Forums & Blogs

I have started posting comments on the photo.net website. I think photo.net is very usefull when you are thinking about buying new equipment. I have also joined the photographers.co.uk and hope to post a few comments over the next few weeks. I have just ordered a new Canon M80 portable hard drive for back up at weddings. I will let you know how it performs against our existing portable epson P3000 hard drive soon.

~rb~

Great Photographers - Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado is one of the best photographers in the world. I remember seeing an exhibition of his work about ten years ago at Aberystwyth University and will never forget it. If you have the chance to see any of his images printed and hanging on the wall please go.....they are inspirational. I have placed a link and so you can view some of the images online.


Sebastião Salgado

Free £10 Training Voucher

If you would like to attend a One to One four hour training workshop make sure you download a free £10 training voucher. We have a back to basics training course, which is for beginners and various intermediate and advanced courses. Try before you buy is also possible as you can try a canon eos 40D or Canon eos 5D. We can visit a local jessops store to try different camera equipment before you buy. To download your free voucher please click on the link below and then contact me to book your workshop.

Free Photography Training Voucher

~rb~

Exposure Compensation

Exposure compensation is a bit like the brightness control on your TV. Add exposure +1 stop to brighten the image. Subtract exposure -1 stop to darken the image. It is your choice, and you will need to have an idea of the final look you require before you play with exposure compensation. This image needed +2 stops exposure compensation to brighten the image and blow the highlights out in the background. This is a standard technique when photographing into a window to achieve a high key look.

I have put together a few cue cards to help you understand exposure compensation click on the link below to download for free.

Click here for free downloads

~rb~

Black & White Film Days

I used mono films Ilford HP5, Agfa APX 25, Kodak TMAX for five years without putting a colour film in the camera. I used two prime lenses 24mm and 50mm on a NIKON FM2 Film Body. I think this was the best training i ever gave myself. Sounds strange but by limiting your equipment you can improve your photography. I still use film cameras today for landscape. I use Large format 5x4 and two lenses 90mm and 150mm. Next time you go out with your camera take a 50mm on one body set the camera to black & white, see what you come back with.....

Click here for more images

~rb~

Image Quality - Noise

Every camera review seems to talk about noise. As cameras have improved Canon and Nikon have increased the number of pixels on the sensors. This has given them the problem with noise. I like noise as it gives the images a film like quality. I use the Canon 5D at ISO1600 / ISO3200 all the time and convert the images to greyscale in Adobe Lightroom. The images have a different look to the clean 'digital look' of ISO200 images. Some people I talk to never take their Canon 1D Mk 2 off ISO 200 as the dreaded noise will wreck their images. Noise can be good give it a go.....

I attended a wedding yesterday using ISO 1600 all day with no flash. I will post the images soon. I am off to the cotswolds today to attend a wedding and its looking pretty grey out there. The groom gets migrane from flash guns andso I can't use flash. Looks like a Canon eos 5D + 24-105 / ISO 1600 Day........

~rb~

Our photography workshops

One to One or group workshops are available for anybody interested in improving their photography. The workshops are informal and focussed on what you want to learn "not what i want to teach you". One to One tuition is getting more popular at the moment. I can offer four hour packages at £100 to get you going. Week days are best for me as the summer is now filled with weekend weddings. For more information visit our main training page Richard Barley Photography Training. If you are just starting out or semi-professional we offer bespoke training courses to help you acheive your goals.

Richard Barley Photography Training
~rb~

Sensor Dust - Finding IT ??

I am just going through my standard procedure before a wedding and I thought i would share with you my approach to 'dust specs on your sensor problem'. I keep the lenses on the cameras for a start, they never come off except for sensor cleaning every now and then. This may sound extreme but dust is best kept out of a digital SLR body. The way to check your sensor is simple.

Set the aperture to F22
Set the lens to manual focus and set it at infinity
Set the camera on aperture priority.
Find a sheet of white A4 paper.
Photograph the paper
Look at the image on the screen/histogram
Should be about mid grey

You now have an image of all the dust on your sensor. Open the image in photoshop and do image-adjustments-auto levels.
Instantly you should see all the dust better now. Don't panic dust becomes obvious at f11 - f32 so if you take photographs at f 2.8 - f8 you will not have seen most of this dust before. I will put a few images up with the next post on sensor cleaning showing the dust to worry about and the dust that will not bother you if you shoot around f5.6. Now how to get rid of it.........

Click on the image above to make it larger



~rb~

Canon Eos 40D Review 1

I have been using the canon eos 40D for the past three months and six weddings. 1st impressions are good. The cameras best point is a very good autofocus system. I have been tracking subjects in servo mode with the camera and have found it to be spot on every time. I use the 40D with a canon 70-200 IS/ F4 lens and the vertical battery grip. This combination is light weight and it feels like they were made to work together. The 40D has allot of new features that I will explore over the next few months. The Auto ISO mode is O.K but I hope a future 50D makes the range 200-3200. The screen image does not match what you see in front of you and is poor. I only look at the histogram when I am photographing weddings andso this does not effect the way I work. The canon 5D screen is great and the colours are good, I don't know why they got the 40D one wrong. The images from the 40D are very good with nice colour. I set the 5D and the 40D at Neutral and use auto white balance with both cameras. When you import the files into Adobe Lightroom they look very similiar.......

I have just found this image from a couple of weeks ago 1/60th at F4 at 200m at 800 ISO on the 40D. The skin tones from this camera are rearly nice and push the 5D at times. The noise is well controlled and at 800 ISO i never worry about it.....

more later


~rb~

Great Photographers

I am going to link you to some of my favourite photography sites and photographer blogs. This week it is Jeff Ascough who I think is one of the best wedding photographers in the U.K. He has also been voted one of the top ten photographers in the world. This link is to his blog and there is a link to his main site from there.

Jeff Ascough Blog

~rb~

In My Bag

What does a professional photographer use. I have sold most of the kit as you don't need much. This is what I use.

Canon eos 5D

Canon 24-105 IS F4 Lens

Canon eos 40D

Canon eos 70-200 IS F4 Lens

2x Canon 580 Flash Guns

and thats
it.

~rb~

Tip of the day.

Dont buy expensive lenses and put cheap UV filters on them. I have learnt by my own mistakes. I now use hoya for both my canon lenses. Keep them clean. Blow the dust off with an air blower before you clean the surface ~ helps stop scratches. I will be sharing a sensor cleaning trick very soon.
~rb~

Canon eos 5D Mk2 / Mk11

The canon eos 5d Seems to be going down in price now. I wonder when the canon eos 5D MK2 / Mk11 or what ever it is called will come out. Maybe they will go for a 3D no....because of the nikon D3. If your reading yhis then you may like to know my feelings on the matter. I think it will be a canon 5D Mk2 with a full frame sensor about 18million pixels. It will probably be a sooper dooper megger brilliant something...sorry. All joking aside I think the main thing for me is I want the iso to go up to at least 6400 and produce images with very little noise. Auto ISO would be nice. Apart from that the 5D is fine so go buy one when they are at there cheapest.

~rb~

WHY NO NIKON ?

I dont use nikon equipment andso it will be impossible for me to review it. If you know of any good nikon reviews, email me links and I will start putting them up. When I say reviews I mean real reviews over 12 months use of the camera. I would not review a camera until its been put through at least 10 weddings. This site will not be about reviews on cameras anyway. You will be able to use the techniques with any digital SLR. If the kits good i will tell you about it...... by the way the nikon D3 images look great I will try to put a link up soon............

The way the blog will work ?

I am planning to give you my own opinion on cameras and lenses and the photography industry ect. I will be putting links on the right hand side of the blog to reviews and stuff I hope you will find usefull. There is a news feed from google about canon equipment and this links out of this blogsite. I have no control over the content andso we will give it a go for a while and see if the information is usefull. I have another blog for our wedding photography business Richard Barley Photography. Take a look at some of the 2008 weddings we are attending this year. The plan is to show you different techniques you can learn to improve your photography. I offer individual tuition and workshops. you can find a full list at Richard Barley Photography Training

Canon 24-105 IS Review

The canon 24-105 F4 zoom lens does not seem to be used by allot of pro photographers, they go for the 24-70/ 2.8. I have never been one for following the crowd andso I bought this one. I can not compare the image quality to the 24-70 / 2.8 but I can tell you why I use it. I use the Canon 5D and this great lens 24-105 Is because I love it. I found I use the upper ranges of this by checking the metadata for my images. I encourage you to do the same to see what focal lenghts you use the most. I use the 70-105 part of this lens allot for weddings and if I bought the 24-70 I would lose these focal lenghts. You could argue use a telephoto lens for this range. fair enough. I find I can use to 24-105 at F4 with image stabiliser switched on in churches at 105 comfortably. What I am trying to say, in allot of words is don't buy a lens because all the pros seem to buy it think about your most used prime lens ranges and when you use them.......Fewww glad I got that off my chest.

Back to the review. This lens has also shot about 33 weddings in all weather conditions and still works fine. touch wood. The image quality has always impressed me and the colours are great from this lens. One thing i will say is distortion can be a problem. I have been using canons software dp pro to correct distortion and it works fine. It is so usefull to be able to use just one camera and one camera body at a wedding without standing out to much. The canon 5d and 24-105 Is allow you to get into the action and stand back at times. I could not shoot weddings without this lens. I crop in camera and try to get everything right in camera to cut down on post production time. This lets me compose focus and take photographs quickly and move on. I would buy one and give it a go......

Visit this page to see the first time i used this lens

Rich

Canon eos 5D Review

I have been using this camera for the past 12 months and its time to tell you what i think of it. Its great. end of review.

The camera is well made and puts up with all the usual knocks from wedding photography weeek in week out. I use it with the battery grip and this makes a big difference when shooting in portrait mode. The grip fits solid on the bottom and there is know movement which I have found on other cameras. (40d review coming soon). All the controls were easy to learn and to be honest are all that we will ever need. I bought the camera the day before a wedding took it out of the box and just used it. They are great to use and reliable. I have now shot about 33 weddings with this 5D and about 20,000 frames with no problems. I have found the metering to be spot-on and autofocus I don't ever worry about. I set it to one shot with my 24-105 L lens and blast away. A real fun camera. Grab yourself a bargain with the 5D and 24-105 so cheap now....you will not be disapointed.

Image Details:

Canon eos 5D + 24-105 F4 IS Lens


SHUTTER SPEED 1/30
APERTURE F4
ISO 1600

Well this is the start of the training blog. We are going to be running a photography training program over the next few years. I am also going to be reviewing cameras and equipment and letting you know how they work in the real world. If you would like a full list of photography courses for 2008 please visit our main website www.pureprints.com