Ok - time for a minor rant.

[rant follows]

Auto Exposure should be banned. Had a discussion with someone today about their new DSLR and all it's fancy things that it does for you. No mention of Auto Exposure, more about things like "smile recognition". A lot of people seem to regard AE as some kind of natural law. Every time they take a photo, the camera has to decide on the correct exposure. As if it changes every second. More wrong exposures than ever, even if you have come to terms with the cameras various metering modes and which to use in which situation and assuming you can change it quickly enough and remember to switch it back. What rubbish.

In most shooting situations the lighting is relatively constant. It varies between light and shadow so most important is the exposure range. If you are shooting in high contrast or low light situations AE isn't going to be your saviour and you need to be a good photographer anyway and then you don't need to worry about AE.

Mostly these fine things don't matter. Find the general exposure for the shoot, set the camera on manual, and then adjust up and down if necessary for shadows and highlights. Concentrate on framing and focusing. When you set the manual mode make a conscious decision about wide aperture or slow shutter speed etc.... learn about how photography works

A mantra that goes around regularly when people discuss camera reviews and x vs y comparisons is "It's not the camera, it's the photographer". Now I think I know what people mean by this. They mean that a "great" camera doesn't guarantee a great photo, but a great photographer does. On the whole of course I agree with this. However like a lot of mantras it can sometimes be repeated unthinkingly, parrot fashion, and the meaning lost.

Sometimes it seems to me that people think the apparatus doesn't matter at all. This is rubbish for various reasons. Try giving a great sports photographer a field camera - he may come back with a great photo, but it won't be the one he or his editor wanted. The nature of the camera is very important when taking the job into account - you need the right tool. So that's one obvious reason why the camera is important.

A second reason, and one which I have discovered for myself after many years taking photographs with all sorts of gear, is that you have to at least feel comfortable with the camera. It also makes a big difference to me if I feel happy with the camera, if I'm in love, obsessed, infatuated with the camera. If I never want it out of my sight and if I insist on going everywhere with it. Ok that's an exaggeration, and points to my unhealthy psyche, but I think you know what I mean.

I have a nice Canon EOS5D with some nice Canon L lenses and I know "it" takes brilliant photographs. However it's sitting on the desk in front of me and I don't feel the urge to caress it and ask it go for a stroll into town with me. If there was a special subject in mind - an event or the like, then yes, I know it's the right tool for the job. But if I'm just cruising looking for the personal shots which give me the most satisfaction, I know I'll reach for my Leica, or maybe my OM1 with a particular favourite lens. Maybe also my little Rollei 35S. These cameras all make me feel like taking photographs. They get me in the mood. I feel they are an extension of my inner eye. They seem to connect me with the subject whereas the Canon always seems to be in between me and the subject.

The proof of the pudding is in the results. I'm sure everyone who has taken many many photographs with a variety of cameras is aware their best work often comes from a particular camera(s), irrespective of technical capabilities - is this a challenge? Anyone got any other ideas?

So how many memory cards do you need to shoot a wedding? Several more than you actually possess. Your shooting rate will increase automatically to fill up all the cards you have before that cake is even cut. I took 8 1gb cards and that was woefully short.

The problem of running out of card space is a real danger. It means that you are going to quickly try and free up space - deleting duds and duplicates by assessing them in-camera. In the hurly burly of the wedding you'll probably delete the wrong ones - or maybe nervous fingers will hit that "delete all" button by mistake. Or you just may run out of space entirely before you have all the shots.

Portable disk storage? For backing up, these or a laptop are essential. There are some nice models on the market, but I wonder how I would have got on transferring cards and reformatting them during the course of the event? Ok once you have some free time, but I don't fancy this sort of image transfer while in the thick of it. Again, I could foresee risks here. I had a laptop, and I took the opportunity later in the proceedings to back everything up, but by then all the big photo sessions were past. Another solution is to have a handy sidekick who you can just toss cards to as you fill 'em up and they can do it. A bit like the old pro's tossing their Hasselblad backs to and fro.

Rather than risk these problems, I would just take more cards, and for a similar event I would take twice as many. I would probably take 16 1gb cards. I don't fancy cards any bigger than that - I can imagine an 8gb card slipping out the fingers and down a drain at the crucial moment with c. 500 images on it. Even 2gb makes me feel jittery, but you have to make a trade-off between changing cards a lot and security. Actually I just saw that the new Nikon D3 has the ability to fill two cards at once. An automatic backup feature. In this case putting 2 8gb cards in seems a nice solution. However I don't have one of these.

Because things are sometimes happening quickly, you need to be pretty slick about changing cards. Put a new card in early if you know the action is going to start. Also, and this is probably obvious to everyone except me, devise a method of keeping used cards and full cards separate. Something sophisticated like putting full ones in your right pocket and empty ones in your left. And remember which is which. I had one embarrassing moment when I had to change a card quickly, and I put a full one back in. Meaning shouts of "wait a minute" "do it again" etc

I started seriously running out of space towards the end and I reverted to shooting JPEG instead of RAW. This gave me a lot more room, but I regretted it as soon as I started working on the images. I'm accustomed to underexposing and then adjusting in photoshop. With RAW fies this is a breeze - with JPEG it's not a good idea. I found many of the JPEGs couldn't be easily rescued without sacrificing something in terms of quality.

A few months ago I talked about shooting a family wedding and the logistical and management problems I encountered. I also came to a few conclusions about equipment and technical matters. Things that I would change if I did it again. Professionals won't find anything startling here, but someone in the same situation as me might find something useful.

I took quite a bit of equipment with me but I shot the whole thing using the following.

Canon EOS20D 17-85mm (34 shots)
Canon EOS5D all lenses (487 shots)
of which

• 16-35 F2.8L (125 shots)
• 24-70 F2.8L (309 shots)
• 70-200 F2.8L IS (52 shots)

This tells an interesting story. I took the EOS20D mainly as a backup, and in the end I didn't use it much. For example I didn't really use it as a second body - I preferred to change lenses on the EOS5D. When I did use it it was because I was running out of memory cards, but that's another story. In an ideal world I would take 2 EOS5D bodies. Why? I'm not sure, but I guess I found even the slight change in operation between the two a bit of a put-off, plus at the back of my mind I wanted all the images similar size/resolution. Maybe more a psychological thing this.

Assuming I had 2 EOS5D's, what lens combination would I use? Well I know that I put the 16-35 on the camera only to do group shots - so that didn't mean chopping and changing much - all of those were done in one or two continuous shoots. Quite a few of the group shots required wider than 24mm, although if possible I might have been better trying to use longer focal length in some to avoid distortion.

The 70-200mm was a different kettle of fish. I found I was often wanting to mount it because the 24-70mm wasn't quite long enough. I think now I know the attraction of the 24-105mm - it probably has just that extra amount of reach to avoid this.

However where I found the 70-200mm really useful was during the ceremony. I was allowed to shoot here as long as I remained at the back and was unobtrusive (no 600mm F4 then!). Here the lens worked very well, combination of handling, fast aperture and IS. I should say also that the EOS5D is a whole lot quieter than the EOS20D which sounds like a rifle shot in comparison.

The conclusion? 2 EOS5D's (or equivalent) with 16-35 and 24-105 would be my preferred set up if I did it again, with the 70-200mm for special shots.

In the next post I'll talk about some other technical and equipment issues (JPEG or RAW? Flash and tripods, memory cards and readers etc)

Almost 40 years ago I used to help my father taking photographs at weddings. Recently I revisited my past, acting as "official photographer" at a family wedding.

I was asked to do this because the families wanted a relaxed atmosphere and didn't want an official photographer hijacking the show as they had experienced in the past. They reasoned that keeping it in the family would result in more of a wedding, less of a photo shoot. I can sympathise with this, but stepping into the shoes of the wedding photographer was quite illuminating. Here are some thoughts about the practicalities.

40 years ago my job was to skulk around and get candid shots, however this time I had to do the real stuff. It's like shooting a sporting event - if you miss the goal, you're likely not getting a second chance. This means you have to plan ahead and choreograph your movements in quite a bit of detail. You also have to know what the game plan is. This is true of the professional wedding photographer as well as the occasional one. However the professional has experience on his side, he has done it many times and knows how to avoid the pitfalls. If you haven't been to a wedding for a while you may have lost track of the normal sequence of events.

As a member of the entourage you are at a bit of a disadvantage in several ways. Mainly you cannot take over the show - that was the whole idea wasn't it? Not being able to, or feeling unwilling to do this brings its problems. The other guests want to take their photos, the wedding party are happy to oblige and pose for them, and you find it difficult to say "back of you lot - I'm first". For the official photographs however there are the regular groupings and poses that you need to get, and unless you are forceful, you just aren't going to manage it. All this generally results in a bit of dithering and time-.wasting which you can't afford as this interrupts the flow of the proceedings and people get fidgety and irritated. How do you balance the requirement to keep things informal and relaxed while at the same time get all the images? Unless manhandled firmly, people will just wander off in all directions.

Then there is the necessity to be in two places at the same time - bride and groom leaving church - bride and groom arriving at reception. You need a faster car than them, or you need to tell them to drive round the block a few times. Really you need two photographers.

I went in with the intention of producing the wedding photos like had never been seen - artistic, original, sympathetic.... however the problems/challenges mean that just getting the job done was an achievement in itself.

In general the whole procedure didn't seem that much changed since 40 years ago. One big difference though. Then we would rush off after the ceremony and spend the afternoon developing films and printing proofs in time for the reception, always a little anxious until the results were available. Nowadays of course that part is a snip if you are shooting digital. You can backup your cards as you go along - none of the stress as you manhandled those films. You can check images as you go and shoot extra if required. I don't think this necessarily means you get better results, but I think it makes the prospect of being a commercial wedding photographer a bit more attractive. Not to mention the possibilities of online delivery and sale of the images, photobooks, internet galleries etc. However, I don't think I'm ready for a career move just yet...

Ok - this food photography business has really started irritating me. Why? Well I can't seem to get it right, and my efforts still look crap compared with even the cheapest book illustrations. I've got the bit between my teeth now though. I don't plan on becoming a food photographer, but as someone who takes his photography fairly seriously, I reckon I ought to be able to do better.

There are two clear aspects to this. One is the technical photographic side, which brings it's own unique challenges. The other is the presentation of the actual food itself. In this post I'm going to concentrate on the former

In the last post on this subject I was muttering about DOF problems. Now I should do a lot more experimentation, finding out the limits of DOF with various lenses and aperture settings, But the next thing I did was just to stop down the next shot to f8, that should be enough, normally gets me from 15 feet to the andromeda galaxy with my Summicron 50mm. However closeups are different.

Now I know you're thinking "this guy only eats steamed fish and spinach - must be real fit and healthy", If that was all I ate - yes. So this was quickly shot and eaten - f8 as I said before. Well the bad news is that there's only about the width of of a slice of prosciutto in focus

Now I was getting annoyed, so I did a bit of research. DOF in this situation is not ever going to be enough, not with ordinary equipment. So, how do people do it. Well the professionals probably use a view camera with tilt/shift capabilities. I don't think I'm going down that route. I had a look at tilt/shift lenses for Canon, but I don't think I can justify those just to satisfy my curiosity, However I found another solution, or compromise.

There are some software programs out there that will take a series of photographs taken at different focus distances, and stitch them together into one über photo with unlimited DOF. A bit like HDR techniques for exposure. I had a look at one "HeliconFocus" and it really does work. (heliconfilter.com/pages/)

Here is an ordinary photograph, taken at f8

And here is one after the HeliconFocus processing. This consists of taking multiple images focussing gradually from the front to the back of the subject in small increments.

It's maybe difficult to see the extent of the difference from these small images, but it definitely works and doesn't seem to lose any image quality. Here are some crops which show how the DOF is improved in more detail. The first image was focused pretty much on the front of the subject

Now the composite image - sorry about the difference in colour and contrast

I didn't take a lot of care over it, just 6 different focus points and it looks as though I missed the front focus point altogether, but I think the improvement is quite clear. Probably would take a lot more "slices" if I was doing it seriously. This piece of software is well worth a look at if you need to solve this kind of problem. Looks as though it was developed for technical applications like microscopy, but works for these product type shots.

So I'm going to persevere now - next time I'm going to start concentrating on the actual subject matter. For that reason probably best not to use something I'm going to immediately eat