camera

Choosing between full frame Canons…
The Canon EOS6D, EOS5D MkIII and the EOS1DX

The Canon EOS6D, EOS5D MkIII and the EOS1DX

A couple of years ago I wrote about how, as a working photographer, I make purchasing decisions. The formula is simple: assess the actual need against the purchase price and proceed accordingly. On that basis I own Canon full-frame digital SLRs (the cost of switching to another brand would be too high – even if I wanted to) and about ten Canon lenses. My last crop-frame DSLR was the EOS7D which was lovely to use but utterly useless to me above about 640 ISO and I shoot at 1000 to 2000 quite a bit these days. I’m always interested in new kit but rarely do I buy something just because I want it.

The chances are that all three of the cameras in the picture are nearing the end of their model lives. The rumours of an EOS5D MkIV and even an EOS1DX MkII (or whatever they choose to call it) are already swirling around the web and it cannot be long before the EOS6D gets an update either. That doesn’t make them bad cameras – far from it, they are all exceptional bits of kit.

I was asked the other day by a talented amateur photographer that I happened to be shooting a portrait of whether it was worth his while “going full-frame”. There’s never a right or wrong answer to questions like that: (more…)

Twenty-five years ago today
©Neil Turner, 13th February 1990. Whitecross Street Market, London EC1.

©Neil Turner, 13th February 1990. Whitecross Street Market, London EC1.

Over the last few years I’ve posted a few pictures from my own filing cabinet when they have had some relevance or when there is a specific anniversary. This picture was taken twenty-five years ago today as I went for one of my regular wanders around bits of London that were near Metro – the 24 hour laboratory where we all got our E6 transparency film processed. It was about a mile and a half from our Hoxton office (before it was trendy) and it took about twenty minutes to walk there or five minutes to drive. Sometimes there would be other photographers around and we would adjourn to a local cafe for a cup of something and a sandwich and at other times I’d take myself off for a walk around one of the many fascinating side roads and markets that made up the Clerkenwell/Farringdon/Smithfield area and take a few personal and/or stock pictures whilst the film made its hour and three quarter journey through the system and the ‘soup’ at Metro.

On this particular day I went to Whitecross Street with a couple of cameras and a couple of rolls of Kodak Tri-X film. It is amazing what you remember when you start to think about a day and a place and my memory of this day is that I was half an hour into the walk when I bumped into another photographer (there were three or four agencies close by) and we had a coffee anyway!

The man in the photograph (who said his name was Frank but I’m not sure he was being 100% honest judging by the cheeky look in his eye) had been a stall holder at the market selling books and a few magazines for many years. Trade was brisk as the workers from the many offices on the edge of the City of London were having their lunch hours and I didn’t really finish my conversation with him.

Anyway, another ‘archive’ picture that brings back happy memories and brings a smile to my face. This was, quite literally, half of my lifetime ago and I still love the photograph.

Techie stuff: Nikon FM2 camera with a 135mm f2 Nikkor, Kodak Tri-x film.

Another photo worthy of an obituary
©Neil Turner/TSL. Carl Djerassi, June 1999, London.

©Neil Turner/TSL. Carl Djerassi, June 1999, London.

Carl Djerassi, the chemist widely considered the father of the birth control pill, has died aged 91. I photographed him back in 1999 sitting in what I thought was a very ‘egg-shaped’ chair in his London apartment. If you want to know more about him, The Guardian’s obituary is worth reading but my very clear memory of being there was that he was one of the calmest people that I had ever met. He was confident without being arrogant and his understanding of my job and the job of the reporter who went with me was absolute. He had, obviously, been interviewed and photographed hundreds of times before but I still believe it to be true that most people who have had that kind of media exposure still don’t ‘get it’ in the same way that he did.

It seems that almost every week now I see an obituary in the press of someone that I photographed earlier in my career and it has two distinct effects on me. The first is quite predictable – I feel that bit older each time it happens. The second effect is to make me realise how amazingly lucky I have been in meeting the people that I have met and having been able to make what I hope are portrait and feature images that will stand the test of time.

This particular photograph lived in my folio for many years. It was unusual for me to have shot quite such a reflective portrait at that time. I was busy trying to make a reputation for myself as ‘the guy’ who used strong lighting and strong compositions to compliment that lighting. Like most phases of a career, it passed. I can still shoot the strong pictures when the situation calls for it but this portrait is far closer to my current favoured style than almost anything that I shot in those early days of digital. When I look back at the more memorable images that I shot through the late 1990s – the period of transition from scanned negative film to 1.9 megapixel digital cameras – a lot of them have this kind of feel and that surprises me because my memory is of lighting everything in slightly over-the-top ways.

Technical stuff: Kodak DCS520 camera with a Canon 28-70 f2.8L lens. Ambient light, 1/160th of a second at f4 on 400 ISO.

Early morning winter sun
©Neil Turner, January 2015. Early morning wintery sunshine on the beach at Bournemouth.

©Neil Turner, January 2015. Early morning wintery sunshine on the beach at Bournemouth.

It’s almost always about the light. Watery winter sunshine on the beach at Bournemouth this morning. I shot a frame and edged closer, then shot another before moving closer still. It was my sixth move that caused a few seagulls to finally move off and then I shot this just as the water came through my right boot.
Fujifilm X100S, 1/600th @ f9, 640 ISO.

©Neil Turner, January 2015. Early morning watery sunshine on the beach at Bournemouth.

©Neil Turner, January 2015. Early morning watery sunshine on the beach at Bournemouth.

The Pier has seen better days and I’m not sure that the potted palm trees do much for the area but they make good pictures.
Fujifilm X100S, 1/1200th @ f8, 640 ISO.

I was born less than three miles from where these pictures were taken and the beaches along this part of the coast still hold an almost endless fascination for me.

Not the DSLR, I’m having fun
© Neil Turner, March 2014. Shadows on the pavement as a pedestrian passes along Tottenham Court Road.

© Neil Turner, March 2014. Shadows on the pavement as a pedestrian passes along Tottenham Court Road.

Question: Why are so many professional photographers using mirrorless cameras, micro 4/3rds format cameras and experimenting with pretty much anything that isn’t a DSLR?

It’s a tough question and without conducting some sort of major survey I can only give an answer based on my own experiences and those of close friends and colleagues. DSLRs have been my main cameras for over sixteen years now and they have become an extension of me when I’m working. They do what I need them to do with no real fuss, the quality has moved from “acceptable” back in 1998 to “extremely good” and they allow me to do the day job without having to worry about my gear very much. But, and there’s always a ‘but’ – they have become a little bit boring and little bit ‘too good’.

When I’m shooting pictures for the joy of it (and despite doing this for a living since 1986 I still do that) I want to feel something different. Elegant competence isn’t enough any more. (more…)

What’s your favourite lens?
©Neil Turner, November 2014. Surfer heads towards Bournemouth Pier as the waves get bigger during a storm.

©Neil Turner, November 2014. Surfer heads towards Bournemouth Pier as the waves get bigger during a storm.

It’s been a while since I’ve directly answered a question from a reader on this blog. I haven’t been ignoring people – it’s just that the questions best suited to an answer on here haven’t been coming my way. A fellow news photographer causing mischief asked this one last week:

“What’s your favourite lens?”

It’s tough to answer because one of the things I love doing in my work is to use as wide a variety of focal lengths as possible and to use the right lens for the situation (if I own it and/or have it with me of course). I’ve written before about the best lens for portraits and I’ve written about zooms versus primes quite recently and so I thought that I’d give a couple of different answers to the question.

Most used lens

There is one lens that I use more than any other, one that I’d find it hardest to live and work without and which has given amazing service over many years. That lens is my Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS. (more…)

Pools of light technique from 2008.

Every time I post one of my old technique examples I get a massive spike in the visitor figures for this blog. Despite some of them being fifteen or more years old they still seem to attract quite a bit of attention. This one is being re-posted after a specific request from a reader and I’ve added a second photograph at the bottom for a little ‘added value’.

©Neil Turner/TSL, May 2008

©Neil Turner/TSL, May 2008. 1/180th of a second at f4, 200 ISO

I was inspired to share the “how” for this picture because of a comment from a colleague who said that I had been “lucky to find such a nice pool of light”. I was amused, annoyed and complimented all at the the same time because I created this light and he obviously thought that it looked as if it was a natural effect. Much of the best lighting looks as if it were not lit… so how was this one achieved?

I had been asked by the picture editor to get a good range of portraits of this man who is the Vice President of a company that handles examination papers. The logo was needed in some frames and this plate screwed to a wall in a corridor was the only one on offer. The layout was like this..

Single flash the other side of the door

Single flash the other side of the door

The brown lines that you can see on the layout are fire doors – big heavy wooden doors with three small square glass panels in each one. The Lumedyne flash unit with a Pocket Wizard receiver on was placed outside the door and the door was closed. The subject was lit entirely by the hard, un-modified flash coming through those three glass panels. Lining up exactly where the light will fall is very easy – if the subject can see the flash head, then it can see them. After that it is just a question of shooting a couple of frames and judging on the camera’s LCD screen where the light is falling and then raising, lowering or moving the flash accordingly.

In this case the flash is about ten degrees above the subject’s eye line and he is looking almost directly at it. This allowed me to get the nice hard shadow behind his head and still have a reasnably flattering light on his face. I also tried to do a few rames where the ambient light in the corridor (see below ) was making the shadows softer but I much preffered the hard treatment.

©Neil Turner/TSL, May 2008

©Neil Turner/TSL, May 2008. 1/10th of a second at f4, 200 ISO.

Technical Stuff: Canon EOS1D MkII with a Canon EF16-35 f2.8L lens.

Another ‘classic’ technique posting from the old site

The idea here is to have two separate lighting set-ups for one interview portrait without having to constantly move around the room adjusting lights. This interview was with a senior businessman who chairs a body that decides how much teachers’ pay rises will be each year. The reporter wasn’t all that comfortable with me shooting through the interview but it was what the picture editor wanted, so that’s what I did. This job required a bit of quick thinking so that I could get two different set-ups in place.

©Neil Turner/TSL, April 2008.

©Neil Turner/TSL, April 2008.

The picture on the left was lit using a single Lumedyne head at 50 joules bounced off of a wall almost in front of the subject. The image on the right was lit by a single Canon 550ex flash gun with a Honl Photo snoot attached aimed directly at the subjects face and set further away from the camera.

Both flash units were fitted with Pocket Wizard receivers set on different channels from each other. The idea here is that by simply switching between channels on the transmitters I could switch between two very different lighting styles without moving.

The left hand image is far more evenly lit. The large expanse of off-white wall made a very good and large light source. The exposure here was 1/60th of a second at f5.6 on ISO200. There was some available light play – without flash the scene would have been two stops under exposed with that amount of flash. You can see from the diagram below how the room was laid out and the flash head was positioned at about 10 degrees above the subjects eyeline.

The right hand image is far more starkly lit. The exposure was 1/250th of a second at f13 on ISO 200. There is almost no available light in this picture and the lighting effect is dramatically different. The very narrow angle of the light offered by the Honl snoot makes it difficult to always get the subject right in the centre of the small pool of light and so you need to be careful when aiming it to centre it on where the subject is most likely to be.

The layout of small conference room where the interview took place.

The layout of small conference room where the interview took place.

The point of this technique is that you can arrange more than one style of lighting and then switch between them at will simply by selecting a different channel on the trigger. I find that I use the Honl snoot a lot more than I had imagined that I would. It fits into a bag very easily and it is simple to use. When you are in complete control of the lighting, it’s very easy to achieve dramatic results. This style of light might not be to every picture editor’s taste and so the evenly lit alternative is a very good idea.