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S95 in Montreal

I recently went to Montreal and decided to take only my new Canon S95 to give it a proper test drive. I'm still as impressed as ever with it's image making and I'm thoroughly enjoying the sheer convenience of a proper camera that fits in a pocket. I've uploaded a gallery of images from the trip to my website, it's unlinked but you can go direct via this link.

Compacts and compromises

In the past I have been guilty of breaking one of the most sacred rules of being-a-photographer by not having a camera on my person at all times. If I'm not working and I don't have to carry a bag filled with kit I often choose to leave the camera at home and risk missing the shot of my life. Although I do get a kind of perverse thrill from this recklessness, it's the freedom from faff that leads me to do it. Having a camera around one's neck is a pain, having it in a bag is a bother and I've never had a pocket-sized camera that I really enjoyed using and could get good pictures from. But times change and technology is a wonderful thing and I have now found a camera that slips neatly into my jacket, is a joy to use and makes great images. But first let me discuss it's compact predecessors, each good in some way but none as complete.

My first compact was a Fuji DL Super Mini back in '96. Very small and nicely made, it was nicknamed the sardine tin because of it's shape and metal housing. The lens was good enough to produce near-SLR quality prints but in the end it had winder problems and had to be retired. Here's an old image I shot through the window of a deli with it:

I replaced the Fuji with a Ricoh GR1, which was the other hot compact of the day that has since evolved into a near-identical digital versions. The Ricoh had aperture priority and exposure compensation dials on the top panel allowing a fair degree of manual control and an understated matt-black-ness that whispered "I'm a discerning pro, incognito". I don't know if I was unlucky but this camera suffered from winder problems too and I went through a few replacements on warranty until I reluctantly gave up and moved on. Here's a Ricoh shot:

After the Ricoh(s) died I eschewed compacts for a little while and tried to carry my Leica around but although I got images I often didn't take it out. It's is a measure of my lack of dedication to my craft that even with the good fortune to have the preeminent tool for street photography at my disposal, a Leica rangefinder, I still neglected to carry a camera at all times. The fact is, I find even a Leica is a bother. But no excuses, I am a sinner and when I'm called to account by the Great Picture Editor I know for sure that the pictures I've missed will outnumber the pictures I've captured. Still time to redeem myself I hope...

When I went on honeymoon to Japan in 2005 I took my Leica, and my wife and I borrowed a digital Ixus. The Leica took all the most beautiful shots of the trip but the Ixus got used more and so, on the way back through Tokyo, I bought my first digital compact, the just-released Panasonic Lumix DMC LX1. Back in 2005 I was still shooting on film so this was my first digital camera and an introduction to the pros and cons of the new medium. I pretty much bought it on the strength of the Leitz lens and I did get some OK images:

The LX1 had a few features I really liked, image stabilization, a choice of formats and control over flash levels. There were quite a lot of manual controls, even manual focus but this was clunky to use. It still felt like I was compromising a lot on image quality and usability for the sake of convenience and what I really wanted was a smaller, more compact Leica, with manual controls and a peachy lens.

In the meantime I had taken the plunge and gone digital, trading in my much loved workhorse, a Nikon F5, and a ton of kit for a Canon 5D, so when I started looking around for a replacement compact I was inclined towards the Canon G9, which would allow me to use my new 580EX speedlight. I should have loved the G9, it's a very capable camera with a good blend of features from DSLRs and compacts and it will fit into a jacket pocket, though it's a bit bulky. I should have loved it but I didn't, it wasn't fun, it felt like a less user-friendly, slightly crappier, smaller version of my 5D. Perhaps the chemistry was wrong? Anyway here's two pictures from that rather troubled relationship:

At least now I know what I want from a compact camera:

• Easy and fun to use so that I want to take it everywhere
• Image quality has to be good enough that when you take a really nice image you aren't sad you didn't have a better camera with you
• Fully manual exposure controls
• Fast lens and low noise
• It has to lead you to experiment and produce surprises
• Fits in the back pocket of a pair of jeans

Not much to ask.

And here is my new love, the Canon S95. I'm not going to review it, you can find plenty of exhaustive reviews elsewhere, but it does all the above with style and ease. I particularly like the fact that you can choose to shoot in square format. This might seem a slightly daft gimmick, you can always crop later right? But I love shooting square format, not cropping square format, there is a difference.

I'm currently working on two projects specifically tailored to the abilities of the S95 and now, when I leave the house I pat myself down for my keys, my phone and my camera. Perhaps I will finally be able to keep that sacred rule.

 

 

Alter Egos

Quite a lot of my commissioned work is basically location portraiture and I often feel like I get stuck in a rut doing more or less the same thing every time. When you only have a few minutes, minimal kit, no previous sense of the location, no assistant and a fairly rigid page-space to fill it's tempting to simply do what you know will work and hard to take risks. I've been feeling for a while that I needed an opportunity to experiment and so I decided to do a series of portraits of my own choosing, unfettered by the demands of publications and the paralyzing fear of screwing up.

So it was that a couple of weekends ago I drove out to the Welsh borders to photograph a group doing Live Action Role-Play (LARP). I'd done a reportage feature story on LARPing many years ago when I was with KATZ pictures (the feature sold once, in Greece) but later I'd thought that it might have been more interesting to photograph more inside the role-play rather than from the sidelines, poking fun at all the juxtapositions and silliness. The idea of photographing the players "in character" seemed like it would both provide a wealth of portraits and say something more interesting about the way people create alter egos in different situations. I found a few groups online and was hugely lucky that the Legion of Dreams agreed to let me come along to one of their big weekend events. Legion of Dreams are one of the longest established LARP groups in the country and they have an awesome site at their disposal for their events, comprising woodland, miniature canyons, caves and a replica iron age settlement. For me it was the perfect combination of subjects and locations.

I took with me the kit that I usually use for location portraits: a Canon 5Dmkii, 35mm 1.4, 85mm 1.8, 580EX speedlight, STE2 TTL transmitter, a lastolite stand and brolly outfit for the speedlight and a 1m lastolite reflector. I brought a few more bits and pieces but I was keen to see what I could do with a fairly limited and very portable outfit. The kit above fits into a couple of small bags and I've put it all on a bike many times, the brolly outfit has been an invaluable tool for quick lighting inside and out in combination with the TTL transmitter. I scoped out locations and subjects on the Friday evening and did 16 separate shoots on Saturday, trying to vary the feel of each portrait according to the character I was photographing. A couple of times I did find myself falling into familiar set-ups but I also tried out some new ideas, combining ambient, flash and reflected light to add drama without it looking completely artificial. I unexpectedly enjoyed the results from using bare flash, without modifying it with a shoot-through brolly as I usually do. If nothing else I've gained confidence enough to use the flash to model as well as just light the subject.

Since the LARP shoot I've decided to invest in a two-head Bowens travelpack kit and I expect I'll be posting more about my experiences in location lighting before long. In the meantime here are some more images from the shoot:

You can see the rest here.

Over and under: homage to Doubilet

Dominick Tyler - George fishing

I can vividly remember the first time I saw David Doubilet's photography in National Geographic Magazine, they were obviously images made by a great photographer who happened to be underwater as opposed to images made by a great diver who happened to have an underwater camera. Rather than accepting the limitations of working submerged, Doubilet always seems to push the boundaries to tell fascinating, beautiful, visual stories.

I don't know if he was the first person to do an "over and under" shot, where the surface of the water splits the image, but he has certainly perfected the technique over the years. I have certainly NOT perfected the technique, but on a recent commission for the Guardian Weekend Magazine I had a pretty good shot at it. Part of the secret is in the kit, you have to use an underwater housing with a domed port, the bigger the better, so that there is a reasonable distance from the waterline to the lens. The water needs to be very calm, because the peaks and troughs of even small waves will make the water-line obscure most of the image, and also clear, to minimize the difference in exposure above and below the water. Lastly you need something to photograph: Doubilet has photographed all the world's oceans and most of the species of fish and mammals in them, I have photographed a mackerel. I did grill and eat it on the beach later though, and you can't do that with a whale shark, or can you?