So, it’s been more than a month since my last blog, unusual for me but considering we have just moved country, found a place to live in a new city and only had the internet for about a week, I think I can be forgiven. In some ways it was nice to be offline, I felt relaxed more than I have done for many years and it also gave us a bit of a chance to sort out furniture for our apartment in Edinburgh. We bought some new stuff, got some second hand stuff and restored it, a fun relaxing time that will continue for a while yet as the place is still fairly empty, but we have all the essential stuff like a full kitchen, a bed, some chairs and a desk for us to sit and work at.

Although it’s nice to have had time away from the net, I have missed catching up on some of my favourite blogs and news sites, something I will remedy soon. Also, it’s been hard to work with no internet, so my priority has been seeking assignments since we got online. So far, we have one wedding lined up, another possible one (tbc), I’ve signed to getty images and also another agency that sends out images to various local/national/international press sites, not bad considering we haven’t been back two months yet.

Last week I had my fist gig, a book signing by an ex-football player/manager Sandy Clark in one of the local Edinburgh book stores to promote his autobiography “From the Heart.2 Just a short drive away (now we drive, no more Tokyo trains which I am so happy about), an easy shoot and home and edits sent off within an hour of the shoot starting. Edinburgh is so much smaller than Tokyo, it makes life easy.

So, a fairly straight forward shoot. As always, two 5DmkII bodies, one with the 24-70mm f2.8L and the other with the 70-200mm f2.8L. Both with a 580 EXII speedlite as well. I did swap the 24-70 for my Sigma 85mm f1.4 at one point at the end as well once I was happy, I haven’t used it much for work yet so wanted to give it a spin. I was only requested to send 10-15 images, not a big lot so I wanted to get some fairly different angles, some standard portraits with the author and his books, some of him signing, some of him speaking to fans, some of the queues waiting to get a signature. I had the images in my mind before arriving, as always I got there early to scope out the shooting area and firm up my ideas a bit more. With this kind of prep the shoot itself is easy really, you just make the images you already have in your mind. However, you also have to expect the unexpected and on an unseasonably hot day where it seemed everyone in Edinburgh called in sick to work and went to the park for a BBQ, the shopping center where the bookstore was located was very empty and not so may fans turned up, so it was a case of concentrating more on the author. Fair play to the guy though, despite a small turnout he spend time with everyone chatting and was very amicable towards the press. Hopefully future shoots will be as easy, here are a few of the shots I sent off:

So, work finally started. Tomorrow I have a press call for the Edinburgh International Film Festival as well. Sue and  have been emailing lots of publications about doing assignments, we’re arranging new business cards, finding out how to register our business here, getting the legal stuff done for Sue to work as well. It’s been a busy time, but one thing that really is making all the hard work and uncertainty in moving country (and continent, especially for Sue) is that we have really fallen in love with Edinburgh. When I was younger I’d go to Edinburgh for nights out with friends, think the pubs and clubs were great but not really see past that. When I moved to Japan and came back for visits I was always blown away by Edinburgh, I loved the gothic architecture, the vibrancy of Edinburgh festival, the “hidden gem” areas like Dean Village (where we moved to) and Stockbridge where it’s more about locals than the tourists, then you’ve got the castle right in the center of town and I never fail to be in awe of it’s beauty, so here are a few more photos of the local sites.

The view from our window, it’s like living in a history lesson, to the right is an old school house, the the left an old water mill:

The backstreets of Stockbridge which is where we go to hang out these days:

And finally Edinburgh Castle, somewhere I will be photographing a lot I feel:

So we arrived in Scotland without a hitch and have started setting up for our new life bit by bit. We sorted out wifi on our first day here, phones on our second day, we’ve been making lists of places in Edinburgh we’d like to stay and from tomorrow. At the moment we are at my family farm near St-Andrews and it really feels like it is on the other side of the world from Tokyo. Literally it is, Tokyo is 5710 miles away and the view from our window there was a car park and a train line, here it’s cows and fields. It’s not  a bad change to be honest, I’ve been in Tokyo for 11 years, 2 years in London before that, after 13 years in packed trains and pollution it’s nice to breathe fresh air again. It’s a nice transitional stage being back in the country, Edinburgh is quite a small capital city, very quiet compared to the previous homes for Sue and I (she lived in Seoul before Tokyo), but seeing as how both of us came from the country in the first place, it’s nice to go back to country life for a while.

Anyway, seeing as how we’ve only been in Scotland for 5 days there hasn’t been any work yet. To be honest, I’m not expecting any for a while, I’d say we’d be lucky to have anything for the next 3-6 months, it takes a bit of time to set stuff up, advertise and get clients coming in, so for a while I’ll be blogging about stuff we did in Japan and hopefully some photos from being out and about in Scotland.

One of our jobs last month was covering the opening of the worlds largest UNIQLO store, a 12 storey building in Ginza, once the area with the most expensive real estate in the world where high end brands were the name of the game, now they are taking second place to fast fashion. With my good friend and Japan’s leading fashion writer Paul McInnes (a fellow Scotsman) we went along to the opening of this megastore the day before it opened to the public to do what was our last collaboration article for Tokyofashion.com. All the photos from the day and Paul’s great write up can be found over at Tokyofashion.com and as always, you’ll learn something from Paul’s writing and I won’t do any dis-service to his article by trying to explain about the store here, instead I’ll just put up some photos from this modern store where they really have thought well about their concepts, whether it be recreating a house inside their store on the higher floors for brand collaborations or having soft floors for the kids to fall safely on on their kids floor, it was a joy to see the place before it opened it’s doors to the public and had people queuing for hours to get in. The shoot itself wasn’t too difficult, it did have a lot of press there, all the big Japanese daily newspapers, NHK broadcasting and the BBC, so all I really had to worry about was not getting reporters or TV cameras in the shots.

Equipment wise it was quite light. I used my new Lowepro Stealth reporter D650AW bag and loaded it with my two 5DmkII bodies (new one to shoot with, old one as back-up), my 17-40mm f4L and 24-70 f2.8L lenses with a speedlite 580EXII with the usual bits and bobs (cable release, spare batteries etc). Also had my slik tripod with me as with store reviews most of the shots are slightly long exposures, somewhere in the 2 second-1/15th second for wide store  shots on the 17-40mm lens (using some fill flash when needed) and for most of the closer up shots, just the 24-70mm and flash. Here’s the gear:

There are 12 floors to the store, but the top one was reserved for a press conference so I had 11 floors to cover. It sounds a lot more work than it is, I already had my brief of the floors which were of most interest to Paul for his article, so I knew I had to concentrate on them, make sure there was coverage of the store interior as well as the garments. This was for the top 4 floors, so for each floor I probably took around 200 images on those floors, for the other floors that weren’t so important it was more of a case of quickly getting some wide shots to show the floor and only one or two shots of garments, so for the less important floors it was perhaps only 10-20 shots. In addition to my brief I wanted to add a bit more of a feel to the area as well, so I added in some shots of the store exterior and even some of the posters in the local underground advertising the imminent opening. Here are a few examples:

Only a few weeks ago the busy streets of Tokyo was our home and work place, now we’re in much more sedate surroundings planning our next steps in life. It had been warm in Scotland last week, 23 degrees which is very unusual for this time of year, but the day after Sue and I arrived it dropped down to zero degrees and started to snow. It felt nice though, it felt like home. Hopefully some more photos of Scotland to come soon.

And so it came to pass that on March 24th 2012 that I had my official last day of work as a resident of Japan. I was very happy as it was a high note for me to finish on, the final day of Japan Fashion Week for Tokyofashion.com (where you can see all the photos by myself and others of the A/W 2012 Mercedes Benz Japan fashion week). It was a sad day for me, it was the end of around 9 days of straight assignments and as I made my last train journey to Tokyo Midtown to cover my last few shows I felt a real mix of emotions, deep sadness that this would be my last Japan Fashion Week as a resident of Japan, but also a happiness in that our goals for leaving Japan and starting life again in Scotland are one more step nearer to coming to fruition. Also, this will be my last blog from Japan, so I’d like to thank everyone who stopped by to read and comment on what I do. I’m sorry I haven’t replied to everyone of late or been able to check out your blog posts so much as life has been hectic with the move, but soon enough we’ll settle down to a new life and all will return to a new state of normal.

First and foremost, it was a high note to finish on as I was working for my favourite client; Tokyofashion.com. I’ve been covering Japan Fashion week for about 5 years now, first for the Japan Times newspaper and then for the last 3 years or so, Tokyofashion.com. The nice people at Tokyofashion.com are actually super nice, they’ve always been extremely friendly, never put any pressure on me, have always said thank you (many clients just take the photos and pay the fee without any kind of contact or acknowledgement) and it’s always been a pleasure to work for them. I’ve did runway fashion and store reviews for them and they have really grown as a site, over 250’000 facebook likes, more than a million visitors a month…well done guys. It’s been great working for them as they’ve proven that you can still be very successful whilst still being nice. Thanks you guys for all the assignments over the years It was also a high note as I find it a real joy to shoot Fashion Week as it’s a challenge to get the right shots and over the years I’ve seen my work improve and that feels really great. Also, it’s kind of an honour to see a lot of the shows as some of the clothes you’ll never see on the streets, they are concepts designed by artists, hand made with the best materials, works of art as well as functional items and I think that’s a wonderful thing. Even though a lot of the stuff isn’t something I would wear I feel some sort of honour in helping to bring the art someone created to a bigger audience.

As per normal, I wanted to take the minimum in equipment with me, so I kept it simple. I was using my Lowepro Pro Runner 450AW camera bag (I’ll blog about bags soon actually) packed with:

Canon  EOS 5DmkII + battery grip x 2

Canon 70-200mm f2.8L

Canon 24-70mm f2.8L

Canon speedlite 580EXII

Macbook (old black one)

Slik carbon fiber monpod (my version if IS)

Canon Powershot S100

+

spare batteries, chargers, memory cards, cleaning cloth, blower, business card holder, press pass and invitations and a step ladder which I mostly used to sit on.

In the end I only ever used one of the 5DmkII bodies, the 70-200mm most of the time, the 24-70mm for one installation I shot and maybe 2 of the memory cards as after each show I was downloading, editing and sending off the pics as soon as possible before the next show. It worked out well as I managed to send most of the shows during the day and when I shot the last show each day I would jump the train and edit my last show on the hour journey home and send off the images when I got in. Also, I used some shots from the S100 again…proving a handy little camera, I’m liking it more and more.

Here’s what the pack looked like:

I’ve blogged about the best way to shoot runway before and I’ve also done a behind the scenes type of blog as well, so this time I’ll just keep it simple and post up a bunch of photos, at least 2 from each show before writing a little more.

Mercedes Benz Japan Fashion Week A/W 2012 in pictures:

A lot of different runways I’ve sat at the end of over the last few years and it’s always been fun, for many designers this year was the last year they will show in Japan, for me too possibly the last time I will shoot it. Hopefully I can cover it again some day for Tokyofashion.com, we will see what the future holds.

Although we’d got rid of most of our stuff over the last few months, when I was at work Sue was putting the finishing touches to getting ready to leave the house and when I got home on the last day of Fashion Week to upload my last show pics the house was almost empty.

All the preparation we’d done in advance made the last week in our apartment not too big a deal, I finished work on the Friday, got the gas cut on Saturday morning, friends came for the last of our appliances and Sue and I moved out stuff to our friends place nearby for the last week in Japan. Over the next few days we cleaned up the house, sent a few boxes to Scotland and one to Korea for Sue’s family, then we said goodbye to our old place.

It’d been my home for 7 years, 5 for Sue, lots of wonderful memories we’ve had there with our life together, getting married and have so many friend come stay with us, to see it as an empty shell with all our stuff gone was kind of sad, but at the end of the day home for me is wherever Sue and I are. For this week, home is with our friends, from next week for a month or so it’ll be with my family near St-Andrews in Scotland, then after that it’ll be somewhere in Edinburgh, small and cheap to begin with until we get on our feet, after that, who knows. I came to Japan on my own with very few possessions, just come clothes and a camera. Almost 11 years later I leave with little more, just with the most important addition, a truly amazing wife and best friend who brings me so much laughter and joy every day. With Sue by my side and the support we give each other, life will be good no matter how hard times may be.

True to my blog’s title, my life sine coming to Japan has been a journey through a lens and I’ve really enjoyed sharing some of it through this blog, thanks to all those who’ve read it again.

Life in Japan is coming to an end, tonight we say goodbye to all our friends, the thought of which brings a tear to my eye. It’s not a case of goodbye, just see you again, but for Sue and I life in Japan only amounts to another 40 hours or so. The show however will go on, just in a different venue.

I’ll be back in a short while from our new life. Take care.

I have been wanting to do this blog for a while now, but not doing it sooner has given me more time for some thorough testing as I want to review the Canon Powershot S100. The camera was released in America in November 2011 and Japan in December 2011, I got my copy in January 2012 so I’ve had it for 2 months now and I’ve used it quite a lot, so today I’m going to write a bit about my feelings on it.

It retails at around $400 in the US, 400 pounds in the UK and 40’000 yen in Japan, so best place for buying at the moment is the US. For a compact camera it is not cheap, if you added a bit more money you could get an entry level DSLR and lens kit which will put a lot of people off, but I really feel that this little camera does pack a big punch and if you are in the market for a compact camera you will not be disappointed if you buy it.

It’s pretty sleek, well designed and feels solid. The front dial next to the lens rotates to change settings/functions of your choosing, the back wheel whirs round to make changes you choose as well (from the menu you can choose what you want each thing to do). Everything is well positioned and pretty intuitive, you won’t have to spend long over the manual, just for a few of the things. It’s nice and light too. However, I do think the positioning of the flash on/off button at the back isn’t good, I find I keep knocking it and the flash comes on when I don’t want it to. Minor detail, but something less sensitive would be nicer. Another negative is the battery life, from a full charge I get around 200 shots. One day I tested it out until it ran dry and it took 238 shots, that was with no video, very little checking of images on the back screen and GPS turned off. If you are taking video, reviewing a lot and have the GPS, perhaps 130 photos/10 short vids per charge.

Here are some pics of it:

This camera is heavily packed with features which makes it a really good camera for someone who wants to learn about basic photography and play with manual modes and also have fun shooting automatic mode or with some of the funky pre-set “creative” modes.

Features:

• 24-120mm lens range, F2.0-5.9 (F2 when the zoom is wide, goes up to F5.9 the more you zoom)
• Manual control over ISO, zoom, shutter speed, aperture value, white balance via the menu and/or the front back dials.
• P Mode
• TV Mode
• AV mode
• The ability to shoot jpeg, RAW or RAW+jpeg combinations in manual mode.
• Custom functions
• Full Automatic mode
• Scene mode with options for automatic control over portrait, landscape, kids & pets, high speed burst, beach/snow scenes, fireworks, underwater, foliage.
• Pre-set creative modes (some of which are very cool): HDR, fisheye, miniature, super vivid, nostalgic, monochrome
• built-in neutral density filter (useful for sunny days)
• 12.1 MP Canon CMOS sensor
• DIGIC 5 image processor (it’s pretty fast)
• ISO 80-6400 (the image quality is pretty good all the way through this range)
• 2.3 fps continuous shooting (9.6 fps for 8 frames in High-Speed burst mode)
• Full HD (1080p24) movie recording; MOV format
• Optical zoom in movie mode
• Super slow motion movie recording (640 x 480 @ 120fps, 320 x 240 @ 240 fps)
• Miniature video mode (at above resolution)
• Direct movie record button (which allows shooting in some but not all of the
• Built-in GPS unit with image tagging and logger functions (something I don’t see me using just yet)

Ok, so all this means very little unless you can see some of the results. I have used the video and it was really good, but seeing as how I’m not a video person I will leave the review of that to other and I will stick with the photos.

First up, here are some photos using the camera in different modes:

Fully automatic mode:

With this mode it does exactly what it says on the tin. You move the camera in close it automatically goes to macro mode, it detects a face it goes to portrait mode, delivers very nice pics across the board.

01. HDR mode which was fun to use, my first HDR shot. You need a tripod or somewhere to keep the camera steady:

02. Nostalgic mode, which I like for it’s grainy film feel:

03. Fisheye mode (I think this may be the only time I use this mode, I really don’t like it but that’s just me):

04. Miniature mode which I really like as you can really select the area of focus:

05. Toy camera, which I think works well, but mostly for indoors stuff in low light:

06. Monochrome mode which applies a blue, B&W or sepia filter (personally I prefer nostalgic):

07. Super vivid which ramps up the vibrancy:

08. Posterized effect:

And a RAW image used with AV mode, f5.6, ISO 160 (manual), shutter speed 1/160 and manual white balance for “sunny”:

So there are some of the main modes you will be likely to use and something for almost everyone’s tastes, whether it be fully manual or a fun mode. All these images look really nice even at full screen, but once you zoom in to 100% you do see the images are a bit more noisy than you would get with a good DSLR with and expensive lens, but still the images are very usable and to be honest, they are better than I was expecting.

In daylight and low ISO it’s easy to get good results, so here are a couple of indoor shots with low ISO (100) and high ISO (1600) to show the difference. Both photos from a rather nice whisky bar in Hokkaido, the first with the camera on the bar for stability, the second with the highr ISO was hand held. Both shots were automatic, the camera defaults to low ISO when stable:

100 ISO:

Same photo at 100%, not bad at all:

Not at ISO 1600, looks pretty good at full screen but you can see the noise pretty easily:

Same photo zoomed into 100%. Not so great, but for your own personal stuff it’s fine:

Where are you likely to use this camera? Everywhere.

I have gotten to the stage recently where I don’t want to carry my bag full of gear around unless I am working, so it’s nice just to have a compact camera on me and take photos just for me, whether it’s hanging out with friends or just seeing something I like and taking a snap. The camera delivers really good quality images in most circumstances and it fits right in my pocket. Here are some pics from recent days wandering about Tokyo, just taking photos for fun:

Shooting with RAW:

Even when it comes to thinking more about fully manual settings and shooting in RAW, this camera does pretty well and I have already used it on a couple of jobs so it’s already paying for itself. Don’t get me wrong, the RAW files aren’t a patch on the quality I get from my 5DmkII and an L series lens but it’s pretty good. I can’t say for sure, but I’d guess the RAW images it produces are somewhat similar to a lower end DSLR camera with a kit lens. I would use it for web work, even a newspaper/magazine spread, perhaps even a wedding book, but I would keep it to wide shots, cityscapes, landscapes. For portraits/macro I don’t think it holds it’s own against a DSLR set up though. Although I will use it for work, I don’t look on it as a “back up” camera, I already have two 5DmkII bodies, the S100 is an addition to my pack. Here are some photos taken manually using RAW and this is how they came out without any editing:

So what are the pro’s about the S100:

• Small and compact.
• Well designed and tough body.
• Shoots at F2, so great for low light when you can’t use flash.
• Lots of manual controls.
• Easy to use, you can master most of it without going through the manual too much.
• Some very nice preset modes which are a LOT of fun.
• Can be used for work by professionals, albeit in a limited capacity (if anyone turned up to shoot a wedding with only this camera, you know the bride and groom have made a mistake in who they hired) .

  So what are the negatives about the S100:

  • The battery life is pretty bad, bank on around 200 shots. I bought a spare batter immediately.
  • F2 isn’t constant at all zoom lengths, but for a zoom lens on a compact having that feature would mean some tech that would at least double the price.
  • The position of the flash on/off button isn’t wonderful, you keep hitting it all the time and turning it on.
  • GPS, is it really needed? Maybe for some, for me not so much and I would have preferred it was a lot cheaper and lacked it.

Conclusions:

It is a top little camera, if you are looking for a new compact you won’t be disappointed in it.The image quality is really great, it’s fun, it’s versatile and it will fit in your pocket and can go everywhere. It’s not a replacement for a DSLR, but for what you get you will not be disappointed.

I had the old S90 which was good, but pretty standard. This is a much better camera, there is so much more I can do with it. The battery life isn’t great, the flash on/off button position, but in the scheme of things it’s not a big deal. It was well worth the upgrade. I’ve borrowed a friends canon S95 a few times and I really liked it. I felt the jump from the S90 to the S95 was pretty big, very different cameras in terms of image quality and functions. The difference between the S95 and the S100 isn’t so big. Compared to the S95, the S100 has slightly better image quality and better noise reduction at high ISO, but it’s not a huge difference, if you zoom in 100% on your computer you’ll see it. If you have the S90, it’s worth upgrading to the S100 (as I did). if you have the S95 and fancy something different, maybe the S100 isn’t for you.

In terms of getting great quality images from a compact camera, the canon S100 (and S95) is really up there with the best. I’ve seen photos from the fujifilm cameras and they are really great also, for more full on manual controls and image quality I think the Fujifilm cameras probably win (although I can’t say for sure as I haven’t used them much), fujifilm zoom lenses and the canon S100, maybe they are in a very similar league. Maybe one day I’ll get one and try them out.

Moving has made me nostalgic in a lot of ways. Selling off our stuff made me 5% sad due to the happy memories of the things that made our house our home, but 95% of me has been happy that it all means we are getting closer to our new life. We spent a lot of days going through “stuff” deciding what to sell, what to throw out and what to send. We’ve kept sending to the minimum, in total we have 14 boxes that take up less than 2m squared and way over half of that is photo books I have collected over the years, clothes we don’t need immediately (my kilt, Sue’s wedding dress) and a shoe box of photographs. If we were in a rush to get out of here and only had enough room to take what we could carry I would just grab that shoe box and my camera gear, the rest we can buy again, stuff is just stuff after all.

I had a lot of photos, two large trunks full of albums from my ten years in Japan, some were just personal, some were from projects I worked on in the past, some were work. For my work stuff, I was happy just to keep the books/magazines, for personal ones I kept a selection of the best memories with my friends and from personal projects I kept those images that struck a chord with me.

Looking back through the photos from from years ago I realized how much things have changed with both my photography and my life. Since I started my blog most of my photos posted up have been about my work life, they have been photos I’ve been paid to take and had to deliver to a certain standard. I’m very happy with all this work, but I was just as happy with the photos from days gone by where I was shooting film of whatever random stuff I discovered on my journeys through Tokyo and then cross processing the film to make the colours vibrant and the contrasts harsh. It wasn’t the kind of material that would win me any praise from a magazine editor, it’s not the kind of work anyone would commission me to do, but it was good for the small exhibitions I did and the images fill me with memories of happy but somewhat lonely trips I made whilst exploring my Tokyo moments.

Back then I didn’t really know much about photography or how to work cameras, it was more about exploring and “stealing” moments from what was going on around me. I was very influenced by the Japanese Street photographer Daido Moriyama whose grainy street photos from Tokyo, New York and all over Japan held me spell bound from the first time I stumbled upon one of his exhibitions and then I sought out and bought as many of his books as I could find. I really admired how he could take something ordinary that we would walk past in everyday life and make it into a work of art. His photos weren’t sharp, they were dark and gloomy, but they said something about the times he lived (and continues to live) through and for perhaps 4-5 years I tried to take photos in this style, but with my own twist. I shot with a Ricoh Gr1s camera, a lomo LCA and Holga a lot of the time, I always had a camera on me, I took photos everyday and I always had a sense of excitement in my chest when I was waiting to get negatives back from the developer and I would circle the negs I was going to have printed.

I looked back on some of my photos and saw an image of me in my old flat surrounded by 10 large prints (about 110cmx75cm) that I exhibited along years ago and I remember the excitement I felt about it. Then I saw the first images I had in a magazine, then my first newspaper publication and so on through the years when publications stopped being a novelty and more of the norm. The change in my style of work has changed a lot, but I actually miss the days when shooting was just for fun. I love shooting assignments and my life has changed a lot (for the better) as a result and I feel really lucky, but one day it’d be nice just to shoot for me again, shoot the moments in my life that I come across and make some more memories of the life I’ve led:

I’m pretty sure I touched on this a while back, but in a way Lonely Planet was sort of the reason I got into photography, so being able to work for them and get some publications with them gives me a lot of satisfaction.

14 years ago, when I was 20 years old I took my first photographs. I was in my third year of university, studying psychology at the University of St-Andrews and during the summer holidays I went off to Thailand for a month and then Malaysia, Singapore and Borneo for a month. I’d never taken any photos up until then and I’d realized I’d had nothing solid to remind me of all the good times I’d spent with people, so I wanted something to help me record my memories of my first big trip and I bought a little point and shoot canon camera and figured I’d use a roll of film a day and took one roll for each day I traveled. I headed off South East Asia with a ruck sack, my new camera, some rolls of film, enough cash to allow me to stay in the cheapest places and get the local buses everywhere and a few Lonely Planet guidebooks from which I would choose places to visit. I’d choose mainly on the basis of the photos I saw and when I arrived places I saw in my guidebook, I’d try to figure out where the photo was taken from and I’d try to go to the same spot to try and get the photos like I saw in my guidebooks and from then on I was hooked on photography and I remember thinking “how cool would it be to take photos for a guidebook!” That thought always stayed with me and I really become hooked on travel and photography from then on. I remember returning to university and being so disappointed that my travels were over, I sat in the library studying for tests but my head was way off somewhere else, exploring the rainforests in Borneo where I hiked and hitched lifts on logging ships, the temples of Thailand and the weird and wonderful people I met. Study just didn’t seem so interesting any more after I’d seen a bit more of the world. I knuckled down and studied hard, graduated, was offered a Wellcome prize scholarship to got to the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at U.C.L in London to study for a Ph.D whilst doing research on human memory using fMRI and E.R.P technology. It was one of these things that sounded more difficult than it was. I was spending sometimes up to 18 hours a day at my computer or in the labs, running massive statistics (computers were slow back then) to find which areas of the brain had increased blood/electrical activity when subjects encountered in a test phase, a word of picture they had seen in a study phase and then I had to compare it to the brain activity seen when subjects encountered new words or pictures they hadn’t seen during a study phase. For the first 3 months I felt very lucky to have been given such a good scholarship to study somewhere so good and I genuinely felt honoured, but after 6 months I began wondering “is this really what I want to be doing in life?” After a year I told my supervisor I wanted to quit, but seeing as how I’d already done a lot of the work needed for my Ph.D I was persuaded to stay on for another year to complete things. I stayed, but each day in the lab just made me more and more frustrated, I took a trip to Peru for a month I told my supervisor I was going away for a few days and sent an email from Peru saying I’d be back in a month….didn’t go down too well) with my best friend to try and sort my head out whilst trekking the Inca trail and even climbing some 6000 m + peaks. Once again, I had my Lonely Planet guidebook with me and it helped take me to different places and I tried to take photos like I saw there. However, this trip just made me yearn for more adventures and I came back to London even more down about my life and I really remember each day struggling to get out of bed and go to the lab. I wanted to quit, but everyone told me I’d be stupid to do so, I’d soon get my Ph.D, I had a glittering career ahead of me, I was already getting a lot of publications in respected journals, so if I just hung on a little bit more…anyway, here are some screen shots from my old publications:

Two years into my Ph.D and I felt I couldn’t hand on anymore, I really felt like I was going crazy, working in an office with the same guys for 2 years and other than saying “hello” in the morning and “see you tomorrow” when we left, we barely talked. It was all about work. When we had tea break and I met other researchers, they talked about work. I just felt like I didn’t fit in, I didn’t have the drive they did to be scientists, I had kind of fallen into it as it was an easy option for me and I felt guilty as my supervisor kept reminding me a lot of people would have given anything to be in my position, and if I just stuck at it a little bit longer…….

So, a few months after coming back from Peru, I went home via a bookstore and picked up a book of short stories by Leo Tolstoy, I believe there were 4 stories, but two of them I remember clearly, “The death of Ivan Illyic” and “How much land does a man need.?” Both stories about how we lead our lives before we die. Both of the main characters have lives they enjoy, but in the pursuit of money, or land they change how they live and the outcome wasn’t happy. These stories had a huge impact on me, I felt like I was the characters, pursuing a life I wasn’t happy with and not leaving as I was being paid well, I was about to become a Dr. (I did like the idea of calling myself Dr. I must admit), but most of all it just made me realize that there was a lot of things in life I wanted to do but was basically too scared to go and do it and I could imagine myself being 40 years old, stuck in a lab and being thoroughly miserable and being full of regrets. so they next day I went straight to my supervisor, quit my Ph.D with less than a year remaining and a few months later I landed in Japan. I only planned on coming for a year and I started working as a teacher in a language school, but then I soon began teaching in university which gave me long holidays where I could travel more in Japan and around Asia and take photos as I did it, so I decided to stay a bit longer and with all the time off I had I started taking more and more photos and learning whatever I could, mostly from friends who were already photographers. I started having small exhibitions of photos, getting some publications here and there and over time my hobby started to became a job, first just little things here and there, but over time things grew and grew. Ten years on I am getting ready to leave Japan, I am leaving with a wonderful wife, a lot of good memories, a different outlook on life and a job I am really in love with as well, so it’s kind of nice to have one of my final publications in Japan being on the cover of a book by a company who in some way played a part in me getting here in the first place. I’ve made a lot of mistakes down the years, but now I don’t have any regrets about my life is now.

Soon Sue and I are starting over again and there are no guarantees it will all work out for us, but now we are satisfied with what we have achieved in Japan and life here is going well for us, it’s time to move on again and pursue new challenges, because we know if we didn’t, ten years from now we may well just be looking back and thinking “what if we just tried those things we dreamed of?” A new journey is about to start, it’s scarey, there are no guarantees, but there won’t be any regrets about not trying.

Anyway, back to the original topic of the post, our first publication of the year. I only meant to write about the shoot itself, but it just turned into something completely different as I’m sitting in our living room enjoying my Saturday morning coffee….I think I am getting nostalgic these days. So, it was almost exactly a year ago I got an email from Lonely Planet asking me if I’d be interested in shooting the cover of their next “Tokyo Encounters” book and I was more than happy to say yes. The deadline for getting it done was pretty tight, but a couple of phone calls, a fax and an email later and everything was fixed for us to do an early morning shoot of an artwork in the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel in the Ginza area of Tokyo. We had to do early morning to minimize and inconvenience to guests, so we were up at 4am to get the first train from our place just after 5am on a cold January morning with our camera bag, tripod bag and a change of clothes for Sue as she was going to be an addition to the shot:

We arrived at the Peninsula about 5.50am. Our scheduled time to shoot was pretty generous, from 6am-6.30am, but we already had our goal in mind, a shot of the artwork in the lobby, focus on it, with Sue admiring it and having her dark to keep the focus on the art, so to be honest we didn’t really need that much time. Sue got changed, I set up the tripod with my 5DmkII and 24-70mm f2.8L and 580EX speedlite, I did some test shots to check the ambient light and see if I needed any fill light (just a little, so I powered down the flash quite a bit) and I were ready to shoot.

Seeing as how we already had the image in mind we wanted to get, there wasn’t a lot of options other than having Sue in different places for each shot, so I did some of her standing and some of her walking past the art work. I put on my 50mm f1.2L lens for a couple of shots, but within a couple of minutes I had enough material I was happy with and we wrapped it up, no fuss whatsoever much to the pleasure of the hotel’s PR manager who was quite happy we were done so quickly and without any fuss. I think he was quite surprised, but there was no point in flogging a dead horse and doing much more than we needed. Sue got changed, I packed up and we headed to the world’s biggest fish market, Tsukiji, which was nearby, so we could have a nice fresh sushi breakfast. Then we went home, I edited up and sent 10 different cuts to Lonely Planet, here are some examples:

Finally, the editors chose this image to become the cover shot:

And here’s how it finally looked, not too bad at all:

I ordered a couple of copies online and sent them to my parent’s place in Scotland, so we’ll see finally see it when we get there…only another 73 days.

A Happy New Year!

Usually I like to end the year with a review of that year in photos of some of the work we have done, but a combination of working up until the 29th and having my best friend from Scotland and his fiancee over to visit has slightly delayed things a bit this time round. As with most years, 2011 came and went in what seems like no time, but in the last few years it was probably 2011 that impacted our lives most. The events of March 11th gave us a lot to think about and after a years of good times and bad, am really grateful that my friends and family are all happy and healthy, you can’t really ask for anything else.

2011 got off to a good start. In January Sue quit her job working for an architects firm and started helping me more, I had landed a job as chief photographer at Whisky Mag Japan, work was flowing in nicely, I did my first product shoots and the year was off to a good start:

In February, things continued to go well. Lots of assignments for Whisky Mag Japan, once again we were chief photographers for Asia’s biggest Whisky event, Whisky Live Tokyo 2011, we had some great fun private hires, work from one of our UK trend forecasting clients was regular, things were really going well and the cold of Spring wasn’t getting us down:

March changed our lives. It started off wonderfully, we covered Tokyo Girls Collection for Tokyofashion.com, had our first wedding anniversary, had a great assignment to Hokkaido, we were supposed to be there from March 8th-12th, with the 11th being a day for us out at sea photographing ice-bergs, but unfortunately (I thought at the time) we couldn’t get a boat to take us near the ice-bergs and we returned home early on March 10th. The next day March 11th and huge earthquake and tsunami killed more than 20’000 people. In a year which had started off so well for so many people changed in an instant. We were in a shopping center when the quake struck, it felt like the place was going to fall down around us and the ground shook so much it felt like we were running drunk when we tried to get out. Once outside and safe we could barely stand for the temors.The trains had stopped and there were no buses or taxis so we had to walk home. I remember getting in expecting the worst, but our place was thankfully barely damaged. I remember backing up my photos from Hokkaido as the TV showed images of the tsunami damaged areas burning. With the nuclear power plant in Fukushima exploding and the threat of radiation it was a very scary time, trains stopped running, phones didn’t work, panic buying emptied the stores and despite some very financially tempting offers to get up north as soon as possible from some newspapers, I stayed put with Sue as I didn’t want to leave her alone. Family comes first, always. Since March 11th there have been a total of 6757 aftershocks as of today, still not an ideal situation and the fear remains. When the situation in Japan just seemed to get worse and all our work for the next two months got cancelled, so we left for a month and went to the UK where luckily we managed to pick up work:

We returned to Japan mid April. We had already decided that we were going to move back to Scotland. It had been on our mind for a few years, but the events of March and a lot of soul searching led us to decide that our best option for the future was to leave Japan. A day after we got back to Japan we had a decent work offer for the UK. Had it been 2 days earlier, we may not have come back. It was a hard time, in April and May we only had one small assignment and at times I really did wonder if we had made the right decision in coming back. However, the one assignment, a store review for Tokyofashion.com was interesting in that the owner of the store really was the kind of person who had come up with a concept she loved for her store, she designed it around the theme of the “Wizard of Oz” and offered “English, Japanese and Furbish” (Furbies are animal/aline things…I think?) language services on her website, perhaps 99% of people wouldn’t think it was a good idea, but she stuck to her guns, opened a business and kept it going with her passion and for me that struck a chord. Also, we’d started to arrange plenty of work from June, so our spirits were good from May despite lack of actual hands on work:

June saw the work load come back and we were much more relieved. We traveled to Kanazawa on assignment for Whisky Magazine Japan and I had lots of assignments for them in and around Tokyo. It felt really good to be working again and as always, we got to meet lots of great people whilst on assignment. There was even a wedding thrown in for good measure:

July saw things continue to go well, there wasn’t a whole pile of work to do as we were getting ready to go to Korea near the end of the month and I was also spending time sorting out a Lonely Planet submission. Still, we had some show reviews which were nice:

Whilst in Korea in August I did some work for various clients and I got a nice offer to cover some corporate events for the biggest Casino’s in Asia and they flew me back to Japan earlier than I had planned, but I managed to double up the jobs in Tokyo and Osaka with other work, so it all worked out well. All the while Sue was still in Korea (for a further 5 weeks) to get her driving license so she can convert it to a British license once we get there:

September rolled around and there were more fashion shows to cover for Tokyofashion.com with Tokyo Girls Collection, some more exhibition reviews for Stylus, a really good live music gig with Rafven for Whisky Mag Japan and I continued to have fun with work. Luckily Sue got back as well, driving license in hands and the world is now a slightly less safe place to be:

October was a busy month, our first baby shoot, Mercedes Benz fashion week for Tokyofashion.com, work on a Living Japan Guide to Tokyo, so plenty to keep us busy:

November saw us busy again, more fashion shows and live acts to cover for Tokyofashion.com at the Tokyo Girls Award, a family portrait, more work on the Living Japan Guide and a trip to Kyoto for Sue’s work, for me a time to relax:

December was about winding down a bit and getting more and more ready for our move to Scotland (in 81 days from now), packing boxes, preparing Sue’s visa application, seeing friends, but we squeezed in a bit of work for the wonderful people at Tokyofashion.com who I am very grateful to for giving us so much work and so much fun for yet another year, the Grimoire Xmas party I previously blogged about and the Harajuku Kawaii fashion show:

So, 2011 was a big year for us, we did lots work wise, we were lucky to stay healthy despite all that happened in Japan and our thoughts really do go out to those who suffered in Japan and in other disasters and wars around the world. Every year brings hardship to the world and I feel truly lucky that Sue, myself and our friends and families managed to be happy and have fun doing what we do, we were lucky to have avoided hardships, we got to travel lots of amazing places, meet some great people we have become friends with through work and spend great times with our old friends as well.

I really am grateful for all our good fortune in 2011 and we feel ready for the challenges of 2012. I know this is going to be a hard year, moving country will see a big drop in work for a while, but I am sure that over time we’ll build something better.

Anyway, rather than rambling on about the shoot too much, I just want to say I had a really good time covering the Grimoire Xmas party 2011 for Tokyofashion.com. Normally I don’t pull all nighters for work, but I’ve covered a Grimoire party before and all the people there are so nice and friendly I really didn’t want to pass up the chance to shoot this. My assignment was to photograph as many interesting people as possible, showing their fashion, full body, crops and details when possible. All 250+ photos from my assignment can be found here at Tokyofashion.com, but here are some of my favourites from a Dolly Kei Christmas party in Tokyo, almost all of which were shot with my 5DmkII and 24-70mm lens with an 580EX speedlite used off camera via my ST-E2 transmitter. A slightly belated Merry Xmas from me too:

Now we’ve started packing up our photo books and clothes in boxes ready for sending to Scotland. Time is flying, so much to do in so little time, so I’m not blogging as much as I’d like to. Here as well, just a short one about some recent work.

Recently we had were hired to shoot a combo corporate/family portrait of the Kawashima family who are the owners of Japan’s biggest concrete firm.

It wasn’t a done deal from the word go. Sue had taken out an advertisment with our website on it and the company contacted us for an initial interview where the company’s CEO looked through our portfolio (which he was very happy with) and listened to our proposal of how we wanted to approach the shoot. Sitting in their boardroom surrounded by photos of everyone in suits behind desks it would have been easy to suggest a straight on nicer version of what we saw around us photo wise, but Sue had already figured it’d be nice to do something a bit different and wanted to incorporate the hobbies of the family members into the shoot. In the boardroom there was also some sport/hobby memorabilia which fitted in with her ideas. Sue suggested that we photograph each family member on/next to one of their concrete trucks in the grounds of their factory and then do a mainly documentary approach of them at work in their offices and make a book out of it all…Sue’s proposal went down well and we got hired on the spot and were asked to hire a hair and make up artist to help out. After being hired we walked about the factory and decided the best spots to shoot from and made notes for Sue and I to work over the finer details. With our ideas decided, all that remained was to pack up the night before and this is what we took with us, quite a lot but we used the most of it, for those things we didn’t use it’s better to have something you don’t need as opposed to needing something you didn’t bring:

We were hired to do a 3 hour shoot at their factory in early November. The day before the forecast was for heavy rain, the morning was pouring down but by afternoon the sun was out and everything dried up, however when we were on the way to the shoot we got a call to say that due to a heavy work load, our 3 hour shoot was now down to 90 mins, not a problem. Times often change, it’s something we are used to. Shooting was scheduled for a 3pm start, but we were there at 1.30pm with Junko the hair and make up artist, that gave her time to do her work and allow Sue and I to set up lights, make notes on ambient light, do test shots and our usual set up. Easier said than done in the factory as more than 400 trucks a day go in and out the gates (where we were shooting to get the factory in the background) and we were there at the busiest time of the day when there was 1-2 trucks a minute coming and going. There was also a bit of wind, the umbrellas and softbox on the light stands kept getting blown over, so we had to go for bare speedlites on stands and also have Sue holding a third speedlite when needed, all being triggered by the ST-E2 transmitter which mostly worked well, but sometimes it just didn’t kick in when the sun was really setting.

Anyway, the shoot started with each family member dressed up in hobby/work clothes in the factory yard. The sun was already going down, so to get the details in the colours of the clothes and make each family member “pop” we had to get the speedlites working all the time. First up, we shot the uncle.

For each family member, first up Sue would explain how she wanted them to pose:

Then I’d work out the ambient light to bring out the sky, but as you can see this made the subject a bit dark:

So with a speedlite (camera right for this one) we got the shots we went about getting the shots we needed:

The initial spot for shooting was a bit too dangerous as trucks were whizzing by and we were running to get stands out of the way every 30 seconds or so, so we moved on to shooting each family member more to the side of the yard where we could work undisturbed, for each member getting a wide shot with a truck in it as well as a close up shot. We shot the grandmother, father, mother and son all on their own:

Then after each individual shoot, we did a whole family shot. By this time the sun was fairly going down and it was getting pretty dark and there was very little details in the shadows. Also, being on the ground wasn’t so good for getting the whole family in and having the factory in the background, so I got up on our step ladder to get a better position. First up a test shot without the lights:

Then with the lights, a speedlite on a stand to left and right of the truck and Sue holding another over my shoulder:

With the fun portrait shoot over and the time being against us, we had to let the family get back to their office work and photograph them doing what they do on a daily basis:

With the shoot all done and dusted, all that remained was to edit the pics and then make a book, here’s the cover and first page:

All in all, a good fun day and a bit of an usual shoot, hope to have more of them in Scotland.

I’ve seen a lot of debate on forums about the canon EOS 5DmkII versus the canon EOS 7D and to be honest, I don’t really get why all the debate, both are good for different things. It’s like comparing a Range Rover and a Porsche, both are very good, but for different reasons. For a farmer who wants a car that can drive over fields, pull big loads and look good about town a Range Rover is an excellent choice, a Porsche would be no use. For someone wanting a speedy little car to whiz about town or the highways and catch a few eyes, a Porsche would be a much better choice than a big old Range Rover. If you had enough money and wanted a 4WD and a little sporty car, it’d be nice to have both cars wouldn’t it?

With that in mind, lets look at the 5DmkII and the 7D, both cameras I have owned and used a lot for work. Both cameras are for specific purposes, one isn’t really better than the other, so I don’t like the whole “versus” idea, instead I like to think they are for specific purposes and really compliment each other very well. Both are different cameras that are very good for what they are made for. Although the intended uses for each camera isn’t as clear cut as the car example above, the same principle applies.

Before looking more in depth at each of these cameras, lets think about the top end canon EOS cameras. At the top of the Canon EOS DSLR line you have 1D series, currently the full frame canon EOS 1Ds mk III and the crop sensor canon EOS 1D mkIV which will soon be merged into the canon EOS 1DX which is scheduled to be released March 2012. Next in line are the full frame canon EOS 5D mkII and the crop sensor 7D. Lets have a look at how the essentials specs compare (I’m just looking at still photos here, the video I’ll leave for someone else):

Canon EOS 1Ds mk III
*Released August 2007
*Full frame
*21.1 megapixels
*Dual DIGIC 3 processor.
*ISO 100-1600 (50-3200 with expansion)
*5 FPS
*Magnesium alloy very well weather sealed.
* Good to around 300’000 shutter releases.
*Priced about $8000 when released

Canon EOS 1D mk IV
*Released late 2009
*APS-H 1.3 crop frame
*16 megapixels
*Dual DIGIC 4 processor.
*ISO 100-12800 (50-102400 with expansion)
*10 FPS
*Magnesium alloy very well weather sealed body.
* Good to around 300’000 shutter releases.
*Priced about $6000 when released.

Canon EOS 1DX
*To be released March 2012
*Full frame
*18 megapixels
*Dual DIGIC 5+ processor (17 times faster than DIGIC 4.
*ISO 50-12800 (204800 with expansion)
*12 FPS
*Magnesium alloy very well weather sealed.
* Good to around 500’000 shutter releases.
*Priced about $7000 when released

Canon EOS 5D mk II
*Released late 2008
*Full frame
*21.1 megapixels
*DIGIC 4 processor.
*ISO 100-3200 (50-25600 with expansion)
*3.9 FPS
*Magnesium alloy somewhat weather sealed body.
* Good to around 150’000 shutter releases.
*Priced about $2500 when released

Canon 7D
*Released late 2009
*APS-C 1.6 crop body
*18 megapixels
*Dual DIGIC 4 processor.
*ISO 100-3200 (12800 with expansion)
*8 FPS
*Magnesium alloy somewhat weather sealed body.
* Good to around 150’000 shutter releases.
*Built in speedlite controller.
*Priced about $1700 when released.

Basically the currently available EOS 1D series cameras are the best canon EOS camera you can get, they are better built, will last longer, they outperform the 5DmkII and 7D in that respect, but when you look at the difference between them and the 5DmkII and 7D in terms of actual performance, the distance isn’t too far (many say the 5DmkII has better image quality than the 1Ds mkIII). when you look at price, the 5DmkII and 7D win hands down. Understandably, the release of the 5DmkII really cut into sales of the 1Ds mkIII. Think about it, you could get three 5DmkII bodies for the price of one 1Ds mkIII. I know what I’d prefer for that money. For the 1DmkIV versus the 7D it’s a similar situation, three 7D bodies or a 1D mkIV. All of these cameras are professional level gear, you look at any Sports competition and you see photographers with 1DmkIV’s and 7Ds, for advertising/portraits/weddings you see 1Ds mkIII and 5DmkII wielding photographers. Although the currentt 1D line up is the highest level of pro gear, the line between them and the lower end pro gear isn’t that blurred, hence the need for the 1DX to put the pro gear back on a higher level.

So, if you are looking at getting a 7D or a 5DmkII, you are looking at getting professional gear, whether you are looking at using these cameras for work or fun. For professional photographers or serious enthusiasts, two bodies are a must. Depending on what you are shooting dictates what you should get, although the difference isn’t cut and dry, each camera does very well in general for everything.

Weddings, photojournalism, portraits, products & travel. Anything where the best image quality is of most concern = Canon EOS 5D mkII

Sports, wildlife, fashion runway. Anything where being able to quickly and accurately focus on a moving object = Canon EOS 7D

Many photographers shoot over many of these fields, so in that respect it’s good to have both cameras. Up until August 2010 I was using two FF cameras, the 5DmkII and the 5D. Both great cameras, but as the 5D was getting old and I knew the prices were dropping I decided to sell and get a 7D body as I often shoot runway fashion and I thought the 7D would be a good option for me rather than just having two full frame cameras. So, for more than a year I was using my 5DmkII as my main camera, using it most of the time for portraits, event and wedding photography and the occasional product shoot. In all these shoots my 7D was in my bag “just in case” and for runway fashion it was my number one choice. However, last week I sold my 7D to get another 5DmkII, not because I think the 5DmkII is a much better camera, just that it’s much better for what I use it for. I’ve really enjoyed working with a 7D this last year and a bit, it served me very well and I was happy with what it did for me, but the time came for me to move on from it. Here’s what I learned from both the cameras though. Also, the example photos I give here are mostly photos I’ve used for work, whether it be in print, online or for private wedding/portrait clients. This isn’t a scientific approach using exactly the same lighting and lenses in a controlled environment with coloured charts, but in reality no-one really does this. We don’t spend our lives photographing under lab conditions, so this is a perhaps a bit more realistic.

Plus points of the 7D # 1: The 8 FPS and very quick autofocus of the 7D is essential for anyone regularly shooting sports/wildlife.

8 FPS isn’t something I often use. The fast autofocus was great for runway fashion as well, but seeing as how the models are mostly just walking directly towards me it wasn’t essential for me to have such good autofocus, so in that respect the 5DmkII was good enough for my needs. For sports though, where athletes are running in all directions on a pitch and you really need fast FPS, the 7D would be essential. I only ever actually used the 8FPS of the 7D once whilst testing it out. Here’s what it’s like:

Plus points of the 7D # 2. If you own a full frame already, the 7D makes all your lenses longer, a big advantage for primes and telephoto lenses.

For anything wide where I am using my 17-40mm F4L or 24-70mm f2.8L lenses, the 5DmkII is the best camera I have. It’s also great with the 50mm f1.2L, 100mm macro 2.8L HIS and the 70-200mm f2.8L, but the 7D added a whole new dimension to the set up. To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of using my two widest zooms with the 7D (wide with a full frame works better) but it’s 1.6 crop factor meant my 50mm lens became a 80mm lens, my 100mm lens became a 160mm lens and my 70-200mm became a 112-320mm lens. That’s like a whole pile of different lenses without buying them, just getting a new body. I recently used a 2X III extender with the 5DmkIII on the 70-200mm lens and I do think the image quality of the 70-200mm on the 7D body without an extender was better. The extra reach of theses lenses came in use for runway fashion with the 70-200mm and portraits with my 50mm lens:

Plus points of the 5DmkII, it’s great for travel.

For travel photos, the 5DmkII is my go to camera. It’s light weight (I use the battery grip most of the time but take it off for travel work). The full frame sensor makes for better image quality and seeings as how the wide L series zoom lenses work best for full frame, the 5D mark II wins hands down for me on that one.

Plus points of the 5D mkII # 2, it’s amazing for portraits and weddings.

As I said before, I used the 7D to get more reach out of my lenses, but this was perhaps only 15% of the time on portrait/wedding shoots. Personally I like to get lots of wide shots in these situations, so usually I have my 5DmkII with a 24-70mm f2.8L lens when I don’t have much time to mess around, but when time constraints aren’t so bad I love to have my 50mm f1.2L lens on as much as possible.

The main reason why I sold my 7D and got a second 5D mkII body: the image quality of the 5DmkII is much better through all of the ranges of ISO capabilities of each camera.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing at all wrong with the image quality of the 7D, I just find that for what I need a camera for, the 5D mkII is much better. Both cameras have an automatic ISO that goes from 100-3200, I prefer to set ISO manually, but regardless I find the image quality of the 5D mkII to outperform the 7D at all ISO levels. I find the 5DmkII to be much sharper, the 7D can have it’s settings adjusted to make it sharper, but it still doesn’t get to the same level as the 5D mkII. Also, the higher the ISO level goes up, the higher the noise level with each camera, but the noise level of the 5DmkII is much better than that of the 7D.

For most magazine/newspaper publication and web images, the difference is minimal to be honest. However, for weddings and portraits we provide clients with large prints (A3 size and over) and when you are getting prints that big, you really do see the difference. Also, when I send Lonely Planet submissions, a lot of the 7D images get rejected, overall I find the 7D images to be a bit softer and show high contrast and noise in the shadows. I find I can easily use images from the 5DmkII up to ISO 3200 with no problems whatsoever. With the 7D, I am very happy up to ISO 640, from ISO 1600 it’s 50/50 in usable shots and at ISO 3200 I’d say 25% of what I get I can use. For weddings and portraits where I am often working in low light conditions, this just doesn’t make the grade for me.

Here are some examples from each camera with images I used at different ISO settings, with their 100% crop.

7D @ ISO 100

Same image @ 100%

5DmkII @ ISO 100

Same image @ 100%

7D @ ISO 400

Same image @ 100%

5DmkII @ ISO 400

Same image @ 100%

7D @ ISO 640

Same image @ 100%

5DmkII @ ISO 640

Same image @ 100%

7D @ ISO 1600

Same image @ 100%

5D mkII @ ISO 1600

Same image @ 100%

7D @ ISO 3200

Same image @ 100%

5D mkII @ ISO 3200

Same image @ 100%

At ISO 100-640, the difference is minimal. The 5DmkII does give sharper images, but from ISO 640-3200 the differences do become much bigger.

Conclusions:

Above are general examples of the quality I get, I’m happy with the 7D up to ISO 640, but with my work I am often shooting over 1600 ISO and in those circumstances the 5DmkII outperforms. Once in the past, whilst shooting a wedding with both my 5D and 5DmkII the shutter on my 5D froze up. No problem, I had my 5DmkII and I used it alone and it covered all my bases with every lens. I would have preferred two cameras on the go, but as long as you have one camera working you can get the job done. I sometimes think “What if my 5DmkII stopped working and I was left with only the 7D during a wedding?” To be honest, I would probably get good photos, I’d shoot mostly with primes as they give better images, but for I would have less options open to me, especially at high ISO and at the end of the day it’s about giving the client the best I can with what I have and for me that means the 5DmkII, hence I went for the option of having two 5DmkII bodies. I don’t shoot sports, so the benefits of a 7D don’t apply to me there. Although I shoot a lot of runway, I find models don’t move so fast that I really need the mega fast autofocus of the 7D. More to the point, many of the shows are pretty dark and I end up shooting with the 5DmkII anyway, so other than 4 shows a year where the runway is super far away, the extra reach of the 7D doesn’t come into play that much (plus I just bought a 2XIII extender which will be used there). If however I was doing sports or wildlife photography, I’d definitely have a 7D in my line up. So overall I think both cameras are really great, the have raised the possibilities of what both professional and enthusiast photographers can achieve for a much cheaper price than the top of the range 1D series without the cost and minimal difference in quality. Moreover, the 5DmkII with a 7D is a pretty mean combination that any photographer would be lucky to have. However, for what I do, two 5DmkII bodies are of much more use so that’s what I now use and it gives me more peace of mind. In a year or two though once I am doing mostly weddings, I may be tempted to get a 1DX and keep my latest 5DmkII as a back up though