Canon 5D3 – steve hickey

Filming Laura Ellen Bacon

November 16, 2015Steve Hickey

I meant to write this a couple of months ago but it’s been a busy time in various ways and I’ve only now got around to it.

Anyway I spent 13 days over 3 weeks this summer shooting a short film of Laura Ellen Bacon working at Hall Place, a Tudor House situated about a 15 minute walk from where I live in Bexley. Art exhibitions are a central theme of Hall Place and visitors almost always have the chance to view an exhibition when visiting the house and gardens. Laura’s work was part of the Watershed exhibition, Laura was also the first Artist in Residence at Hall Place and I had the opportunity to film her at work.

Laura works with willow and makes large structures which are often placed out in the open, as was the case here. The weather played its part, starting reasonably well the first day or two but after that most days it seemed to rain – quite heavily sometimes. Pretty much your typical English summer. I think there were one or two sunny days somewhere in there, but Laura carries on working whatever the weather! So I had to rainproof the cameras a lot of the time. I was filming with a Canon XF100 and 2 Canon 5Ds. I had proper waterproof covers for the 5Ds but the XF100 had to make do with a cut down plastic bag – but then I do tend to improvise a lot with things like that so it wasn’t a problem.

As I live close by I could pop over for an hour or so, have a chat with Laura about how the work might progress through the day then maybe go back later for another hour or two. I felt it was important not to get in Laura’s way too much and allow her to work so I didn’t hang around any longer than necessary. So with a couple of weekend breaks this is how it went over 3 weeks. It was a great experience to be able to be there on pretty much a daily basis and watch Laura at work and to see the sculpture take shape.

Laura was assisted by her partner Robert Clough and both were a pleasure to work with, particularly as they shared their Rocky Road cake with me!

The video can be seen at http://www.vimeo.com/141776115

Switch off and tighten up!

August 10, 2015August 10, 2015Steve Hickey

The display on the back of the camera – switch it off.

Even for someone like me who spent years trusting my skill with film and shooting in thousands of different situations its a sobering thing to do – switching off the display. Because like many photographers these days I’ve become addicted to the instant confirmation of the shot.

Only recently did I think to do it, and only last week put it into practice. Can’t believe it took me so long to do it. Maybe lots of photographers out there do this, but if they do they’re hiding it well, because almost every photographer I see has their face stuck in the back of the camera and they’re not looking through the viewfinder!

So last Wednesday I was in London and on the way home spent a few minutes taking pics with the display off as an experiment. It became very hard to not press the ‘play’ button to see what I had shot. I found this restriction I had imposed on myself quite annoying so I stopped after 20 minutes or so. I put it down to being tired and thought tomorrow I’ll try again.

Next day I was working back in Deal again and got there ages before my job started and so went for a walk with my camera (and with the screen off again). I just pretty much shot anything for about an hour. This time I found it more enjoyable – maybe I was tired the day before or perhaps it was the relaxing effect of being in Deal.

Well I did feel that it freed me up somewhat, didn’t create any earth shattering photographs, but had a good time. I continued to shoot part of the job later that day in the same way. Although I have to admit that at a certain point the lighting got a bit tricky so I switched on again – still addicted! But I will shoot more this way and see if it changes how I shoot. Just realised that sounds weird – been shooting for 40 years and I’m looking to see how something might change how I shoot! I think what I really mean is – lets see if I start shooting like I used to before digital came along.

What I did find last week was that switching off the display did tighten up my camera skills and did make me look outwards rather than inwards into what I had just shot. It’s worth a try. Switch off and tighten up!

Forty years on – Restart

August 3, 2015Steve Hickey

So Blogging 101 came up and gave me a reason to reassess my blog and why I do it.

I think it was forty years ago last week that I started my first job in photography, thereabouts anyway. I spent a lot of time in the darkroom in 1975 – with the odd cockroach floating about in the fix as company, but I was let out on jobs as well and started to learn.
Forty years on last week I was in Deal starting work on a project for Deal Pier Arts (photo above), some nice fresh sea air!

I still shoot, still work, still earn a living doing what I like best. I’ve worked for some major companies for good money and I’ve also worked for a small return or even nothing if the subject interests me.

Well a few things have come up recently that have made me kind of reflect on why I still take pictures, but the main catalyst was finding Vivian Cherry’s book, Vivian Cherry’s New York, in a charity shop and it made me look into her life. A really inspiring person who after a long break from photography – stopped in the 1950’s – took it up again later at the age of 67 (five years older than I am now).

I have also come across a fair amount of misinformation about photography lately on the internet and so I thought that rather than do the ‘see what a great photographer I am’ kind of blog – which seems to be everywhere ( and which I’m just as guilty of doing). I would give out some (hopefully) useful tips, information and how to’s. I’ve done that a little bit already, but I thought that now I should do more.

I’ve shot 40 years with film and almost 15 years with digital so I’ve a pretty good idea of how to do it. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in that time – (still make the odd one!) but I’ve also got it right a lot of times. If I get it wrong in the future then I’m sure that someone will let me know

Burgh Island and Capture One Pro 8

June 12, 2015June 12, 2015Steve Hickey

I like the morning – it’s the best time of day for me, I get most work done before lunch. Mornings are also often the best time for landscape photography. The day I photographed Burgh Island I got up a little later than I would have liked, the Sun had already risen but I decided to go anyway. Walking through Thurlestone village about 6am I was a little surprised to see an old guy waiting outside the only pub in the village. We exchanged greetings and I moved on to the cliffs. Two old guys wondering what each other were doing up so early in a tiny village on the Devon coast.

I had been to the location a couple of times previously so had a good idea of where I was going to shoot and had three spots sorted out. However the light was changing really quickly and by the time I had reached the third location I decided to call it a day, so I was done before 8am.

I should have started out by saying that I don’t consider myself a landscape photographer but I like going out and shooting landscapes when I can – my work is mostly not about landscapes. I kind of always feel that I should be using a 5×4 camera instead of a Canon DSLR when I’m out shooting this kind of stuff. I used 5×4 and 10×8 cameras many years ago for studio work but I don’t think that I could bring myself to carry around a large format camera these days – but you never know, I might go back to one sometime.

So, instead of using large format, my way to bring up the Canon 5D3 to the best it can do is to use Capture One software to process the RAW images. I started using Capture One a few years ago, at the time I wasn’t happy with Adobe Raw Converter which I had been using to process my images. I tried Capture One and saw that it could pull out more detail.

So with this image of Burgh Island I noticed the edge of the shot (the mainland) was a little unsharp. I used the Canon 24-105mm lens – which although a reasonable lens, it has some sharpness fall-off at the edges. This image was taken at f9 – wide open at f4 the lens is pretty bad at the edges. Most people wouldn’t notice in normal use but viewed at 100% the fall-off at f4 is very obvious.

To correct the fall-off I used the Sharpness Fall Off tool in the Capture One lens correction panel. The screen grabs below show the change in sharpness when using it at 250% compared to 0%. The centre of the image remains unchanged in terms of sharpness. It’s a fairly subtle but noticeable change which in my opinion brings the image from the lens up to a good enough standard.

Image at roughly 100% with 250% edge sharpness correction. — The extreme right hand edge of the image at roughly 100% with 250% fall off sharpness correction.

Image at roughly 100% with no edge sharpness correction. — The extreme right hand edge of the image at roughly 100% with no fall off sharpness correction.

To be honest in normal life nobody ever notices as images are rarely viewed at 100%, and some don’t care anyway. The important thing for me is that I know I’ve got the best out of whatever lens I have on the camera and using Capture One Pro 8 enables me to do that.

Burgh Island, located just off the Devon coast, is known for its Art Deco hotel which famously inspired Agatha Christie.

On the street, Cadillac GWiz

October 28, 2014October 28, 2014Steve Hickey

2up — Left – Cadillac, Rue de Rivoli, Paris 1981. Right, a Gwiz electric car, Bread Street, London 2014

When I was younger I used to like wandering around the streets of London ( or where ever I might be) with my camera looking for interesting things to photograph, ‘street photography’ as it’s commonly known.

Now I’m doing that again. I’m in the City of London quite often so now I look around for things to shoot when I’m on my way to a job, or scout out a location to go back to later. It’s something I stopped doing for a long time. I was just concentrating on earning money I guess, it’s an easy trap to fall into, but for a while now I have been shooting more stuff just for myself. Anyway here are a couple of shots, old and new. I have been scanning some old work recently and when I saw the little electric GWiz on the way to a job yesterday I remembered my Cadillac shot (Paris 1981) which I had scanned only a few days ago. Cars that are on opposite ends of the spectrum in just about every aspect.

For the technically minded, the Paris shot was done using an Olympus OM -1 with a 35mm f2 lens, the GWiz with a Canon 5D3 and 24 – 105mm lens.

Canon 17mm TSE at Danson House

September 30, 2013October 3, 2013Steve Hickey

Recently I was asked to do some photography at Danson House. The photography was for a new brochure showing the wedding set ups at both Danson House and Hall Place, both located in the London Borough of Bexley. I took along a Canon 17mm TSE together with a little rig I sometimes use to get very wide shots.

The photograph above is of The Salon, an octagonal shaped room in the house. The image is composed of three separate images which are then just layered together, it’s not stitching as there’s no special software involved.

This is a very tight space. I was literally standing against a wall ( not leaning on it! ) in between a very expensive chair and a probably more expensive cabinet. The tripod legs about a centimetre away from each!

Over the years I have used various cameras to get super wide shots, the Hasselblad SWC of course and 75mm lenses on 5×4 cameras. The digital full frame camera and shift lenses have in recent years made it possible to achieve the same kind of wide angle photographs that I was used to gettting on film.

The main issue is to keep the lens in exactly the same spot (relative to the scene) for all three images, this is done by effectively moving the camera around behind the lens. There are various rigs available to do this, but they can be quite expensive, so a couple of years ago I looked around for an economical alternative. I already had the Manfrotto umbrella attachment for a light stand and an old Metz 45 flash bracket so I just needed something to slide this around. I found the Manfrotto 454 micro positioning plate which was just what I was looking for. Cost for the Manfrotto 454 is around £75. I put these together so that I could mount the camera in a vertical position and then slide the whole thing very precisely sideways. It takes some time to ensure that everything is vertical – a bit fiddly but effective.

The shooting method is as follows;

1/ Set the lens so that it shifts from side to side across the vertical plane, then centre the shift.

2/ Set the Manfrotto slider to a given point which works for you, I usually start with the marker at 20 or 30 on the scale. Ensuring that the camera is positioned so that it is directly above the tripod head.

3/ Take the first shot ( centre image)

4/ Move the slider 10 mm to the left (markings are 1mm) then move the lens shift to the right 10mm. Take second shot.

5/ From this move move the Manfrotto slider back to the centre point and then another 10mm to the right, move the lens shift so that it now goes beyond the centre position and 10mm to the left.

6/ This now means that I have three images each with a slightly different view but with the lens in pretty much exactly the same place in relation to the scene.

All that needs doing now is to align each of the images in Photoshop using layers. It’s feasible to do this in just two shots but I like to use the eraser tool to blur the joins of each image and having three shots gives me more room to play with on some shots. Also it’s safer to do three if you want to push the lens shift to 12mm, although I find it easier and quicker just to go for the 10mm markers most of the time.

The images usually line up exactly if I take time to make sure everything is straight and vertical, so layering them together is simple. The image on the left is slightly off in this shot. I have guessed roughly 10 pixels, but it’s only on the vertical axis and the side to side matches perfectly. I must have nudged the camera slightly on that one, or more likely I forgot to lock the Manfrotto plate on that exposure and this made a slight difference in how the camera was positioned.

You can see from the centre image on the Photoshop screen grab that you end up with a much wider image than just doing the one shot. The shot a the top of the page is cropped square which I think works well, very similar to how it might look on a SWC – possibly even wider. The full uncropped shot is below and works out at almost exactly a 5×4 ratio with a size of 113.5Mb.