Photographers’ Quotes

Posted on July 24, 2008 | Leave a comment

Came across the Photo Quotes web site today. Makes good reading!

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Posted in Photography

Can You Believe All You See On The TV News?

Posted on July 24, 2008 | Leave a comment

Whilst watching the BBC News yesterday, I saw an interesting and bizarre story about the world’s first hotel made of sand; the Sand Hotel on Weymouth beach in Dorset. It had a concierge and you could stay there for £10 per night.

I decided to make the three hour drive and timed it so I’d be there just before sunset to get some nice soft light. My other hope was some pictures of the concierge and the guests who had paid £10 a night to stay there. Imagine my disappointment when I found an empty “hotel” with a security guard.
The whole story was made up and a pure publicity stunt; you couldn’t pay to stay at the hotel and the story, whilst obviously a silly and fluffy story was reported in a way that said it was actually a temporary hotel, which it was not. Now, this is the silly season and news organisations do scratch the bottom of the barrel sometimes, but I just don’t condone behaviour which straight forward misrepresents the reality of a story. The story was a good one and should have been covered, but they should have mentioned that its just purely a stunt and people cannot use it as a hotel.

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Posted in viewpoint

Broadband – Are We Getting What We Pay For?

Posted on July 24, 2008 | 14 comments

I’m probably one of few who have two ISPs. I have Demon ADSL using copper wire and Virgin Media using Fibre Optic for my broadband at home.

I took out the Virgin Media because as a bundle with cable TV it was working out cheaply.

I just did a speed test at 4.30pm and the results are astonishing!

For Demon, I pay for an 8Mb connection but get 0.52Mb download. Upload was 0.36 Mb.
For Virgin Media, I pay for a 20Mb connection and get 17.98Mb download. Upload was 0.7Mb. To get these speeds with Virgin you need to make sure you’re in an area that has fibre optic; don’t go for the copper wire ADSL as it’ll be just as slow as everyone else’s.

This isn’t Demon’s fault as its the technology which is terrible. Using copper wire has many drawbacks; distance from phone exchange and number of people using the pipe. Most ISPs have a 50:1 contention ratio. Fibre Optic doesn’t have these issues.

In this day and age of doing almost everything via the computer these slow speeds are crazy! Naturally for us upload is often more important and I use Virgin when filing from home or doing off site backups. Its so much quicker. As “Cloud” services begin to grow and we’re beginning to use off site virtual storage providers, internet service providers really need to start looking at raising these upload speeds.

Copper wire is dead; bring on fibre optic for the masses.

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Posted in Computers and Software, viewpoint

Apple iPod Touch and iPhone Version 2.0 Update

Posted on July 23, 2008 | Leave a comment


I’ve written about my fondness of the iPod Touch before, so I won’t be going over those comments.

What I did want to share though was the amazing Version 2.0 update. I don’t have an iPhone yet, so my comments are from experiencing the update on the Touch, but the same should hold for the iPhone.
I upgraded around a week ago and I must say its turned my unit into a completely new piece of kit, making it even more useful than ever.
The most obvious change is the “App Store” which can be accessed either from iTunes or the iPod Touch itself. There are already loads of applications available, ranging from utilities to games.
I’ve installed a few things:
1-File Magnet which allows you to transfer files across from your computer.
2-Vicinity which finds your location using WiFi triangulation and lets you know where nearby places are, including banks, bars, hotels, convenience stores, hotels, restaurants, taxis etc. Absolute genius software.
3-Google Mobile App which works like Spotlight for the unit. Superb.
4-Backgammon which has got me hooked, and
5-Super Monkey Ball which is a very entertaining game where you control game play by tilting the unit! Very novel!

One of the other big changes is “Mobile Me” which is the new name for “.Mac”. This “pushes” changes to your calendar and phonebook straight across to your unit (its having some teething problems and doesn’t happen immediately yet) and also pushes new email to the unit without you having to do this manually.

Just moving away from the iPod and iPhone, the “Mobile Me” service works perfectly with your other Macs. I now have all my Macs fully synced automatically. Its absolutely superb!

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Posted in Computers and Software

Rates For The Job – PR & Commercial Work

Posted on July 22, 2008 | Leave a comment

As photographers, one thing we are all universally good at is moaning. We moan about work, lack of work, our picture desks, the light, lack of light, wrong type of light, cost of everything and pay, or more correctly, the lack of pay.

Editorially, shift rates have gone up very little over the past decades. However, the cost of equipment has gone up astronomically and the job is no where as well paid as it used to be. Our workload has also gone up as we now do all the post processing as well.
In the days of film you could have a descent professional camera system for around £10,000, now days you’re looking at more like £30,000. To top this, you also need to change cameras a lot more often as digital is changing and getting better at a very speedy rate. Lets not even talk about the computing technology making leaps and bounds.
Where we do have some control on the rates of pay is in the PR sector of the market. However, we choose to shoot ourselves in the foot. My rates haven’t changed in years, and I stick to them no matter what the client says. Everyone tries it on; the client doesn’t have enough money, the job’s a quick one, its a hospital, its a charity etc. One thing you can be sure of is that the PR companies charge full wack, but they will always try and get the photographer for cheap so they can have a larger profit margin; why not? Its a business and they have to make money – but so do you.
The problem we all face is that less established and less experienced photographers are under charging massively for this type of work. PR rates have always been three to four times that of editorial work. However the thought process seems now days to be “well, some money is better than none” or “its better than doing an eight hour shift”! Painfully, its not just the less established photographers who have this philosophy; alas a few established names are also doing this.
In the short term this does mean more income. The thought being to make money. One of the excuses being “well the economy’s not that strong”. Be warned though; once you drop your rates and give discounts and do things like editing or wiring for free, you will never be able to get back to your normal charges when things get better. Its a one way street; there’s no going back.
My advice and my way is to stick to my rates and not budge. For very regular clients I’ll do DVDs for free, or drop a wiring charge as a token of appreciation for doing long term business. I know that once I give in to a cheaper rate, this rate will then be always expected regardless of who the end client is or how well the economy is doing.

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24mm to 60mm f2-2.8 Lens On A Compact!

Posted on July 22, 2008 | Leave a comment


Panasonic has announced the new Lumix LX3 which has a 24mm-60mm f2-2.8 lens. Thankfully the manufacturer has stuck to 10 Megapixels rather than jumping on the bandwagon of cramming more in (although in my opinion 10 is still too high for a compact with a small sensor).

According to Panasonic the low light capabilities of the camera are an improvement on its predecessor.
It can go up to 3200ASA at full resolution and shoot at 2.5fps.
Accessories include an 18mm wide angle converter, external optical finder and a flash.
No idea how this camera’s going to perform, but the press release makes interesting reading and on paper the camera seems superb.

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Posted in Camera Equipment