photography

The constant software update dilemma

Back in the day we used to occasionally try out new chemicals and different printing papers. We used to experiment with new film stock when it hit the market and, on the whole, it was a welcome distraction from the day-to-day work. In the digital era we have to get new cameras a bit more often and we need to keep our IT current but the biggest battle and the largest dilemma is software. Because I teach a bit and because I am a complete anorak** I always have a look at new software packages as they become available.

menu_bar_screen_grab

Keeping up to date is not cheap. Upgrades are often necessary – especially when none of the software companies make their RAW converters backwards compatible when new cameras and new lenses hit the market. The move by Adobe towards the monthly or annual subscription model is very interesting and brings into very sharp focus the real cost of having the latest software. I have written before about making the business case for buying new gear and the same formula should apply to upgrading software. Every time I talk or write about these kinds of financial decisions, the same piece of music pops into my head… Bruce Springsteen’s song “Cautious Man” where there is a line that says:

“When something caught his eye he’d measure his need
And then very carefully he’d proceed”

lightroom_5_screen_shot

This week, to misquote the wonderful Fast Show, “I are mostly been playing with Lightroom”. To be more precise I have been looking at the new Lightroom 5 beta that Adobe have made available. This comes against a background of having experimented with pretty much every version of Lightroom since it hit the shops back in 2007 and found that I wasn’t entirely sold on the application despite seeing why others love it so much. And that is a huge part of the software conundrum – there are lots of options that achieve pretty much the same end result but get there via very different routes. If, like me, you shoot RAW pictures you need to have a way of editing, captioning, renaming, converting, saving, delivering and archiving your work. This can be achieved using a single application or you can use three , four or five different ones – it really doesn’t matter as long as your workflow is repeatable, flexible, efficient and accurate.

I will write a lot more about Lightroom 5 when I have really used it properly but I have to say that it seems a lot quicker than the previous version and the interface for Adobe RAW Converter is even closer to to the version that I use in Photoshop CS6 than ever – making using Lightroom a lot easier for me. I have also realised that Adobe’s efforts to create a programme for photographers to edit their work in are bearing fruit. The time has definitely arrived when I could easily do without Photoshop altogether and run pretty much everything from Lightroom. Of course that doesn’t mean that I want to… yet.

Lighting gels… the best in VFM?

Almost all photographers spend money on accessories, gizmos, gadgets and photo-related odds and sods. Sometimes we waste our money but I wanted to put in a brief plug for the things that constantly amaze me by the amount of “bang for the buck” I get from them. I’m talking about lighting gels. They cost a few pounds each and they last for years if you look after them even reasonably well.

Screen grab from Swatch App

Screen grab from Swatch App

The reason that I am writing this today is that last week I was shooting a job and was slightly embarrassed that the pieces of gel in my lighting kit were looking a bit tatty. I realised that some of them were bought as shared sheets (ie I only had half of a 52 x 61 cm sheet of each) when I was at college in the mid 1980s. I might have added a few more colours and strengths since then but even the newest gel in my bag is five years old. The beauty is that you don’t need to look after them that well really – even a scrunched and screwed up gel is still the same colour and will work. Of course they don’t like extreme heat and they aren’t partial to liquid damage either but at under the boiling point of water and kept dry they are very durable.

When I decided that I needed some new gels I phoned The Flash Centre and they arranged for Rosco to send me some. I have been playing with the iPhone Swatch app for about eighteen months now and it made ordering the new gels rather easy. They arrived rapidly in a strong cardboard tube and all I had to do was cut them down into the right sized pieces to fit into a pocket in my Think Tank rolling case.

This time around I ordered various grades of CTS – that’s Colour Temperature Straw, the gel that changes the light coming out of my flash units to varying degrees of Tungsten right up to the Full CTS which does a very good job of making the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra flash tube into a Tungsten light that very closely matches the Tungsten setting on a Canon EOS DSLR. I also got some ND (Neutral Density) gels and a sheet of a diffuser called ‘tough spun’. I didn’t need to get any effects gels – the purple, orange, red, blue and green gels that I have in the case are fine even if they are old enough to buy alcohol by now.

Comparing the cost of this big batch of new gels to some of the money that I have literally thrown away on rubbish gizmos over the last 30 years I feel very smug. I know that after one single use I will have justified the (tiny) expense and that after the 50th use it will get embarrassing how smug I feel about the VFM (value for money) that you get from quality lighting gels.

Philippa Gregory – the contact sheet
© Neil Turner/TSL. Philippa Gregory, October 2004

© Neil Turner/TSL. Philippa Gregory, October 2004

I haven’t done one of these contact sheets for a long time and I thought that this set was an interesting example. I submitted this set of sixteen pictures and they are all landscape in orientation. That’s because the slot they were shot for was across two pages and always a squarish landscape image. As I said in the previous post, the whole thing was done in ten minutes on a dull Autumn (fall) day in Hyde Park. That time included setting up and breaking down the Lumedyne light and chatting to the subject. Note that she is clutching her novel in the opening frame. I find that it’s always a good idea to do that if their publicist insists so that you can then go on to get the pictures that will actually get used.

The Copyright Fight

It’s not very often that something comes up that threatens your livelihood in quite such a stark way as the current piece of legislation going through the UK Parliament. My colleague Eddie Mulholland says it far better than I could so please follow this link, read what he has to say and let your MP know that they need to remove the copyright clauses from the bill before our industry is damaged (again).

The Copyright Fight.

Hero portraits

A few months ago I got a call from a designer who wanted me to shoot some pictures at a gym in east London that would be used in many different ways but primarily as huge prints in the window of their high street premises. My instructions were to shoot what he called “hero portraits” of some of the gym staff and of the two owners who are both fitness experts. That was the extent of the advanced briefing.

©Neil Turner. March 2012, London

The designer was there on the day to act as art director and I turned up with plenty of kit: cameras, lighting, backgrounds, clamps, clips, gels and plenty of batteries. The day started with a quick chat, a couple of test shots and then we decided to shoot “black on black on black” – the team were all wearing black gym kit, we made use of the black rubberised floor in the free weights area and I brought in a six foot by four foot matt black folding Lastolite background. We settled on a mixture of strong side and back-light with some very warm gels being used in different ways in each of the four main shots.

Shot one was of one of the owners who uses boxing and boxing training to work with many of his clients and with some of the group classes he teaches. We went for a simple composition with him putting up his guard as if the 24”x36” soft box that was about four feet away from him was his opponent. That gave us the main light and I used a second head with a grid diffuser behind him to accentuate the shape of his shoulders, neck and head. The first few shots featured black boxing gloves but that was just one bit of black too far and so we swapped them for red and the resulting images were very pleasing.

Shot two was his business partner who does fitness classes and we featured her with a large blue medicine ball, three quarter length and slightly less side lighting.

©Neil Turner. London, March 2012

Shot three was of another male instructor who specializes in power training and he suggested that we used a variation on the American Football quarterback starting position. This was the most fun image to shoot because the shapes were instantly graphic and the light was almost instantly correct. The floor featured in this shot for the first time and so I needed to make sure that it didn’t dominate the composition. In the end I made sure that only the smallest area around his feet had any light on it at all and some nearby kit was used to “flag” the area – stopping unwanted light hitting the rubber tiles.

The fourth and final of the hero portraits was about physiotherapy and for that we had a client sitting on one large blue ball using a blue soft tube across his shoulders to stretch and twist. Four very large prints now feature in the window of the gym. Heroic!

A quick update…

Here I am on another morning train to London Waterloo from Bournemouth and tomorrow marks my fourth Monday morning working at London 2012. Training, preparations, more training and extra preparations would sum up what we have been up to so far. The Main Press Centre on the Olympic Park was the first area to open officially and we have had a few photographers passing through already.

The scale of the operation is impressive and the amount of planning that has gone into getting to this stage is staggering. I’m already excited about the next two and a half months and the nearer we get to the action starting, I can only imagine that the excitement will keep growing.

I’m glad that I decided to get involved…

On test: Vanguard Heralder 38 camera bag

When somebody offers me the chance to try out a new camera bag that is winning awards all over the place, I normally jump at that chance. An email from the people behind the Vanguard range of bags arrived in my inbox a few weeks ago and the Heralder 38 arrived at my home shortly afterwards. I have tried so many rucksack bags and been disappointed with the compromises that you have to make in order to get portability and so I keep coming back to shoulder bags – despite the best advice of people who know about back pain.

The Vanguard Heralder 38 camera kit + laptop shoulder bag.

Lets put this bag into some sort of context: I have used a Lowe Pro Stealth 650 as my main “carry everything” shoulder bag for many years now and I am used to it, quite like it and would buy the same again to replace it if Lowe Pro hadn’t done what they seem to love doing – which is to take a perfectly good design and “improve” it. The old Stealth 650 that I have is a good bag but the new Stealth 650 is really annoying!

Anyway, back to the review: The way that I test things is to use them in my everyday work and so the amount of testing depends entirely on what I’m up to at any given time. The last couple of weeks have been relatively quiet but I have had enough days out with this bag to have made a lot of important decisions about it. From my own experience of reading reviews, I know that a lot of people skip straight to the end and because of that there will be a “conclusions” section at the bottom.

Most people want their camera bags to be smaller than they need to be, to weigh less than the total of everything that they want to jam in, have super-easy access, look great and to be a joy to carry for several hours. I guess that’s why nobody has ever found the perfect bag. It’s impossible to make that bag on a commercial level because we all have subtly different needs and so the word compromise rears it’s head AGAIN!

What can you get in the bag?

If this bag is going to become my everyday carry everything bag then it needs to swallow my standard amount of kit: Two Canon EOS5D MkII bodies, 16-35 f2.8L, 24-70 f2.8L and 70-200 f2.8L lenses, two 580exII flash units and all of the bits, pieces and accessories that go to support that kit in the field. I also need to put either a 15.4″ Apple MacBook Pro or an 11″ MacBook Air plus gadgets in from time to time. The good news is that everything fits in and the bonus is that I can just fit the 70-200 standing up with its lens hood in place (I hate having to remove and reverse hoods every time you put a lens away).

The Heralder 38 showing how my standard kit is laid out when loaded into it.

The bag itself doesn’t have too many pockets and hiding places for anything other than relatively small or flat items such as pens (x3), memory cards (x4) notebooks, passes and business cards. What it does have is a removable pouch which holds a couple of spare batteries for the camera, a couple of spare sets of AAs for the flash units and an electronic release for the camera. Because of this pouch and the excellent use of space within the main compartment of the bag the Heralder 38 passes this test rather comfortably – even with a laptop and related accessories on board.

Ease of Access

That less than perfect clip…

Shoulder bags are nearly always nicer to work from that rucksacks or rolling cases. I prefer my bags to have a simple method of closing them whilst working and a more secure method for securing the contents when I am simply travelling. The combination of a zip around the whole lid and a single snap-shut clip on this bag meets that requirement too. I suspect that the designers of this model have looked at the old LowePro Stealth bags and decided that they were on to something before designing their own similar solution.

It’s at this point that I found my first ‘issue’ with the Heralder 38. I like to be able to close the bag in work mode one handed. Every Domke and LowePro I have ever owned has the ability to do this in common and the Vanguard looks as if this wouldn’t be a problem either. So far I have struggled like mad with the plastic snap-shut clip fitted to this bag and I cannot work out why. I cannot seem to line it up as easily as the more square ones on my LowePro or on the Think Tank roller that now carries my lights everywhere. I’m still trying to master this clip and failing.

Beyond that niggle, getting kit in and out of the bag whilst moving is as easy as it has ever been on a bag that I’ve used. If they could source a less trendy looking clip I’d be well on the way to proclaiming this bag a massive success.

Carrying the bag

This is where the Heralder 38 comes into its own. Somehow they have made this a superbly comfortable bag to carry. The strap is excellent and the shape of the back of the bag means that it sits on my hip incredibly well. Vanguard have gone some of the way to fooling me into thinking that I am carrying less dead weight than I actually am and that is a huge advantage for this bag when comparing it to the other bags of a similar size that I have owned and/or tried out. Put simply, this is an easy bag to carry – possibly the easiest I’ve ever used.

Extra features

All bags these days come with clips and straps that allow you to attach tripods, monopods and other large and unwieldy accessories. To be honest I never want to be in a position to have to do that and so the bits an pieces that came with this bag that allowed me to do that were removed (where possible) and put into a cupboard.

The bag features lots of handy labels…

What the bag does have (in common with my old LowePro) is a rain cover tucked away in the back of the bag that can be fitted to keep the contents drier than would otherwise be the case. We are in the middle of a spell of beautiful weather here in the south of England and so I haven’t had a chance to test the rain cover yet but I can tell you that it is fast to fit and easy to pack away again. The great news is that it is detachable too – which is a big tick from me. I have had other bags where the rain cover is permanently attached – which means that when it stops rainy you have to leave it out to dry or pack it away wet.

The bag comes with a very stylish luggage tag and an elasticated end pocket that fits a small bottle of water rather well. As someone who carries his bag on the left shoulder, the elasticated pocket is on the wrong end but that’s just a small niggle and not a deal-breaker!

Looks and construction

I guess that when you design a camera bag you have two choices: you either go down the “it’s a camera bag so it should look like one” route or go the other way and design something that looks like a normal holdall. This bag is squarely in the former camp – to the extent that it would be hard to imagine that it was anything else. The black water resistant materials are of a great quality and the plastic base appears to be pretty tough. The orange colour of the interior may be off-putting for some people and I’d prefer something 18% grey myself (like my old LowePro) but it has the advantage of being very visible from a distance and being the colours of The BPPA.

The quality of the stitching and the fabrics tells me that this bag should last a long time. If they put a better snap-shut clip on the bag I think that they will have the whole construction sorted.

Conclusions

This is a very good bag. It is OK to look at, swallows a lot of kit and is easy to work out of. It appears to be well made and the biggest selling point for me is that it is supremely comfortable to carry. The number of distributors for these bags seems to be growing and a quick search of the internet found the best price is as low as £124.98 at Amazon– which is good value for money as far as I’m concerned.

The Vanguard Heralder 38 in use.

So far I only have one real niggle: the snap-shut clip. Beyond that, for the first couple of days I thought that a couple of external pouches would be useful for when I have a few extra bits but I suspect that would alter the superb balance and usability of the bag rather than enhance it.

So that leads me to the big question: “Is this the best bag in its class that I have ever used?” The answer is very close… for portability and comfort of carrying the answer is a big yes. For ease of working is a marginal “no” BUT the bag that I would say beats this one has been modified by LowePro and the new version isn’t as pro’ friendly as the old one and so, if you needed to buy a shoulder bag to carry a decent amount of kit along with a laptop, I don’t know of anything that would beat the Vanguard Heralder 38. I haven’t found the camera bag equivalent of the holy grail yet but there is every chance that it is just a myth anyway.

UK National Symposium on Photography 2012

The fourth National Symposium on Photography takes place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday in London. Timed to coincide with the World Photography Organisation Festival in London, the symposium will feature a very interesting range of debates and events.

I am going to be there, taking part in a panel debate about the future of news photography. The narrative for the debate on the UKNSP website says this:

The ethics of press and public photography, with particular reference to the implications of the Leveson Inquiry. At what stage does photography become harassment? Should there be controls? More broadly, where is the press heading in its use of photography? Should the press, citizen journalists, and members of the public all be treated the same or differently, whether in general or at newsworthy events? This panel discussion features a range of points of view – that of a photographer who gave evidence at the Leveson Enquiry, a leading picture editor and a champion of citizen photography.

It’s going to be a very interesting and maybe even passionate debate. This will be the third time in four years that I’ve taken part in the symposium and I firmly believe that it is developing into and very important event in the UK photography calendar. My fellow panellists are Alan Sparrow, Chairman of the Picture Editors Guild and Executive Picture Editor of Metro UK and Pauline Hadaway, Director of Belfast Exposed Photography and the debate will be chaired by Photographer Andrew Wiard.

The debate starts at 5pm on Friday 27th April at Somerset House in London. Tickets are available from Redeye or from the WPO.