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Posted on November 26, 2010
One of the magazines I supply editorial photography to – NHS’ “Your Health” – scooped “Best Magazine” at a top awards ceremony in Brighton on Friday (19 November). The 15-month-old title, produced by NHS Eastern and Coastal Kent to encourage healthy lifestyles, was announced a regional winner at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) PRide Awards. These awards recognise public relations success and achievement and a sparkling trophy and certificate were presented to members of the Communications Team at the Brighton Metropole. CIPR Chairman Lisa Bradley MCIPR said: “The judges said Your Health is a professional publication which clearly meets the needs of the audience it targets in eastern and coastal Kent. The photography, layout and content are clear and consistent and deliver an engaging read when combined with real life stories “.
Posted on November 15, 2010
Here are some shots from a location lighting workshop in London over the weekend. The technical notes are further below…make up by the wonderful Nikki Milina.
- the objective was to use studio lights but then see whether speedlites could do the job too (in order to see what can be achieved travelling light and setting up quickly).
- Manual meeting rather than TTL as we were using the speedlites as mini studio lights (plus TTL flash can be a little inconsistent).
- natural light – then reflected – then flash was the order because that’s what you might do when having to shoot quickly or with a subject that needed some warm up time.
- tungsten can be used in hotel rooms to some useful effect – we cheated and used modelling bulbs.
- we interchanged using a parabolic reflector, barn doors and grid with some studio lights and then replaced them with the equivalent speedlites and modifiers (I used the pack from Viewfinder Photographic that includes a small beauty dish, grids and a snoot).
- ambient was about ISO 800 1/60 @ F4 but I chose to kill it off by shooting at 100 ISO and most of the time between 1/80 – 1/160 and f4-F5
- directional light, no softboxes – sandwich (cross-over) lighting with both the speedlite and studio flash heads. Pushed one light as far as possible before introducing a second light.
- general consensus was that speedlites in a small space could match the studio lights – but the absence of a modelling light meant that it took longer to set up each shot.
Posted on November 6, 2010
I don’t normally go straight into a techie comment, so if you don’t want that and just want to go straight to some images from the week, please skip the next bit.
Now the nice people at Canon, via the CPS network have fixed the following faults with only a modest dent to my credit card – but here’s the story. I get my camera gear serviced annually whilst away on holiday and so at the end of August everything came back to me via courier in the usual way. I’d noticed that I’d been losing a number of shots due to inconsistent focus which I has initially put down to poor tracking in AI servo or human error. But these started to happen at 1/250 @ 5.6 – subject’s eyes not pin sharp and a creep in focus to the right. I reported this to those that know but was not happy with the margin or error that is allowed for. So, at a conference this week I found myself with a load of shots that were front focusing by 6 inches – seriously. If you locked onto the speaker’s eyes, only the lecturn and mic would be in focus. Thinking it was my 70-200 I switched to my 24-105 – which returned an intermittent error 99 because the IS had decided to break…suddenly I was the pilot on Airbus with the second engine about to shut down. I limped back to base and managed to salvage enough – but the great close up shots were unusable.
The problem was the horizontal focus sensors on the 1d had taken the equivalent of LSD and were permanently tuning in and dropping out. The IS on the 24-105 – even when you switch it off – will still return an intermittent error – displaying the same symptoms as lens/body connection issue, battery compartment issue or dirt on the connectors.
Anyway, some pictures from the week : off-camera flash as fill-in or as dominant light by balancing for or killing off the ambient. I call the latter the “Observer Mag” look. The interior shots in the mix are all lit with brollies and positioning of lights – yes, old school rather than just bracketing ambient or using ETTL but it means I don’t have to correct anything in post production or painting in layers!
