of storage we need on our PC's! I am currently putting together a blog on storage to take this thread on a step further.

For camera rental and camera lens hire uk choose lenslocker. We are based in London and ship our products country wide. We stock Nikon, Sigma and Canon Lenses amongst other photographic equipment.

We have another blog (Cafetographyhttp://www.cafetography.co.uk) within our website, if you have a spare 5 minutes check it out.

Bristol International Balloon Fiesta

Date : 2nd August 2012 by Martin Barnes

The Bristol Balloon Fiesta runs from Thursday 09^th – Sunday 12^th August and is one of the UK’s top five outdoor events and the biggest of its kind in Europe.  Attracting over 500,000 visitors over the four days, it is an amazing event and in the year of the Jubilee and the Olympics it promises to be bigger and better than ever.

This year the Fiesta will host two spectacular Nightglows and Firework Displays on both Thursday 9^th and Saturday 11^th August.  There will be mass ascents of over 150 hot air balloons on each day and the event will be rounded off on Sunday with ‘The Blades’, a spectacular four-plane stunt team performing over 30 separate adrenaline-filled manoeuvres.

LensLocker is proud to be one of this years event sponsors and to celebrate this fact we’re offering one lucky person the opportunity to come and join us at the Fiesta on Saturday 11^thAugust.  The lucky winner will receive two VIP tickets, the chance to use the 100 Club Pavilion as their base for the day, free parking AND overnight hotel accommodation at the Holland House Mecure Bristol on the Saturday night.  And in order that you can capture the sights, shapes, fun and atmosphere of this amazing event we will also provide a Canon 7D and a lens for use throughout the day.

To have a chance of winning this fabulous day out all you need to do is click and share our blog by using one of the buttons on the left hand side of this page and send your name and contact number to bristolballoon@lenslocker.co.uk.  You will then be entered into our free prize draw.   Closing date for entries is 21:00 on Monday 6^th August and we will announce the winner on Tuesday 7th August.

We are really excited to be part of this amazing event and would love to be able to share it with you.  For more information about the event visit www.bristolballoonfiesta.co.uk and as entry is free why not stay and enjoy the Sunday as well!

Terms of the Competition:

* The competition is only available to residents of the UK
* The closing date for entries is 21:00 on Monday 6th August.
* We will send you an email confirmation when we have received your details – look out for the chance to have a second go at entering!
* Entries received after this time will not be entered.
* Only one entry to the prize draw per email.
* The winner will be chosen at random after the competition has closed
* The winner will be notified by telephone in advance of the announcement on Tuesday 7th.
* Photo ID and proof of address must be provided before the tickets are dispatched.  Tickets will be sent by registered mail and must be signed for.

* The winner will receive overnight accommodation for two including breakfast.  Any additional charges will not be covered by LensLocker and MUST be paid for by the winner.
* Hotel accommodation will be confirmed once the winners have been selected.  LensLocker reserve the right to change the hotel details if required.

* The Canon 7D and lens will be provided on the day and will need to be returned to LensLocker before leaving the event.  The lens provided will be dependant on availability but will either be a Canon 24-70mm, 16-85mm, 24-105mm or 10-22mm

* Tickets or any other part of the prize package CAN NOT be sold on
* In the event that the winner is unable to make the event the tickets can be passed to a friend or family member only after agreement with LensLocker
* In the event that the winner (or a friend or family member) is unable to make the event then the draw will be re-run.
* For more information or any queries about the terms of the competition please contact us at info@lenslocker.co.uk


Lenslocker is an online camera rental and lens hire company based in London.  We provide our lens hire UK wide and if you live in or around London you can come in and pick your equipment up. We have a wide range of Nikon, Sigma and Canon lenses, we also have a wide range of other photographic gear.

If you would like to learn more about what Lenslocker can offer you please read our about page.