Author: dg28

I've been a full-time editorial & corporate photographer since 1986 and I'm still as passionate about the work now as I was then. These days I also write about photography, teach photography and act as a consultant on all things photographic - so, basically, photography is my professional life.

32 Months with the MkIII
SHM: The Vitality London 10,000

Lily Partridge of Aldershot Farnham and District crosses the line to win the women’s race. The Vitality London 10,000, Monday 30th May 2016. Photo: Neil Turner/Silverhub for Vitality London 10,000

Whenever you read about a camera the reviewer has usually had it in their hands for a few days and taken a few hundred frames with it. I’ve done it myself with all sorts of kit and I find it interesting that one of my most popular blogs  (a review of the original Elinchrom Ranger Quadra) was written when I had been using the kit for 32 months. As luck would have it I have been using Canon’s EOS5D MkIIIs for 32 months now and as the announcement of it’s widely leaked successor is only a week away I thought that now would be an excellent time to blog about my long-term opinion of these interesting cameras.

By the time my first MkIII arrived I had been shooting for almost five years with its predecessor – the Canon EOS5D MkIIs. I had grown to love the MkII despite its many quirks and faults and I knew them inside out and backwards. I had owned three of them at various times (never fewer than two) and had shot somewhere near half a million frames with them. In some professional circles that would qualify as barely worn in (more…)

Photography compared to…
160408-fairground-074

BOURNEMOUTH, DORSET. 08 April 2016. A fairground on Redhill Common. © Photo Neil Turner – Freelance photographer.

When you try to explain concepts in photography to someone who isn’t deeply embedded in the art/craft/science/passion it makes sense to find something else top compare it to. My favourite comparisons are driving, cooking and sport.

Driving is something most of us do and, on the whole, we do it without having to think too much about the basics. I’ve talked about it before so I’ll quickly recap my thoughts:

Changing gear, using the indicators, knowing when to use windscreen wipers and headlights are all pretty much done on auto-pilot whilst we think more consciously about road awareness, speeds, traffic, navigation and much else besides. The comparison to photography is an easy one to make because there are basic controls that we like to think are second nature; exposure, focusing, making sure we have memory cards and batteries whilst composition and anticipating things happening in front of your camera (and often off to the side and behind you) are things that require more conscious thought.

Tempting though it is to continue stretching the analogy I want to move onto cooking. (more…)

Getting captions right, quickly
Members of the AELTC Photography team heading home after another log day. AELTC/Neil Turner

Members of the AELTC Photography team heading home after another log day. AELTC/Neil Turner

I was about to sit down and write a blog post about the last four weeks of my life – three and a bit of which were spent underneath Court 14 at Wimbledon – when I realised that I had written the self-same post this time last year. Instead I thought that I’d tackle the subject that causes me the most work and the most angst when I am working as an editor; IPTC captions. For those who don’t know or whose photography doesn’t involve writing them, IPTC (the International Photo Telecommunications Council) captions are the standard for adding the details in words describing the “where, when, who, what and why” of the image  almost universally used in our industry. It is a form of metadata added after taking the pictures – although if you are smart and use the right software, quite a bit of it can be drawn automatically from the camera’s own EXIF metadata.

This has already turned into a geek-fest. I apologise to those who want to read about technique and kit but without good metadata, finding the right pictures in amongst tens and hundreds of thousands of others becomes a chore and can become almost impossible. (more…)

Canon feature request?

I had an email from someone who has followed my blogs for many years this week. He’s a working news photographer who I bumped into on a job a few weeks ago. He had noticed some tape on the top of my Canon EOS5D MkIII and my EOS 7D MkII and simply pointed to his cameras and said “snap”. He had tape on his cameras too – doing precisely the same job that the tape on mine does and went on to ask what the chances of Canon making a change to future cameras that would eliminate the need for us to tape that particular feature on our cameras. The email was to remind me that I had promised to do a quick blog post about the issue.

Taped diopter adjustment on a Canon EOS 5d MkIII

Taped diopter adjustment on a Canon EOS 5d MkIII

The tape on our cameras holds the built-in diopter adjustment dial and stops it from being moved in the bag or over your shoulder – something that happens to me a lot if I remove the tape. I have no idea if anyone from Canon’s design department reads this blog (I doubt that they do) but it seems to me that if enough of us sufferers from this problem mention it to them when we talk to them then they just might do something about it. Nikon have a lock on the diopter adjustment on some of their professional cameras so it has to be relatively easy to do.

The EOS5D MkIV will be appearing later this year if all of the rumours are to be believed so this may be a little late but you have to give these things a try.

Canon employees and dealers reading this… please help to reduce my gaffer tape bill. Soon. Please.

Think Tank Logistics Manager 30
31 May 2016. Bournemouth, Dorset. Think Tank Logistics Manager 30. Hillcrest Road

Think Tank Logistics Manager 30.

A few weeks ago I bought some more Elinchrom Ranger Quadra kit and after a short while lugging my gear around in multiple bags and cases I decided that it was time to get myself one big case to take most or all of my Quadra gear. My rationale was that I am pulling one bag on wheels and carrying two or three others so why not make it one on wheels with the lighting and one smaller bag with cameras and lenses riding on top of it or over my shoulder as required? There’s quite a bit of choice on the market but all of my experience with Think Tank bags told me to start my search there. They make lots of rolling bags but only three specifically designed to lug large amounts of kit. My benchmark was that I had to be able to get at least two of my Manfrotto 156 stands plus a couple of Manfrotto 001s in there along with two or three packs, three or four heads, spare batteries, cables, light modifiers and plenty of accessories.

I had previously seen a colleagues Location Manager 40 case and so I wanted to check out the Logistics Manager 30 because on paper it appeared to be just about perfect. The internal dimensions were listed at 70cm length. (more…)

So I bought a Canon 7D MkII

I wrote a long blog post about this time last year talking about the choice between three of Canon’s full-frame DSLR cameras. At that stage in my work I couldn’t imagine buying another crop frame camera after selling my original EOS7D and giving my opinion of it as “loving everything about the camera apart from the image quality above 800 ISO”. Well, hold the front page – the EOS7D Mk II can handle ISOs a fair bit higher than 800.

Cropped area of approximately a frame shot at 3200 ISO blown up to 100%

Cropped area of approximately a frame shot at 3200 ISO blown up to 100%

In the frame above shot at 3200 ISO you can see some noise in the out of focus areas but it isn’t nasty and it isn’t overwhelming. In the sample shot under ‘press conference’ conditions at 1600 ISO I think that the camera performed brilliantly. I would say that the MkII is at least two stops better in low light than the original 7D and maybe a bit more under certain lighting conditions and those two stops are the difference between a camera that is very usable as an every day available light camera and one that isn’t.

So far I have been delighted with it. I’ve used it on ten assignments already and it is rapidly becoming one of those things that goes into the bag first. (more…)

Elinchrom Quadra ELB

27 April 2016. Bournemouth, Dorset. Elinchrom Quadra ELB. Hillcrest Road Neil Turner

When I get a new piece of kit worthy of mention, I usually write a first hand account of how it is working out and go into details based on using it on a few jobs. I bought an Elinchrom Quadra ELB HS kit a couple of weeks ago and I thought that it was about time I gave some first impressions on this blog. Sadly, I haven’t used it for anything particularly interesting and I certainly haven’t stretched it beyond what I would normally do with my old Quadras (some executive portraits and a quick location shoot) but I can already see a lot of small but amazingly significant changes from the original system.

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I was very impressed with the Quadra when I wrote about it in my “32 Months On” and was further impressed when the Lithium Ion batteries came out. The differences between the ELB and the Quadra for most jobs aren’t huge but everything about the new kit tells me that the designers have listened and that the manufacturers have allowed their engineers to implement some great changes. For me, the positive changes with the pack are:

  • Far better display
  • Vastly improved menu system
  • Ability to recondition flattened lithium batteries
  • Better cable port covers
  • All of my old Quadra bits and cables are compatible with the new pack

I have the new High Synch head too which brings one key improvement which is the ability to synch with my cameras at shutter speeds right up to 1/8000th of a second using the EL Skyport Plus HS Transmitter and I’ll talk about these a bit further down the page.

Let’s talk about the menus: (more…)

Pelican case wheels

peli_wheels

There cannot be many photographers out there who don’t own at least one Pelican Case. The super tough plastic boxes (often on wheels) that a lot of our gear travels in are superbly designed, brilliantly made and as tough as old boots. I have three of them and another photographer swapped the standard hard wheels on my 1510 case for some softer rubber ones a couple of years ago and the absence of grating hard wheeled noises was a revelation. I find myself using my 1560 case a lot more these days and so it was time that got the ‘old soft wheel shuffle’ too.

I am not someone who indulges in much DIY but it became obvious when I read this ‘how to’ blog post by David Fearn that even I could do it. (more…)