In my camera bag – the 2018 remix

Screen grab from an older version of my website showing the ‘obligatory bag shot’

I am writing this in response to a request from a long-time follower of my blogs who wanted me to do an update to an old posting which was, in turn, an update to an even older one.

Back in January 2009 I had been freelancing again for just over four months and I posted what I called the “obligatory bag shot” and went on to detail the kit that lived in my everyday camera bag. At the time that was a Lowe Pro Steath Reporter 650AW – a bag that I still own and use from time to time. These days I am more likely to either have a Domke J3 (with less kit) or a Think Tank Airport Take-Off rolling bag (with slightly more kit) and I wanted to compare notes on what I had in the bag back then compared to now. As a direct comparison I am going to talk about how I load the Lowe Pro when I use it:

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Adobe Camera RAW – big (ish) changes

 

I sat down to edit a set of pictures this morning and went through my normal routine before actually touching the RAW files:

  1. Calibrate monitor
  2. Check for application updates
  3. Restart the computer

All went well, I had a cup of coffee and then opened the set of pictures as a contact sheet in Photo Mechanic. I went through, added the relevant IPTC captions and then imported the selected images into Adobe Camera RAW and then I noticed that a new icon had appeared in the tools on the right hand side of the screen. A small ‘film strip’ had appeared in Camera RAW 10.3 and below that a new ‘treatment’ option was sitting there offering me the choice between Color (surely they mean Colour?) and Black & White with the choice of profile sitting there in a much more convenient place than it ever has been before.

Change is good. Isn’t it? (more…)

New Canon 70-200 on the way

According to the usually reliable Canon Rumors website there is going to be a new mark 2 version of the Canon 70-200 f4L IS very soon. As regular readers of this blog will know I went over to using f4 zooms for the bulk of my work a couple of years ago and the 70-200 f4 became part of my every day kit. It’s small and light and the image stabilisation is good but the thought of having an up-to-date version of this lens with better (and dare I say it quieter) IS would be something that I’d be really interested in – especially since my back operation last year.

Let’s hope that the rumour is true and that the lens comes in at an affordable price.

Clamshell mode

A good workstation for editing pictures is something that all photographers should have. For quite a few years now I have favoured having a good monitor married to a fast laptop. I have tried using an iMac and I have owned a couple of desktop computers but having a high end (MacBook Pro) laptop and a quality monitor has provided me with a very flexible set up that allows me to grab the laptop and work on that if I need to be away from home without the complication of having multiple computers. Well, that’s sort of true; I do have multiple laptops and use the MacBook Air when I am travelling light and on longer trips I take my spare MacBook Pro along to either use as a makeshift server or as a back up “just in case”.

My home office is a relatively small one and so my set-up is somewhat dictated by that. I am always evolving what I use and the way that I use it and my current monitor is a three year old 25″ Dell Ultrasharp (now discontinued) which has not only served me well but has been packed up in a flight case many times to go with me on trips where I have been working as an editor. When I’m at home the monitor is wall-mounted so that I can get it as far away from me as I can and give me as much desk space as possible. It is connected to a dock and so there is only one Thunderbolt 3 cable that needs to be plugged into the MacBook Pro. (more…)

My iPad workflow – some conclusions


Over the last couple of months I have been looking hard at the whole idea of an iPad and iPhone based workflow for the kind of photography that I do. I have tried to find a workflow that is repeatable and adaptable that could replace my tried and tested (and damned good) workflow on a laptop or desktop computer.

I’ve failed.

After trying different iPads and iPhones as well as dozens of apps and an endless combination of those apps I have come to the conclusion that there is no way that an iOS device can replace a computer for the vast bulk of my work. There are several reasons for this but the main one is that iOS was never designed for this kind of heavy lifting and the way that you move files around between apps is still pretty painful and that it is even worse with RAW files. Don’t get me wrong, using a fully-loaded top of the range iPad Pro with decent internet connectivity and a keyboard you get really close to a good workflow but by then you have a device costing at least £1,000.00 (and a lot more if you go for the 12″) which weighs and costs almost as much as an Apple MacBook without the access to rock solid made-for-the-job applications. (more…)

Memory card sizes

Once upon a time I had six 128 and 160 megabyte PCMCIA memory cards and I happily rotated them through my 1.9 megapixel Canon/Kodak DCS520 cameras. That was over nineteen years ago and, like most other photographers, I have kept on buying more and more newer, faster and larger cards ever since. In 2002 when I was shooting with the original Canon 4.1 megapixel EOS1D I graduated to a small pile of 256 megabyte cards which were replaced by 512 meg’ cards pretty quickly. Nine and a half years ago (2008) when I went freelance I was shooting with 8 megapixel Canon EOS1D MkII cameras and I had eight 2 gigabyte cards (along with a stack of ‘retired’ cards) and rarely needed more than four of those a day.

Fast forward to today and I still have a Think Tank wallet with eight compact flash memory cards in it – but now they are all 32 gigabyte plus three spare SD cards for the Canon EOS5D MkIVs and the 7D MkII. On top of that I keep a couple of 16 gig’ CF cards, six 8 gig’ cards and a couple of specialist SD cards in my ‘just-in-case’ case. further on top of that each camera starts the day with a 32 gig’ CF card as well as a 32 gig’ SD card. (more…)

Merry Christmas

After what has been a difficult year for me 2017 is ending on a good note. My fitness is still an issue but work is interesting and the rest of my life is good too.

I just want to wish everyone who reads this blog the very best for the holidays and a fun and interesting 2018.