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Ramblings

End June 2010

Time for a change. I have never like the word "blog", but that's what my Rambling page has been, but I started it before the term was commonly used. I am starting a new Rambling page, but using commonly available blog software to run it. This is my last update on this page.

New ramblings link is here

Portugal April 2010

Waders are a strange group of birds. There are times in the U.K and abroad when I have walked upto dunlin, curlew sandpiper, little stint, grey plover, ringed plover and even avocets and photographed them without a hide. Tame confident birds, not at all  bothered by people.

In other places you can't get anywhere near them. I am in Portugal currently enjoying blue skies and great access to saltpans and rolling hills. From a car driving around the saltpans I can't get within 30 meters of any wader before they fly off and it is even further on foot. I have been putting my hide up each morning under the cover of darkness and sitting and waiting. It is obvious that wherever the hide is the birds stay away. 

This morning almost as I was going to give up, as the sun was getting too high, a large mixed flock of curlew sandpiper, dunlin and little stint almost came close enough for a shot with my 600mm and 2x extender. They were still a bit distant, but I took one shot to just warm up and the whole flock flew off at the sound of the shutter. I was amazed at that distant they reacted.

I am fed up with getting up at 0530 hours for nothing. I might have a lie in tomorrow. Then again some of those curlew sandpipers are in summer plumage and I do want them.

Prices March 2010

With the end of the financial year in sight I have had a quick look at the spreedsheets to see how things are going. Not great. It's a regular moan. I am selling the right of numbers of pictures, but the average price per sale continues to drop.

Listening to other photographer Alamy always seems to get the blame for selling too cheaply. My spreadsheets do not bear this out. In the financial year 2005/06 year Alamy averaged £45.22 per picture sale. That is how much I got per sale after their commission. In 2009/10 (with only a few days to go) they averaged £26.67 per picture sale. A large fall off, but still better than many of the other agencies that sell my images.

Too many photographers chasing the same sales. Still it is no good moaning. Nobody owes you a living. If you can't provide something unique that someone wants to pay for do something else.

Zigview Live February 2010

I have owned a Zigview in the past, but after upgrading cameras it no longer fitted the viewfinder. It was a useful device, but not overly used and I did not rush to replace it. However I have just done so, buying the model that plugs into the small usb like port of the side of the Canon EOS 1d Mk1v.

Perhaps it will be a small disadvantage that it does not attach to the camera, unlike the previous model. It does if you buy a small accessory, but I will delay doing so for a while. I found I mostly used it within a hide when I wanted to shoot from ground level without having to lie on the floor and this version with a screen on the end of a lead should still be okay for that, maybe even better. It can be used on extension cables from 50-100 meters away depending on which web site you read and I have ordered 30 meters of cables so far to see how it goes.

I have tried live view shooting using a laptop to operate the camera and view the image. The Zigview will let me do that without the need to carry a laptop with me.

Canon Eos 1d Mk1V January 2010

I spotted a rarity recently while driving along the M6 north of Birmingham. Workman on the hard shoulder, working. Miles and miles of cones and 50 mph speed limits have been in force for ever on a long stretch of this motorway. Frustratingly I never normally see any work taking place. On this occasion it was more annoying than usual as I had to get home and pick up my newly arrived Eos Mk1V before the shop closed.

I made it. Just.

First the negatives.

I took a series of pictures at 100, 200, 400, 800 iso etc on both the Mk3 and Mk1V using the same lens and dark background. Comparisons on the computer showed no improvement in noise levels. I will be using the Mk1V at a default setting of 400, just as I did with the Mk3. 

On the first session there was already dust on the sensor. The camera came straight out the box and on to the lens already dirty. I have noticed this with other new cameras.

The positives.

The autofocus is a big step forward. My first attempt at flight shots of birds on servo mode was with bullfinches. It was an impossible shot and I did not think I had got it until I looked at the screen. Perfectly sharp. I repeated it 5 times and was very impressed. It is the only flight photography I have had the chance to do so far, but I am looking forward to more.

The Raw files are much more punchy and sharper than any I have come across. I now look at the Mk3 files as if there is something wrong with them.

Mixing cameras with water December 2009

While photographing diving kingfishers recently I placed my spare camera body, an EOS 1ds Mk3,  on a plank of wood just above the water level. At least it started off just above the water. At some point water flowed over the plank and the bottom of the camera sat in water for several minutes. As soon as I noticed I removed the battery and water flowed out.

Only the bottom got wet, but it is a right off, beyond economical repair. I tried three repairers just in case, but have now given up. A £4500 lost.

Looking on the bright side it is only worth what I could have sold it for, probably about £2000. I have not been insured for many years. My premium was running at about £3000 a year so 10 years without insurance has saved me £30000.

Unfortunately I am left with just one camera body so have to buy another. I have decided to order a Mk4. Normally I would not have bought one so early, especially with Canons current reputation for releasing cameras with faults built in, but I do not want to but another Mk3 with all the problems they have had. So the order is placed.

Canon G11   November 2009

I was very unhappy with the image quality from the Canon G10 and only kept it very briefly. The G11 is a great improvement. The raw files are far less noisy and it is not so prone to burning out the highlights as the G10. I have used it enough now to say this is a camera I am going to keep. It is small enough to fit into my shirt pocket so it is always with me. Hopefully it will encourage me to do a lot more travel photography.

I have also used it for some wide angled bird photography. When the shutter is fired the camera is silent so even when inches from the subject it does not scare the bird. It is also so small that they are not intimidated by it. I have a radio remote control release that works from 100 metres and I am looking forward to doing a lot more wildlife with the setup.

Annoyingly Canon removed the remote viewing feature that was on the G10. This enabled the image on the LCD panel to be viewed on a laptop and all the camera settings changed remotely. I have a 50 metre cable for this purpose and it would have been so useful. So long as I can get a direct line of vision to the rear of the camera I find I can view the image on the LCD screen with binoculars, which is not quite as good, but simpler to setup and in most cases all I need to do.

Teamviewer 4 October 2009

Helping other people with problems on their computers over the phone is so much easier when you can see the screen yourself. Windows Vista provides a means of doing so, you can even take over the remote computer, but I find it usually takes too long to talk someone through how to do it.

I now use Teamviewer 4. The person I am helping does have to download and install it, but once done it is so easy to use. Within seconds I can access their computer and change settings with mouse and keyboard.

Sales September 2009

One third into the financial year and numbers of sales of published pictures are doing okay, but the average sale price per picture has collapsed. It has been in slow decline for years, but in the last 12 months the amount photographers are getting paid for their pictures has really dived. These are not my prices, but the average price from across a wide range of picture libraries. Alamy gets a lot of blame, but its average fee is higher than most.

In September I start the grind of the talking circuit again and starting up some workshops. I thought I had left all that behind me, but I am going to need to boost my winter income.

I am doing a workshop for Permajet in October. See link. 

Hides August 2009

I have a strong preference for the old fashioned square shaped portable bird hides, rather than the dome shaped variety. It is rare that I put up a hide on level ground so I like to have four upright telescopic legs so I can adjust the height of each independently. I also frequently need to adjust the overall height of the hide. The height of the tripod is adjustable so surely the hide must be too. 

I have always built my own using an old sewing machine, but it is now beyond repair and I am in need of some replacement hides. Jamie Woods used to make the Fensman hides, which were close in design to what I require, but they seem to have gone out of business. So I decided to get some made professionally. As always in these situations it is cheaper to get them made in bulk. Both the poles and fabric were much cheaper if I had a lot made. So I did.

Now I need to sell a few. Perhaps I will discover a new business opportunity. Is the world awaiting a new bird hide? See link.

Goodsync July 2009 

I have been using Handy Backups for some years now to ensure my pictures are safely copied to other drives. It is a simple and intuitive bit of software to use and 100% reliable when backing up between two internal drives. I have had problems however when backing up to external USB drives.

It works fine if the drive is never disconnected, but I store mine away from home and when reconnected they are sometimes picked up as different drive letters. That is when the problems begin. I can usually overcome it by using Windows Disc Manager and reassigning the drive to the correct letter, but Handy Backups sometimes thinks it has to do the entire backup again rather than an incremental one. That can take all night to do and defeats the object. I have never been sure why it happens,  but friends have the same problem occasionally.

Now I am trying Goodsync. Unlike Handy Backups it does not keep an index of what it has previously saved, but simply looks at the files on the master and copy drive, compares names and dates and backs up those new or altered files if it needs to. So far it is going well and it makes no difference what the drive is called. Its only downside is it is not intuitive. The programmers who created it need to call in the Plain English Society to label the various options and menus.

I am going to persist with it for a while though and hopefully eventually understand all the settings and what they mean by such weird statements a “propagate deletions”.  Handy Backups has the same option but labels it in good clear meaningful English so you know what the option will do.

Dust June 2009

The problem with dust on sensors was much reduced when I bought the Mk3 Canon bodies, but now after a year of use, the 1ds Mk3 sensor is filthy. I have cleaned it with swabs, but it is still far from clean especially when I close down the aperture. The 1d Mk3 sensor is not so bad. As ever the smaller the chip the easier it is to keep clean. I am sure this is in part because there is a surround to the sensor where the dust can be wiped to. With a full sized chipped camera like the 1ds the dust gets swept to the edge and stays there.

Loose dust is easy to get rid of. It is the embedded dust that is the problem.

I have been looking at http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com/cleaning.html which seems a very comprehensive site on the subject. Perhaps I need to look into the sensor inspection devices.

Canon G10 May 2009

First the April entry in my ramblings was an April Fool tale. The fact that I dated it the 1/4/09 gave some people the clue they needed, but others it did not.

Sadly though I am predicting it will come true. This will be the future of wildlife photography.

I have been using the Canon G10 for a while, but only recently got around to processing the pictures and I am very disappointed. Even at 100 iso it is very noisy and does not begin to compare with the quality of my DSLR bodies. The lens does not appear very sharp either. Having the camera in my pocket all the time has encouraged me to take a lot more travel pictures and the total lack of dust on the sensor is great, but it does not deserve the great write ups I have seen. I have now stopped using it, but will hang onto it for some special shots I have in mind.

I will have to buy a small, cheap  DLSR body, fit a small zoom  and never remove it so dust does not get on the sensor. With travel shots I shoot at f16 and smaller more frequently than I do with wildlife subjects so the dust shows up more. It will never fit in my pocket, but maybe it will be light enough to encourage me to carry it more than I do my EOS 1ds bodies.

PROGRESS April 2009

I have expressed negative views about “paid for” wildlife photography before. No need to have any knowledge of  wildlife, no need for any field work, just hand over your cash to the “rent a hide” companies and instant wildlife pictures can be taken by all. This year we have reached a new low.

As of this summer a Scandinavian tour company is offering remote controlled cameras on red-throated divers. The tour guide will place a 500mm lens and body in one of four small hides on the edge of a breeding pool. You choose the hide and using WiFi the tripod head can be panned and tilted to follow the divers on the water over the internet while you look through the viewfinder on your desktop back home. Using the software supplied with Canon cameras all the controls such as aperture, ISO, focusing and metering modes can be altered from your computer and the shutter release button pressed when you are ready. The pictures (only medium sized jpegs in the first year) are downloaded to your computer instantly.

The daily cost is the same as if you paid to be there in person, but you do save on airfares as well as massive savings on time. Has it finally gone too far. Probably not. I am sure we will all embrace the technology before long and even demand that the camera controls become more automated. 

Mike Lane 1.4.09

PAIRS February 2009

I have just about everything backed up in pairs. I have two 1.5 Gb internal hard drives these days. One with all my completed pictures on and the other a complete copy, which is updated every 24 hours automatically. I then have two external drives to which I copy the same data to frequently, one is stored at home and one at a friends house. Every time I visit him I swop the two drives over.

I have two card readers with me on every trip and as in Januarys ramblings one got damaged recently so I needed the backup. On my last trip a mini USB cable stopped working, but I had a backup. I have an Epson storage device as well as my laptop to backup to. Even my CF cards I always buy in pairs. Backup, backup, backup all the time.

Then I broke the rule and on a trip to Japan using the Canon G10 camera I did not bother to download the SD card for the whole trip. I did not take many pictures and they were not important ones, but when I got home and found I could not read the card I was very disappointed. I sent it off to a data recovery firm who reported they could not recover the data. I should have backed it up every night.

Not as bad as another photographer I know who recently paid out £1000 to a data recovery firm to retrieve a lot of pictures from a faulty hard drive, which he had not backed up. Backup, backup, backup.     

CARD READERS January 2009

Expresscard readers for compact flashcards that plug into the PCMIA slot of laptops are not cheap. I paid almost £50 for my last one and have just damaged it by bending the pins as I pushed in the CF card . This is the second one I have had this problem with. Are they more vulnerable than others?

I have never had the problem with other card readers that fit into a USB socket so instead of replacing it I have bought a USB card reader for £1.99 plus postage off Ebay.  I always carry two with me on a trip (along with two of almost everything else) and at this price I can afford it. The specifications say they are a little slower to download, but I am never in a rush to do this. I start the download off and have plenty of other things to get on with.

I have not bought a new flashcard for over a year as I watch the prices come down lower and lower, but I will before the end of the tax year. My largest is 8 Gb and I will now buy 16 Gb. Some would argue you are putting all your eggs in one basket by having such a large card, but I feel the greatest danger is losing a CF card when I take it out of the camera. When you change cards it is usually because something is happening and in the excitement I might put it down and forget it. I am prone to this. With a 16 Gb I will rarely have to change cards.

I have also never had a problem with a flashcard yet. 100% reliability, so I feel confident in them. I always download my pictures at lunchtime and evenings so I am only risking half a days shoot if they go wrong.

CANON EOS 5D MK2 December 2008

When I first saw a digital compact camera that could take a short blast of movie film as well as stills I predicted that one day stills photography as such would disappear. We are not there yet, but it has got closer. This week I got to see results from the EOS 5D Mk2 camera. One moment we were looking at stills pictures and then I suddenly realised one of these shots was moving. It was a video of a relatively static bird, but it was moving.

In appearance everything was much the same as the still picture and so it should be. It was taken with the same lens and camera. I will not be rushing out to buy one, unless I decide to start doing talks again. It would make a interesting addition to a digital picture show, so long as not overdone.

The quality was excellent and one day the frame sizes will be large enough to start taking quality still pictures from the movie. The Casio EX-FH20 can take large jpegs at 40 frames per second, so we are very close.

RECESSION November 2008

My photography income has not been hit by the recession yet, but I expect it will. One of my early rules on finance and photography was “to have as many legs on my stool as possible”.  I.E. as many means of support as possible. Hence the workshops, talks, beanbag sales, multiple picture libraries across the world as well as direct sales. When one is doing badly the others keep you going.

That is less so for me today as I have given up too many means of income in favour of just picture sales. So far so good, but maybe I will have to go back to the old ways and come out of partial retirement.

The only step I have taken so far is to cut down on the exotic trips. I love to travel, but have always been aware that British wildlife subjects outsell foreign. In these times of financial hardship I have cancelled trips to South Korea and Hong Kong in favour of Pembrokeshire. The latter does not cost so much and the sales from choughs, curlews and muntjac  will outstrip those from abroad.

I am on a short trip to Spain right now, driving down through France and for the first time have stopped at a Formule 1 hotel.  Simple, cell like rooms which are clean and cheap. The one thing that is missing though is a power socket. There is no means of plugging my laptop in or charging camera batteries. Now that is low budget!  Etap hotels are very similar, only a couple of Euros dearer and do provide a socket. I must remember that.

I miss my cosy caravan, but this trip is too short to tow it with me.

CANON POWERSHOT G10 November 2008

I quite fancy the new Powershot G10 compact camera. Unusually for a compact it can shoot RAW files and at 14.7 Mb should produce wonderful pictures. It is a small enough camera to fit into my pocket, so I will have no excuses for not having a camera with me. 

With a fixed lens dust will not be a problem on the sensor. I don't think I will ever make a landscape photographer, but it will encourage me to do more travel photography, which will help increase picture sales.

SITE CLOSURE September 2008

The photographers hide a Snettisham will be closed after October this year. It has been less successful in recent years with birds not coming as close as they used to. Inevitably there have always been allegations of disturbance caused by photographers.

Anyone renting the hide was required to enter the hide under cover of darkness. One person with a telephoto lens was seen climbing over the fence and sneaking down to the hide during the day this autumn. Not only were the pits full of birds, but the public hides over looking the pits were full of birdwatchers and wardens. Not a great move. However the decision to close it had already been taken before this incident.

It could also be the last year the grey seals can be accessed at Donna Nook. In 2009 it is rumoured it may be closed. Never an easy country to photograph wildlife in, the UK gets more difficult.

NEW WEB SITE August 2008

 It has taken me many years to get around to it, but I have finally made the plunge to getting a searchable web site up and running. www.nature-photography.name  I choose to use Lightbox Photo Gallery software and am very impressed with it.

It has pushed me to the limits of my computing abilities to get it running, but I have enjoyed the challenge. It is not quite finished yet and I need to load and keyword the pictures, but that was always going to be the slow part.

BOATING July 2008

I have enjoyed pottering around on my small inflatable boat with its electric outboard. Silently cruising up rivers and estuaries has been fun, but not productive. So far it has only resulted in one successful session photographically and that was with black guillemots in Port Patrick Harbour.

The idea that wildlife if often more approachable by boat is a common one, but I think false. It is like cars, you can get close to wildlife using a car when they are used to cars being there. A boat in a place where boats do not normally go scares the birds. This was very noticeable with some white-headed ducks in Spain. In my boat on a small pool that did not normally have boats I got no where near them, but on the banks I could get almost close enough for photographs, because they were used to people walking around. In the end I needed a hide to get pictures in the early morning before the people arrived.

I shall hang onto the boat for a little longer, but it has not been a great investment yet.

LAPTOP FAILURE June 2008

I have been very unlucky with laptops. On too many trips they have just failed to power up. It has happened with three different machines. Having a working computer is important to me not just for editing the days pictures, but getting my emails too.

I have more than once gone running to the nearest repair shop and altered my travel plans while waiting for the technician to do his stuff.

Last week it happened again to my latest Vista laptop while up in Scotland. It was dead. No sign of life on the mains or battery supply. The first repair shop I found said it was beyond repair.

Fortunately I tried a second shop, although it was a long drive into Inverness. They knew better. Apparently if a laptop shows no sign of life you have to remove the power supply and battery, then hold down the On switch for 30 seconds. Then refit the battery or mains and press the On switch again and it powers up.

This is the procedure to reset a laptop. Any laptop! How come I did not know that. Worse how come none of the repair shops I have ever been to with this fault tried such a simple remedy. It could be they wanted to charge me money for dismantling it, but I am more trusting than that. Maybe it is not that well known.

It could well save me a lot of problems in the future now I know.

 EOS 1D MK3 May 2008

I now have the 1Ds Mk3, but only for 3 days.

It is sad that in the days of film you could buy a £100 second hand camera body, fit it to a 600mm f4 lens, shoot on Sensia 100 film and get exactly the same quality as a £1000 camera body. Spending more money on a camera did not buy better quality images.

That is no longer true. The £4600 1Ds Mk3 results in files that totally outshine the 1D Mk3 or my previous 1Ds Mk2 bodies. Money now buys quality, which spoils my previous beliefs in photography.

I am very pleased with the few pictures I have taken so far. 800 iso could well become the normal with this camera and at 1600 iso I do not see the need to run Neat Image to reduce the noise.

However money does not produce good pictures (just gives good image quality). You still have to get up at 0400 hrs everyday and stay out until dark at this time of year. Unless I could start to pay someone to do that for me!

EOS 1D MK3 April 2008

Two months into using the EOS 1d Mk3 and it has been consigned to be my reserve camera. I like a lot of the features and especially the great reduction in dust on the sensor, but the files just do not compare to my IDs Mk2 bodies. I keep grabbing the 1Ds bodies from my bag every time now. It is hard to define the difference. The 1Ds files just ooze quality.

I can't afford it and don't want the large files, but I shall have to buy a 1Ds Mk3. If I shoot everything very small in the frame and crop all the pictures perhaps I can reduce the overall size of my Tif files. It will certainly speed up my workflow by solving the dust issue.

EOS 1D MK3 and Auto ISO March 2008

I have not heard anybody speak about the ability of the EOS 1D MK3 to auto ISO. The manual does not make much of a fuss about it and perhaps many do not realise it can. Set custom function 1.8 to 2 and the ISO will automatically change to give the correct exposure if it is impossible any other way.

I have always photographed in AV mode so for flight photography I open up the aperture wide and the fastest shutter speed possible is available. However, especially with digital, the shutter speed may be far faster than is actually needed to freeze the bird and valuable depth of field missed because you could have closed down the aperture.

I was reluctant to use TV mode, giving priority to the shutter speed, because once the aperture opened up fully it had no where else to go and pictures would be underexposed if the light dropped. This could not happen in AV mode as the shutter speed would just go slower and slower.

Now I am experimenting with shooting in TV mode. I set the shutter speed to what I feel I need for each situation and the aperture changes first, followed by the ISO increasing automatically if it needs to.

It is working okay, but my brain is struggling to cope with the concept after so many years of shooting AV.      

DxO Optics Pro 5 (Feb 2008)

My photography started off with Olympus Om1 camera bodies, probably the most popular for wildlife workers at the time and manual exposure. Not long after the Om2 was announced with auto exposure. I was told not to bother with it. Auto exposure could never work they said, you need to be “in control” of exposure and meter manually.

I wanted auto exposure. 

About the same time powerwinders came into fashion or was it they became affordable. They screwed onto the base of the camera and added bulk and weight. Photographers argued you did not need one as it was possible to wind on manually almost as fast (2.5 frames per second) and it kept you “in control”. When you needed to be quiet you could wind on slowly.

 I wanted autowind.

When autofocus came into being they said it could never work. Better to focus manually then you could focus on the birds eye and be “in control”.

I wanted autofocus.

With Raw converters I keep hearing this “in control” as the reason for using the more expensive sophisticated software. I still use Breezebrowser which has hardly any settings to mess with and is very simple. It is not quite automatic, but getting there.

However, I have been expecting an auto raw converter for some time and just found one. DxO Optics Pro 5 Raw converter takes account of what lens and camera body was used and adjusts levels for you automatically. I have been trying it out and it certainly speeds things up. So far however the results are not as good as Breezebrowser. The grain in the finished Tif files are not as smooth. However it is early days and there are other settings I can try adjusting that might improve the results.

It is an interesting concept and like autoexposure, autowind and autofocus I think it will catch on. The future will see auto raw conversion.

Travel Photography (Jan 2008)

I find statistics fascinating, but this is one I don’t keep so I am making the figures up to reflect what I feel is about right. I photograph birds, mammals or other wildlife 99% of the time. The remaining 1% could be classed as landscape or travel photography. That 1% however, probably makes up about 5% of my picture sales. I really should do more.

Search Engines (Dec 2007)

Search engines are powerful things. There was a time when if you typed “yellowhammer picture” into Google my pictures would appear amongst the first 10 hits. Picture agency sites never appeared, I assumed because their dynamic web pages (means they are temporary web pages that appear in response to a request from their own internal search engine) could not be indexed by Google. 

Then Google lost my pictures as a result of my changing folders around. It took over a year to get them back in the results, but rarely do I get a high ranking now. On the other hand picture agencies have solved the problem and they appear high in the rankings.

The result has been a sharp drop off in direct picture sales from my site. For years the photographic bean bags I sell usually appeared as the first hit in Google for most relevant search terms. Five weeks ago my beanbags disappeared from Google and sales have collapsed. Understanding what drives search engines is a full time job, but it shows how important it is to get it right. I have just made some changes, now I must await Googles pleasure.

Faster and Bigger (Nov 2007)

It has been a while since I upgraded my computer, but finally I have. A quad core processor with 4 Gb of memory and 4 x 1 Tb hard drives. It certainly goes faster and that is important to me. I spend too much time on the computer and the faster it goes the quicker I can get done and out taking pictures again.

Hard drives are still a problem though. They need to get bigger faster. I now have 750 Gb of master pictures despite heavy editing. I then have two external disk drive copies of this. To be able to keep all the pictures in one place I hope those 1 Tb drives reach 10 Tb quickly.

Alamy Clone needed (Sept 2007)

What will be the next big money making venture in wildlife photography? No doubt tour leading is one. Not enough companies are offering suitable trips to supply the vast numbers of photographers wanting to photograph wildlife.

But another service that is almost untouched would be to offer a web site service like Alamy to individuals. I am surprised someone is not already doing so. Instead of sharing the Alamy site with others only your pictures would be present and it would offer downloading and online sales. There are web packages that do the job, but none are as simple to use as Alamy. Alamys strength is that none computer experts can load their pictures onto it quickly and easily. It is simple and  well presented. Anyone can do it.

As soon as someone matches it they will make a fortune selling the package.

Digital Projection (August 2007)

As I do not own a digital projector I have not had been able to play around with one, but I have done several shows using other peoples, mainly at camera clubs. With models offering the standard resolution of 1024 x 768, it is recommended that the file be set to that size in pixels. What difference does it make? Is it worth worrying about? Nobody ever convinced me either way.

I finally got the chance to find out. I took a picture and created three different sizes of it  starting at 1024 and going upwards. I then dissolved these into one another, using the software Picturestoexe, as a continuous loop. By staring hard at the projected image it was possible to see a difference. The picture set to 1024 was sharper, but it was only just visible. Without the immediate comparison I doubt anyone would notice. I have concluded it is best to do so, but hardly vital.  

CD's and DVD's (July 2007)

I recently ran out of CD cases so decided to throw away some old disks containing my first ever slide scans. These would be from the late 1990's I guess and the files had long been copied across to hard drives so were safe. However, I thought I might as well try and see if I could read them as a test.

It confirmed what I have long been saying about CD's and DVD's. They are not suitable for long term storage. Some I could not read at all and others only allowed a few pictures to be opened. Amongst these disks were Kodak Gold types and they were no better.

Proshow Gold (June 2007)

Although I have now retired from the speaking circuit I still do occasional presentations using digital images. I have been using Picturestoexe software for this and been very impressed with it. However I recently saw a far more advanced AV show, which included zooms and pans of the images. It was very well done. So I have now invested in Proshow Gold to have a go myself. Although the software is fairly simple to use and intuitive I don't think it will be easy to do. A good AV show is going to be a long learning curve.

UPDATE. Just as I bought Proshow Gold, Picturestoexe updated its software to version 5 and the upgrade is free to owners of the previous generation. I have ended up using Picturestoexe. It still remains fairly simple to use and the zooms, pans and general pictures are much smoother and sharper than Proshow. The only weekness with the program is the help menus, which are not so much poor as absent. 

Boats (May 2007)

I have been looking into buying a boat for some time now and finally ended up with a small semi-rigid dingy and outboard. It is a subject I know little about, but feel there must be new pictures out there.

After several unsuccessful attempts to launch it I finally managed a short run up and down a Welsh estuary. No cameras on board until I had more faith in my abilities. I quickly decided I had made a mistake in buying this particular boat.

It takes too long to launch. As much as an hour and the same to recover. I need something much quicker, as it will normally be used in response to something I have just seen. Then the outboard was far to noisy and I got nowhere near the red-breasted merganser and young I was interested in.  I need a silent  electric outboard and from what I have learnt they are very advanced today. The latest will do up to 11 KM on internal batteries in the shaft of the outboard.

If I can sell it for the same as I paid then it has not been too expansive a lesson and I now know  what I want. The mergansers would have been a great picture. 

Remote Control (April 2007)

I recently purchased a new product. It is a small remote control device that fits easily into a pocket of my camera bag and adds no weight or bulk. It only works over a short distance, but it is now always with me. In the past I have often wished I had my radio remote control available, but it is too heavy to carry routinely. This is always in my bag. Only £50 too.

http://www.jacobsdigital.co.uk/index.php?target=products&product_id=25172

Storage Devices (March 2007)

I am constantly telling people that they should be carrying two storage devices with them on trips as one is too risky. Having just been on a trip with a total of 12 photographers I can report two had problems with storage devices and one lost his (me, can’t explain how). Each of us had another device to carry on with. Without a backup the trip could have been very difficult. There are some very cheap, light ones available and they are worth it.

Snugpak (Feb 2007)

Flying with warm winter clothing creates even more weight and bulk problems in already overloaded baggage. This winter I have been to several cold places and have been delighted with the performance of my snugpak suit. Lightweight and compressing down into a very small package it has kept me incredibly warm in very cold temperatures. The material is water resistant and has performed well when lying down in dirty snowy conditions. You need the bib and brace trousers as well as the jacket. Highly recommended. See www.snugpak.com.

10 ways to make a living (Jan 2007)

I meet a lot of photographers who want to make there living from wildlife photography and I am usually fairly negative about their prospects. Here are the 10 most likely things I will advise to someone asking how  to make a living as a professional wildlife photographer.

1) Start off rich and be prepared to end up poor.

2) Avoid the hotspots for wildlife photography. If other photographers  are going there stay away.

3) Photograph common British wildlife, not exotic foreign stuff.

4) If you can write, do so. If you can't, learn how to.

5) Get into the lecturing circuit. It is the one area there is a shortage of photographers, because few enjoy standing in front of an audience. If you can learn to do it well you will be in big demand. You are only nervous for the first 10 years then its a gets easier.

6) Diversify. The more legs you have on your stool the better when it comes to supporting yourself financially. Writing, lecturing, tour leading, falconry shoots are obvious routes to go, but try and find something new that nobody has tried yet.

7) Photograph what is newsworthy. Something that is becoming under threat, becoming a pest, expanding rapidly, almost extinct or a new breeding project started. The magazines and newspaper will be full of it for years so make it a photographic project.

8) There are lots of pictures about of wood mice and bank voles. Why? Because they are easy. The are the first species to enter a trap, easy to keep alive and pose well for the camera. Don't do the easy. Do the shrews and short tailed vole instead. Much more difficult and far fewer pictures about. The picture libraries will be interested if you can provide something most can't.

9) Whether you enjoy captive wildlife photography or not you need to do it as in the long run it is cheaper than photographing in the wild. Just be honest about what you have done.

10) Start off rich and be prepared to end up poor.

What I want for Xmas (Dec 2006)

What I want for Christmas is a camera that will take an image 5 seconds before I press the button. Sounds far fetched. Well it already exists!

At least it does in the wildlife film making industry. I don't know exactly how it works so this next bit is my speculation. Once turned on, but not actually filming, the camera must record constantly to a 5 second loop on hard disk or perhaps a flash card. After 5 seconds it starts to overwrite itself.

When the cameraman presses the button to start filming and recording to tape, perhaps as a bird takes off, the 5 second loop is added to the beginning of the footage capturing the bird 5 seconds before it takes to the air.

Sounds simple. Can't think why it has taken so long to develop. When will it be applied to still cameras?

Focus Problems (Nov 2006)

I began to suspect the sharpness of one of my EOS 1ds MK2 camera bodies. Nothing was sharp and I could even see this on the built in screen viewer. I tested it by placing an A5 sized book at a slight angle to the camera (35%). This meant the right hand side of the book was about 1/2" in front of the left hand edge. I took three pictures, first focused on the right hand column of text, then the middle and finally the left hand column.

I used the 600mm lens on a tripod at f4 so depth of field was very limited. The result was very positive. Each time the focus was to the left of where I focused. I.E. behind the point it should have focused on. I repeated the test three times with the same result and tested my other 1ds MK2 body which was fine.

Canon fixed the problem within a week, but the worry is how did it happen. Can the focus shift over time or did it  get a knock?

I found out a few days later when the same body fell off the tripod. It was not a high fall and the ground was soft mud. A film camera would have been fine, but my digital body was now focusing about 1 foot behind the focus point. Back to Canon again. Every time a digital body gets a knock do we have to test the focus?

Slow shutter speeds (Oct 2006)

One of the remarkable features of digital photography is how sharp the pictures appear on a computer screen. Or at least they do at fast shutter speeds. Drop down to less than 1/125th of a second however and the opposite is true.

With film I would regularly shoot birds at speeds down to 1/15th and get them sharp. I can't achieve this with digital. In dull light I am struggling to get sharp pictures unless I push up the ISO to unacceptable levels.

One solution with fairly static subjects is to use the mirror lock up. Not a feature I have used much before, but one I keep trying with some success. After composing and focusing on the subject I use a cable release to expose the picture. One press of the button locks up the mirror and after pausing for 1 second I press it again to take the picture. Usually I look along the top of the lens to see if the bird is posing correctly at the time of exposure. I also turn the image stabiliser off.

It is working. I can see a difference, but it is not a perfect solution with bird photography.

Auto ISO (Sept 2006)

I would like to see an Auto-ISO mode on the next Canon cameras. This would mean I  set the shutter speed and aperture and the camera sets the ISO to give the correct exposure. I understand this feature is on the latest Nikon models and there are many situations it  would be very useful.

I see Canon have announced an anti dust system, which will help reduce dust on the sensor, but not eliminate it completely. It is available on the 400D.

Paid for Hides (August 2006)

There is a lot of money around in wildlife photography. Photographers (most unlikely professional) seem to able to spend vast amounts on trips and paid for wildlife photography, such as renting out hides. I have just heard of a new development.

It is only a rumour. I have not spoke to the original source of the story, but someone wanted to rent out a hide for golden eagles and then pay for exclusive use of that hide all winter to prevent other photographers renting it and getting the same picture.

Inflation (July 2006)

Every now and then I get a reminder of inflation and how much more everything costs. There is however, one item that remains constant. The amount publishers pay for pictures. Looking through my spreadsheets of picture sales I seem to get about the same per picture today as when I started.

That must reflect the numbers of people taking pictures and competing for sales.  It has never been easy making money at wildlife photography and it is not getting easier. Roll on my pension.

Flying getting easier (June 2006)

Flying with camera equipment is getting easier and easier. More airlines are removing restrictions on the weight of cabin luggage and only insisting that bags should not be beyond a certain size. It is a long time since I have had any hassle at all.

Now that I own a 500mm F4 lens as well as a 600mm I take the 500mm when flying. This easily fits inside a Lowepro bag that is small enough for cabin luggage and I can get almost all my other gear in it as well. Impossible with the 600mm. My photo jacket pockets no longer have to be stuffed with film so are available for lenses and camera bodies should I need too. I try and keep them empty so that should anyone complain about my photo bag I could quickly transfer stuff into my pockets.

On top of that most airlines also allow a laptop as hand luggage too. Although my laptop is quite large (17”) I have bought a padded slip on cover from PC World that seems to give very good protection without being bulky.  

On my last flight I felt more comfortable with the whole process of getting my equipment on board than ever before. If only they could reduce the queuing, keep to the schedule, give more seat space and get my hold luggage to the same airport as me I would enjoy flying a lot more.

UPDATE Ooops. I spoke too soon. A few days after I wrote this another terror alert made flying with cameras more difficult than ever.

Caravans (May 2006)

I have sold my campervan and gone back to a towing caravan. Campervans are very popular with wildlife photographers and I have owned at least 6 over the years, whereas this is my 3rd caravan. It is not a question of which is best, they both have advantages and disadvantages. Caravans are best when working in one area and campers best when touring around.

With my caravan I am far more prone to leaving it on one site for weeks on end, whereas with a camper I would move on after just a few days and rarely stay on official camp sites.

Today the big advantage of camp sites is they nearly all offer electric hookups. A valuable commodity  in the days of digital photography. My caravan positively glows of a night. On one table I have my desktop with a new flat panel monitor (to save space), at the other end is my laptop with a 3G card so as I can get emails everywhere. Inbetween is another flat screen panel receiving satellite TV. Along with other leds indicating charging batteries, external disk drives, PDA's and mobile phone it all looks incredibly hightech.

With hot and cold running water, a large fridge and oven it is the most comfortable way of travelling I have experienced. I have all my digital images with me and am making picture submissions as I go.

It only leaves one question. Why do I still own a house?  

Zigview-R (April 2006)

It has been many years since I owned a right angled finder. In fact it was in my Olympus days. It was one of those useful accessories that never got used very much, so as I have swopped equipment over the years I have never replaced it.

Finally I have. Sort of. I have gone for the Zigview-R viewer which I have been looking at for ages and waiting for someone I know to buy one and tell me what they are like. Nobody has, so at the end of the financial year I reduced my tax bill with a speculative buy.

It's a very complicated beast for a right angled finder and I have yet to wade through the instructions. However I have used it for its main purpose of looking through the viewfinder from above so as to avoid getting on the floor for low angled photography. It comes with various adaptors for different cameras, which have to be screwed in place. When switched on an image appears of the view through the viewfinder.

I find the image difficult to see in full daylight and there is no way you can tell if the subject is in focus. The screen resolution is not sharp enough for that. It is possible to increase the brightness of the screen and to zoom in, but both are slow to do and do not totally solve the problem.

Inside a hide it is a different matter as the picture is clearer in the subdued light. I was recently doing some black grouse and intended lying down on the floor of the hide at some point. Never an easy manoeuvre within the confines of a small canvas hide. Instead I rested the lens on a bean bag on the floor of the hide, pushed its end out under the canvas and looked at the image from normal sitting height on my stool. My eye was about 2' away from the viewer.

It was still impossible to judge focus so I relied on the camera to get it right, but it was very easy to follow the birds and a lot more comfy than getting down on the floor. I have also used it on very muddy beaches with great success.

I think for low angled flower photography the traditional right angled finder would be much better for detailed checking of the focus, but for birds and other wildlife the Zigview has its place. I am looking forward to getting to grips with its other fancy features like motion detection, where it takes a picture automatically when a subject comes into the frame. 

Heavyweight hide (March 2006)

I recently sat in someone else's canvas hide during the spell of strong icy winds we have had. I was not looking forward to it. Hides blow about in the wind making for a miserable experience and with the temperature being so low I was going to suffer. Wooden hides are much better in windy conditions.

However I was pleasantly surprised. His hide was very old, but made of a very heavy tarpaulin canvas that did not blow about in the wind at all. The material was so heavy and stiff it was like sitting in a wooden hide and I was well protected from the weather.  He had had ten made up specially years ago by a tent manufacturer and this was the last one to survive.   

I must try and find some suitable canvas and make one up for myself. Not something I would want to walk far with, but when the car is close enough it appears a heavy hide is worth its weight.

Lens calibration (Feb 2006)

There is something strange going on. I am hearing of both Nikon and Canon users complaining their cameras are not giving sharp pictures and being told to send them in for calibration. Canon technicians can now apparently match cameras and lenses. Send them a 500mm and a body and they will match the two. Eos 20D bodies are particularly prone to being out I am told.

It leads to an obvious question. If they match the lens to one body, what happens when another body is put on?

Why did I never hear of this with film bodies? Over the years I know of several photographers who felt their 500mm lens was not quite in focus and sent them back to Canon, but they would be told there was nothing wrong. I never heard of lens to body calibration until very recently.

If anyone can throw any light on this I would be happy to hear it. I have looked on a few forums without success.

Fill in Flash (Jan 2006)

One of my hopes for digital was that I would finally get to master fill in flash. Straight flash I have no problem with. Cameras will get that right automatically, but fill in is still a mystery. By being able to see my results straight away I hoped to get to the bottom of it.

In a way I have, but only by proving to myself that there is no fool proof method where it works every time. No wonder I have struggled on film all these years.

I have settled on a best working practice. Firstly I set the shutter speed to its maximum sync speed, which is 1/250th on my bodies. That cuts out the ghosting or second image that is so often a problem with wildlife at slower speeds. Then with the camera on manual exposure I adjust the aperture until the ambient light is about 2-3 stops underexposed. This means I get a dark background, but not too nocturnal. Then I leave the flash to light up the subject. This is using a Canon EOS 1ds Mk2 and a Speedlite 580 flashgun. The flash exposure is automatic with the camera on manual.

This gives me a good starting point, but the result is variable so I have to look at the image and adjust from there. I usually find myself wishing for a bigger viewing screen at this point. I am getting my best results like this, but could do with greater consistency. In July I will be working in the rain forest of Brazil again and will be doing almost all flash work. I would not have attempted it on film.

ACDsee Version 8 (Dec 2005)

Having developed my digital workflow to a satisfactory speed I next needed to keep a track of which pictures I was sending where. I have a computer database of my slides going back 25 years. Each slide has a unique number and I can see where it has been and which picture library has what. I need the same for digital files.

There are a number of programmes that do this. Digital image asset managers seems to be the generic term and Extensis and IMatch are probably the most well known products.

With the steep digital learning curve I have been through I was not really in the mood to experiment and trial them all, but I think I got lucky. I initially tried ACDSee photo 8 and it seems to do everything I want. Perhaps it does not quite conform to my requirement of being "intuitive", but I very much doubt the others do either. With software this complex it probably always takes a while to get used to them. After several months of use I seem to have mastered it and finding it a great tool.

I can view all the picture I have taken day by day or month by month. I can keep a track of which shots I have sent to each library and which they have kept. I can view by species or by the library I have sent pictures to.

It seems to do most things, but so far I can't find a way of displaying pictures that I have failed to send anywhere yet. That would be useful to sort out my backlog. If they are not out there, they will not sell.

Cleaning Fluids Airports (Nov 2005)

Getting through airports has become so much easier now I no longer have to worry about carrying film through as hand luggage, but on my last flight I hit a new problem. My sensor cleaning fluid was confiscated on the way home. It's inflammable apparently and you can't take it on a flight either in the hold or as hand luggage.

Although I get less dust problems on sensors since I stopped using a blower brush I still need to clean them on a trip. I don't take my Invisible Dust Brush as I have always assumed it was not possible to carry an aerosol of compressed air and simply used swabs and cleaning fluid. I need to look into a solution before the next flight.

Lecturing (Oct 2005)

Lecturing is a hard way to make a living, but it can be done. Get it right and  it is possible to survive from giving talks alone, without the need to sell pictures to publications. To do it would involve getting involved in adult education classes and day time talks, as well as evening events. Add in a few day seminars on wildlife photography and the money would roll in.

It also needs suitable stock to sell off the table after the presentation, such as cards, bookmarks and mounted prints, etc.

However, it is hard and I would not want to do it. I have compromised by selling pictures and doing the lecturing circuit for a limited part of the year. For 12 years now I have travelled out to camera groups and natural history societies. Each year it gets more difficult. Traffic is the problem, forcing me to start out earlier and earlier. This year is terrible and a midday start for an evening talk becoming normal. Whichever way you travel out of Birmingham the motorways are blocked. It is getting impossible or at least not worth the effort to get there.

I am going to have to reduce the numbers of talks I am doing and the best way to do that is to raise my prices to discourage clubs from booking me. What I need to do then is find a replacement for the income I am going to lose at a time when picture libraries are more or less uniformly reporting lower sales of published pictures. Still looking for the young, rich wife really.

Paid for Photos (Aug 2005)

 Wildlife photography has changed so much in recent years. Not only is the equipment we use so radically different, but the “paid for” or captive wildlife photography is expanding rapidly. I was thinking about it at the Rutland British Birdwatching Fair over the weekend. A large proportion of the exhibiters are travel companies and more and more of them are offering photography packages. Scandinavia has perhaps been at the forefront of it and Eastern Europe is catching up.  

It is now possible to rent hides in Europe for white tailed eagles, golden eagles, imperial eagles, vultures, lammergeier, goshawks, lesser kestrels, red throated and black throated divers, black grouse, capercaillie, cranes, red squirrels, hen harriers, ospreys, bustards and brown bears to name just a few. 

North America has for a long time provided a whole range of captive animals for photographers and is now renting hides too. Texas has a whole chain of ranches where hides at feeders designed for photographers have been set up. You can do a tour from one ranch to the next. 

Wildlife photography has never been easier and hence the standards keep rising. In the past I have avoided the “paid for” wildlife photography. Firstly because I could not afford it and secondly because the most enjoyable aspect of my photography is the field work. I love finding my own sites and preparing them for photography. It never felt the same if someone set it up for me. 

Today I do find myself doing more “paid for” photography and for the opposite reasons. I can now afford it and I guess I am slowing down a little with age. The foot slogging across moors looking for suitable photography is becoming harder.

Raw images in Explorer (July 2005)

Although I don’t use Windows Explorer to view my pictures often, there have been occasions when I have wanted to look at thumbnails of RAW images and been frustrated that they do not appear. TIF and JPG files can be viewed as images, but not RAW files. 

There were some none Microsoft downloads available that solved this and I tried a couple, but they did not work properly. Recently however Microsoft has released it’s own update.

It is available at;

 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/raw.mspx

It’s a small improvement that helps speeds up the process of copying files, when you just want to check what the actual picture is.

Cleaning sensors (June 2005)

The Visible Dust system mentioned below worked well on dust, but after a while some marks on the sensor became more stubborn and I was forced to try the swabs and special cleaning fluid. I was a bit nervous of pressing onto the sensor at first, but it seemed to do no harm. However it didn't clean it very well either. The muck gets pushed around rather than removed.

Because the Canon EOS1ds Mk2 is a full chip camera there is no border around the sensor. It fills the recessed area from edge to edge. I have looked at the sensors on other cameras and they have a border edge around them. When cleaning with a swab the muck would be pushed onto this border and out of harms way. With the 1ds Mk2 the muck stays in the corners or edges.

I have tried it several times now, but it is far from perfect. I end up with marks on the edges of the sensor everytime.

Interestingly my 2nd EOS1ds Mk2 body arrived today and brand new, straight from the packet, I tested it by shooting at f16 against a plain sky. The sensor was just as dirty as my first body. I give up. I guess I am expecting too much. If Canon send them out new like this then dust on the sensor is something we are stuck with for the time being.

I hope they solve soon. As I am shooting with my lens wide open most of the time this reduces the effect of the dust. At F16 it shows up far worse, so I pity landscape photographers who will be shooting with the lens closed down more often. Other than never removing the lens I am not sure how they cope.

Visible Dust (May 2005)

After a few months of shooting digitally I have greatly improved on my workflow. If it were not for the backlog of slides still being sorted I would be right upto date on my files. I can edit and sort them very quickly now. 

I have just speeded the process up even further by using the Visible Dust Brush. There are no UK distributors for this product as yet, so I bought it off the web and had it shipped over from Canada. To look at, it seems like any ordinary soft brush, but it is specially formulated not to harm sensors and to have anti-static properties. First you spray it with ordinary compressed air, sold for dedusting negatives etc, for 20 seconds. Then a quick wipe of the sensor with the brush and all the dust is gone. I am very impressed so far and it means I am no longer having to waste time dedusting my images with the healing tool in Photoshop. They are spotless. 

I have not yet tried the other method, using swipes and cleaning fluid. I have bought them, but it seems a lot more trouble and risk than using the Visible Dust system, so I am keeping it in reserve for any stubborn marks. Visible Dust should be cheaper too as the brush can be re-used. It is certainly quick and whenever I have a single speck of dust showing on my images I shall not hesitate to clean the sensor.

Lowepro Bags (April 2005)

I am always very impressed when I hear stories of the after sales service offered by Lowepro camera bags. More photographers use them than any other and they are extremely well built. The warranty states that should a zip break (or any other part), they will repair or replace the bag no matter how old it is. I don't think many faults occur, but I have heard they do just that with out any quibbling.

Recently I lost all the inner dividers for my Photo Trekker (not saying how) and after one quick email to them asking if I could buy replacements they arrived in the post free of charge.

Excellent company.

Epson P-2000 (March 2005)

I have just got around to using my Epson P-2000 storage device. No where in the advertising material and no where in the instruction book can I find mention of the fact it does not allow zooming in on RAW images.

What a waste of space.

It does point this out in some of the reviews I have gone back and re-read, but I missed it the first time. It should be headline news in any review, not tucked away at the bottom. My opening sentence would be "Don't buy this device, it will not allow zooming in on RAW images".

What are Epson thinking of? Never mind the high quality of the screen and ease of use, if I can't zoom in on a picture to check for sharpness I might as well not look at all.

Backups (Dec 2004)

A New Years prediction is that we will all know someone who will lose all their digital pictures in 2005. It’s got to happen. So many are shooting digitally and we all have a big learning curve to go through on storage and backing up. It is more difficult than it sounds. 

I have a computer background, but am finding it difficult to keep a track of all my files and worry my data is insecure. I have a master copy of all my pictures on an internal 300Gb disk and two external 300Gb USB drives that mirror the master. I backup using a program called Handy Backups 4.5. It only backs up a file if it is new or has been changed since the last backup (incremental backup). Over Christmas however, I had to reinstall Windows XP and all my software. To my horror when I next ran Handy Backups it started over writing all of my files on the mirrored disks from the master. If one of the master files was corrupt, it would overwrite the good copy. I stopped it, before it had gone too far, but could not find out why it was happening. In the restore it had lost a record of what it had previously backed up. Before I could let it continue I had to run a routine that would open every picture on the master disk to check they were okay. Then I ran Handy Backup to get everything in sync again, letting it overwrite each file. 

I keep the Raw and 16 bit Tif cleaned file of each digital image so the master disk is already half full and by the end of 2005 I expect I will need another set of 3 disks.  

If a burglar ever broke into my house my slide filing cabinets would not hold much interest to him, but the computer and all its peripherals would be a prime target. The computer can be replaced, but not the files. This means I need to buy another disk and store it at a friends house, updating it every few months or so. I already do that with data on a DVD (such as spreadsheets, databases and word documents), but need to do the same with pictures. If I don’t I could be the person who I am predicting will lose a lifetimes collection of digital images.

Digital Workflow (Nov 2004)

I keep asking friends about their digital workflow and getting blank looks. Few seem to understand what I am talking about. This is surprising, as without the cost of film, digital photographers are clicking away like never before and it must be taking hours, days or even weeks to view and edit them all. 

For me it is the opposite. I take fewer pictures digitally as I do not need the vast amount of copies I used to shoot with slide film. Now I only need one good picture and can stop. That is saving me a lot of time in the first place. It could take days in a hide to get several rolls of film of a bird. Now I get one good one, view it, decide if it's okay and pack up. 

Even so after a trip abroad it takes a while to deal with them all. I start off by copying the RAW files to one folder. Then I use BreezeBrowser to view them in its High Quality mode. BreezeBrowser is the fastest software I have tried for viewing thumbnails. It presents them almost instantly. Why is Windows Explorer so slow to do this?

BreezeBrowser also display a large image which is big enough to be able to do a first edit. Anything that is obviously poor can be deleted. Then I use the Batch Rename feature to change the file names to “Little grebe 10” etc. This groups pictures of the same species together in alphabetic order.

Then I do Control Q to take Breezebrowser out of High Quality mode. After that it is very quick to zoom each picture to 100% to check sharpness. Once down to the minimum amount of pictures I convert them all to TIF files automatically. The few that need reconverting manually I do in Photoshop CS.

The pictures then get filed on the master picture disk (300Gb) in folders divided into alphabetical order. There are two copies of this disk on external Maxtor 300Gb USB drives and I use Handy Backup to ensure the copies are up to date automatically. It’s a wonderful bit of software and very cheap.

First Digital Camera (Oct 2004)

I finally got around to buying a digital camera, but not the one I wanted. I was trying for ages to get a second hand Canon EOS 1DS off Ebay, but many were very suspicious looking so I would not bid. My rule of thumb is to ask the seller if I can collect the camera in person and pay cash should I win the auction. If they say no to that, forget it. When I did bid prices just seemed to go sky high, almost as much as you can buy them new.

So I gave that up and settled on the newer EOS 1D Mk2 from Jessops. It will do me until the EOS 1DS MK2 comes out. It was announced 3 weeks after I got the 1D Mk2, but it could be a long time before we see it in the shops.

I managed to read the instruction book before flying out to Brazil and took it with me, along with my laptop. I am forcing myself to shoot film first and then digital. I still need the slides, too many publishers and agencies still prefer film. Having a digital camera will save me having to scan everything, which I am fed up with doing, but it has bought a new chore.

When working in a hot country like Brazil the heat saps your energy and the long restful evenings in hotel rooms can be a bit boring, but were appreciated. I used to get plenty of rest and could go to bed early ready for a dawn rise.

Not any more. I spent entire evenings working on the laptop, sorting and editing pictures. If I didn’t do it then, it had to be done at home, but it makes for a long and tiring day.  Once I am familiar with it all, perhaps I will speed up, but I can see foreign trips will never being the same again.

Technology (July 2004)

I love technology. I’m addicted to it and waste hours fiddling and configuring devices that I believe will eventually save me time. The next car I buy will need a bigger dashboard if I add any more kit. There is already the speed camera/radar unit that allows me to drive faster between speed traps. Next to that is the hands free mobile phone so that I can make calls that would otherwise have to wait until I get home. The latest gizmo is a GPS system that takes me home by the fastest route. It displays a map and has instructions in a sexy female voice that I've nicknamed Heather. She's the first women in my life who knows her left from her right! Marvellous. 

The GPS is also a personal organiser that fits in my pocket and in an instance gives me access to my diary, address book etc. In theory it has WiFi capability too so I can access my emails on the move, but this technology has beaten me so far.

Likewise home is fully equipped with WiFi so when I get it working I can walk around the house with my laptop wirelessly accessing my broadband connection. Other people want a TV in their kitchen, I want my laptop!

Broadband is a joy to use, not so much because of the speed, but because it is permanently connected. The web becomes a part of your computer and an essential research tool for wildlife photography.

Someone mentioned to me recently that they had seen a TV program showing very tame roe deer living in the middle of a city. Using www.google.com I searched for “roe deer city park” and found it on the first page of results. The web page was rather large so I had to use the FIND option to locate what I was after. Now I had the name of the park and by typing that into Google was able to find out where it was. Two days later I was photographing the tamest roe deer in the UK.

I have done the same with “mistle thrush traffic light Manchester” to find the location of a pair nesting in a stop light I had heard about. If you want to know about photographing white tailed sea eagles type it in and the tour companies that will set this up for you in Finland and Norway will appear. How I ever got anything done before all this technology I can’t remember.

Dealing with mosquitoes (June 2004)

The good news is that only the first million bites itch and after that you start to become immune. I know this because when I get bitten (I know it’s not really a bite, but we all know what I mean) on my face or arms I hardly react at all these days, but when they get inside my shirt and attack my belly the swelling lasts for days, itches terribly and turns red over a huge area. My arms might be used to it, but not the parts normally covered up.

However even on my arms I am not keen on being attacked. Insect repelling creams certainly work and I carry some on me whenever I am in a mosquito infected area. Trouble is the cream on your fingers can effect the plastic covering on camera bodies and other equipment. On my last trip I used Repel Sportsmen Formula which did no damage to my gear at all and most certainly discouraged the insects.

When the going gets really tough I resort to my Bugwear jacket. A special coat with a hood on it that has scimming built in to cover the face. It can be zipped up so the head is completely protected, but I rarely have to bother and by leaving it open it can be quickly pushed out the way when you need to get an eye to the camera or binoculars. The jacket is best worn with a baseball cap with a large peak as this pushes the scrimming outwards and keeps it taught. which allows better vision through it as you walk along.

The material is thin, but they can’t bite though it and the sleeves are extra long so you can pull your hands up inside them. Mosquitoes in Northern Scandinavia or Canada are larger and more aggressive and can bite though the thickest of ordinary trousers so I end up wearing my Gore-Tex waterproof trousers too. Only problem then is how to keep cool when the weather warms up and you really want to be just in shorts. Maybe I should just go for another million bites all over and be done with it. 

More on Digital (May 2004)

Further to  the piece below (Mar 2004), I did make the Picture buyers fair and it was much as I predicted except things had advanced further, quicker than I thought. Two of the nature picture libraries present said they were on the verge of not accepting slides from photographers any more. Only digital images wanted now.

They were aware they may miss out on certain markets, such as the calendar companies who may well want to do their own drum scanning for some time, but if that is not a major buyer for them it is not a great loss.

I have still not bought a digital camera, but this is more to do with not being at home long enough between trips than anything else. It's time to do so.

Digital Latest (March 2004)

In May 2003 I attended the Picture Buyers Fair in London where nearly all the major (and many minor) picture libraries exhibit and meet their customers from the publishing world. It is not really designed for stock photographers like me, but does present a wonderful opportunity to meet library staff and ask questions. I can speak to them all in one day. 

My conclusion at the time was there was a growing willingness to accept images from digital cameras, but still with reluctance. This was progress from the year before  when it was an outright not interested! 

The negative argument was that it is slow to edit digital files compared to slides and that many publishers (60% was the average estimate) still demand transparencies, so if they only have a scan they may well lose 60% of sales. 

If I make the fair in 2004 I am expecting a huge change of opinion with far more enthusiasm for digital submissions. I am sure minds will be adopting to the idea that it does not have to be slow to edit the images. It is just a matter of a better workflow and faster hardware.

As any picture they choose to keep does not have to be scanned it is a great time saver. If the library sales are going the same way as my own direct sales then almost no one is asking for slides today. Almost everything they send out will be digital. Personally I am fed up of scanning everything.

By the 2005 fair I would guess we will hit the point where picture libraries turn round and say “actually we don’t want your slides anymore, they are so slow to edit and our customers never ask for them as even drum scans can’t match the quality of digital cameras”.

So I feel I am now at the point where I have to go digital. I will either buy a EOS1ds or the new EOS1d MK2. The difference between 8Mb versus 11Mb does not concern me too much and I am attracted by the faster frames per second and longer bursts of the MK2. Frustratingly whatever I buy will be out of date within months as they increase the files size in new models.

Keeping warm (Jan 2004)

I've been trying out my super warm, super expensive wellies during these cold winter days. Unbelievably I forked out over £100 on a pair of what look like ordinary wellies. That's half my annual clothing budget gone in one purchase, but boy are they good.

I have tried other insulated, winterised foorwear, but they tend to be so  thick and junky I trip up in them all the time. These are Le Chameau wellies available from www.thewellyshop.com and they fit and feel like ordinary wellies. They are made from Neoprene, used in wetsuits, and the insulation is superb. So far I have not suffered any frozen toes and can walk around in them freely. At £100 plus I am a bit nervous of putting a nail through them or ripping them on a barbed wire fence so am only using them when it is really cold, but I highly recommend a pair, especially if like me you spend a lot of time sitting in hides.

While in New Mexico over Xmas, where it was -14c I bought a matching pair of Neoprene gloves too. They have slots in the end of the index finger and thumb so I can, hopefully, operate the camera without taking them off. I bought them on the last day of the trip so I didn't get to try them out. What I need now is a really cold spell to put them to the test.

Wonder if someone does a Neoprene hide? That would sell!

Travel Tips (Dec 2003)

I love travelling as much as photography and after visiting more than 41 countries I am a bit of a veteran. Here are my travellers tips. 

1) The Lonely Planet web site is usually a good place to start planning and checking the basics for any country, such as visa requirements (note Philip Newman).

2) If committed to the trip order the Lonely Planet guidebook from Amazon or the NHBS web site (Amazon usually gets it to you quicker). At the same time order any “where to watch birds site guides” and a bird identification guidebook if needed. To supplement this download and print birdwatchers trip reports from websites such as Birdtours. These are always useful for finding sites to visit, although you need to read between the lines to decide if they will be any good photographically.

3) Car hire is usually easy. Simply type in “car hire + country” into the search engine Google for a list of local companies with cheaper rates and better web sites than the larger, better known car hire companies. Hertz, Avis and the rest have some of the worst web sites going and must be losing a lot of business. It is important that the car has unlimited mileage as photographers do excessive mileage in search of pictures. It is not available in all countries unless you book the car for several weeks (when they will make an exception). Crash damage waiver (CDW) insurance is also a must. A major problem is the rear passenger window, which needs to wind down fully if there are two of you and one will be photographing from the back.  It only winds down partly on many cars these days. Check it out on the model you are renting.

4) Booking flights on the web is getting easier at last. My current favourite site is Travel jungle, which has not let me down yet. I am very fond of the Easyjet web site too. It is one of the best.

5) Getting equipment and film through airports is a nightmare. My solution is to carry a small bag that just holds my 600mm f4 lens. Down the narrow end of the lens I  squeeze two camera bodies, one on each side. There is no padding or protection and the bag is so small it has never been checked or weighed. Larger camera bags draw attention and from time to time get refused entrance as cabin luggage and have to go in the hold. In a photographers waistcoat with several large pockets go the 1.4x and 2x extenders. All my other camera equipment goes in the hold. I feel the 600mm, two camera bodies and extenders are my most important bit of kit. Everything else I can cope without if my luggage goes astray for a day or two. The rest of the pocket space is filled with film. Then I put on another coat, again with many pockets and load more film into these along with the passport, flight tickets, car hire papers and a reading book. I’m ready to fly.

6) Up to 300 rolls can be carried like this. Film should not go in the hold luggage as the x-ray machines used there are more powerful than those used on hand luggage. I have never had any problems with x-rays on hand luggage. Incidentally as my own ongoing personal test I always put one roll in the suitcase in the hold and have never had a problem with that either.   

7) I rarely take travellers cheques these days, but will have several hundred pounds sterling (or even US Dollars for some countries) stashed away in a money belt and other secure places for emergencies. Take several credit cards and a bank cards and store them in different places about your person, so if one is lost others are still available. Have the PIN numbers for each and get money out of cash machines, which are available worldwide these days. At the destination airport it is usually simpler to get local currency from a cash machine. Not every card will work in every machine, and there is no logic to it, but by having several cards from different banks usually one will work. Keep enough local currency on you to get out of trouble should it occur.

8) One of the biggest nightmares you can face abroad is losing your passport. Its safety and whereabouts are vital. Normally it will be in a plastic bag inside my money belt, but in some countries you have to show it frequently so that is not practical and it must be carried in a pocket. Wherever it is I check it frequently. My money belt also contains travel insurance papers, flight tickets home, one of my credit cards and emergency contact details for the car hire should it get stolen. I regard these papers as essential and too risky to leave unattended in the vehicle. I want them strapped to my body at all times.

9) When picking up the car hire there are certain things I like to know other than the obvious before I drive off.

      a) How to switch on the headlights and windscreen wipers. The last thing you want is to be driving along a motorway and suddenly find yourself in a heavy downpour and not know how to do this. It’s a mistake I made once.

      b). How to get reverse. It is often the last gear you need to use and when you do it's not always that easy. It varies so much from car to car. Some you need to push down, others pull up, etc so I make it the first gear I engage before driving away.

     c) How to open the petrol filler and what they call that grade of petrel locally. Just recently in the Czech Republic it took me, the garage assistant and a passer-by 20 minutes to undo the filler cap. It was controlled by the central locking key, by remote control. A first for me.

   d) How to lower the spare wheel if it is underneath the vehicle rather than in the boot. Not always that obvious. It happened to me in Zimbabwe at dusk out in the bush. In the 10 minutes it took to figure it out it was no longer dusk, but very dark.

10) Once out on the road in my car hire I head for the first supermarket I see. My shopping list will be mineral water (lots of), plain biscuits, bananas and rice for my beanbag. On bananas and biscuits I can survive a missed meal if I fail to find somewhere to eat and can get an early start without breakfast. The car will always have these emergency rations.

Buzzards (Nov 2003)

Driving down from Scotland last week it was very noticeable how many buzzards there were sitting on the side of the motorway. They are so common now all over the country. I have successfully baited them down in Wales on several occasions, but they can be very difficult. Close to Tregaron in Mid-Wales has always been the spot to do it, they seem more inclined to come into bait there.

However I have always wanted to do them in the Midlands and succeeded last week. I chose a spot where they frequently hang in the air over the ridge of a wooded hill and put the hide up against a low farmland hedge. This is important as the hide blends in against it and is not as obvious as it would be stuck out in the open. I only put the hide up on the day I photographed and got in about 1300 hours.

I defrosted a rabbit from the deep freeze in my microwave and pegged it out at the right distance for my 600mm lens. Pegging is important else the buzzard will simply pick the rabbit up and fly away.

Within an hour a buzzard landed in the hedge 100 metres away and sat watching and assessing the situation. 10 minutes later it flew in and landed to the right of the rabbit. Usually it is important not to take a picture until it has walked up to the bait and started to feed, then you know it is reasonably relaxed and preoccupied, but where he landed looked so attractive I could not resist. Moving the lens a millimetre at a time I swung it across to him. No problem. Then I just took one picture and waited. It was very windy, which helped cover the noise of the camera. After 10 seconds I took another picture and so on until the end of the roll. He appeared to react to the shutter noise, but because I went slowly stayed.

Eventually he walked over to the rabbit and stood looking at it nervously. I stopped taking pictures and waited, but I don't think it was me making it nervous. The buzzard seemed to keep ducking and I guessed a crow was mobbing it from the air. Before it fed the crow successfully drove it off and it landed back in the hedge again. Still I got enough pictures to satisfy me and will wait a few days for the first shoots of the farmers crops to come through in the field. I think it will look even nicer with fresh, green vegetation around it.

All told it was an easy days photography and contrasts sharply with the days, turning into weeks that I sat in hides in Wales, getting in under the cover of darkness and staying until nightfall. All seems such a waste of effort now.

Exhibition standards slide (Sept 2004)

 I have been spending at lot of time recently watching high tide wader roosts. It’s a time consuming process made more awkward by the fact I live in Birmingham! There are so many variables that must be right for photography. I need good numbers of birds in a spot that I can put up a hide without upsetting people (getting harder to find), which eliminates nature reserves for a start. The sun needs to be coming from the right direction and I need an escape route in case I misjudge the tide and get water logged. It needs to be within a mile of the car as I don’t want to walk much further with a hide, stool, tripod and a rucksack full of cameras. 

Then there is the time of day and the height of the tide. The varying tides make it very difficult unless you live on site and have local knowledge. I study the tide timetables, but what I really need is a set of posts in the ground showing me where it will come to each day. 

One roost in south Wales I have watched 3 times, and thought I had it weighed up. It had all the ingredients I needed except the morning high tide was taking place at 0400 to 0500 hours, in the dark. I left it alone for a few days and returned yesterday morning for a 0900 hour high tide. I still got it wrong though as the tide was a particularly high one and the birds were already on the sand banks where my hide would be at 0630, just as it was getting light. The weather forecasters also got it wrong as the promised early morning brightness had turned into rain. 

The weather does not look promising for the next few days either and after that it will be a month before the tide is high enough in the mornings to push the birds in. Time and petrol money all wasted so far, but I shall persist as it is a fantastic spectacle to watch thousands of oystercatchers and curlew crowded into one small spot.

Creative pictures don't sell (August 2003)

I like photographs that look like paintings and I like paintings that are so realistic they look like photographs. A sort of half way house. Arty photographs tend to get labelled as creative and sell well as prints. They will probably also do well in competitions and exhibitions, but they rarely sell well to publications. 

My most well known picture is a bee-eater sitting on the branch of a tobacco tree whose yellow flowers are in bloom. People always say it looks like a painting. They also believe that they have seen it published everywhere, but it actually sells very infrequently. When it is published it has been in well circulated magazines, so may be more visible, but it is not a big seller. 

The pictures that sell repeatedly and therefore generate the most money are much more mundane, often straight portraits. It is not actually the picture quality that makes for repeated best sellers, but the newsworthiness of the subject. 

Look at my best sellers list below and you will see water voles at the top. Few mammals have had as much coverage in recent years as this fast declining, cute vole.

The cirl bunting was very rare a few years ago, but its numbers have increased. As the numbers came up my sales have gone down. It is not so newsworthy anymore.

Red kite and their re-introduction also meant picture sales for many years. Skylarks have dived in numbers and written about frequently, which creates a need for pictures to accompany the articles. The corncrake I am less certain about from a news point of view, but it is a charismatic species and never going to be ignored. Chough sales have recently surged, because of breeding success in Cornwall.

I still need to take the arty looking pictures as print sales are another part of my income that can’t be ignored, but it is a very different market.

Captive Labels (June 2003)

Ever since I started captioning my slides using computer generated labels I have included the word “captive” for any subject taken in controlled conditions. It goes in the location field of my database, which has been a disadvantage as it would be more informative to me to give the geographical location. There is not room for both and unfortunately there is no standard abbreviation for “captive” that everyone would recognise. However I have stuck to it as it seemed the right thing to do. 

Has it been of use to anyone? No I don’t think it has. Whenever these slides have been published there has never been any mention in the credits of the word “captive”, so who is benefiting? Not the reader of the book or magazine obviously. 

Recently I lost a picture sale, because an editor on seeing the word captive decided he could not use it in his magazine as they only used wild birds. When I saw the finished issue he had used an alternative photograph from a picture library that was also almost certainly a captive bird, but presumably not labelled as such.  

Even more recently a well known organisation told me that although they do use captive subjects, some of their staff were against the idea and I might lose the occasional sale. Last year they used £11,000 worth of my pictures and so reluctantly I have relented and will no longer put the word captive on my slides. I will still be very honest about it when talking to people and not try to fool anyone into thinking I have done something wild and free when I have not, but I can’t afford to lose money over it. My bank account can’t handle the strain and at the end of the day the reader is not being informed either way.

Digital Cameras (May 2003)

The digital revolution took a big step forward with the introduction of the Canon EOS10D. When I returned from a months trip to Spain I was amazed at how many serious wildlife photographers had taken the plunge while I was away and bought this new camera. They are raving about it. For the first time there is a responsive, fast digital camera at an affordable price. It is far superior to the previous D60 they tell me and affordable unlike the 1DS. At £1200 or there about, it seems an absolute bargain to me. 

Will I take the plunge? No way. Not yet. It is not a question of quality. I know how good digital is. I am lucky to be surrounded by other photographers here in the Midlands and have been seeing marvellous A3 prints produced from digital cameras for the last couple of years. I know how digital holds the detail in blacks and white and how smooth the grain. I know about the ability to work in poor light and how advantageous the instant viewing is. I have even borrowed digital cameras and produced prints myself. There is no doubt about it, they are marvellous and it is very exciting. 

It is marketability that concerns me. 40% of my income last year came from picture libraries and with one exception they all require slides even though most of them are selling an ever increasing number of digital images derived from film scanning. 

The one library I am with that will accept pictures taken on a digital camera require a minimum file size of 48meg. This means interpolating the file to make it bigger (which I am a bit hazy about the logic of).  

Another 40% of my income came from slide shows and workshops. This includes the sales of prints, cards and other items I make at these shows. From what I have seen so far of digital projectors they do not offer the quality to project to large audiences so I still need slides.

The remaining 20% of my income comes from direct sales of pictures. This is always on the low side as I am not at home very much and why I would really like 100% of my income to be from picture libraries. When I do supply pictures directly it has now become perfectly normal to send digital files on CD or DVD. The last couple of consignments I sent out I forgot to even ask the question. I assumed they wanted images as TIF’s and they assumed that is how I would send them, but until the picture libraries will accept digital and I can do my slides shows digitally I am stuck to old fashioned film.

The only reason I can see for having a digital camera is to get better quality prints and as this is a growing side to my income I need to keep it in mind, but I hate the idea of having to shoot with both media. Which body do you have on when waiting for hours in a hide knowing the subject may only stay long enough to get a few pictures.

Top sellers (March 2003)

I'm quite fond of statistics and every now and then one of the picture libraries I am with comes up with an interesting set of figures illustrating what is selling or trends in sales growth. I also keep quite a few records myself although it is a time consuming business. The more data you record the less time you have to take pictures.

However, now that I have a laptop computer running off my motor caravan battery (complete with a wireless modem) I can pass the long winter evenings computing even while on my travels. It has given me time to come up with some figures of my own.

So here is the long awaited list of Mike Lane's top selling pictures.

1) Water vole

2) Skylark

3) Corncrake

4) Buzzard

5) Cirl bunting

6) Red fox

7) Red kite

8) Song thrush

9) kingfisher

10) Chough

11) Robin

12) Swallow

13) Dipper

14) Chimpanzee

It shows what I have always known. British wildlife pictures outsell the rest. I stopped at chimps as this is the first foreign subject appearing on the list.

To uprate or not uprate (Jan 2003)

For several years now I have used one camera body for Fuji Sensia 100 and another body for the same film uprated one stop to 200 asa. For flight and action shots I use the 200 asa body, but for the majority of my photography I use the 100 asa body. This is because I can see a slight difference in the grain when the film is uprated. I have probably been shooting with the film at 200 asa about 10% of the time, but I am about to change my mind.

The difference in grain is there to see, but it is only marginal whereas the resulting doubling of the shutter speed is significant. The trouble with having one camera body reserved for action shots is you never know when the action will occur. Sometimes I am losing out by  having the 100asa body on. From now on I shall use the film at 200asa more often and only use the 100asa body for subjects that are high in contrast where uprating can make the contrast worse.

The British List (Dec 2002)

About 30 years ago I read Eric Hosking’s autobiography “An Eye for a Bird”, a book that I think influenced a lot of would be bird photographers. In it Eric refers to starting travelling abroad in order to photograph some of Britain’s rarer birds that he had failed to do so far. Up to 1954 he had photographed 182 species. It made me wonder if I would ever photograph all of Britain’s birds and I was very doubtful that I could in one life time.

How things have changed. Today I believe it is possible to photograph nearly all the British birds in just two years and to a very high standard. I don’t mean all the birds on the British list, but all of our resident, winter and summer visitors. This would be about 230 species.

The big changes that have taken place to enable this are firstly 500/600mm IS lenses with 2x extenders that allow sharp pictures at up to 1200mm. Such lenses often mean I am getting pictures the first day I arrive.

The second thing is travel. Wildlife photographers travel widely in search of pictures today and I believe there is somewhere in the world where each of our species are tame and approachable. Many of these sites I have found and could pretty well guarantee places where many of our more difficult birds could be done easily. Hawfinch, corncrakes, marsh harriers, golden eagles and wood larks are easy to do if you know where as are most species. The photographer who can travel widely is at a huge advantage. The U.K. is one of the most difficult countries to work in.

The last factor is digital. Up to now the biggest problem we face is the weather. How many times have I failed to get pictures simply due to the lack of light. Days or weeks spent sitting and waiting close to my subject, but unable to get a decent image due to constant rain and dark skies. The wonders of digital should resolve this. Even in the dullest of light, bright colourful pictures should be possible.

Today it is a question of could I photograph all of Europe's birds in one lifetime. I am 90% there already.

Getting the Colours right (Nov 2002)

The most difficult part of digital printing is, without doubt, getting the printer and monitor to match. It is the number one question I get asked when I show my prints and until now I have not had an answer, but finally I have it cracked.

There is no short cut to it. If you want accurate colours each and every time instead of pot luck then the monitor and printer needs calibrating and profiles set up. I have just had mine done and am delighted. I can now scan and print without having to make any adjustment to colours and so far it is coming out perfect every time. What a pleasant change that is. The time and paper saved is well worth the cost.

You need a separate profile for each type of paper you use and there is a charge per paper profile. By measuring the screen colours and the paper output with an expensive device each colour can be made to come out exactly as it should. I used Simon Clifford-Smith of SCS-Imaging. He comes to your home and was not expensive and appears to be prepared to travel long distances. I highly recommend him. See his web site and save yourself a lot of frustration.

Website: http://www.scs-imaging.co.uk

Campervans (Oct 2002)

Just got rid of my old motor. It had to go with 200,000 miles on the clock and feeling like it. I have replaced it with Citroen HY/LO motor caravan which has done only 11,000 and sounds like a car should sound and not a worn out tractor.

I have bought and sold a number of campervans over the years. In some ways they are the ideal method of travel for wildlife photography. No need to worry about accommodation, pull up where you want close to a prime location for dawn photography.

There are two problems with them.

Problem 1. They are not cheap to buy and unless you use them extensively are not cost effective. You have to spend a lot of nights away to be worth the cost of tax, insurance and vehicle deterioration value. It is usually cheaper to bed and breakfast than run one. For me this is not a problem because I am away more than I am at home so make good use of them

Problem 2. The bigger the vehicle the less close you get to the subject when photographing from the car window. A lot of modern bird photography is done from the car and birds do not like big vehicles. Height is the main problem which rules out a hightop camper. With its elevating roof I am hoping the HI/LO will prove a success. It is not much bigger than a standard saloon with the roof down and no longer than an estate car.

It has a reputation for being economical on fuel too and over the first 3 tankfuls I am doing 49 miles per gallon of diesel. Pretty good.

The HI/LO comes in any colour you want so long as it is white, but colour has never seemed a problem to me. It is often reported that red cars disturb birds more than other colours, but I have never noticed this, but I have no doubt height does.

Canon 28-135mm IS zoom Lens (June 2002)

As I am primarily a bird photographer my most important lenses are long telephotos such as my Canon 600mm f4 IS. Standard short zooms, such as 28-80mms get relatively little use, but when I do use them I am always frustrated. They have totally inadequate minimum focus distances, often around 18". Useless for frogs, snakes and flowers on the odd occasion I tackle them.

For a week or more now I have been photographing adders and have to use either my 90mm macro or a Sigma 24mm which does focus very close indeed. The standard zoom stays at home.

There is a solution however in the Canon 28-135mm IS zoom. Not only does it have  the wonderful image stabiliser system, but unlike any other lens of its type it focuses very close. I borrowed one for the adder shoot and it was wonderful. Not only could I get very close while still zooming to frame the subject, but the IS compensated for my occasional nervous twitch when eyeball to eyeball with my subject. I must buy one soon.  (Update: I have).

Digital Manipulation:The rules (April 2002)

Nobody has become more bored than I with the endless, circular discussion about the rights and wrongs of digital manipulation in nature photography. If only there was a conclusion to be reached, but I feel it is irresolvable dilemma. 

However, every once in a while someone says something new or even rarer I have an original thought on the subject that I have heard no one else voice. This is one of those moments.

Recently I have been learning to print digitally. Something I have dabbled at, but wanted to perfect and create some A3 prints to be proud of. Having no darkroom printing experience it was slow going. Colour casts were hard to call and all those settings on scanners, printers and Photoshop can take a lifetime to master, but after several weeks (and hundreds of ££££'s) I emerged with my collection of "sparkling" A3 prints.

Now I wanted feedback and embarked on a round of showing off my efforts to other digital print workers. I had ignored the RPS nature group guidelines about digital manipulation. My printing was for my pleasure in my own backroom, not for competition or exhibition and some of the manipulation was drastic. Boulders had disappeared and backgrounds extended if the subject was a little large in the frame.

I can't say I was surprised to find nearly everyone else I spoke to was doing the same. Radical manipulation was the norm and nobody seemed to give it a second thought. The idea that we should be only removing minor blemishes had disappeared from the agenda. If it looked better do it, seemed to be in vogue.

To remind you the guidelines state;

"No radical changes should be made to the original photograph, nor additions from any source, whether during processing in the darkroom, or through digital/electronic manipulation. The removal of minor blemishes or distractions is permissible."

To me this is like giving someone a 200-600mm lens and saying you can zoom with it, but only a little. It will never work. The tool is too powerful and easy to use. The temptation to zoom or go beyond a blemish too great.

Some self regulated rules work well. Having to put a "W" on an exhibition slide to indicate a subject is wild and free is one. I believe most people are very honest about this. Sure there will be some cheating, there always will, but it is from a minority. It is important that the rule is an opt in one by having to enter a "W". If it was the other way around, where a "C" for captive had to be inserted it would be less well adhered to.

With digital manipulation I feel we are in one of two scenarios. Either our nature exhibitors are going to become a highly dishonest lot or we will have exhibitions not representing the work nature photographers are actually doing.  Currently there are not many print exhibitions with a nature section so perhaps the issue has not come to a head, but I suspect this will change in the future as printing becomes more popular thanks to the digital revolution.

I don't think the current guidelines work. We only have two choices that are workable. You allow it or ban it. No half way house and I think it is too late to ban it. The only restrictions to be applied should be the first half of the rule; "A nature photograph should convey the essential truth of what the photographer saw at the time it was taken". That works for me and seems more in line with what people are actually doing.

Digital Printing (March 2002)

I have been teaching myself digital printing of late.  A new area of photography for me, as I have never been interested in printing in the darkroom. In fact it was my idea of hell to spend time in a small, smelly, dark room fiddling around with chemicals. Digital is a different matter. Pleasanter, but no easier.

Here are a few of my thought on the subject, although I count myself as a novice (but a fast improving one).

I am using the Nikon 4000 scanner and the Epson 1290 printer.

Rule number one is keep the ICE off. What a disaster that is. ICE reduces the sharpness of the scans drastically. It means time cleaning up the dirt that the scan picks up, but is well worth it.

I do not attempt to physically clean slides other than a blow with the puffer brush. I have tried and it simply makes it worse and if I persist the slide gets damaged. Yes I have tried these slide cleaning chemicals. They don't work. Best of all is to scan a slide as soon as it comes back from the processor.

I scan at 16x, which only seems to benefit in the shadowy areas, but I always do it. After the preview I try and get the contrast, brightness and colour right using the scanner controls. I think I have seen an improvement by getting it right before scanning rather than afterwards in Photoshop, but it is a very subjective call.

I save the scan to a folder and then start to work on it in a different folder in case I screw up.

I start with levels and move onto hue/saturation. This is the hard part, getting the colours right. My monitor is close to my printer in colour now, but how I got there I am not sure. Constant messing. I like hue/saturation for showing me what colour cast I might have.

Another important call. I always use the same paper, PermaJet Archive Classic. I think it is important to have this constant. When I am a master printer I might start messing with different papers, but for now I will stick to one and I do like this matt, heavy paper. The paper needs a shake before it goes into the printer to remove and bits of dust, which will otherwise leave white spots on a print.

I print at 1440dpi for A3 prints and can usually see a slight improvement over 720dpi, but it is a close call. At A4 size I can see no improvements.

The mystery of unsharp mask. Everyone seems to do this differently and at this moment I do not have an opinion of my own as to what is best. Still working on this one, although I always do it by one of the methods.

I only judge the prints during the day by the window light. Looking at them by electric light is not the same. Then I pester everyone I can find to look at my prints and tell me what they think. This is so important. I learn something new from everyone I talk to about it and hopefully improve another notch.

 EOS 1v and EOS 3 (Sept 2001)

The EOS3 was a great leap forward. At last an EOS that would autofocus with a 1.4x extender on the 500m f4.5 lens. Bird photographers had been asking Canon for this for years. For me it was even better as my 600m f4 would now autofocus with a 2x extender. Wonderful enough, but at the same time the 500m f4 was introduced, which meant this lens too could be used with a 2x extender and autofocus retained.

The EOS3 viewfinder was also much brighter than previous models, always a benefit. I bought one body, tried it for a couple of weeks and added a second. I always have two identical bodies for daily use. My mind has become too old and feeble to cope with different models, with switches and buttons in different places.

Initially both bodies flattened the batteries even when they were switched off. After returning them to Canon several times they eventually discovered and solved this problem, which effected many EOS3 users. After that I was very happy with them in all respects save one. The exposure. The EOS3 gave me the poorest consistency in exposure than any previous model.

Other photographers were experiencing problems too, but usually the complaint was either under or over exposure. I don't really think of this as a problem at all. It is not unusual to have a camera where you set the ASA differently to the recommended speed to allow for the camera or photographers preference. My problem was the variation in exposure in the evaluative mode. It was so erratic.

I concluded that the evaluative mode was not really working at all, but this is hard to prove. I felt it was more inclined to spot meter in this mode and the exposure would jump all over the place as I moved the frame over a subject. Photographers who use the partial or spot metering modes seemed quite happy with the EOS3 as did those who in effect manually meter by constantly referring to neutral areas to meter from.

After a few months of using the EOS1v I am happy to say all is back to normal. The evaluative metering works very well. Probably better than any previous model and I am having to compensate my exposures less than ever. Why though is the viewfinder screen so much darker? Was this the problem with the EOS3? Did the new bright screen cause unreliable exposure when shooting in evaluative mode? Eventually I shall get around to fitting the EOS3 screen to the EOS1v and seeing if it makes a difference (you have to change a custom function setting).

Anyway I am happy with the EOS1v and need to acquire another for a matching pair.