Voice-activated light stands

This clever bit of technology allows you to position your lighting with pin-point accuracy. You don't even need to take them along in your kit bag - there are always plenty lying around at any wedding.

Happy New Year to all!

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Wedding Photography Kent

Finally got a call from Cameraworld yesterday saying that my Canon EOS 5D Mark II would be delivered on Monday. No battery grip or spare batteries until the New Year though. I don't think it's unfair to say that Canon was a little premature with the announcement of this camera.

It's not worked out too badly, however. If the camera had arrived earlier, I wouldn't have been able to process any RAW shots anyway, as Lightroom and the Adobe digital negative (DNG) converter have only just been updated.

Note that Adobe are no longer updating either Lightroom 1.4 or Photoshop CS3 with RAW support for recent camera releases. Instead you'll need to use their free DNG converter utility.


I've got a wedding tomorrow and then the last of the year on Tuesday. I'll probably take the 5D Mark II along to the latter as back-up for a quick tryout.


This is my 200th post having only started the blog in April 2008. I hope my blogging stamina will maintain throughout 2009!


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Wedding Photographer in Kent - starting-out kit

I had the following great question from a reader yesterday:

Hi,

Just been looking at your blog, which is excellent. I wonder if you might extend a bit of advice to someone looking to dip a toe into the wedding photography ocean?

I’m making myself available to friends of friends (ie weddings I wouldn’t be invited to myself) who otherwise wouldn’t have a wedding photographer (perhaps couldn’t afford one). At the moment, I have a Canon EOS 350D with a couple of cheapish lenses. I wouldn’t consider myself under any pressure to product fantastic wedding shots and I’m certainly not looking to make a career of this at the moment. However, I do want to produce the best work I can and have some funds available to buy some new kit.

I was really wondering what I should spend my money on. Is the key to good wedding portrait photography through a good camera or good lenses (or both)? In other words, should I spend my money upgrading to a better camera (eg secondhand 5D, 1D etc), or should I purchase some decent EF lenses that would be compatible with my 350D (eg L lenses)?

I’ve already got a decent flash (580EX). It would be useful to take some advice from somebody who’s been there and from looking at your gallery, producing some great shots.

I appreciate you will be busy, but would welcome any advice you might be willing to give.

Many thanks in advance.

Marcus

Obviously there's no right answer to this question. Here's my take on it.

Although digital cameras with smaller sensors have a crop-factor which is to the benefit of cheaper lenses I would be tempted to buy a secondhand Canon EOS 5D since this will allow you to handle lowlight situations - the bane of wedding photographers. The larger pixels on the sensor give a much better signal-to-noise ratio allowing you to shoot at high ISO. Unless of course you can be certain that you'll be shooting in well-lit venues on bright days! Partnered with your 580EX Speedlite you'll be able to handle nearly all lighting conditions.

Obviously a 5D will not work with EF-S lenses. You could pick up a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens, which is incredibly fast and has superb optics, for £60. You could shoot a wedding with just this.

Sigma also make some great lenses - check out the 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG.

There are a few Canon L-series lenses which don't break the bank. The Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L (though you'll need to crank up the ISO setting to give you at least 1/200s at f/4.0 when shooting at 200mm in low-light levels) and the Canon EF 135mm f/2.0 L are both worth checking out.

As always, comments are most welcome.

Check out my photography here: wedding photography Kent

Kent Wedding Photographer - Canon 35mm f/1.4 lens

I bought the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4 L lens earlier this year and have no regrets for doing so – the image quality from this lens is stunning, in terms of sharpness, colour and contrast.

I wanted a very fast wide angle lens for low-light wedding photography to complement my 85mm f/1.2 L lens. I grappled with the dilemma of whether to buy the 24mm f/1.4 L or 35mm f/1.4 L and decided on the latter as it’s a more general purpose focal length – at 24mm perspective distortion becomes an issue. Although 50mm is regarded as the ‘standard’ focal length I think 35mm corresponds more closely to human vision – or mine at least!

The lens is beautifully constructed but is light. It features ultrasonic motors for rapid, silent focusing and supports full-time manual focus. The lens focuses very quickly in low light and I find it more efficient and reliable than the 24-70 f/2.8 L zoom lens. On the full-frame EOS 5D vignetting (darkening towards the corners of the image) is visible when the lens is wide open (f/1.4) but this is easily corrected in Lightroom or Photoshop. As the aperture is reduced from f/1.4 to f/2.0 there is an increase in sharpness but I regularly shoot at f/1.4 and find the results sufficiently sharp for my purposes.

I process at least 700 wedding shots using Lightroom most weekends on my 30” Apple Cinema Display (which is pretty unforgiving in exposing image flaws) and, as I work through the images in the development module, those from the prime lenses stand out. You would expect this from first principles, on the basis that the optics of the lens should be close-to-perfect for this single focal length, but it is reassuring to see it in practice.

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Wedding Photographer in Kent - EOS 5D Mark II

The Canon EOS 5D Mark II is now shipping in limited quantities and some stock is available in the UK. Keith Cooper at Northlight Images has done a terrific job of keeping everybody up-to-date with developments - check out his 5D Mark II news page.

I'm hoping for a call from Cameraworld about my pre-order today. Fingers crossed!

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Kent Wedding Photographer - Lowepro Camera Bags

Choosing camera bags is a tricky business, particularly when you start to build up a bigger collection of kit. None ever seem to be quite right and each generally requires a degree of customisation. It's for this reason, along with their reputation for being solidly-built, that I've bought Lowepro bags - they feature padded dividers which can be rearranged within the bags using velcro attachements. I've bought three Lowepro camera bags for transporting my gear safely - the choice of which I use depends upon the requirements of the assignment. The biggest is the Stealth Reporter D650 AW (top) which is attached to my wedding photography trolley. I've removed a lot of the internal padding which allows me to get a huge amount of kit in - check out the wedding photographer's camera bag post - and gives me instant access to all my lenses during a wedding shoot. If I need to be more mobile, during the bride and groom portrait shoot, for example, I put a smaller selection of kit in a Lowepro Fastpack 350 (bottom right). I also use this for assignments which require a small amount of kit, such as venue photography. For times when I need a good amount of kit but still need to be highly mobile I use a Lowepro Vertex 200 AW backpack (bottom left). The bag is on the heavy side but does offer robust protection.

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Wedding Photographer in Kent - Apple Display

This is a follow-up to my initial post on the problems I was having with my 23" Apple Cinema Display. I phoned AppleCare in the UK last week to complain that my £600 monitor had started misbehaving after only 15 months. I was initially told that there was nothing that could be done, but I took a deep breath and calmly, but assertively, put my point across. I can't remember precisely what I said but it was along the lines that if Apple are going to charge premium prices for their products they ought to be lasting for many years. I also pointed out that the Apple forums are full of threads regarding issues with this particular display and that Apple should take responsibility for flawed products. I was put on hold for 20 minutes while the representative spoke with the Customer Services department but the upshot was that Apple agreed to sort out my monitor for free. I took the display along to my local authorised Apple repairer and they replaced it within 24 hours. If you're having problems with your Apple gear I hope you'll be inspired to give them a call and complain!

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Kent Wedding Photographer - NiMH batteries

I use nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries for all my kit - they're economical and green. I bought mine from the wonderful 7dayshop (as indeed does Damien Lovegrove, the well-known wedding and portrait photographer, who I saw remove a pack from his camera bag in one of his lighting tutorial DVDs) who sell their own-branded batteries and chargers at very low prices. I purchased 2800 mAh (milli Amp hours which reflects the capacity of the battery - the bigger, the better) batteries and a smart charger which charges quickly, optimises battery life by not overcharging and can detect bad cells. A good tip is to keep your batteries in groups of four. Use them and charge them together, so that they wear out at a similar rate, since problems can arise when combining batteries of differing quality. Bear in mind that NiMH batteries lose their power quite quickly, so remember to recharge all of them before an assignment.

For flash photography they offer another advantage. Since they possess a low internal resistance they are able to transfer their charge to the flash capacitor much more quickly than alkaline batteries, leading to reduced recycling times (up to twice as fast) - the time you have to wait for your flash unit to recharge.

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Kent Wedding Photographer - UDMA cards

In anticipation of the imminent arrival of my Canon EOS 5D Mark II (I'm in an optimistic mood today!) I've just purchased four 8Gb SanDisk Extreme 'Ducati Edition' compact flash cards. These have a transfer rate of 45Mb/s, using the ultra direct memory access (UDMA) protocol which the 5D Mark II supports. This allows fourteen 21.1 megapixel RAWs, at 3.9 frames per second, to be shot in a single burst.

You don't want to be waiting for your camera to catch-up when you're shooting a wedding.

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Kent Wedding Photography - 5D Mark II Noise Profile

1/1600, f/2.8, ISO 25,600, o EV, 62mm

I've finally been able to play with some shots taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and am very, very impressed. A friend sent me a selection of files shot at the highest ISO settings on the camera - 3200, 6400, 12800 and 25600. The low levels of noise are astounding.

The above shot was taken at ISO 25,600 and has had digital noise removed using NeatImage. To my eye the result is as good as, or maybe even slightly better than, the EOS 5D at ISO 3200 - a 3-stop gain. This means that I'll be able to shoot weddings in the darkest churches with apertures of f/4.0 or even f/5.6, giving me a much greater depth of field. This is very good news.

I have my fingers crossed that I might be able to get my hands on a 5D Mark II in November!

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Kent Wedding Photographer in action

1/100, f/2.8, ISO 3200, -1 FEC, 24mm (24-70mm f/2.8 L)

A huge mirror at the wedding reception venue on Saturday provided me with the opportunity to take a shot of myself in action (contrast is poor due to lens flare). As you can see, I dress quite plainly, but the advantage of this is that I'm not afraid to get dirty. If the shot requires me to lie on the floor, I do!

In action you can see:

1. A Lastolite micro Apollo light modifier - a portable softbox.

2. Hiding behind which is a 580EX II Speedlite.

3. A Custom Brackets digital Pro-M kit - allowing the camera to be rotated between portrait and landscape formats.

4. A Canon EOS 5D with BG-E4 battery grip.

5. A Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L zoom lens.

6. A CP-E4 battery pack.

It's not light but serves to tone the photographer's upper body (optimistic view) and cause backache (realistic view).

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DIY Kent Wedding Photography

This device could be the biggest threat to wedding photographers yet devised - as long as the subjects don't mind having an outstretched arm in every photo!

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Wedding Photographer in Kent - Monopods

I always have a monopod strapped to my photography trolley. I tend to use it during wedding speeches and sometimes for candids of guests shot outside, both occasions when I shoot with a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS lens.

I'm currently using a Manfrotto 685B Neotec monopod - it's a well-designed and elegantly-constructed piece of kit. The headline is the automatic Neotec locking system - no twisting or tightening of clamps required, just extend the legs (whilst standing on the foot pedal to keep the monopod firmly grounded) and they lock automatically. To contract the monopod you release a safety lock with your small finger and then squeeze the palm trigger with your other three fingers - this allows for one-handed operation. It also features a suction foot cup for floor stability and a leg warmer (carrying a cold monopod without one of these is not a pleasant experience). The monopod is light, but able to support 8kg of kit, and has a good height range of 71-166cm.

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Wedding Photographer Kent - CP-E4 battery pack

I use my 580EX II Speedlites in 75% of my shots but typically I only add a "kiss of flash", with flash exposure compensation dialled down by at least 2/3 stop, and this often allows me to use the same set of batteries for a whole wedding, particularly during the summer. As the winter months draw on, and light levels drop, my flash units have to work a lot harder so I break out the Canon CP-E4 external battery pack. This unit takes 8 AA batteries (I use NiMH rechargeable batteries which recycle more quickly), which in conjunction with the 4 AA batteries in the flash unit, means you have 3 times as much power at your disposal. The key benefits are faster recycling times and longer usage between battery changes. The flash unit also seems to stay cooler (which makes sense, though I've never seen any hard facts to back up this observation).

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Wedding Photographer in Kent - Favourite Lenses

I've just read an article in the Canon Professional Network's October 2008 Newsletter on Favourite Lenses for Weddings.

In his wedding kit bag (no doubt carried by his photographic 'caddy'), renowned wedding photographer Joe Buissink has two EOS 5Ds with 24-70mm f/2.8L and 85mm f/1.2L (his all-time favourite) lenses, and two EOS 1V film SLRs with 16-35mm f/2.8L and 70-200mm f/2.8L lenses.

He's obviously read my recent post on Lenses for Wedding Photography!

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Apple Cinema Displays

I'm a huge fan of Apple's products - premium-priced but well-designed and built and with resulting longevity. I've got a Mac running my mini music studio (another passion) which is over 10-years old.

I've just had my first problem though. I bought a 23" Apple Cinema Display (£600) last year and declined to purchase the 3-year Apple Protection Plan (£69). The products are so robust and I treat them very well so why bother? Wrong answer this time. Last week the screen remained ominously dark when I switched on the computer so I took it to the Apple Shop at Bluewater. They couldn't get it working with its power supply but, by complete chance (and in retrospect very good fortune), it was tried with a power supply for the 30" Cinema Display they had to hand and it worked fine. They therefore concluded my power supply was at fault and ordered a new one for me. I returned 3 days later to try this out but the screen still refused to work. I was asked to leave the screen with them and told that if it was at fault Apple operated a full-unit replacement only and it would cost me £400 for a new one with a limited 90-day warranty. Not ideal.

I needed a screen straight away (and also realised it was probably a good idea to have a back-up) so I bit the bullet and invested in a 30" cinema display (with Apple Protection Plan this time). Outrageously expensive but a magnificent bit of kit and with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels perfect for photo processing.

I got a call from the Apple shop the next day to let me know they couldn't get my screen working so I suggested they try a power supply for a 30" display. They called back shortly after to say the screen worked perfectly. For some reason my old screen seems to require more power now - any suggestions as to why are most welcome.

I just need to buy myself a new power supply then - so I seem to have got off relatively lightly. I haven't checked the price yet but, knowing Apple, I'm sure it will be in 3 figures.

Check out my photography here: Kent wedding photographer

Wedding Photographer in Kent

Even though the Canon EOS 5D Mark II has yet to be released its impact is already starting to be felt. Vincent Laforet convinced Canon to loan him a pre-production model last weekend and used it to shoot a short film in high-definition. Check it out here - HD film.

The results were so impressive that a lot of people struggled to believe it was shot with just an SLR camera. He's therefore just released all the original RAW files for download and inspection. Read the ongoing saga in Vincent's blog.

It will be interesting to see the impact this technology has on wedding photography. Roll on the release date!

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Canon 5D Mark II

An exciting day for wedding photographers who use Canon equipment - the EOS 5D Mark II has finally been announced and with a stunning specification - 21.1 Mp with ISO from 50 - 25,600. Another 3-stops in ISO sensitivity over the 5D (and matching the Nikon D3)! This opens up the possibility of shooting in a very dark Church at f/4.0 or more, no more ultra-shallow depth of field. Image size will be 5616 x 3744 pixels, giving increased forgiveness with cropping. The shutter is engineered to give 150,000 exposures (compared to the 5D's 100,000 - a longer usable life). It will feature the 1D's well-received highlight tone priority feature, great for dealing with wedding dresses in bright sunlight, and a much improved screen (3.0 " TFT LCD, 920,000 pixels, automatic 3 level brightness adjustment, 170 ° viewing angle, dual anti-reflection - 'Clear View') and live TTL display of scene from the CMOS image sensor - 'Live view'.

I'll also be able to double up as a videographer now with the high definition movie recording feature. The price is £2300 and it should be available in November.

Key Features

New 21.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor with improved EOS Integrated Cleaning System (E.I.C.S.)
New Full HD 1080 resolution movie recording
3.9 frames per second continuous shooting
High performance DIGIC 4 providing superb image quality
Maximum 310 large JPEG images in a single burst with a UDMA card
3.0″ VGA (920k dots) Clear View LCD
ISO 100-6400 (expansion from 50 up to 25,600)
9 AF points + 6 Assist AF points

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Extension tubes

For a more in-depth discussion of macro photography and magnification rates check out John Shaw's 'Closeups in Nature'.

Extension tubes increase the distance between the optics in the lens and the digital sensor. This allow the lens to focus at a closer distance to the subject, hence increasing its size. An approximate magnification rate is given by total extension/focal length - immediately this tells you that greater magnification rates are achieved with shorter focal length lenses. 

Since there is only air between the end of the lens optics and the sensor I bought the cheaper Kenko extension tubes which come as a set of three - 12, 20 and 36mm. They allow the lens to communicate with the camera body so that autofocus and metering are not affected. With my 100m f/2.8 (a true 1:1 macro lens) putting on all of the above extension gives a magnification rate of .7-fold. 


The extension tubes can be used in conjunction with the extender I discussed in the previous post. If you attach extension to the lens first and then subsequently add the extender you will multiply the magnification by a further 2x. I took the photograph of the fly with a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, 68mm of extension and a 2x extender!

Another result of adding extension to a lens is that minimum and maximum focusing distances are reduced. The former can be beneficial. I often use my 85mm f/1.2 L lens indoors with an extension tube to reduce the closest focusing distance of 0.95m - I can then take advantage of its excellent low-light capabilities in confined spaces.

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Canon extenders

Fortunately for my wallet I'm not into wildlife photography and so haven't needed to buy any of Canon's high performance telephoto lenses - here are the current prices at Warehouse Express: Canon 300mm f/2.8 L IS £2848, 400mm f/2.8 L IS £4889, 500mm f/4 L IS £4154, 600mm f/4 L IS £5399, 800mm f/5.6 L IS £9000! My longest lens is the 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS which suffices for all my professional wedding and portraiture work. However, I do occasionally need a bit more reach, and so to achieve this without breaking the bank, I invested in a Canon EF 2x II extender (also known as a teleconverter) - seen above next to a Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8 L lens for size comparison. It attaches between the camera and lens, and as its name suggests, it doubles the focal length range of the lens.

The downside is that the aperture of the lens is decreased by two stops, so my 70-200mm f/2.8 IS becomes a 140-400mm f/5.6 IS lens - image stabilisation is not affected. This is the smallest aperture at which autofocus can work on a Canon EOS 5D (1D bodies can handle f/8.0) - if your lens is slower than f/2.8, adding a 2x extender will require you to focus manually. This doubling of focal length results in a doubling of magnification - great for wildlife or, for example, photographing the moon, as above (cropped). As an aside, I shot this in manual mode in order to underexpose by 3 stops to take into account the black sky filling 60% of the image - exposure compensation only allows you to correct by -2 stops in aperture priority mode. The magnification resulting from the extender does lead to a small deterioration in image quality. Canon also sells a 1.4x extender.

I've used the Canon extender on all my lenses - it's particularly entertaining to stick it on a macro lens in conjunction with extension tubes (I'll discuss these in the next post) to achieve high magnifications.

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent

Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2

I have three 580EX II Speedlites that I use for lighting but I still find the ST-E2 wireless flash controller to be a useful addition to my kit - it's very light and compact compared to having a 580EX II mounted on camera as the master controller, and it can also be used solely for its AF-assist beam.

It does have a few limitations compared to a 580EX II though. It can only control two channels, A and B (you can have as many Speedlites as you want in each channel but you can only control the flash output ratio between the two channels as a whole - from 8:1 to 1:8), as compared to the 580EX II which can control three (A, B & C). Also, the ST-E2 cannot communicate flash exposure bracketing or manual flash instructions, unlike the 580EX II. Another point of difference - the ST-E2 sends instructions to the slave flashes using near infra red, whereas the 580 EX II Speedlites communicate using visible light.

How do I use the ST-E2 transmitter? For indoor portraits of the bride and groom and for the cake-cutting pictures are two good examples. I set up two 580EX II Speedlites on stands with diffusers, as fill and key lights, set an appropriate ratio between the two light sources, and then off I go. I feel fleet-of-foot and liberated from a composition point of view.

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Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 L II USM lens

Canon's best lenses are given the L-designation (an abbreviation for luxury I believe). They have excellent optics, superb build-quality and cost an arm-and-a-leg. If you're doing photography professionally, however, they are well worth buying. They hold their value well, unlike camera bodies, so you can recoup most of your money if you regret your profligacy at a later date! A terrific value starting lens is the 70-200mm f/4 L lens - be warned, though, it's a slippery slope. Once you see how good your shots are - in terms of sharpness, contrast, colours and pure visual impact - it's hard to go back to non L-series lenses.

For this post I  wanted to briefly discuss the 85mm f/1.2 L lens - for a full review visit the excellent digital-picture.com. Canon describe it as their "definitive portraiture lens" (it's very popular with wedding photographers) - for a discussion on why this focal length is ideal for portraits see my earlier post 'Perspective and portrait lenses'. With a maximum aperture of f/1.2, this is the fastest lens that Canon produces - the more light a lens allows in, the faster the shutter speed you can access for a given level of light. Working down through the full f-stop sequence (1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22 - multiply by the square root of 2 each time), each aperture allows in twice as much light as the previous one. Fast L-series zoom lenses have a maximum aperture of f/2.8 - f/1.2 is a huge 2.5 stops faster than this. Coupled with ISO 3200 on an EOS 5D and the low-light capability is truly astonishing. This wide aperture also gives incredibly shallow depth-of-field and leads to wonderfully out-of-focus, diffuse backgrounds - an effect known by the Japanese word bokeh (pronounced bo-ké). As a result, your focusing must be very accurate. The optical quality of the lens is just fantastic (this is purely a subjective description, I haven't run any tests on the lens) - the shot of Emily above could be printed at A2 and still look great.

The downsides? It's very slow to autofocus in comparison with other Canon USM lenses, the closest focusing distance is 0.95m (though this can be improved using extension tubes) and, the really bad news, it currently retails for £1249 in the UK. Not the first L-series lens you should be buying but a very worthwhile addition if you shoot weddings and portraits.

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens

My new Canon fisheye lens was delivered at the weekend. I intend to use it at weddings for scene-setting and group shots in cramped locations (I'll be using it at The Dog Inn in Wingham this Saturday), and for general interior photography. The shot above is of The Guildhall in Sandwich and illustrates the extreme barrel distortion that the lens causes. This can be corrected in Photoshop to give the picture equivalent of an ultra-wide 12mm lens. Distortion is minimised on vertical and horizontal lines which bisect the frame (notice the flag pole above) so if you're shooting a landscape, and want to keep it looking relatively normal, place the horizon in the centre. However, the distortion is key to the appeal of the lens for me.

A couple of downsides which come with the fisheye territory. In areas of contrast within the shot, chromatic aberration is very noticeable (you may still notice a little in the top left hand corner above - this is after correction in Lightroom). Also, the lens cap does not clip into place and is easily removed - care is required when storing the lens in your camera bag.

The convex surface of the lens means that filters cannot be used (I keep B+W UV filters on all my other lenses). Of course not having a filter on the lens reduces the chance of flare, as demonstrated perfectly by the shot above where I shot almost directly into the sun - there are only a couple of small flare spots (pentagonal due to the 5 aperture blades in the lens).

My first impressions with this lens are favourable. Image quality is excellent and the lens is compact and light (a nice change from lugging a 70-200m f/2.8 L IS lens about).

Check out my photography here: Kent portrait photographer

Battery grips

If you've never used a battery, or vertical, grip before you could be forgiven for wondering why anyone would want to make their camera heavier and bulkier. Once you've put one on your camera and used it for a couple of days, however, you'll find it difficult to use your camera without it. It allows you to rotate your camera from the landscape to portrait orientation whilst maintaining the same grip on the camera. The battery grip also duplicates key buttons such as shutter, exposure lock, AF point selection and the main dial - giving you a more consistent 'feel' between the two orientations. The camera also feels more balanced when putting heavier L-series (Canon's professional range) lenses on the camera, with the grip acting as a counterweight. Finally, it allows you to put two batteries in your camera (reassuring on a long wedding day) and comes with a battery converter allowing you to power your camera with 4 x AA batteries. An essential piece of kit.

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Canon versus unbranded accessories

I spend a lot of money on photographic equipment but even I balked at spending £40 on a Canon remote switch last year. I don't use one that often and the self-timer setting can be used in a lot of cases. So I bought a very cheap unbranded-make on eBay - in retrospect, not a very good idea. It was slightly too tight in the remote control terminal, which made it difficult to remove,  and I quickly discovered that it was not compatible with mirror lock-up (I've never actually compared a shot with and without mirror lock-up but conventional wisdom suggests that the latter should be sharper. When you take a shot, the mirror, which has previously been directly light to the viewfinder, rotates up to expose the CMOS sensor, blocking light from the viewfinder in the process - which is why you can't see your subject at the moment of taking a shot with an SLR camera. This supposedly causes the camera to vibrate sufficiently to impact on sharpness and is why many cameras offer a mirror lock-up feature - press the shutter fully once to lock the mirror and then again to take the shot. This is controlled by custom function 12 on a Canon EOS 5D). The final straw was when my unbranded remote switch recently started being unreliable. I therefore bought the Canon variant. It works perfectly but then for £40 it should!

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Using ring flash for portrait photography

Ring flashes are particularly popular with fashion photographers as they create almost shadowless light (the flash unit wraps around the end of the lens - hence light is coming from all directions), reduce the visibility of skin imperfections, produce a very soft-edged shadow, and remove the need for any other lighting. They're very expensive and used primarily in a studio setting.

I've just purchased a much cheaper variant from Speed Graphic, a ring flash adaptor which attaches to my Canon 580 EXII Speedlite (as shown in the above picture). It uses a system of internal prisms and reflectors to distribute the light evenly around the lens.

I had my first go with the adaptor yesterday and quickly realised that it's going to take some getting used to. It's not practical to use in low light as the unit completely blocks the autofocus-assist beam on the 580EX II. It considerably diminishes the power output of the flash and also seems to seriously perturb the E-TTL (evaluative through-the-lens) flash metering system, with some shots badly underexposed and others overexposed. I need to learn how the camera behaves when this unit is attached. Having said that, I managed to get some great results in situations that have previously proved problematic, such as my daughter Emily enjoying her bathtime. Lighting most bathrooms is tricky due to all the reflective surfaces, such as tiles and mirror, creating far too many shadows.

In conclusion, not an essential item, but I am pleased to have it in my arsenal of portrait photography gear.

The wedding photographer's camera bag

A breakdown of my wedding photography kit. I'll share more detailed information on specific items in future posts.

In the centre:

Canon EOS 5D

Canon BG-E4 battery grip

Custom Brackets Digital Pro-M kit

Canon Speedlite 580EX II

Lastolite Micro Apollo light modifier XL

Canon off-camera shoe cord 2

Moving to the left in the above picture:

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM

Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 L USM

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM

All the lenses have B+W F-PRO MRC filters mounted for protection.

Moving to the right:

Canon Extender EF 2x II

Lensbaby - original

2x Canon Speedlite 580EX II

Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2

Also in my bag (but not pictured above):

Sekonic flash master L-358

Lastolite tri-grip reflector

Homemade diffusers

2x Lighting stands with Novoflex ballheads

Flash gels with homemade holders

10x 4Gb SanDisk Extreme III CF cards

Remote release cable

Manfrotto monopod 676B

Cokin circular polariser P-series

Cokin neutral density graduated filters

Enough spare batteries to illuminate the Blackpool lights

All packed (just) into a Lowepro Stealth Reporter D560 AW bag & large plastic box.

Near to hand I also have:

Canon EOS 350D (back-up digital body)

Manfrotto 190X PRO-B tripod

Manfrotto 486RC2 ball and socket head

Small step ladder

The roving Kent wedding photographer

Tomorrow I shall reveal to you the kit that I use when I photograph a wedding. In the meantime I show you how I transport it! It weighs a ton, but provided there aren't too many stairs I don't suffer. Generally there are too many stairs.

New wedding photography equipment

I had the opportunity to try out some new equipment at Erina and Paul's wedding on Saturday. First up was a Custom Brackets digital Pro-M kit. This is an expensive, but superbly built, flash bracket that has been designed by someone who likes to take photographs. The headline feature is that the camera sits in a cradle which smoothly rotates between portrait and landscape formats, meaning the flash unit is always placed correctly for the shot. Other terrific features include padded grips in all the right places for holding the unit, a readily adjustable arm for tilting the flash forwards and two supports which can fold away and allow the unit to be placed upright. Absolutely fantastic.

I also trialled a Lastolite micro Apollo light modifier with a Speedlite 580 EX II. It's not as good at softening the light as my Lastolite EzyBox but it's still pretty good and it's considerably more portable. These items will be joining me at my next wedding shoot.

Both of these items were purchased from Speed Graphic who I can heartily recommend. They have a great selection of gear, knowledgeable staff and deliver quickly.

Warning - fake SanDisk memory cards on eBay

I ordered a SanDisk Extreme IV compact flash card on eBay recently and received a fake. I immediately suspected it was a wrong 'un and a quick call to SanDisk confirmed the fact. I then raised a dispute in PayPal which allowed me to claim my money back. The card on the left in the picture above is genuine, the card on the right fake. Although the poorly cropped sticker on the front of the latter is a giveaway in this case, SanDisk advise that a more reliable way of identifying a genuine card is that all four corners of the metallic inlay should be rounded - subtle but clearly observable in the picture above. Caveat emptor!