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Timothy Armes' blogPhotography as I experience it…
Archive for the ‘Gear’ Category
Friday, July 9th, 2010
Chase Jarvis recently produced a great video detailing his team’s approach to “Workflow and Backup for Photo + Video”.
Chase produces very high end – and high budget – photography, and this shows with the gear that the team are using. For example, the two field drives are G-Tech 256GB SSDs, and at $1200 each they’re worth significantly more that the MacBook Pro itself!
Chase knows this though, and he makes a very important statement at the end of the video when he says “everything I say here is scalable, and you need to design your backup solutions for your needs”. Storage and Backup are vital, but the workflow can be scaled up or down based on requirements and budget. There’s no single “right” solution for that’ll work for everyone, but there’ll certainly be a solution that’s right for you.
I thought it might be interesting to describe – with far less grace and without the cool little graphic doodles – the workflow that I use. I hope it’ll prove interesting for other photographers who have comparable budgets to myself. I’ll compare my workflow to Chase’s so that you can see how the key ideas are the same, even if the gear isn’t.
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Posted in Business Practises, Gear | 4 Comments »
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
It’s not often that I put gear reviews on this blog – but from time to time I make an exception. This is one of those times.
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Tags: back pack, f-stop gear, ruck sack, Tilopa
Posted in Gear | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed sharing my passion with you through this blog and I’ve had some great feedback. For 2010 I’ve decided to go even further and offer tailor made workshops.
Many photographic workshops are aimed at newcomers who seek basic guidance and support, covering entry-level subjects such as exposure, composition “rules” and simple post-processing techniques. My objective is different — to address the needs of intermediate and advanced shooters who wish to push themselves further and overcome any hurdles that are preventing their progression.
With this in mind I have chosen not to offer a rigid menu of predefined workshops. Instead, I will discuss your requirements with you in advance so that each workshop will be a unique experience designed to meet the specific needs of its participants. Nothing is fixed — the dates, course content, duration and even the location are all open to discussion (and guidance).
You can browse the list subject areas that I’m currently proposing on my workshops site. If you have other needs then please feel free to contact me.
To get the ball rolling I’ve decided to offer a 20% discount on the first five bookings for 2010.
Posted in Gear, Lighting, Photo Technique, Workshops | No Comments »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
I thought it might be interesting for some of you if I explain how this image of a tennis player diving for the ball was created, starting with the concept and working through to the the post-production.
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Tags: action photographer, action photography, active lifestyle photographer, active lifestyle photography, commercial photographer france, commercial photography france, lifestyle photographer, lifestyle photographer france, lifestyle photography, lifestyle photography france, photographe d'action, pocketwizard, post-processing, Profoto, sport, tennis
Posted in Anatomies, Gear, Lighting, Photo Technique, Photos, Studio, Workshops | 12 Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
I love my 5D MkII with it fabulous full frame sensor and great range of lenses. For my sport lifestyle shoots I wouldn’t be with anything else, I absolutely need the flexibility, handling and exceptional image quality that come with professional DSLRs. In these situations I really appreciate the large camera body with easy to access buttons and dials – I need good ergonomics and I don’t want to have to fiddle.
However, I’ll fully admit that my DSLR isn’t always appropriate; I find that I hardly ever get my ‘big’ camera out for casual just-for-the-fun-of-it shooting. I miss that. I’ve just come back from a week’s break to Florence and the size and weight of the 5D MkII with two 2.8 lenses was just too much – it was a bane around my neck, literally….
But I could use a small compact for the fun stuff, right? Well, no. The problem is that I get absolutely no pleasure from shooting with today’s compact cameras for several reasons:
- Their minuscule sensors give near infinite depth-of-field, and if I can’t play with selective focus then much of the pleasure of taking photos is gone.
- Their ergonomics and slow reaction times are frustrating.
- The resulting images are poor – for years the camera manufacturers have been playing the marketing game with the megapixel count, and as they’ve struggled to cram far too many pixels onto those tiny sensors the results have been tragically poor quality images and appalling low light performance.
I thought that my hopes had been answered in 2006 when Sigma revealed the DP1 – the first compact with a big sensor, but the camera wasn’t really up to the job. Two years later, with the DP2, they hadn’t learnt much from their mistakes.
So, I’ve been waiting a long time for a compact digital camera with a wide aperture and corresponding large sensor (for reducing the depth of field) that offers high image quality, good low light performance and decent reactivity.
I’d nearly lost all hope, but now it seems that that day is finally dawning. By the end of the year they’ll be quite a few “serious” compacts that make a concerted effort to meet these needs. Here’s a quick run down.
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Posted in Gear | 14 Comments »
Monday, July 6th, 2009
Location scouting for future shoots typically involves me driving around the local countryside looking for interesting places. I then take shots that I store for future reference. More often than not I end up driving along some gravel paths that I’ve never seen before, and if I don’t take note of where I am I can very easily forget how to return to a given place. I’m famous for my total lack of any sort of sense of direction.
The obvious solution, and one that many location photographers use, is to Geoencode the photos.
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Tags: geoencoding, iPhone, Lightroom, Trails
Posted in Gear | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
Nathaniel Coalson was kind enough to send me a copy of his new Lightroom book, “Lightroom 2 – Streamlining your digital photography process” in order to thank me for my contribution to the Lightroom community. Thanks Nathaniel!
Having had a good look at his book, I felt that I just had to blog about it. This really is a great Lightroom book; not only is it comphensive, it’s extremely clear and easy to read. Nathaniel has obviously thought long and hard about his presentation, and the result is simply excellent – the best I’ve seen. And the final cheery on the cake is that Nathaniel has separated the chapters with some wonderful colour images to inspire you to get out there and shoot…
I’d highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn more about Lightroom. And no, I’m not just saying that because he gave me a free copy!
Tags: book, Lightroom, nathaniel coalson
Posted in Gear | 1 Comment »
Monday, May 25th, 2009
I’m a heavy flash user, and typically I like to travel light (excuse the pun) with a set of hot shoe flashes – Strobist style. However I have a number of upcoming shoots planned that’ll be best served with a portable, battery powered, higher performance flash kit, one with enough oomph to overpower sunlight through a decent sized softbox.
To this end, over the course of the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research into the various options that are on the market. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any resources on-line that grouped all facts together to help make the decision easier, so I’m sharing the fruits of my labour in the hope that it’ll serve other photographers.
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Tags: 7b, Acute, B2, battery, bowens, comparison, Elinchrom, Explorer, flash, Hensel, Porty, Profoto, Ranger
Posted in Gear, Lighting, Studio | 13 Comments »
Friday, March 27th, 2009
This post is just a chance for me to rant about the current state of air travel restrictions. See, I need to take a certain amount of useful camera gear on a plane with me, including the following:
- Canon 5D MkII
- Canon 30D (backup body)
- EF 16-35mm
- EF 24-70mm
- EF 70-200m
- Macbook Pro (15″)
- All the various chargers, cables, card readers, etc.
That’s a fairly compact amount of kit, but it’s worth a bomb. The absolute last thing that I want to do is check-in any of this equipment as luggage. Doing so would mean risking loss, theft or breakage, any of which would not only be extremely upsetting in its own right, but it would stop me from participating actively during the week.
So imagine if you will my chagrin when I read the carry on baggage rights with Turkish Airlines:
“You are allowed to carry only one carry-on bag on board. Its dimensions must be 23x40x55 cm and must weigh max. 8kg. ”
8kg? That’s just ridiculous.
I grabbed my lightest backpack, and I can effectively stuff in the Macbook Pro, the 5D and 2 lenses before I reach the limit. What’s a man to do? Stick the other lens and body in my coat pockets seems to be the only possible solution to the problem.
I’d love to hear how other solve this issue….
Tags: air travel, weight restriction
Posted in Gear | 17 Comments »
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
Neil Van Niekerk has just written a very interesting comparison between Canon and Nikon flash systems. Neil’s a very experienced TTL flash user, and uses both Nikon and Canon extensively, so there’s really no better person to discuss the subject.
His conclusion is that for on camera TTL (including bounced flash) the systems are just different. That’s all.
We often hear that Nikon’s flash system is better than Canon’s and being the curious fellow that I am I’ve tried many times in the past to get to the bottom of this question by searching the net. Until now I’ve never seen a decent comparison – probably due to the fact that there are so few people who are intimately acquainted with both systems.
I personally use Canon’s ETTL-II flash extensively, and I’ve never had an issue with it. It’s always worked extremely well for me. Clearly understanding the system is key to getting good results in either case.
However, I was very interested to note Niel’s thoughts concerning the better ease of use of Nikon’s off-camera TTL, so I took a peek at the SB-900 manual…
Here’s my own feature comparison based purely on reading the Nikon manual, my own experience with Canon, and the things that are important to my own use of flash.
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Tags: canon, ETTL, flash, iTTL, nikon, off camera
Posted in Gear, Lighting | 6 Comments »
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