Vicki & Ayesha
These two lovely girls are friends who let me practice taking photos with them and whose help is invaluable to me!
Focus on Imaging 2010
Focus on Imaging is the largest photograph exhibition of it’s kind in the UK, almost every manufacturer, dearlership and traders will be there showing off their new tools of the trade at discount prices! You really can get some bargains at Focus and I managed to bag myself a flash umbrella kit for only £25!! Here’s some photos from the show and I’ll upload some more taken with the new umbrella kit soon 
Bring On The Girls!
Had some fun the other day with fellow photographer Si Moore where we used our girlfriends for some portraiture experiments! He got a softbox for Christmas and wanted to have some fun playing with it. I’m not going to go into a great deal about the image setups because they were all very similar. We used a Canon 430 EXII through softbox from camera left @ 1/4 manual and another Canon 430 EX with Stoffen diffuser from camera right @ 1/16 manual.
Collection of My Favourite Wedding Photos
I’ve only been an official photographer at four weddings over the last two years but I think I’ve come a long way in terms of moving from just getting the necessary shots and anything else available to getting the necessary shots and anything else the client is after as well as maybe throwing in some candids. So here’s my favourite shots where I had a bit of chance to experiment and do something a little different from the last few events!
You Get What You Pay For
Dusk on The River Towy, originally uploaded by Steffan Harries.
I’ve complained a lot over the last 12 months about how badly I’ve suffered from owning a cheap filter kit and in the last few days I’ve finally been able to get myself a decent one! My shiny new kit compromises of a Lee Foundation holder, Lee 77mm Wide Angle adapter ring, Hitech 1.2 ND, Hitech 0.6 ND Hard Grad. I really can’t compliment it enough and it goes to show that you really do get what you pay for! The quality is outstanding!. The holder sits incredibly close to the front element of the lens to prevent any light leaking in and the Lee foundation holder is also adaptable because it’s supplied with additional filter blades.
Lee are undoubtedly the best photographic filter manufacturer out there but are also the most costly! This is why I went for the Hitech filters because from what I’ve read about them they have the same neutral colour as Lee’s filters but weigh less and are a helluva lot cheaper! I’ll be putting them to the test over the next few weeks and months but the early results speak for themselves
A Blusterous Gale
Both these images were taken on an extremely windy evening in Aberystwyth. I used a B+W 10 stop Neutral Density filter to get a long exposure and washout the sea and clouds. I love it! That filter is fast becoming a favourite. I’ll keep this post simple and leave it at that
Cokin’s Not-So-Neutral “Neutral Density” Filters
I’ve been using Cokin P-Series filters with the wide angle hold for a while now and it’s alright. I’d give it a six out of ten. If Cokin got they’re act together and fixed this colour cast problem then I’d give them ten out of ten! It’s the only thing holding them back and I fear it’s going to force me to replace my Cokin kit sooner or later. I’ve binned at least a dozen shots because of it and I’m not sure I can live with it anymore.
On the left is the unprocessed image as it came out of the camera with a huge pink/purple cast and on the right is the colour corrected image. For some images the warmer tone is nice but I’d rather have control over the toning of my photo rather than have them cast like this. This shot was taken using an ND4x and ND8x stacked over each other. Stacking NDs seems to make the cast more prominant but it’s pretty visible regardless of filter stacking.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’ve had some pretty decent photos from these filters and some have even been explored like this one and others that have done well that I’ve nearly binned like this. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on Cokin but I’m tempted to move over to using Hitech filters because of this…and I’m not the only one!
It’s marmite. Some love it. Some hate it.
Full frame Vs. APS-C
Most photographers already know that there are two main types of camera bodies when it comes to Digital SLR cameras but here’s a little introdution anyway. First of all there’s APS-C which is a type of crop bodied camera. A crop body is where the the camera has a field of view multiplier and APS-C cameras have a crop factor of 1.6x. This means that if you’re using a lens at a focal length of say 50mm you’re actually at a focal length of 80mm. This crop factor has a few benefits and advantages and there are some lenses specially designed for crop bodies such as Canon’s EF-S range and Sigma’s DC range.
The other main type of camera body are what’s known as full frame. These full frame sensors have no focal length multiplier at all and so lenses used on these cameras do what they say on the tin! This also means that the focal lengths are identical to 35mm film SLRs. As with APS-C camera bodies there are a few advantages and disadvantages that I’ll in a moment. However the biggest difference between these two types of cameras is that full frame bodies can’t use crop body lenses. Ie: a Canon EOS 1Ds can’t use an EF-S 18-55 and those who try will often result in damaging their cameras mirror or sensor. Following me so far? Good! Because that’s the easy bit. I’ll try to cover as much as I can about the differences between these two without going OTT by covering a few things like cost, focal length conversion (already mentioned) and resolution.
1) Cost
For most semi-pro photographers who use crop camera bodies the only thing holding them back from upgrading to a full frame camera body is the cost. Full frame costs money. Often costing well over £1500 owners of a full frame camera are members of a pretty exclusive club. But don’t assume that what you pay is what you get. Obviously a Canon 1Ds Mk III or Nikon D3x is in a different league to a Canon 1000D or Nikon D40. Don’t forget that if you buy a full frame body you’ll have less money for any lenses, flashguns, filter kits and accessories. APS-C bodies on the other hand are pretty cheap. Very cheap in comparison! For the same price as a full frame body you could buy a crop body camera, a wide angle lens, telephoto lens, flashgun and a spare battery! So with regards to cost alone…APS-C is the winner!
2) Focal Length Conversion
Another well known fact about full frame bodies is that with any given lens they capture a wider view. That’s a bit of a misconception really. Full frame cameras capture a true 35mm view identical to the field of view you’d get with a 35mm film SLR with any given lens. To put it simply, full frame and flilm SLRs capture the true 35mm perspective and APS-C bodies capture a cropped version of that field of view. With APS-C only a portion of the projected image is captured by the sensor. APS-C sensors are around 1.6x smaller than a full frame sensor hence why APS-C is a 1.6x crop. To capture the focal length on a crop body camera you’d have with a full frame body to widen your zoom a bit more to match the true 35mm focal length. However on the other hand APS-C bodies are perfect for motorsport and action photographers as that crop ratio helps them capture subjets at a distance. So if landscape or architecture is your thing you’re more likely to need a full frame camera than an APS-C camera. Alternatively if you need something capable of capturing things at a distance you’re more likely to want a crop body. So really there is no outright winner! Preference depends on what you shoot.
3) Resolution
Resolution is a measure of how much detail the sensor can see…the more detail the better the image! For a higher level of detail you need a higher resolution sensor. Full frame comes into a league of its own here. Generally APS-C sensors have a much lower megapixel count in comparison to full frame for a few reasons. The first is size – because APS-C sensors are generally smaller it’s naturally harder to fit as many pixels into the sensor. In fact full frame sensors are so much larger than the light diodes an be larger resulting in better low light performane and also better sharpness…but only marginally. With smaller more tightly-packed pixels you need sharper glass to every pixel on your sensor count. If the lens you use is soft to begin with then cramming more pixels on the sensor will give you a bigger version of the same blurry image. Similarly this means that an older 12.7 MP full frame image will be sharper and be of a higher resolution than a new 15MP crop sensor. Full frame blows APS-C out of the water with regards to sharpness and resolution!
There are a few other things that affect these two sensor types as well such as ISO performance where full frame is prefered because bigger pixels mean less noise in general and depth of field issues such as background blur – at identical focal lengths, 35mm equivelant focal lengths that is, background blur with APS-C sensors will be much less because the image is effectly a wider perspective that’s been cropped. This means that background blur (aka: Bokeh) is more uniform and pleasing with full frame than APS-C. As for an overall winner it’s really up to you and your wallet! If you’re shooting motorsports, action or portraiture then you’ll probably be needing a crop body. However if you shoot landscapes, low light or architecture you’re more likely to be need a full frame sensor…if you can afford it!
Re-learning The Trade
Way back last December I was fortunate to land myself this deal and to say I was a happy chappy would’ve been a major understatement. Well in any trade it’s true that every now and then you must re-invent yourself in order to attract some business and what not. Nothing is more true of this than with photography. After I moved from an APS-C camera (cropped sensor) and got a full frame body I found that I had to completely re-learn everything I knew about photography! All of a sudden focusing distances made more of a difference, depth of field, vignetting and a whole field of jargon that once made sense to me suddenly caught me unawares! It was as if somebody had said “Right, here’s a football pitch. Now go play hokey…“. The rule book and gone out the window and been re-written.
There’s more to full frame than there seems you know? For instance. A focal length of 50mm on a full frame body is…you guessed it, 50mm…but the same focal length on a standard APS-C sensor is actually more likely to be around 75-80mm! This also means that aperture and focal length cause varying differences in depth of field compared to the equivelant settings used on cropped camera bodies. And before you know you’ve forgotten how to photograph everything! It means re-learning focal lengths, distances, aperture values, shutter speeds and sometimes even subject matter! I’ll tell you one thing though. Full frame is unforgiving. Make a mistake on a full frame camera and it’s obvious. Any dust spots become twice as visible as before and the same goes for slight miss-focusing. Everything becomes insanely hard! So hard in fact that only now around 7 months later I think I’m getting my mojo back. Sure I’ve taken decent photos in that time. But I’ve had to work and sweat at them a lot longer at the same time too.
Compare the above photo to this more recent photo. The first one is alright. It’s a close up, almost macro, photo of a milkshake bottle composed on a third however the shallow aperture meant that I slightly miss-focused for the image. Only slightly mind, but it’s enough to distract the eye. Compare that against the sharp image I took yesterday where after I’ve had time to learn how to effectively use the camera I can now not only compose a shot, use an effective depth of field but also introduce more complex elements such as using longer shutter speeds to create movement in the sky. I think what I’m trying to say is it’s not all down the camera…and neither is it all down to the photographer. They say a car is worth more than the some of it’s parts…I think the same applies toward photography…
Rawr!
Who says it’s impossible to photograph under tungsten lighting?
I See You, by Steffan Harries. Click for more!
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