If you’re a regular reader of this blog (I must have at least one, surely?) you might know that the Castle Arcade is one of my absolute favourite places in Cardiff.

Not only is it a great place for a wander around, filled with all kinds of curious shops and cafes, its beautiful architecture make it, in my opinion at least, a fantastic place to shoot portraits.

So it was here I brought Nina, my latest subject, to shoot this set of portraits. It was raining outside (big surprise), but the natural daylight which pours through the glass roof of the arcade makes it wonderful to shoot in, no matter what the weather.

Nina has modelled before, so she was completely at ease in front of the camera, which is always nice. I hope you’ll agree that she looks great, these are easily some of my favourite portraits from the many I’ve taken this year.

I used two different cameras for this set, both of which are great in different ways. First up, the Canon EOS 650D, which is the world’s first DSLR to feature a touchscreen. I’m a 60D user, so I generally feel very comfortable shooting with Canon cameras. Although this is technically a step down from my camera in terms of the line-up, it’s a fantastic camera and if I didn’t already have a 60D, I think I’d be very tempted by it.

Secondly, one of my favourite compact system cameras of the year, the Panasonic G5. With its articulating screen and electronic viewfinder, the handling of this camera is great, but it’s so light making it a much more portable proposition. Luckily, I’m getting one of these for myself in the not-too-distant future so I’m sure I’ll be shooting with it a lot more in the coming months.

I’m already an Olympus PEN E-P3 user, which is a bonus as lenses between the two systems are compatible so all my existing optics I can swap between the two cameras. In this set, I’ve used a number of different lenses, including a 50mm f/1.4 on the 650D and a 25mm f/1.4 (Panasonic) and 45mm f/1.8 (Olympus) on the G5.

I won’t witter on anymore about the camera tech behind these portraits, but I do hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them. Any thoughts, suggestions, comments and so on are always welcome in the box below.

If you’re wondering which images were shot with which camera, it’s really easy to tell – I used the 650D for all the portrait orientation shots, and the G5 for all the landscape ones.