Newsletter May 2008
News, Reviews and Articles from All Things Photography
Newsletter May 2008: As some of you may have noticed, I failed to get a newsletter out last month. I am sorry about that! It seems to be becoming a regular occurrence these days but my life took a crazy turn of "busy-ness" over the past few weeks.
I have been so busy putting this new Wedding Photography project together. The wedding season suddenly crept up on me and bit me in the a**. I only got back from Spain a couple of weeks ago (shooting weddings, portraits and interviewing etc). I am now currently in Kent shooting a wedding in a refurbished castle of sorts and am then off to Spain again on Wednesday to shoot another wedding there.
On top of all this, my wife, who won't even get up and sing Karaoke, applied to be an extra for a couple of days. It was on a $70 million film they are shooting in Weymouth "The Boat that Rocked" directed by Richard Curtis.
Clever wifey
Well not only did she get the job, she was asked to shoot for 8 days flat, starting at 5-7am and finishing at 9pm each day. This was playing the part of a competition winner with a huge "beehive" hairdo and 60's miniskirt/dress. There was also a point where she was personally directed by Richard Curtis for a special scene with a few close up shots of her!
Needless to say I am stoked and very proud but I did get somewhat behind with a lot of my work. I had the kids for a lot of that time hence no newsletter for a while. It also put my project back a few weeks as I now catch up and to top it all I have a nasty cold. Altogether now…Ahhhh!
Anyway, enough of that, what do I have to say this month? The main reason for this sporadic newsletter is three-fold really, so here we go!
DSLR Course
Firstly, I have had a few enquiries for the DSLR course I hold in Weymouth. This includes a lady coming all the way from Australia to "get acquainted" with her new DSLR camera before she starts a long tour/holiday travelling the world.
That means I had to add a date and we now currently have 3 places left on the course on the 4th June 2008.
Secondly and more importantly, you may or may not have read an article I wrote about cleaning sensors a few months ago (Cleaning Camera Sensors).
I still hadn't worked out where the greasy specks had come from until 3 days ago when it happened again! 5 days before this wedding I am about to shoot I gave the 1D mark III a good clean. I used a turbo blower to clean the sensor of an annoying speck of dust. Then I took a test shot, checked it and horror! The sensor was once again absolutely covered in greasy specks!
It's the blower!
I finally worked out what it must be. My blower brush is kept in a bag with the rest of my cleaning kit and left in the main camera bag. I think what is happening is that when I travel, the brush is constantly being squeezed and "re-inflated" as I lug my gear around. As it does this, it attracts dust inside and due to the humidity and heat. Especially in Spain, that dust gets wet.
Hence, when I blow it hard onto the sensor, I am actually spraying it with damp specs of dust…argggh! It seems obvious now I think about it.
Anyway, when I lived in Spain there was nowhere to buy any decent sensor cleaning kits. Our post sometimes went missing so I was up the proverbial creek. Now I am in the UK things are so much easier. I called a store in Canterbury close to where I am shooting the wedding and took the camera in to be checked.
The guy at the Canterbury Camera Centre had it for half an hour and cleaned it completely using the amazing:
This is stuff you just can't buy in Spain so I immediately bought a set and I can't recommend it enough for peace of mind alone!
That is it for now but I hope that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible once my current workload has been diminished slightly!