photojournalist

Tonality – the black & white conversion app
Screen grab from Tonality 1.1.1

Screen grab from Tonality 1.1.1

I was intrigued by a recommendation that I read from a colleague for Tonality. I rarely go outside Adobe Camera RAW these days, even for black and white conversions, but I was tempted to have a go at something new and so I went to the Apple App Store and bought it. After a few attempts at fiddling with it I dismissed it as a very interesting application that I would master one day when I had the time. A few days ago I was asked by a client to convert a lot of images supplied to them as colour Jpegs into mono Jpegs with a slight tone over them. In the past I would have gone straight back to the RAW files and started again but I had the idea of giving Tonality a go.

Like so many of the corporate jobs I shoot, the client would rather I didn’t show they images on my personal blog and so I grabbed some other interesting pictures from my ongoing personal work and applied the same sort of presets to them. It had taken me less than five minutes to become familiar with the sliders and controls and probably another five minutes to create the ideal and very subtle split toning effect that the client had been asking for. The two versions of a photograph taken on the beach at Bournemouth that you see below were a quick test for this blog post. The colour image is a Jpeg converted from a Fujifilm X20 RAW file in Adobe Camera RAW and the black and white version underneath was converted into black and white using the “adaptive exposure” auto setting in Tonality from that Jpeg.

©Neil Turner, September 2014. Bournemouth.

©Neil Turner, September 2014. Bournemouth.

©Neil Turner, September 2014. Bournemouth.

©Neil Turner, September 2014. Bournemouth.

 

I don’t know what you think but I am really impressed by the job that the auto has done and, whilst I could fiddle and get it even better, I am more than happy with it. I can hear you saying that this is also easy to do in Photoshop (and quite a few other apps and plug-ins) but the point is that it was done in Tonality and it was really easy. The application is capable of a lot of good stuff as well as a lot more completely over the top special effects that I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole.

When I get more time, I’m going to get right under the skin of this application. Until then, it will be used on my personal project work. If a client asks for toned mono images again, I will definitely look as using Tonality for that too.

The UK price is £13.99 – which is a little bit dearer than most Apps that I would buy just to have a play. It’s a very simple app that achieves its goals.

Canon’s EOS 6D – pressed into service

With Photokina drawing the crowds in Germany and with both Canon and Nikon announcing important new DSLRs I have (typically) been having a good look at a camera that has been on the market for ages. I bought my EOS 6D for a very specific reason; the ability to use it as a remote and control it from my smart phone. It performed that task rather well and I will definitely be making use of that function again but I also wanted to blog about what it’s like as a daily working camera.

Canon's small, light full frame DSLR. ©Neil Turner, September 2014.

Canon’s small, light full frame DSLR. ©Neil Turner, September 2014.

I was at another major show last week – The Southampton International Boat Show to be precise and I wanted to carry as little gear around with me as I could. Most of the work was going to be shot using EOS 5D MkIII cameras which have become my favourites (although they are far from perfect) for day-to-day jobs but I had a problem with one of them and decided to use the 6D as my second body once it had performed it’s (not able to post the pictures here) remote task. I had quite a bit of confidence in the camera having used a borrowed one when it was first launched and so I stuck a 16-35mm f2.8L lens on it and away I went.

Press day at the Boat Show is a mixture of dull press events, glitzy celebrity appearances and the search for different and interesting pictures that nobody else has. I found myself drawn to the official opening despite there being over a dozen other photographers there. To get something different I managed to get on board the tall ship Phoenix to see if I could shoot a different angle to everyone else. It wasn’t much of a gamble as the value of having the same picture as everyone else was pretty low on this job for me and I managed to get this nice frame of a couple of the invited children at the helm of the moored ship.

The sons of the late Olympian Andrew

The sons of the late Olympian Andrew “Bart” Simpson at the helm of the tall ship PHOENIX alongside Europe’s largest temporary marina. ©Neil Turner, September 2014.

Anyway, back to the EOS 6D. It is a tiny bit smaller than the 5D MkIII and it is a tiny bit lighter. It has fewer buttons and fewer megapixels (20 for the 6D and 22 for the 5D MkIII) and it only has a single SD card slot compared to the CF + SD combination on the 5D MkIII. It doesn’t have the same amazing auto focus and it isn’t as well built as the 5D MkIII either but, and it is a big but, it is really nice to use. It fits in your hands well and the controls are easy to use even with the camera to your eye – ergonomically speaking it ticks a lot of the boxes for me. I haven’t used it with a big lens attached yet and I suspect that with something like a 70-200 f2.8L IS it might feel a little unbalanced without a battery grip but with the 16-35 and with a range of primes including the 135mm f2L it feels great without a grip (I’m not a grip fan). The shutter sound is OK and the ‘quiet’ option is also pretty good.

I have written a lot about processing RAW files from various cameras recently and I found the 6D files to be remarkably similar to the 5D MkIII ones and that is a big plus for me.

As always there are a few things that I’d like to see changed on. Canon have this amazing knack of producing “almost perfect” cameras and the 6D is no different here. In no particular order:

  • I’d like them to add the ability to add custom file names in camera in the same way that you can in the 5D MkIII and the 1DX – surely this could be done as part of a firmware update?
  • All Canon cameras need to have the ability to lock the diopter adjustment on the eyepiece. Having to put bits of gaffer tape on every camera is getting boring.
  • I know that the camera already has built-in wifi but better Eye-Fi integration and the option to assign a button (the Q button?) to “protect” an image for transmission would be great.
  • Twin card slots on a MkII would be far better than the single slot that this version has. 2x SD would be fine.
  • Similarly, USB2 on a camera of this generation is poor.

I don’t shoot a lot of on-camera flash and I was caught out on this job where I only had a single 580exII with me. With not much time to work I found that the flash exposure with an older lens wasn’t great. It works well with the newer lenses and flash but the technology has left a couple of my older (but still great) L series lenses behind.

There was photocall with a couple of celebrities (Eddie Jordan and Claudia Winkleman) on the Sunseeker luxury yacht stand and I managed to steal the former Formula 1 team boss onto the bridge of a £3.8 million boat for a quick shot. I had to flash it and the head linings of the boat made a low but useable place to bounce from. Sadly my “exclusive” was ruined when a local agency photographer jumped in and did much the same shot. You win some and you lose some!

Former F1 boss Eddie Jordan on the bridge of a £3.8 million Sunseeker. ©Neil Turner, September 2014.

Former F1 team boss Eddie Jordan on the bridge of a £3.8 million Sunseeker. ©Neil Turner, September 2014.

So what about the 6D’s performance as a working camera then? It is good without being brilliant. Lovely to use but not perfect. I could have written the same summary of just about any camera I have ever used but for anyone needing a full-frame Canon body on a tight budget it really does represent a great buy. It will get used again soon and I will add anything that crops up. Anyone want to lend me a 7D MkII for a day?

One that didn’t make the folio
©Neil Turner/TSL. June 2008, Hertfordshire.

©Neil Turner/TSL. June 2008, Hertfordshire.

When I was putting a massive “long-list” of photographs that I was considering putting into one of the galleries on my portfolio website I looked at this picture and couldn’t make my mind up one way or the other. I was aware that I already had a lot of images from schools – which isn’t surprising when you consider that I have worked in over 3,500 of them in 15 different countries – and that it didn’t add anything to the mix.

I like this picture a lot because it is simple, demonstrates the use of good composition and shallow depth of field as well as reminding me of the kind of work that still makes me want to get out of bed in the morning and go and shoot pictures. These days most of my school based work is shooting for their prospectuses and websites with the odd news story thrown in from time to time but this remains the kind of picture that has a lot of uses and draws the most comment from those who are commissioning the work.

The truth is that almost anyone could take an acceptable picture of primary school children on a scavenger hunt in an enclosed copse. I hope that it also proves that it takes a lot more to produce as good as this on a miserable and rainy day early in the morning when the light is awful and the gear is getting wet. I have kept a few photographs that didn’t make it to one side and I intend to publish a few of them here on the blog with a bit of the background to why I like them along with a bit of the story.

 

Techie Stuff: Canon EOS1D MkII with a 16-35mm f2.8L lens at 16mm. Canon CR2 RAW file 640 ISO, 1/90th of a second at f2.8 on daylight white balance and converted using Adobe Camera RAW in Photoshop. At the time it would have been ACR in Photoshop CS3 but the file was re-worked using ACR in Photoshop CC.

Portfolio features now updated
©Neil Turner/TSL. April 2005. Kabalega, Uganda.

©Neil Turner/TSL. April 2005. Kabalega, Uganda.

The funny thing about updating the features section on my portfolio website is that I have a section called “portraits” and another section that should be called “not portraits”. That isn’t a  particularly elegant way to categorise the thirty plus images featured in that particular gallery but I have yet to find a work that sums it up. Features is as close as I seem to be able to get.

Anyway, it’s a big relief to have finished the refresh and the last of the design updates for now. When I was looking through the huge folder of images that were under consideration I was struck by the picture above of a teenaged Ugandan boy who was part of a group helped to think about issues that were affecting their lives by an art teacher who had visited the United Kingdom where he had picked up this technique. They were an interesting set of images of a fascinating project and I’m really glad to have been able to include this picture in the new folio – even if the picture was shot nearly nine years ago.

The new “features gallery” is now on show at www.dg28.com/folio/features/ and I hope that you have some time to have a look.

My Fujifilm X20 – the final word?

It’s amazing how often a casual conversation or a quick exchange on a Facebook group can spark a train of thought. Earlier today a comment by a friend and fellow photographer about how a photo sharing site had made him look around him and start taking pictures for the love of it again. I agreed whole-heartedly and began to think about uploading a few more pictures here. That moved my train of thought onto the various reviews and updates that I’ve written on this blog and elsewhere about the Fujifilm X20 that has been my almost constant companion for the last 11 months. So what I decided to do was to say a few words to summarise my experiences with this camera and add some pictures shot in the last couple of weeks.

©Neil Turner, March 2014. The photographer's shadow forms part of the scene as an elderly couple walk along South Bank of the River Thames in London.

©Neil Turner, March 2014. The photographer’s shadow forms part of the scene as an elderly couple walk along South Bank of the River Thames in London.

In general, my opinions about this camera have barely changed since I posted the first update back in mid April 2013. Given the product cycle that Fujifilm seems to gallop through the X20 is probably about to be superseded anyway but I thought that I’d offer some advice to make this camera (that I still like very much) better if they want to bring out an X30.

  • The battery life has to improve. Despite doing everything possible to limit power drain I get through two batteries a day when shooting with ordinary SD cards and up to four batteries a day when I’m using one of my Eye-Fi cards. This makes a cool and convenient camera a lot less convenient and pushes up the cost of ownership – even if you go for third party spare batteries.
  • Start-up delay. About once in every third time I switch the camera on it takes three or four seconds to adjust and get the exposure correct. The first picture is often three or more stops over-exposed.
  • Autofocus at the telephoto end of the range. My camera sometimes refuses to auto focus when the lens is zoomed all the way to the 112mm equivalent end of its range.
  • The review time options for looking at images you have just shot are too restrictive. There are no options between 1.5 seconds and zoom (unlimited).
  • The built-in flash isn’t compatible with the lens hood – you get shadows and so to use that function you need to remove the hood.
  • The video isn’t great – but I didn’t buy this camera to shoot video.

On top of all of that it would be great if the focal range went from 24-120, the camera had two SD slots and if there were lens correction options for Adobe Camera RAW because at the 28mm end there is the slightest barrel distortion.

This is a great camera and I love using it. I am seriously tempted by the X100S too. Having borrowed one for an extended period, I would very much like to own one. Fujifilm have done a great job with their X-series cameras and they should be very proud of the effect that their cameras have had on a lot of very old and very picky professionals (like me) who all grin like idiots when using the kit. So now, without further ado, here are a few more recent X20 images for you…

So there you go Fujifilm… bring on the X30…

Dogs on the beach and the Fujifilm X20

My addiction to taking pictures of dogs walking on the beach with or without their owners shows no signs of abating and neither does my joy at shooting pictures with my Fujifilm X20. When I get to shoot bon the beach with the X20 my photographic life is almost complete (laughs ironically there). So, once again, for no other reason that I loved taking and editing the picture here is a photograph taken last Saturday at Boscombe Manor during a break in the foul weather that the whole of the country has been getting.

© Neil Turner, February 2014. A couple walk their dog on the beach between storms.

© Neil Turner, February 2014. A couple walk their dog on the beach between storms.

To the north of us was the wreckage of broken beach huts, to the east was an area closed off to the public and to the west was the only stretch of the beach where you could walk with reasonable safety. Happy days.

An interesting portrait
©Neil Turner/TSL. Sanjit Bunker Roy - founder of The Barefoot College in his native Rajasthan in 1984 is also heavily involved in the Global Rainwater Harvesting Organisation. Photographed at the Said Business Centre at Oxford University .

©Neil Turner/TSL. Sanjit Bunker Roy – founder of The Barefoot College in his native Rajasthan in 1984 is also heavily involved in the Global Rainwater Harvesting Organisation. Photographed at the Said Business Centre at Oxford University .

Whilst looking for an image to demonstrate a specific point to a group of NCTJ Photojournalism students I re-discovered this portrait of a charming businessman and philanthropist that I shot back in March 2006 for The Times Higher Education Supplement. The point that I was making was actually about histograms but I wanted to say a little more here about why I liked this picture so much at the time I shot it.

Firstly, he was a really nice man who gave me the time to shoot a small range of images. He was happy to chat, happy to be directed and trusted me to do my job. You would think that the majority of people would react the same way when being photographed by a professional but that is sadly not how it is. I was delighted that, despite being a businessman, he was wearing something a lot more interesting than a grey or navy suit. I got the distinct impression that he had cultivated an image and that he was very happy with it.

My second point is the degree to which I had to mix ambient light, the sky and my own flash. I couldn’t do too much to balance the sky and the lighting around the quadrangle but I had to get the balance between the subject and the ambient just right and I ended up allowing the walkway to the left of the frame go a lot darker than I’d originally intended so that the depth of the blue in the sky was exactly as I’d wanted it. Looking back, I was always keen to see the lighting balance on the screen on the camera and I often shot two versions of a picture with differing balances so that I could choose when looking at it on a decent sized screen in the edit. These days, the screens on cameras are so much better and you get a far better impression of how the photograph will look on the LCD.

My third and final point about this portrait is the way that it applies the old “rule of thirds” in an unusual way. Yes he is almost exactly one third of the way into the frame from the left (classic composition) but his body is facing out of the frame (not classic composition) and everything on the right hand side of the frame isn’t much more than decorative.

I think that the light, the tones and the colours all add up to an interesting and very usable portrait – one that I remember enjoying taking. I also remember the speed with which I had to offload the images over a slightly dodgy GPRS mobile connection. But what about the histogram? The students who were at the lecture would tell you that I spent a lot of time comparing good, bad and ugly histograms and explaining what they all meant before admitting that I rarely, if ever, look at them myself! I know that in certain circles that would be a heretical thing to admit but all photographers have to have some sort of rebellion in them.

Techie stuff: Canon EOS1D MkII, Canon 16-35 f2.8L lens at 16mm, ½ second at f8 on ISO 200 with a Lumedyne Signature series flash with no light modifier. Canon CR2 RAW file converted using Adobe Photoshop.

Out Walking

Ever since I started using the EyeEm photo sharing site I have been trying to shoot more pictures “just for the fun of it”. The platform allows you to add your pictures to albums and one of my favourites is entitled “Out Walking”. I often shoot with my Fujifilm X20 with and Eye-Fi card in it, convert the RAW fils to Jpeg using the neat film simulation modes before uploading them to my iPhone and going through the process I described in my Eye-Fi Workflow post a week or so ago. I also vowed a while ago to get better at black and white. I’m not sure that’s going quite so well but I often combine the two. It’s great fun and even mildly addictive!

Anyway, for no other reason that I want to share them, here are some of the images.

© Neil Turner, January 2014. Man holding sign offering tattoos an tattoo removal touts for business on the pavement just outside one of main areas of Camden Market

© Neil Turner, January 2014. Man holding sign offering tattoos an tattoo removal touts for business on the pavement just outside one of main areas of Camden Market

© Neil Turner January 2014. Cold and bored stall-holder selling keep calm t-shirts at Camden Market.

© Neil Turner January 2014. Cold and bored stall-holder selling keep calm t-shirts at Camden Market.

© Neil Turner, January 2014. Bored shop keeper outside his open hat shop just outside one of main areas of Camden Market

© Neil Turner, January 2014. Bored shop keeper outside his open hat shop just outside one of main areas of Camden Market