Category: Equipment

Equipment news and reviews

Battery power

 Gavin   Equipment, Tips

I don’t recall suffering from this in the good old days of analogue photography, but these days I’m forever charging batteries of one sort or another. The list just keeps getting longer too. For instance, these days I have to do the following prior to every photo-shoot:

  • Camera battery – 2 or 3 Canon LP-E6
  • Flash batteries – upto 24 AA batteries (3 flash guns with 2 sets of 4 batteries per unit)
  • Radio triggers – 6 AA batteries. 12 if its a long shoot and I’ll need two sets
  • Portable back-up drives – 8 AA batteries (2 drives with 4 batteries each)
  • Spare AA batteries

That little lot adds up to getting on for 40-50 AA batteries. Managing that number of batteries is not without problems.

Continue reading Battery power »

On the grid… Part 2

 Gavin   Available Light, Equipment, Strobist, Techniques
1/4 Speed Grid

A few days ago I mentioned that I’d bought a couple of Honl Speedgrids to attach to my Speedlites. The original post can be found here.

I had the opportunity and the pleasure of using one of these, the 1/4 Speedgrid, during my Notting Hill Beauty Shoot and here is an example of what one can achieve with these magic little devices.

As a comparison, I’ve also included a version that I lit with just available light. Both images were shot in the same room with the model standing in exactly the same place. Continue reading On the grid… Part 2 »

On the grid…

 Gavin   Equipment

I’ve been dipping my toes further into the strobist world of late, as you can see from my Fashion in the City shoot. Its really great fun too, combining the control of the studio with the fun and freedom of a location. In fact, I’m starting to get hooked on it, favouring working with my speedlights over my studio heads. Of course, there is a time and a place for everything.

Speed Grids. Left: 1/4 Right 1/8

One fascinating little gadget I picked up recently was a grid for a flash gun. Its small, compact and lightweight (isn’t everything when it comes to strobism?) and attaches to the flash using a velcro cynch strap. Quick, simple and effective.

But how effective is it? Continue reading On the grid… »

Nice bit o’ glass that…

 Gavin   Equipment

Just got back from shooting lions in deepest, darkest Kent and I really do mean “deepest” and “darkest” owing to the weather. It threw it down with rain all day, resulting in a very overcast, dull and dreary day, some very deep puddles and lots and lots of mud.

Got some great shots though 🙂

I also had a chance to play around with the EF400mm f4 DO IS USM lens. Thats a bit of a mouthful to describe a great lens. The DO bit means that the lens is shorter and lighter, and together with the IS bit means that I was able to hand hold it at speeds as low as 1/100th and still get a sharp image. The image quality looks fantastic so far and when I’ve had a chance to drag them through Lightroom and CS3 I’llpost some images.

To sum up, this is a fantastic piece of kit and I was thrilled to have it to play with for an hour or so this afternoon. I don’t think it will be on my shopping list yet though. At over £5,600 it carries a hefty price tag.

Full details on this lens cn be found here.

Backup, backup, backup… Part 3

 Gavin   Digital Darkroom, Equipment, Lightroom, Techniques, Workflow

Following on fom my previous posts here and here about in-field backup and in particular the solution I have opted for, today I had the opportunity of testing it out in anger.

As I write this post, I’ve just returned from a day shooting Big Cats in deepest, dakest Kent. And I really do mean “deepest” and “darkest” owing to the weather.

With freshly charged NiMH batteries, a stack of compactflash cards and two bodies I proceeded to put the device through its paces. After each shooting session I swapped the cards and backed them up onto the drive. It isn’t the fastest solution but it worked admirably, even when I went out for the final session of the day and had the unit backing up whilst in my pocket. The cards from the final shoot I backed up in the car during the journey home. It performed faultlessly throughout the day.

I did discover one unforeseen benefit of using this device, and that is the ease by which the images can be loaded into Lightroom. Plugging thebackup drive into the PC allowsall the images from the day to be imported and processed in one go rather than having to swap out the media cards.

This suits my workflow very well as I rely on the import processing capabilities of Lightroom quite heavily…

  • Copy the image to the local hard disk
  • Rename the image according to the shoot date and theme
  • Apply my standard metadata settings (e.g. copyright notice, contact details, global keywords etc)
  • Keywording withe client/shoot details
  • Apply capture presets
  • Backup to the NAS.

Getting back to the topic of this post, I would say that today has proved a great success. I’m still a little nervous of losing battery power but I can work around that and with two drives the risk if a total failure is somewhat mitigated.