equipment

A new compact… again
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Ground Staff cutting the grass on Court 14 at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon ahead of The Championships. ©Neil Turner, June 2018

When I’m away from home working as a Photo Editor on big sporting events I like to have a compact camera with me. My relatively recent entry into the world of Instagram has made my desire to have a camera in my pocket/rucksack/bag has grown. Regular readers of this site will know that I have owned and loved quite a few but, having sold all of my Fujifilm cameras, I felt the need to buy a new one.

The list of features that I felt that I needed couldn’t really be filled by one camera and I considered several options before finally making a purchase. Top of my list was probably the Sony RX100 MkV and the Panasonic TZ100 was also on that list but the combination of my familiarity with the Canon system meant that I want for the G7X MkII. The Sony was a little expensive (almost £500 dearer than the Canon) and the Panasonic just didn’t produce the results in the way that I wanted. (more…)

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:

(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.

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…)

iPad workflow part two

Apple’s Lightning to SD Card and USB3 to Camera adapters

A few weeks ago I promised to keep working on my iPad workflow and keep readers of this blog up-to-date with my thoughts. Lot of other things have got in the way lately but here is the second instalment. I’ve decided to break the whole process down into four parts:

  • Getting the images onto the iPad
  • Toning and captioning them
  • Getting the pictures to where they are needed
  • My conclusions and (hopefully) a settled workflow

The accessories that I’ve used to import images from memory cards onto an iPad for photo editing.Because I’m vaguely logical, I’m going to tackle them in order and so I’m going to outline the ways that I have looked at getting my pictures onto the iPad. Because this is an examination of the possibilities I’m going to consider all of my options and because I’m a Canon user I will tend to lean towards the options for EOS cameras although much of what I’m talking about is not make specific. I have experimented with several ways to get the pictures onto the iPad and I’ve tried all of them as JPEGs and RAW files too: (more…)

Work in progress – an iPad workflow

Whilst I’m not able to be out shooting I have decided to take a serious look at the workflow options using an iPad or even an iPhone and to see whether they really can replace a lightweight laptop in my working life. I have even bought a new iPad Mini 4 (already upgraded to iOS11) because I’m sure that I will be using the tablet for some form of mobile editing. Should you be seeking wisdom and a fully-formed solution I’m prepared to stick a plot-spoiler in here and tell you that it is still very much a ‘work in progress’ and that I don’t have an answer for you. Yet.

My starting point for this is having used my phone as an occasional method of getting pictures away quickly – mostly for clients to be able to use my pictures in their social media and on their websites instead of their own pictures taken with their phones and tablets. If you are prepared to work with JPEG files then this isn’t too tricky, but what if you want to base everything on a RAW workflow? Not so simple?

I know that a lot of photographers have worked out their own workflows for using iPads as their principal location editing devices. I have been trawling blogs and YouTube videos trying to get my head around how and why they have decided to go down this route and the fact that several photographers that I respect and even admire have gone this way means that it has to be a serious option for professional editorial and corporate photography. A lot of the same people, driven by a desire to reduce the weight of their kit, have also gone to mirrorless camera systems.

As part of my search I’ve used a LOT of different apps. Amongst others, and in no particular order: Lightroom, FSN Pro, Shuttersnitch, Marksta, PS Express, PicturePro, Transmit, Affinity and the sadly no-longer-supported Photogene4. These range from Lightroom being free with the right Adobe CC subscription to a chunky £49.99 for PicturePro.

So here is what I do know: (more…)

Using the Canon W-E1 wifi adapter

When Canon announced the W-E1 wifi adapter for the EOS7D MkII and the EOS5S and 5SR I was decidedly underwhelmed for two reasons;

  • The first was that it was not backwards compatible with the two EOS5D MkIII bodies that I had at the time.
  • The second was that it took away the ability to record to two cards when it was in use.

At the time I couldn’t see any advantage over any of the SD based transmitters from Eye-Fi or Toshiba amongst others. I didn’t buy one and I couldn’t see myself buying one either.

Fast forward ten months and my need to use remote cameras controlled by an iOS devices has grown and I only had one – the wonderfully simple Canon EOS6D. I didn’t want to use either of the EOS5D MkIV bodies as a remote and so I bought the W-E1 adapter to use in my EOS7D MkII. (more…)

Setting up FTP from a Canon EOS 5D MkIV

A couple of weeks ago I spent a couple of days helping to teach other photographers to send pictures direct from their Canon EOS 5D MkIVs. Over the last couple of years I have taught dozens of people how to do this and set up a huge number of cameras; mostly Canons ranging from the 5D MkII, MkIII and MkIV to the various EOS1D series models as well as various Nikon D4, D4S and D5 models. It’s not rocket science but it is something that takes a lot of practice before it becomes part of your toolkit.

I use this technology all of the time myself and it was suggested to me that I might like to try my hand at making an instructional video. I have a face for radio and so my two thumbs are making a welcome return to the media (last seen holding a power tool in the 1985 Argos catalogue). You might like to check out this old blog post about why I need to get pictures away quickly too.

Here’s a link to the 1080p version on Vimeo
There’s also a 720p option on YouTube.

I’m always happy to answer questions and even happier to get feedback. This is my first real attempt at a “how to” video so be gentle with me!

For those who are interested it was all filmed using a Canon EOS7D MkII and a Canon 24-70 f4L IS lens before being edited in Apple iMovie with some help from Apple Keynote.