Tag: digital

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Important Thing

Probably all would agree that equipment management is crucial for working photographers. It’s not very professional to arrive to set and notice your battery is empty or even worse, missing.

Canon’s camera manual advices you to make test shots before important shoots, or even take camera to be checked up by Canon’s authorised service professionals for check-up. Sound advice, I say.

I have a principle to always have backup for everything, including the camera body. Even though modern DSLRs have sensor cleaning mechanisms, it is possible that something gets to the sensor, piece of hair or skin for example. Bulb blower is a must have, but sometimes even that doesn’t help. Bring extra body, just in case something goes wrong. And camera’s shutter has always a limited lifespan anyway, so sooner or later it’s going to break. Extra camera body might save your day and reputation.

And after the shot, take super good care of that memory card. It’s like your digital negative. Now that we have tools like iPad, it’s very handy to have one of those camera connection kits (especially with Retina display iPad) with you. It’s great for on-location previews and backups.

There are some theories that large memory cards might be more prone to failure than smaller ones. I am still shooting with 16GB card and it’s unlikely that I would ever get larger card than that. And if you split the shoot to two cards, even if one of the card fails, you wouldn’t lose everything. So far, I have never had memory card failing on me, but I have heard many horror stories.. especially after someone has shot a multi-million-yen wedding.

Rather than deleting photos from memory card, I would recommend formatting it. I have heard this reduces the chance of getting some kind of (eh, I don’t really know what I’m talking about) logical error in the data of the disk.

So, the lesson here is that pro or semi-pro photographer must take very good care of his/her gear. That gear is probably expensive (and if you are sports photographer VERY expensive), and it’s your lifeline really, much like parachute is for skydivers.

If you do pro shoots daily, my advice is to keep every necessary item in your camera bag always when you are in home or studio. Then you will get into the habit of never forgetting anything, and basically just recharge batteries and format memory cards in advance, and then take that bag and you’ll be ok.

Good luck for shooting!

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Leica M8 Seduction

Leica’s M8 used to be a camera that I never really had interest to. Crop sensor, infrared issues (requiring filter) you know, it was Leica’s first attempt to make a digital camera and I read many negative reviews about it.

I just thought that I would rather go for M6 and get a full frame camera via 35mm film and be happy for the rest of my life.

But now, since M8’s price came down (in fact you can get used M8 with around same cost as Fujifilm X-PRO) I find myself attracted to this camera. M8 is less than half the price of M9, and still it is a real rangefinder Leica, and accepts all the great optics.

The shortcomings of the M8, such as poor JPG’s, requirement of infrared filter, and the crop sensor, doesn’t weight so much in my scale. For me I care much more about the spirit of rangefinder focusing, feeling connected to the scene you’re shooting.. and of course, the culture of manual photography which is so genuinely embraced by Leica.

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Don't Forget to Be The Artist

Since most of us creators have gadgets and devices that we need to manage, we often forget the most important, to be the artist.

It makes a lot of sense to step back from the glowing screen and go to another room with simple pencil and sketchbook.

There’s something fundamentally wrong with the digital devices. They mess up with our creativity.

Computers are still just what they once were, digital devices capable of managing lots of data, and they have no creativity whatsoever built into them. Computers have limits. You are the creator with no limit.

It’s easy to forget nowadays that we are artists. Although we take advantage of digital tools, we shouldn’t forget who we are; artists with infinite potential.