This blog be moving!!!!

Yes! I've gone and shipped everything over to a Wordpress type blog... it's just better you see. I can post things quicker (so it doesn't get so horrendously out of date), I can make it look nicer and it just seem to work a bit better!

To visit the new blog please goto:

http://inventoryphoto.wordpress.com/

This blogger blog won't be updated any more as it's horrendous!

Great service

Moaning is easy, but when I receive great service from a company, shop or otherwise I like to talk about that just as much. So here goes...

This summer I took delivery of a Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 DC telephoto zoom lens to use at festivals. I'd had terrible luck so far, with two lenses breaking in two months. My much loved Tokina 80-200mm f/2.8 had some sticky aperture problems, so I purchased a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 AF second-hand, which broke within one day of use.

I decided on the Sigma, mainly because I was missing shots when performers came to the front of the stage (80mm was too long) and also because the AF was so sluggish on the old Nikon, that I though Sigma's HSM would be a very welcome addition.

I was very pleased with the lens for the day and a half I used it before my run of bad luck struck once more and the lens died (they say these thing come in threes!). Of course, I was disappointed, but then I suppose these things happen to the best of us.

I contacted Sigma support through their website, and they asked for me to send the lens in to be looked at, so I packed it up and posted it off, not expecting to see it for a good long while. To my surprise, the lens was returned to me in just over a week, functioning perfectly!

The picture on this post was one of the few I managed to take with the lens before it died. It's a great lens, very sharp and quick to focus. I'm very glad to have it back!

Architecture in Helsinki

Architecture in Helsinki
Originally uploaded by inventory

An image from last night's gig at the Plug in Sheffield. To be completely honest, this band aren't really my cup of tea, but the crowd seemed to enjoy them, and that's what matters after all... isn't it?

Even more busyness... just about caught my breath!

Two festivals in two weeks, that would be V in Chelmsford and the Leeds leg of the Carling Weekend, plus plenty of standard giggery-type fare in-between.

So what were the highlights for me? well:

The Ghost of a Thousand performing at The Leadmill in Sheffield
They put on a great show, to a fairly sparse audience. That audience was made a little more sparse by my early departure for another gig across town. Shame as I've enjoyed these both times I've seem them.

Municipal Waste performing at The Casbah in Sheffield
The venue couldn't have suited this gig better. The Casbah, for those who aren't familiar with it, is a small underground cellar-type venue. The low stage and complete lack of any security barrier fuelled the explosive atmosphere, where the crowd ended up commanding more of the stage than the band by the end of the gig.
I shot most of the gig using wireless flash, triggered with my camera's built-in strobe. As the crowd got rougher, my camera started to take more punishment though, ending with someone punching the pop-up flash clean off the top of my camera! It popped back into place just fine though, and seems to be working fine... thankfully.

Foofighters performing at V 2007 Festival in Chelmsford
It was just one of those moments where I realise, crap, it actually really is the Foo Fighters!

Rodrigo Y Gabriella performing at V2007 Festival in Chelmsford
Definitely the musical highlight of V 2007 for me. That should be no reflection on the lacklustre line-up. I would've loved their performance all the same if I'd seen them anywhere else.

Sepultura performing at The Corporation in Sheffield
This was quite possibly one of the most difficult gigs I've shot in a long, long while, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Cancer Bats performing at Leeds Carling Weekend
First band of the weekend after a delayed arrival, and they were great. Great to shoot.

Battles performing at Leeds Carling Weekend
Finally I got the shot of the drummer from Battles about to strike his highly placed cymbal I had missed on my previous attempts at shooting them. That made me a very happy snapper.

Crystal Castles performing at Leeds Carling Weekend
I really didn't think these would be my cup of tea at all. I couldn't have been more wrong. I enjoyed them immensely.

Grammatics performing at Leeds Carling Weekend
A great surprise from the Topman unsigned stage were Grammatics from Leeds. they have a very sophisticated sound for such a new band. They're definitely worth checking out if the opportunity presents itself.

Kaiser Chiefs performing at Leeds Carling Weekend
I got the obligatory Kaiser jump shot. Now I can truly call myself a music photographer! :-)

Nine Black Alps performing at Leeds Carling Weekend
Not so much a musical highlight, but more a spectacle of weird, for me at least. The guitarist, David Jones went to the same school I did. It was a bit odd to say the least recognising someone on stage as someone I remember from school! :-S

MuteMath performing at Leeds Carling Weekend
They put on a great live show, and I was quite chuffed with the shots I came out with. Happy days.

Tilly and the wall performing at Leeds Carling Weekend
I had earplugs, so everything was OK.

Here we go. That should be me pretty much up to date now. I've just discovered how the 'blog this' thing works on Flickr, so there should be no excuses for me not keeping this blog up to date from now on. Even if it is only, here's a picture. No time to say anything useful.

Crikey... too busy! So what've I been up to? Well...

The huge amount of general busyment I've had to contend with over the past few months has meant I haven't had time to keep this thing updated at all.

Hopefully I'll be able to remedy the situation once the festival season's over, but in the meantime I will still keep my website and flickr page up to speed with my latest work.

While I'm here, I may as well point out some of the highlights since my last update:

ATP - Weekend One, curated by the Dirty Three
It was my first ever ATP, which I photographed this for DrownedinSound.com (read the write-up here).

ATP festivals are great! If you've never been to one, I strongly recommend it. Held in a Butlins holiday camp, the atmosphere is incredibly relaxed, and the stages are excellent. Plus, staying in a chalet certainly beats sailing a tent down a waterlogged hillside anyday.


ATP - Weekend Two, versus the fans
About a fortnight later and I'm back in Minehead (again, for DrownedinSound.com, read the write-up here) for my second bout of ATP goodness. This time the line-up is part chosen by the bands, and part voted for by the fans.

The line-up was immense, and the atmosphere no less relaxed. Even the chips from the chippy seemed better this weekend!

Somewhere in between all this I also shot 65daysofstatic at The Plug, with Josh T Pearson and Rolo Tomassi (who I really, really enjoyed) in support. As per usual, 65dos were buggars to shoot, but one shot must've struck a chord, as they've nicked it for their myspace, no less (I'll get back on the subject of thieving Sheffield musicians later).


Download Festival - Donington Park
This was the big one I've wanted to have the opportunity to shoot since starting out in this music photography malarkey. After receiving news that my pass was confirmed, I was very excited indeed.

Just one look at the line-up, and anyone who knows me would understand my excitement: Megadeth, Dimmu Borgir, Dream Theater, Turisas, Korn, Dragonforce, Lamb of God, Machine Head, Napalm Death, Porcupine Tree, Priestess, Maiden (of course) and Slayer!!!!

DrownedinSound.com were again furnished with pictures after the event to accompany a write-up by someone who would rather stay in their hotel bed watching Hollyoaks than see any of the above leviathons. I camped. How good am I?


Hove Festival - Arendal, Norway
Norway is amazing. Pretty much everyone I met there is friendly and good looking. Returning home was like being slapped repeatedly across the face with the kipper of reality, even though it chucked it down solidly for most of the entire week.

The line-up was a mixed bag, but a good one nonetheless. What other festival do you know with Slayer, Mastodon, Gojira and Amy Winehouse (definitely not a typo, I assure you) on the rosta?

Even though alcohol is hideously expensive over there, those of us residing in the DrownedinSound house (yes, we had a house!) consumed more than our fair share, unperturbed. I especially ended up a little worse for wear after an encounter with a litre of Jager of the first night. Never again, never again.

Non-music highlights of the weekend include rushing into the moshpit after photographing Slayer, to be greeted with a friendly headbutt from an over-zzealous Norwegian metalhead, talking about gout, the free gruel, and 'Party with beer' on the TV. Surely, a classic in the making.

For the musical highlights, you're probably better off reading the full DrownedinSound account of the week, as I fear I wouldn't really do it justice not being a wordsmith or anything.

Phew. well how do you follow that? I'll tell you how I followed it, with a few gigs here and there, getting stuck in Nottingham for an evening and then a few more gigs.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club performing at the Leadmill in Sheffield was one of these gigs. I can't say they managed to bowl me over musically, but I did take some cracking pics (well, I'm happy with them!). Looky here

That's pretty much all for now. :-)

Drowned in Sound - Slow Club review

Drowned in Sound's Sheffield correspondent, Rob Webb, reviewed Slow Club's performance on The Steel Stage at the Leadmill in Sheffield. Of course one of my pictures of the night was used to accompany the piece.

The review of the evening can be seen here.

The night didn't start as smoothly as I'd hoped. A few of the usual Leadmill guestlist issues (even the band's manager was left off the list) had to be sorted, but eventually all was well.

Sheffield two-piece Slow Club combine harmonic vocal work with their own inimitable anti-folk style. Percussion comes in the form of 'found-stuff'. A chair and glass bottles, amongst other things are utilised. I for one really enjoyed their performance, as it seems Rob did too.

More information about the band and some tunes can be found on their MySpace.

Drowned in Sound - Decemberists review

Rob Webb's account of the evening can be seen here.

It tickled me that Rob, felt it appropriate to mention my frustration at the band's control over the venue that evening. When I arrived, the security informed me that I wouldn't be allowed into the pit, at the request of the band. No problem, I thought, I've shot many a gig from the crowd before, there's no reason why this one should be any different. It'll just be a little more stressful, that's all. Lucky I brought plenty of tobacco with me eh?

It was just as I was entering that I was then informed, "oh, and the venue is no smoking tonight, also at the request of the band."...

Arrrrgh!

To be fair, the Leadmill has never been such a pleasant place. The air was clean, and the crowd was attentive (except for a few fellow smokers, getting tetchier as time passed!).

Maybe this whole public smoking ban malarkey isn't such a bad idea after all. I'd better hurry up and quit in time!

Music Mart - February 2007 edition

The 'On Stage' section of this month's edition of Music Mart magazine contains an image I took at The Milburn Christmas Party, held at the Fusion and Foundry in Sheffield University Student's Union.

The accompanying review, written by Rob Webb, explains how Milburn have become 'one of those Marmite bands'. All things considered, it was a good gig. The crowd were as mental as they always are for Milburn's live performances, plus the tinsel and free festive headgear added to the fun.

The picture on the right is one I took of the setlist for the night. The tongue-in-cheek song name conversions pretty much sums up their attitude for the night. I wish more bands were able to take things a little less seriously like this!

Important news for Canon 24-105mm f/4L lens owners.

It seems this one slipped through most other photography website's nets.

Canon have issued a recall on certain 24-105mm f/4L lenses. Apparently early versions of the lens will exhibit excessive amounts of flare in strong backlit situations (like a gig for example). Further details of the recall can be found on Canon's website here.

Any of the earlier models affected can be shipped back off to Canon for a free repair.

Corrupted memory card? Fear not!

I discovered a great way to sort out corrupted memory cards in Windows XP, completely by accident, this weekend after photographing Jamie T at the Leadmill.

When I tried to transfer the RAW files to my computer for processing, Windows XP produced one of it's all-too-familiar Warning/Error messages stating that the files on my card were unreadable. The problem with shooting RAW is that none of the image recovery programs available recognise the files, leaving the information on the card ignored.

In a frantic panic, I frantically searched www.download.com for a solution to my woes, as if anything is available I'd find it on there, or so I hoped! So I downloaded a couple of freeware applications which professed to be able to retrieve the corrupted data, and drew many blanks. The final program I tried required a reboot before I could use it. I obliged and restarted the computer with my corrupted card still in the USB card reader.

Now the next bit was where the magic happened:

Upon restarting, the blue screen that you'd normally get if you didn't shut down your computer properly appeared saying that the integrity of the CF card needed to be checked using CHKDISK. Fantastic, it skimmed through the card, fixing any errors and restoring *nearly* all the lost data!

All the files I thought I'd lost had been restored, the only problem being that a few images had black space filling a band down one side of the frame. Sod's law dictated that these images would be the best of the night, but I was still relieved to have most restored to their former glory.

So what's the moral of this tale? Don't panic, just reboot and hope for the best! Just as any computer tech support person will tell you to do first time round, 'switch it off, then switch it back on again.'

Sandman Magazine - Issue 127 January 2007

A few bits and bobs of my work can be seen in this month's edition of Sandman magazine.

Images have been used to accompany a feature on Sheffield based six-piece Dead Like Harry, MJ Hibbett's 'Tales from the conference league' column and a review of Dragonforce's performance at the Octagon in Sheffield.

Sandman is the north's free monthly music magazine and is available in pubs, clubs and live venues across the north of England.

Other bands featured in this month's issue include, Bromheads Jacket, Bring Me the Horizon, Sky Larkin, Working for a Nuclear Free City, Rocky Nest, Sally Doherty, and Hayley Gaftarnick.

Dragonforce

Dead Like Harry

MJ Hibbett

Red Stripe.net - New music website

This Christmas, while you may have been catching up with family and friends and eating a little more than could be deemed healthy, the busy people at website have given their website an overhaul - it now includes features on the latest up-and-coming musical talent.

A music-related blog and the features section both bear images taken by yours truly... to take a look, please visit www.redstripe.net.

Bands featured include, The Long Blondes, Tiny Dancers, Situationists and many more.

Unfortunately, due to the beer related content, you will need to verify you are old enough to legally drink booze in whatever country you reside in.

What equipment? - Other stuff

Indeed, there is more to the stuff I use than just the camera and lenses. When I'm out and about, I need to carry my camera in something, plus there's other items such as monitor calibrators and flash equipment to complete my kit.

To help me cart my kit about, I use either a Lowepro Stealth reporter D550AWor Crumpler Company Embarrassment. The Crumpler bag is slightly smaller than the Lowepro, making it perfect for carrying my general kit around. The Lowepro comes into it's own when I have to carry my Nikon 300mm f/4and Tokina 80-200mm f/2.8, as these both fit vertically inside the bag.

The flashgun I use is a Nikon SB-800 Speedlite. This is plenty powerful enough for most applications and provides scarily accurate results when used with my D200'sMatrix-metering. I've modified the supplied Stofen-like diffuser by cutting a notch in the mount, so that the flash doesn't automatically set itself for 14mm wide coverage, as this robs me of too much flash power. You can clearly see the notch in the picture on the left.

I also regularly use a Jessops off-camera TTL cord. This simple, inexpensive piece of kit provides a fantastic amount of flexibility with my flash shooting.

For power, and improved handling of my D200, I use an MB-D200 battery grip. This adds more weight to the camera body, which helps with handholding at slow shutter speeds and also provides enough power for a couple of days shooting. I wouldn't be without it.

Finally, there's no point taking all these photos if I can't edit them properly afterwards. Colour is very important to me, so I use a Monaco Optix XR monitor calibrator to ensure my screen displays accurate colours. Of the calibration devices I've tried, this one provides the most consistent results.

• Back to - What equipment do you use to take your photos?
• What equipment? - Camera
• What equipment? - Introduction to lenses
• What equipment? - Prime lenses
• What equipment? - Zoom lenses

What equipment? - Zoom lenses

99% of photographers will use zoom lenses for most of their work as they provide flexibility for composition at the expense of their light gathering ability.

I tend not to use zoom lenses as I prefer flexibility with exposure. Lots of practice and experience has enabled me to learn to change lenses quickly, and to second-guess what the performer is about to do (in most cases) so that I don't miss too many shots.

I still own a full set of zooms though. I find them especially useful at larger venues, and at festivals where changing lenses can lead to my camera getting filled with crud. I also use them for any general photography I may do, including band portraits and landscapes.

I own the following zoom lenses:

Sigma 15-30mm f/3.5-4.5 EX DG
I bought this lens along with my first digital SLR to give me some form of wide-angle back.
The small maximum aperture makes this lens pretty useless for concerts, except at the widest setting in bright venues. The problem is that most venues that warrant such a wide angle are extremely dark and dingy.
I also hate the variable maximum aperture, although I get by with it. The main problem arises when using it with studio lights as zooming in reduces the amount of light gathered, which means I can't really use the maximum aperture if I wish to recompose by zooming. It is also very prone to flare due to the large globe of glass on the front.
Despite its flaws, optically this lens is great producing images which are easily sharp enough for large prints, even wide open.

Sigma 24-60mm f/2.8 EX DG
I haven't owned this lens long enough to get a proper feel for it yet. On the few occasions I have used it, I've been very impressed by it's performance.
My primary reason for buying this lens was for festivals, and general snaps as the range covers moderate wide-angle through to medium telephoto on my D200. It's a very compact design for a full-frame lens that is f/2.8 all the way through, which is ideal.
This particular lens can be quite difficult to find new or used. If I was looking for a lens of this range and couldn't find one of these, I would proabably go for the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG, which is nowhere near as compact, but is supposed to be good for the money.

Tokina 80-200mm f/2.8 AT-X
I bought this lens after shooting Monsters of Rock at Milton Keynes Bowl. That event really opened my eyes as to how difficult shooting with prime lenses can be, plus my camera was filled with more dirt than could ever be deemed healthy by the end of the day.
The build quality of this lens is absolutely fantastic! It's constructed of metal throughout and the zoom ring glides easily from one end to the other. AF is plenty fast enough for my needs as well. Although this lens is not an internal focusing design, the front element is encased inside a tough metal collar, which does not extend with focusing.
Optically this lens cannot compare to my primes, but it is plenty sharp enough at f/2.8 nonetheless, only softening slightly at the 200mm end.
Unfortunately, I think this lens has been discontinued in favour of Tokina's new 50-135mm lens, which is designed for digital only. On the positive side, this surely means that a few used bargains will crop up from time-to-time on ebay. If you're looking for a lens of this range and can't afford the Nikkor 70-200mm VR, I'd keep your eyes peeled for one of these!

• Back to - What equipment do you use to take your photos?
• What equipment? - Camera
• What equipment? - Introduction to lenses
• What equipment? - Prime lenses
• What equipment? - Other stuff