Blog

I have not posted anything here for ages, but there is a reason for that. I am planning to put some hockey photography pages on my other web site at www.HockeyinEngland.com and I have been working hard at that.

When the pages are ready I will post something here.

Sorry to everyone who follows this blog. Actually I've been working on some photography pages for my www.HockeyInEngland.co.uk web site. Hence nothing on here.

When I've got the pages up and running I'll post something here.

.....which is my new web site which has now been running for just over a week. It takes over from my old site, TalkHockeyRadio.

So, what's this got to do with photography? The answer is simple. I have included a page about photographing hockey in the new web site. Although I will continue to keep this blog going, the photography pages on the www.HockeyinEngland.com web site are intended for those starting out and are based on questions I am asked by various people.

Pay the site a visit. I'm really proud of it.

The “Nifty Fifty” or sometimes “Fantastic Plastic” is one of the cheapest lenses on the market. I cannot remember when or how I acquired mine but it was a heavily discounted extra when bought another lens. You can pick one up for about £100 and it is a really great lens.

The Nifty Fifty is the Nikon 50mm 1.8 D. They’re as cheap as chips, made in China, and mostly of plastic but, if you’ve never used one, you are in for a real treat. The images you take with this cheapo lens are just unbelievably sharp. You have the added bonus of having a lens that is featherweight and only 4 cms long. And it focuses at express train speed too. If you have a packed camera case and have to dismount your lenses when you bag up your kit, the chances are that there is room to leave a 50mm mounted on your body, leaving your camera ready for action.

For years my default lens for doing press work was the Nikon 24-70 2.8 G. This is a uber heavy lens (it’s built like a tank), but of late I have been seduced into using the 50 mm as my first choice lens. I must confess that I got some funny looks from a local press photographer when I turned up for a job using my D4 with the Nifty Fifty attached to it. But, at the end of the day it’s not about the kit – it’s about the pictures you take – and the 50 mm takes some great shots.

Obviously, it’s not a zoon, so you have to move around a bit rather than have the zoom do the work for you. I often carry the lovely Nikon 85mm 1.8 and a 20mm lens with me to deal with those situations where the 24-70 might be useful, but with better results.

If you search around the Web you will find nothing but praise for all the Nikon 50mm lenses, but there is a proviso. There tends to be a lot of comments like, “Entry level lens” and “Beginner’s lens”. Forget all that. I’ve been using a variety of lenses roughly in the 24-70 range for years. Having re-discovered my 50 mm I am a great fan of it.

If you are thinking of buying one you should be aware that the ‘D’ does not have a motor in it, so if you buy a camera which does not have a focussing motor, you will need the ‘G’ version. Both ‘D’ and ‘G’ lenses come in 1.8 and 1.4 versions, and none of them will break the bank.

I noticed the other day that I have lots of loose ends from previous postings, so here is a round-up of various stuff I should have posted.

THE D4
I’m still in love with my new (used) D4. Recently, there was an interesting example of where it really came into its own. My local council held an event in the council chamber involving a large number of primary school age pupils. One of the communications team (who is herself a very good photographer) tried to take some pictures inside the chamber, but the kit she was using was not really up to the job, so they asked me if I could do it.

There were a number of problems, of which the most important was light. The shot they wanted was really the entire council chamber, which is lit with a collection of tungsten lighting and some daylight, but it is not what you would call bright. My main concern was insufficient light, and/or inconsistent light.

Using a 20mm prime lens gave me most of the chamber and I set the camera on ISO 5000, at f8. The resulting picture is beautifully exposed, with good colour and detail. I recently read an article which decried the use of high ISO, but my clients were delighted with the results. And yes – the council did ask permission to take photographs of the children.

ABOUT ME
The Hockey World Cup in The Hague was my last major overseas international gig. There is a blog post elsewhere which explains the reason, but it’s a combination of age and the increasing difficulty of breaking even. At the London Cup in July I am the Media Centre Manager, my first such appointment, so I will still be around. AND I will still be photographing domestic hockey in the UK. I’ve even got a new web site planned to feature it.

TETHERING
One of the features of the D4 (and D4S) is that it has a LAN port. I recently tried this out and took a number of ‘selfies’ with a Macbook on my lap tethered by cable to my camera. It is a useful technique which I will almost certainly use again. Its advantage is that you can set up your shot in advance using the live view facility (although I found this to be only useful only for setting up the picture – the exposures were wildly wrong*) and you have an instant copy of the picture on your laptop screen when you have taken the shot.

I found the set-up for LAN tethering a bit baffling at first, but there is a helpful booklet published by Nikon explaining how to connect a D4 to a Network, which you can download from their web site. It is possible that this booklet is supplied with the D4 but it did not come with my used version.

One peculiarity, and it could be just me, was that I found my default browser, Firefox, very slow in tether mode. Safari on the Mac worked much better. And just in case you are wondering the need to use a browser, your computer connects to your camera using an IP address which is generated by your camera. You type the IP address into the address line of your browser (in much the same way that you would type in a web address) and hey presto. But for more details read the Nikon handbook.

*I should explain this a bit better. My experience was that the tethered D4 generally took well exposed and sharp pictures. However, you may wish to use the live view facility to set the shot up. Being slightly dumb, I thought that when I had selected live view that my camera had gone into ‘bulb’ mode but, of course, the camera has to lift its mirror and open the shutter to provide the live view picture. The first impressions in live view was that the pictures were going to be over-exposed, but I found that the actual shots were OK

NEW LIGHTS
I have some portable studio lighting, which consists basically of three Nikon flashguns and a remote control, plus umbrellas etc. However, I have often found these tricky to set up.

Recently I have been taking some interest in LED lights, and I have acquired two medium size and two small lights. There are several advantages over conventional lights, as well as some disadvantages. The plus point is basically that you just turn them on and they just work. They also do not get hot, and they can work off batteries. Range seems to be their main shortcoming and I would not like to use them on a large group or to light an entire room. But early experiments with portraits have been encouraging.

PHOTOS WITH OLD CAMERAS
I recently wrote an article for a magazine about the VPK. It being the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1 there is a lot of interest in all things WW1, and the VPK has an interesting part to play in the conflict. Marketed as the ‘Soldier’s Camera’ the VPK (Vest Pocket Kodak) is little bigger than a modern compact digital camera, and they sold in great numbers during the War.

In an earlier blog I mentioned the VPK and promised to try and take some pictures with the one I have. I am afraid I have had to disappoint everyone. I have not been able to track down any suitable film, and I have recently noticed that the seal around the film compartment is not light proof.

Anyway, my experience with the camera provided me with material for a good article.

I have purchased several items of used pro camera kit in the last few years and the chances are, whenyou see me pitchside, I will be shooting with my used D4 or D3s and a used 400 mm 2.8 lens. There is probably a total in the region of £5000 worth of saving over the new prices in those three pieces of kit, so you can see the attraction.

I am often asked about buying expensive used camera kit and my advice is to consider it but do take a bit of care. I do not know if there are clones of this type of kit anywhere around the world (although I doubt it), so possibly the worst case scenario is to make a huge saving over the new price with the chance you might land up with a £300-£500 repair bill, which (surprisingly) might be a risk worth taking.

Ebay had the unfortunate effect of making the retail sale of camera equipment less attractive and the outlets for used kit shrunk for a while. Jessops stopped selling used gear, and a very good used camera dealer I used regularly was forced out of business. But there are clearly risks involved in buying from Ebay. I recently heard a tale of an honest vendor selling a damaged lens on Ebay, only to see it immediately re-advertised by the buyer with no mention of the damage.

One potential problem of buying pro camera kit is that the “one careful owner” does not exist. Well OK, that’s not quite true, but a pro’s kit has a hard life, and some of my own kit has survived (or in some cases not survived) some horrible mishaps. I once watched my D3 gently roll off the top of my camera bag, damaging the lens. Surprisingly the damage to the lens mount on the camera took over a year to surface. So there may be some problem waiting to cost you a bob or two soon after you’ve shelled out a whole load of cash to make the initial purchase.

There are some real finds out there if you are very lucky. Just before the Olympics I was lucky enough to find a used Nikon D3s which looked as if the original purchaser had changed his mind soon after he had opened the box for the first time. My 400 mm lens likewise, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Up until now I have purchased used kit from two sources, Fixation and the London Camera Exchange. One purchase, a 300 mm lens from Fixation, failed straight away but they repaired it at no cost to myself. But I recently found another outlet, Camera Jungle at Chessington.

I am always a bit concerned when dealing with companies that I have not used before and shelling out over three grand to a bunch of people I had not previously met does focus the mind a bit. But they had one of those rare beasts, a used Nikon D4.
The camera could hardly be described as ‘mint’ (although Camera Jungle had been very fair in their description) and there was a mark on it which looked as if it may have been the result of an impact, but I swallowed hard and took out my credit card. I was reassured by the knowledge that they were offering a six month warrantee.

I had only had the new D4 only a few weeks when the autofocus failed. Fortunately I was shooting at the Hockey World Cup where Nikon Professional Services were in attendance. Their service man took a look at it and told me that the mirror had somehow made contact with the shutter blades, damaging the shutter. Fortunately they were able to lend me a camera for the two weeks. This was likely to be a mega expensive repair, so what was the reaction of Camera Jungle likely to be? Blame me for the damage?

It is at this point that I am going to reveal a little secret. My wife (who is a law graduate) and I have done some voluntary consumer rights work in the past. Unfortunately, having heard some really bizarre excuses for not honouring warrantees has made me a bit paranoid. What excuse was I likely to hear from Camera Jungle for not honouring the warrantee?

Er, well, none actually. “We have another D4 body in stock with a slightly lower shutter count. We can swap them if you like.” NOW... that’s what I call good service.

I have been asked for my views about Camera Jungle from several people and so far I have been unwilling to commit myself. What would I say if I sang their praises for an honestly sold camera at a fair price if it turned out to be a dog and they would not repair it? But having had this experience they have my praise.

The sort of work I am doing these days is starting to change slightly, especially since I took the decision to stop doing major overseas tournaments. Four World Cups, an Olympics, and more European Championships than I can remember, should be enough for anyone of my age. A D800 might be a useful purchase. Now, where could I find a reputable dealer where I might find a used version of one of those? I think I know the answer.

I sometimes get asked if I shoot RAW.

If you are not interested in photography this will take some explaining. RAW is sometimes referred to as a digital negative, which I actually think is a very good analogy. It is the data which your camera takes and compresses and converts into another form. The ‘other form’ is most commonly a JPEG (.jpg) file, which is what most amateur photographers upload from their cameras onto their computers.

Because most compact consumer cameras do not allow you to upload the original RAW file to your computer, RAW has a reputation as being what most professional photographers use. In practice nearly all pro cameras will allow you to by-pass the in-camera processing and to shoot in RAW. If you want to hedge your bets, it is sometimes possible to shoot both RAW and JPEG at the same time. So some people starting out like to boast that they shoot RAW because it makes them sound professional.

One thing you need to know about RAW is that there is no single standard, unlike JPEG. However, if you use Photoshop you will find that it should be able to read most RAW files and, if you are a subscriber to their Creative Cloud, they will no doubt update the program to read any future RAW files.

I recently commented on the battle between two popular Internet sites - that run by Jared Polin of ‘Fro Knows Photo dot Com’ fame (and I do love his slightly wacky Youtube videos) and Ken Rockwell’s site. I am not going to get into a battle about who is right, but both seem to occupy opposing camps on whether you should shoot in RAW or JPEG. If you visit Jared’s web site you are left in little doubt that he is an advocate of RAW (he wears a t-shirt with “I shoot RAW” on it), whilst Ken feels that most of the time JEPG is fine.

To answer the question at the top of this piece, I shoot both. But being primarily a hockey photographer I shoot mostly in .jpg. The most basic reason is that shooting RAW files will fill a memory card in next to no time, and in turn it will fill you hard drive as well. I went digital in 2005 and I have already filled several external hard drives. One problem with shooting hockey, or I imagine any team game, is that you are really forced to save all the duds. “Have you got a photograph of Sarah Miggins when she used to play for…….” is not an uncommon question, and sometimes I am reliant on pictures that I would never release into the wild to assist in locating said player. It is that slightly out-of-focus back view with the player’s number in full view that will help you identify her in other pictures. But I digress. Routinely shooting RAW files for hockey would have been unfeasibly expensive.

You can do amazing things with RAW files. Because you have access to (and forgive the pun) the raw data, it is possible to fine tune the picture to perfection. But I do have a caveat here. I shot the ‘Wheels’ event in Littlehampton a few years back, with my camera taking .jpg and RAW pictures simultaneously. I’ve tried tinkering with the RAW files, but mostly the final product is little different from the JPEG shots the camera produced. And whilst on the subject, at hockey tournaments time is precious. Uploading JPEG files and processing them through Lightroom or Photoshop is relatively quick. Not so processing RAW files. And you cannot send a RAW file off to a customer. As I mentioned, there is no single RAW standard.

But to end this piece, I recently noticed that Ken Rockwell was warning about the possibility that one day you may not be able to view your RAW files. The time will come when there will be something better than .jpg, but at the same time I have little doubt that there will be software available to convert your old files to the new format. There are just too many .jpg files in existence and it conforms to a common standard, unlike RAW. And this got me wondering. My first ‘pro’ digital camera was truly terrible. That was partly down to the technology at the time, and the fact I strayed away from the Nikon/Canon fold. It only produced RAW files and the camera came with some conversion software. I recently had a look at some of the unconverted RAW files. The original conversion software got filed away years ago, so I now have a collection of unreadable RAW files. So, perhaps Ken Rockwell does have a point?

I think one always has to be cautious about advice you find on the Internet. Two of the most popular on-line advisors are Ken Rockwell and Jared Polin of ‘Fro Knows Photo’ fame. Polin has been very critical of some of the advice which Rockwell has given, and although I find Polin’s YouTube videos entertaining, there have been times when I have felt I needed to take his advice with a pinch of salt too.

The truth is that if you get two photographers together, they are bound to disagree over something. There are lots of factors at work here – what you shoot, what sort of a budget you have, and what you are comfortable with. They are all important. And please note, most of my blogs contain comment rather than advice.

So in this blog I would like to take a look at XQD cards. “XQ what?”, I can almost hear you shout. XQD cards are a super fast flash memory card developed by Sony and they are used in........ Well, I am only aware of one device that does, which is the Nikon D4/D4s. The D4/D4s has two card slots – one for an XQD card and one for a Compact Flash card. Personally I have always thought this was a bonkers idea, but the camera has them, so how should we use them?

The difference in price between a half-decent 16GB CF card and a 16GB XQD card is eye-watering. The fastest Sandisk CF card I could find on Amazon was available for just short of £70, but there are a lot of much cheaper and slower cards out there. An XQD card will cost you just over £130 and there are no cheaper and slower alternatives. It is against this background that many photographers are leaving their XQD card slot empty and continue to use their existing stock of CF cards. But I wonder if I have come up with an alternative strategy.

The D3s and the D4/D4s have decent buffers on them, so you should not be too restrained by using slow CF cards. I recently tried an experiment with the slowest CF card I could find and the camera kept on shooting well beyond what I would be doing if I was shooting hockey. However, there are drawbacks, like accidentally removing a card before the buffer has finished writing to the card, or not being able to view your work on the LCD until it has finished. However, what I was interested to discover was whether the XQD card would win out over a slow CF card when uploading images to your computer. The strategy would be to install one XQD card in the camera, along with a relatively cheap CF card as a back-up. You could then read the images on your computer from the XQD card and keep the CF card and only use it if you have a problem.

At important tournaments I tend to try and retain as many used CF cards for as long as I can, but clearly XQD cards are prohibitively expensive bits of kit to do this with. Using a USB XQD card reader is lighting quick, but I still recall my early days of digital photography where the break between matches at a tournament was seldom long enough to upload all your pictures. USB changed all that and USB3 is even better. However, that break between matches still never seems long enough to do all you want to do, so a fast upload is really useful. Experiments at home tend to suggest this is a sound strategy, but will it work in the field?

Watch this space for more information.

I’ve been using the D4 for about two weeks now, and you might be interested in my initial impressions.

Can I start by saying that I did not set out to buy a D4. I was actually looking for another D3s. The issue was more to do with my second camera body – an aging D3 – and the upcoming Hockey World Cup. The D3 is a great camera, but it does have some shortcomings when used alongside a D3s. Whilst the older of the two bodies was a revelation when Nikon first introduced it, the D3s is a whole lot better when used in poor light. Some of the floodlighting really tests the D3, but less so the D3s. However, faced with the opportunity of buying a good used D4, as against a D3s, and with a price difference of £750 (and a low shutter count on the D4), the D4 made good sense.

Teamed up with my lovely 400mm 2.8, they are a perfect combo. I initially found some difficulty with the focussing, but that might just be me. The camera seems to have a tendency to focus perfectly or be wildly out-of-focus, although the latter is thankfully rare. I may just need to improve my technique. But it seems to be a remarkably forgiving camera. Some of the light when I was shooting at the Euro Hockey League finals in Eindhoven was distinctly difficult, including one evening when I was shooting directly into low and bright sunlight, but some of the pics are actually very good.

One of the strong points of the camera (and one of the reasons I bought it) was the excellent low light performance. My first digital SLR would produce horrendous noise at 800 ISO. I shot one match in Eindhoven at 10,000 ISO. If you don’t believe you can shoot decent pictures with those figures, get hold of a copy of the Surrey Comet or the Surrey Advertiser, both of whom have used my pictures. There is almost a complete absence of noise.

Being a Nikon pro camera, you can pick it up and use it in minutes if you are used to using a D3, but there are some differences. The differences are likely to put a hole in my pocket too. The D4 uses a different battery to the D3/D3s, and they are roughly £100 each. One is not enough for me, and so I am in the process of acquiring another three. (Battery chargers do go wrong, and that’s the reason for that). The camera has two card slots, one a relatively conventional CF slot, but the other is for the rare and rather expensive XQD cards. They start at £100+ and you need a card reader for them as well. Many photographers just manage with CF cards but I feel slightly queasy about having an empty slot, so I have bought one but will rely mainly on CF cards.
Unfortunately the slightly higher pixel rate means that I am inclined to fill my favourite cards (SanDisk 4 gb Ultras) during a match, so it looks as if I need some more cards. When I’m away at tournaments I try to avoid re-using cards, or at least not re-use the cards with the important matches on. Effectively the new camera means that my stock of cards is halved.

The D4 is my third used pro body but it’s the first time I’ve not had a handbook with the camera. For some reason nobody has produced a guide to the D4 (one is coming out in the autumn), so I am relying on a downloaded Nikon guide to iron out any snags. But I do like reading handbooks in the bath and I’m not taking my Macbook in there!

All-in-all I am delighted with the D4. Go to the most recent pages on this site and perhaps you can see why.

Several people have told me that they have heard a rumour that I am “giving up”. That’s quite untrue and I thought I should set the record straight.

The truth is that after the World Cup I will be travelling abroad less. Over the last few years I’ve attended a huge number of European and International events, as well as covering UK domestic hockey. Although I am giving up the travelling, it actually means that I am hoping to spend more time shooting hockey and not less.

I am currently working on a new web site – www.HockeyInEngland.com - which I hope to have up and running in the Summer. This will run alongside HockeyImages.co.uk very much the same way as www.TalkHockeyRadio.co.uk does now. The new name (and the new site) is to reflect the new emphasis on domestic hockey.

Why the change? There are several reasons, not least of which is my age. Pro camera gear is extremely heavy, and whilst I don’t mind lugging it from my car to the pitch for a league match, hauling it up and down flights of stairs at airports and railway stations is a different matter. And why are the lifts always broken?

Unfortunately there is a financial reason as well. Pro photography is expensive. You may be horrified to know that the smallest available memory card for one of my cameras is well over £100, and batteries are very much the same. And you cannot shoot with one memory card and one battery. It has become increasingly difficult to make any money out of photography, mainly due to the growth of a group of people who some photographers refer to as the “happy snappers”. The problem with these people is that they never charge for their photographs, and so they are gradually putting professional photographers out of business.

England Hockey has to an extent aided and abetted this problem. They actively canvass free photographs for their Facebook page, something that I have so far declined to be a party to. Just to add insult to injury, some of you may have heard the recent arena announcement at Reading, “For the best hockey pictures go to the England Hockey Facebook page.” I am aware that a lot are sourced from their contracted professional photographer, Ady Kerry, but some are not, and I am uneasy at England Hockey pointing hockey fans away from the professional sites to their own. Hockey has already lost one top rated photographer. Others may follow.

The squeeze on finances means that the huge amount of foreign travel I do cannot be sustained. Whilst a huge slice of my cash goes into supporting both HockeyImages and TalkHockeyRadio, there is a limit to what I can do. The average foreign trip costs me about £1000. I am not selling £1000 worth of pictures.

But, to repeat the message, it’s not over yet. I am first and foremost a hockey person and a photographer second. You will probably still see me shooting at matches as long as I have breath in my body. But the travelling abroad has had to stop.
A final thought. You can take the photographer out of hockey but you will never take the hockey out of the photographer! I hope you will support the new site when it comes on-line in the summer.

I'm writing this from my room in Eindhoven, waiting for the Euro Hockey League KO16 to start. In my camera bag is a new - well new to me anyway - Nikon D4, which I managed to acquire only two days ago.

Fortunately I still have memories of what happened when I acquired my D3S a couple of years back. I was in Amsterdam for a hockey event, but just before it started my D3 went missing. It turned out that someone had just moved my bag and it was safe. But I went out to the pitch with only my D3S and immediately ran into problems. Had I bought a dud? It turned out after a few difficult minutes that I had to do a 'factory reset' on the camera. The previous owner had some very strange settings, and it was easier to start from scratch. I have heard of photographers experiencing similar problems with borrowed or hired cameras. Anyway, I shall be prepared for a few surprises this time, although I think I have found all the previous users defaults.

Some people claim that the D4 is not such a great camera, and I would say that its improvements over the D3s are not as dramatic as the difference between (say) the D2 and the D3. I doubt whether it will be remembered as one of history's groundbreaking cameras. But first impressions are favourable and, with the D4s having been recently launched, some used D4 are coming onto the market.

I hope to update this blog with my impressions at some time in the future. And this is the first serious outing for my Retina display MacBook. Fingers crossed folks!

I’ve had two encounters with Currys/PC World recently which might amuse readers.

A little bit of background might be of interest. I first got involved with PC World after they originally opened. They were a spin-off from a well-known Croydon electronics retailer, Hi-Voltage. In fact, one of the little quirks in those days was that if PC World were out of stock you could walk round the corner to Hi-Voltage’s warehouse and purchase the item through what was virtually a hatch. And the prices were the same too. Subsequently PC World was taken over and became part of the Dixon Store Group (DSG). Many PC World branches are now in the same premises as Currys, another member of the DSG group.

To be blunt, I’d rather shop somewhere other than in a DSG store, but there is virtually no competition these days and so it’s either them, or making the purchase on-line from someone like Amazon.

But onto my recent experience with them.

My lovely old Macbook is about to give up the ghost. It’s had a hard life. One USB port no longer works and the LAN connector has been suspect for some time and has let me down. I suspect the latter may be as a result of someone tripping over my LAN cable in a press room. So I was resolved to buy one of the new Retina screen models as a replacement.

It so happened that my wife wanted to visit Hobbycraft in Crawley, and there is a Currys/PC World next door. I could pick up my new Macbook there if they had one in stock. A few minutes in the store and standing in front of the Macbook displays, I am approached by a very amiable assistant.

“I’ll have one of these if you have them in stock, but I don’t suppose you have” I said, the latter comment being prompted by past experience.

“I am sure we have.” He replied. “I’ll check my stock list.”

And sure enough they had two in stock. Someone from the stock room was contacted by telephone and asked to bring it down.

I will not labour you with what happened next. Suffice it to say that it seemed as if everyone on the shop floor was getting involved. At one stage, whilst waiting idly around for something to happen, I was approached by a woman assistance who asked if she could help me.

“Is there any chance of any food?” I enquired.

She looked surprised.

“I’ve been waiting here so long that I am starting to get hungry!” I added.

I think about 20 minutes elapsed, with my wife in the car park getting concerned about my whereabouts, before they broke the news that they could not find a Macbook in their storeroom.

I bought my Macbook somewhere else.

A week later I happened to be passing Currys/PC World in Guildford. My new Macbook has two USB 3 ports on it and, knowing how lightening fast these are on my iMac, I thought I would buy a second USB 3 card reader to keep in my laptop bag. There’s nothing worse than being at a gig with no card reader. Yes – I’ve done it!

Inside the branch I am greeted by a member of staff who asks if he can help me.
“Can you tell me where the card readers are?” I ask.

“Do you mean pen drives?” he replies.

“No, I want a USB 3 Compact Flash card reader.”

He looks slightly baffled but takes me to a display and shows me what I think I need.

“No, this does not have a slot for a Compact Flash card.” I tell him.

He shows me several other card readers, none of which have CF card slots.

“Can you tell me exactly what it is you want?” he asks.

“Goodness me. It’s a simple enough request. I want a reader that so that I can transfer data off a Compact Flash card onto my computer via the USB 3 port.”

At this stage he gives up and calls for the assistance of a colleague, who he describes as an ‘expert’.

I put the question to her.

“Is it a Secure Digital card you mean?” She asks.

“No – for goodness sake. It’s Compact Flash!” I am getting exasperated.

I am then invited to look at the display of flash cards, where I am able to show them a CF card.

I am taken to their stock computer.

“Can you describe again what it is you are looking for?” I am asked.

At my dictation the assistant types in the words “USB 3 Compact Flash Card reader.”
Miraculously one appears on the screen. In fact it’s the same model as is already attached to my iMac.

“We don’t stock those.”

I avoid commenting that even if they did, the price shown on the screen was a rip-off. And for the second time in a week I found myself visiting the Amazon web site to place an order. And, I should add, that in the interests of brevity, I have left out some of the conversation with the latter two assistants, all of which showed an astonishing lack of knowledge on their part.

By the way, the latest Macbooks are lovely. However, it is noticeable that Currys/PC World seem not to support the super-fast Thunderbolt ports on Macs and other computers. Perhaps they have never heard of them?

Will I visit Currys/PC World again? As much as I would like to avoid them, they are almost within walking distance of where I live, and their click and collect system is brilliant for getting toner cartridges quickly. If only there was somewhere else to go?

I occasionally do work for a district council. About a week ago I got a telephone call asking me if I could go to Pagham Harbour in Sussex to photograph a visit by Government minister Eric Pickles.

Just out of interest’s sake, I should explain the reason for his visit. Where Pagham Harbour empties into the sea there is a shingle spit. Water flowing out of the harbour reaches the spit and does a quick left turn before reaching the sea. A number of factors have caused the spit to grow longer, meaning that the water has a longer flow before getting to the sea. This has caused serious erosion on the landward side, endangering houses on the sea front. The local council has tried to carry out some work to arrest the erosion, but no sooner had it been completed than we had the recent bad weather, which undid all the hard work. So Mr Pickles was visiting to get a hands-on view of what was happening.

It was a dull morning, and as I drove down the unmade road to the car park (specially opened for the occasion), mud was being splashed over my recently cleaned car. The road seemed to be a collection of potholes connected by a few scraps of tarmac. And it started to rain. And with the rain came a light breeze, enough to cause me problems later.

Mr Pickles arrived.

“Good Morning. Can you let me get my coat on before you take any pictures?” he shouted over to me cheerily and smiled.

Good start. There’s nothing worse than shooting a grumpy person who does not like photographers.

Whilst he is doing the meet and greet with local worthies, I dash off down the path he will be taking so he will be walking towards me as he makes his way down to the sea front. He starts walking and I start snapping. I’m not expecting anything too great because it’s a dull day, and the party is a bit strung out. The rain is also starting to come down quite hard. I’ve dressed appropriately, so I’m not concerned, but it will mean that I will have to work hard to get some good shots.

The minister stops and an engineer from the council starts to explain the problem to him. There’s lots of pointing. Good, I should be getting some decent shots now.
Then I notice that my eyepiece seems to be getting misted up. That’s not surprising. It’s a chilly morning, and I often experience that problem when shooting hockey. Move the camera away from your eye, and your breath will sometimes steam up the eyepiece. Hang on! The eyepiece is clear. I check the front of the lens and it is covered in rain. I quickly fish into my pocket and get out a lens cleaner and wipe the front end UV filter. The cloth is saturated after only one clean. I fish out another, and that is soon saturated. I carry on shooting, wondering what, if anything, I will have in the way of usable shots.

After a while we adjourn for a meeting with local residents in a nearby yacht club. Mr Pickles is positioned across a table from me being shown a map. Ideal material for a good snap. I level the camera to my eye. It’s not focusing. Have I forgotten to turn it on or has the rain got into the electrics? After a few seconds of bafflement I realise that the cause is all these wet people coming into a warm room. There is a film of mist on the front of my lens. By the time I had cleared it the opportunity had gone.

To cut a long story short, I did manage to salvage some usable shots from the many I took. Some are a little soft around the edges, which I put down to a wet lens being cleaned with a wet cloth. But the client was pleased with the results and two appeared in the local paper a week later.

I was a bit concerned that I would be accused of making excuses for some indifferent shots had I not been able to produce some good ones. I had shot the Olympic Torch relay for the same council two years ago. Just as the runner approached where I was standing the heavens had opened, and the rain came down so heavily that my camera’s auto focus was confused and I was forced to manually focus. I had about 10 seconds to identify the problem and respond to it. I had very few decent pics from that shoot. My only compensation was that an employee from the council’s communications team managed to wreck their camera by getting water into it, although I must admit that she managed to get some better pictures than mine before the camera went to the great camera heaven in the sky. At least I was not alone in suffering rain related problems.

There is a lesson to be learnt here. Many people commented on my camera cover. All the outdoor shots were taken using a 70-200 lens. My rain cover? A leg from an old pair of waterproof trousers. This has saved me from damage to my camera several times, including the Olympic Torch Relay and Pagham Harbour. And how many cleaning cloths to you carry in your pocket? Two turned out to me not nearly enough.

I seem to have come a long way since the World Cup in Monchengladbach in 2006 with my Nikon D70 and a Coke can lens. I those days my activities centred on the TalkHockeyRadio side of things, but in the subsequent years it became apparent that people were more interested in the photography side of my activities. Things progressed until in 2012 I got to shoot the Olympics.

One thing I have noticed over the last few years is that podium ceremonies are getting more and more chaotic. If you are not familiar with what a podium ceremony is, it’s where the cups, medals, awards, etc. are handed out at the end of a tournament.
I don’t know what the organisers are thinking of when they plan these things, but photographers are absolutely at the bottom of the list of considerations. At more than one tournament I’ve experienced the photographers being placed at right angles to the presentations. At others it is not uncommon to find one or more persons with a cameraphone between you and the presentations. Quite frequently there is a considerable difference between the briefing giving to photographers and what actually happens. The most common issue is presentations being made with the parties facing away from the photographers. Then there are the TV cameramen, who stand right in front of the presentations.

The podium ceremony for the European Indoor Championships in Vienna was one of the worst I have experienced, virtually all the elements mentioned above being in place. Luckily, some of the more experienced players, like Germany’s Moritz Furste, are very camera aware, and helped us to get the shots we wanted. But things hit a new low at the Maxinutition Indoor Finals at Wembley. The Women’s presentations were made, including the cup, the opposite way round to the camera positions. Afterwards, hoping to get a picture of some of the players with their winners’ medals, I approached them in the mixed zone, only to find that their medals had been taken away from them. They had been given the wrong ones.

On two occasions I have been to tournaments where there has been a dedicated photo manager – the lovely Tracey Smedley. One was the Olympics and the other the first indoor finals at Wembley. Although a photo manager cannot make things perfect, they are on your side and can sort out any snags, like players facing the wrong way. My wife was very amused when she watched the video of the Olympic podium ceremonies, to see Tracy flitting about in the corner of the screen, just trying to make things easier for us photographers.

At recent events England Hockey has appointed their official photographer, Ady Kerry, as their photo manager. Ady is a very talented photographer, but when things go wrong he is amongst the photographers doing his job as the official photographer. I know Ady well, and he is an honest and decent guy, but I think that England Hockey is putting him in an invidious position asking him to be both official photographer and photo manager.

I am cutting back on my activities after this Summer and have suggested to England Hockey that I might volunteer as their photo manager. I have an Olympic Games, three World Cups, four European Championships, and dozens of other tournaments under my belt. And I know most of the photographers who travel the world to shoot hockey. I await their response.

Well do you? I am constantly being asked for advice about which camera to buy and, to be honest, I am not the best person to ask. Pro gear is quite limited in range compared with the consumer market, and so I tend to only look at reviews if they relate to the sort of gear I might buy.

However, there is one question I would pose to anyone who wanted to buy a digital SLR. Do you really need one? I think that some people buying a bottom of the range digital SLR camera feels it makes them a 'pro' photographer. Cheap SLRs are really great but you have to examine your motives for buying one. Many people feel that it is the first step on the ladder to putting together a pro outfit. Let me put you straight on two points. The jump up in terms of cost between consumer camera equipment and pro equipment is eye watering. Pro lenses mostly start at £1000.00 plus, and a pro camera is going to set you back a few bob too. The chances are that you will have to junk your original camera and kit lens because, to be frank, there is little progression gained from keeping them.

If your ambitions are slightly more modest, then go for a cheap SLR. I cannot speak for other ranges but I don't think you can go far wrong with anything from the Nikon or Canon ranges. When I did my Photoshop refresher last year I sat next to the chairman of a local camera club. His gear cost a fraction of what mine did, but he was able to produce some incredible pictures. Where I think he might struggle is taking action shots indoors or under floodlights from the edge of a pitch.

I think the whole point of this blog is to suggest you might want to think about your true motives for buying a camera. A couple of years back I bought a Canon bridge camera to take to the Olympics. A 'bridge' camera looks somewhat like a small DSLR but does not have a detachable lens. I did not want to take one of my pro cameras and lenses into the Olympics in case it got confiscated. Of course, I was eventually given accreditation, which meant that both my tickets and my Canon camera went with my wife to the Women's Hockey Final. The Canon has a most amazing zoom on it and, perhaps thanks to vibration reduction, she was able to take some great pictures of me photographing the podium ceremony. She was right at the back of the stand opposite me, which is a long long way away! And, of course, it was dark.

So what are the avantages of a bridge camera over a DSLR? Well, they are cheap to buy, light to carry, and you don't have to worry about keeping the sensor clean because they are sealed. The zooms on some of them are quite amazing. The main drawback I have found is shutter lag. There is a distinct (if short) wait between pressing the shutter release and the picture actually being taken. All cameras, even DSLRs, have this issue, but on DSLRs it's hardly noticeable and probably little different from a conventional film camera. And, of course, you cannot change the lens.

So, before you fork out on a DSLR ask yourself the following question. Do you just want to take great pictures or do you just want to look flash? But, if you really seriously want to take up photography as a hobby, then go for the DSLR, but put most of your initial investment into your lens. A good lens will last you decades. Even the best camera bodies become obsolete after a few years. And don't be swayed by the number of megapixels. It's taking good pictures that counts, not the numbers on the box.

Looking back through my posts on this blog I noticed my year-old piece about my problems at Vienna airport. I had vowed never to use it again. So you can imagine my horror when I saw that England had been promoted back into the European Indoor Nations Championships as a result of Spain dropping out. The venue? Vienna!

I have to admit that I have some latent tendencies to being a bit of an anorak. My first ever foreign trip, back in the 1960s, involved an overnight train journey from Bolougne to Innsbruck. So, could I go to Vienna by train?. It costs a huge amount more and takes about 24 hours, but you can, and I've booked my tickets, using an overnight sleeper from Cologne to Vienna.

Surprisingly, one of my shortcomings as a photographer is that I don't take photographs. Let me explain. When I am with friends they will often take out their cameraphone and shoot something interesting. I either don't have a camera with me, don't think ever to use my phone as a camera, or my camera is in my camera bag and needs a lens attached to it before use. But travelling across Europe by train seemed too good an opportunity to miss recording the journey.

When someone asked me what I wanted for Christmas recently, I decided to ask for an action camera. These are miniature camcorders and the one I have chosen has a whole box of attachments to enable you to fix the camera to almost anything, including clothing. Whilst the main purpose has been to record the journey, I am starting to consider its possible hockey applications. A Dutch photographer friend of mine has been experimenting with setting one up behind the goal, and the results look promising. There is of course a danger of it getting smashed by a stray ball, but £60 is a whole lot better than losing £4-£6000 of pro camera equipment.

Keep watching this space for more developments!

....but not gone quite yet!

Readers of my on-line magazine, HockeyTalk, may have read that I am scaling back my activities after the World Cup next year. I have been offered the possibility of an accreditation to the 2014 Commonwealth Games, which follows the World Cup, but decided to turn it down. Here's why.

Over the last few years it has become increasingly difficult to make any money out of international hockey or, for that matter, hockey in general. Both the England Hockey League and the Euro Hockey League appoint an official photographer, and their work is free to anyone who wants to use it. To add to that, I can remember on several occasions in the past, some of them World Cup matches, when I have been the only photographer pitchside. I virtually never saw another photographer at a domestic league game either. Oh, how that has changed. But it's not just the money. I will be 67 at my next birthday, and lugging heavy camera equipment by air or rail around Europe and beyond is becoming more and more of a strain on aging limbs. What is more, my wife and I have not had a proper holiday for nearly ten years, mostly due to calls on my time because of hockey.

So, am I giving up? Not quite yet. Next season TalkHockeyRadio will morph into a new website called www.HockeyInEngland.com. I have some exciting and ambitious plans for the site, which we concentrate on the men's and women's national leagues and cups. Sometime between now and the end of this season I hope to post some trial pages at www.TalkHockeyRadio.co.uk to test the reaction. I also hope to try and spend more time at the Northern clubs, which I feel I have sold short in the past due to me being based on the Sussex coast.

So, you have not got rid of me quite yet. It's not even a retirement. It's a host of new ideas that I cannot wait to try out.

A short addition to my blog following my return from Antwerp for the European Championships, and it covers a subject I mentioned before.

Visitor numbers to the site for the tournament were initially very disappointing. But then something happened. I took a rubbish picture. It's out of focus and colour is not good. Let me explain.

The women's final ended dramatically, with Germany winning a shoot-out against England. The timing was terrible. The rain was coming down in stair-rods and the light had all but disappeared. The floodlights in the stadium were among the worst I have ever come across. But as the German goalkeeper celebrated saving the final attempt I levelled my camera at her and went for it.

Technically the resultant picture is not good. You can see the rain, which does not necessarily look like rain, but more like a fault with the image, and the focus is anything but sharp. I had to use Photoshop to bring up the colour, as the original was lacking in saturation. But the image I have is a dramatic one, and I put it on my Facebook page. Almost immediately the number of visitors to this site started to climb, as people became aware of it.

The picture captures the moment. Criticise it all you like, but it has drama. And I am almost left wondering whether it would have been better if it had not been raining and the light had allowed me to shoot at sensible shutter speeds. You know, I actually doubt it.

As John McEnroe would have said, “You cannot be serious!” Nokia has recently announced the launch of a 41 megapixel cameraphone. That’s over three times more megapixels than any the three pro camera bodies I own.

The camera and mobile phone buying public just do not understand megapixels, mainly because the manufacturers have seen it as a way of selling their products to a gullible public. It reminds me of the war between hi-fi separates manufactures before the introduction of CD’s. The selling point invariably seemed to be the accuracy of the speed at which the turntable revolved, irrespective of how good or bad the pick-up arm was, or any of the other components. I was in Park Cameras one day and overheard a discussion where the salesman was trying to persuade a prospective buyer that the better of two cameras they were looking at was the one with the lower number of megapixels. “But this one has more megapixels,” I heard the purchaser say, more than once. (I think this encounter shows the benefit of going to a dedicated camera shop, where the sales staff actually know what they are talking about.) I was shooting at a hockey match once, when a spectator lent over the rails and asked me how many megapixels my camera was. His, apparently, was 24, and he expressed some surprise that his camera was “better” than mine.

If you do a bit of research you will find that most cameras suitable for sports shooting have relatively few megapixels. I say “sports shooting”, but of course there are other types of journalistic work which need a camera with similar qualities. It is therefore interesting to compare the Nikon D3s with the Nikon D3x. I have chosen these two cameras because, although the D3s has been replaced by the D4, Nikon has chosen not to offer a D4x yet. Both are outwardly identical, and are rugged go-anywhere cameras, and both are very good cameras. The D3s has 12 megapixels, as against 24.5 on the D3x. But there is a trade off. The D3s can shoot at 11 frames per second, as opposed to five frames per second on the D3x. But it is the ISO range where the difference is most notable. The D3s offers a normal 200 to 12,800 ISO, whereas the D3x only offers 100-1600. This makes the D3x unsuitable for shooting indoor hockey, or even hockey on a wet February afternoon. The D3x comes into its own for work where the light is excellent and frame rate is not important. In those circumstances it may give you better pictures.

I should add that the latest cameras can improve on the above figures, but the difference is still noticeable. The D4 is rated at 15.9 megapixels, whereas the D800 has 36.2. The ISO range on the D4 is similar to the D3s it replaced and, although the numbers on the D800 are much better than the D3x, the max normal ISO is still only 6,400. What the figures do not tell you is how good the image quality is at the higher end of the range. (I have shot at 5000 ISO on my D3s. The image is OK if a little grainy.) The frame rate is very different too. The D4 is 11 frames per second. The D800 is four frames per second. These are both top cameras, but it’s a matter of horses for courses. The D800 is very tempting, and about half the price of the D4, but it does not even seem to be suitable as a back-up body to my D3s for hockey use.

In case you think the numbers above are simply down to the whim of the camera manufacturer, that is not the case. One of the problems in packing lots of pixels onto a camera sensor is that the size of the individual photosites is reduced. Larger photosites will let in more light, and so can perform better at low light levels. The other compromises are probably caused by the speed required to process and store large images. And, let’s not forget that larger megapixels result in larger files, using up your memory cards and filling your computer hard drive!

So getting back to the Nokia cameraphone, having 41 megapixels seems well over the top and does not promise better pictures. How good are the optics? It is tempting to believe that with a high resolution image you can crop and crop until you get the image you want. If only it were that simple.

A very good photographer, who I’ve often worked alongside at hockey tournaments, doesn’t do weddings. I cannot remember the reason, but he’s a very modest man and I imagine that he believes he does not have the skill or talent to take on that type of work. The fact that a friend of his begged him to photograph her wedding, and he produced an album of really excellent pictures, proves that he is underestimating his abilities in that department. But I do see where he is coming from. Someone’s wedding is a very important day, and the couple want beautiful photographs to remember it by.

I get asked to do weddings quite a lot, but I will not do them. It may be something in my genes. My parents married in 1946 and the only wedding photograph they have is a very under exposed and grainy picture that was taken by a relative. None of the ‘official’ photographer’s photographs came out. I think my mother told me that the photographer had said that something had gone wrong with the processing. Apparently chemicals were not particularly reliable in those days, and that was the cause. Personally, I wonder whether the RAF would have sent photo-reconnaissance aircraft over Europe during the war years if the chances were that none of the pictures could be properly developed. Back in those days it was fashionable to have your children after you got married, so I wasn’t around to find out whether the explanation given to my parents was believable or not, but I still have my doubts. It seems ironic that an uncle with a box Brownie, whose pictures were probably developed at the corner-shop chemists, had more success.

I’ve recently seen the professionally taken wedding photographs of two friends (two couples). I hope I am not slandering them when I say this but one couple probably had to budget carefully when choosing their photographer, whilst the other did not. The contrast in the pictures is astonishing. Album number one is quite beautiful. All the pictures are well lit, sharp, nicely saturated and well......interesting. I have noticed a tendency for some photographers to be ‘arty’ without being very original. Copying someone else’s idea (and we all do it) is all very well and good, but it just does not work for me when the picture is a meaningless clone. Photographer number one has ploughed his own furrow, and the pictures are brilliant. The bride is delighted, and so she should be.

Album number two – and this is the couple who probably did not have to budget as carefully – is quite terrible. The pictures are boring and frequently under exposed. The photographer seems to have been obsessed with taking pictures with nice countryside behind the subject, but has not compensated for the fact they are shooting into the light. Harsh shadows appear across people’s faces. Talking of shadows, several of the indoor pictures have been taken with the subject standing with a wall close behind them. Direct flash has been used, with the result that they have a black halo around them which completely spoils the picture. Some of the composition is laughable, with a preference for taking full length shots, where you cannot see the feature of the guests you are photographing.

You daren’t say to a bride, “You’re wedding pictures are rubbish!” so I have kept my counsel.

So why am I telling this story? Several years ago I was at a hockey event, and a man with a very cheap camera came up to me and gave me a business card on which he claimed to be a wedding photographer. Having seen some of his hockey work, he has no business making such claims. If anyone was ever foolish enough to book his services, I have little doubt that they would have landed up by being very disappointed.

So, in nutshell, I am asking photographers to be careful when promoting themselves as wedding photographers. If you manage to cock-up a match or a tournament you may have a very disappointed client. They may not use you again but the damage will be limited. There will undoubtedly be other photographers around, who images can be used. If you make a mess of a wedding, the consequences are lasting. It’s not fair on the bride and groom.