I'd only been outside the church on Sat Althorp House for ten minutes when, out of nowhere, a few big, serious people appeared, apparently talking to their lapels.
is one-up the cell door on the yard peering carefully into middle distance, still hung-looking back where they came from and the last, largest and most serious made a bee-line for me. What happens?
I got my car and started walking towards the big one, and then, behind him, I caught sight of three persons, two of whom were women. This church has suddenly become very busy I think.
then dawned on me - people were at the police royal protection duties, three others were Earl Charles Spencer, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and their sister, Princess Diana. They walked up the hill, Diana wearing her father's ashes to a place in the family tomb in the church.
This was embarrassing, my camera was in the trunk of his car, no film or lenses. I ran back to the car, opened the boot and started to assemble my kit.
a great, serious man now moving quickly towards me. I do not know whether these particular guys carrying a weapon, but they definitely wanted me to give that impression. Hands shaking, I got the film wound on the spool, closed-back and stepped out from behind the car.
As soon as the big men spotted my camera, I saw them relax. It is obvious what they expected, so that a gentleman who was supposed to jump on me, had stepped back and clear the way for me to take my picture.
I got off about five frames on the cheap and nasty Sigma lens on an old Canon A1 body. pictures are in every UK national newspaper the next day, released worldwide and continues to sell now, on occasion.
for one hour "working" I made £ 11,000. I should have made more!
sounds like fun, and it is, but it is only a small part of what the news or paparazzi photographers.
As for equipment, it's horses for courses and any professional photographer will have a number of cameras, lenses, flashguns and bits and bobs that will allow you to meet any likely short.
good compact camera is always useful as a "walking-around" and use the camera on those occasions when the full-on, Pro SLR will attract attention, or too many questions.
For the past few years I have been using the Olympus C7070 wide, although it is probably time to buy something a bit more modern now. I chose Olympus because it is an excellent, fast lens, good low-light performance and good image chip. It is a bit slow to process images, zoom range is minimal, and the flash is not great, but it has done a good job over the years and it seems to indestructible.
One of them, the key thing to look for a good trigger response. camera that captures images half a second after you push the release is completely useless.
There is a compact SLR with good opportunities, so you have to compromise. I was ready to give up a little reaction to the lens, You May feel differently so purchased in accordance with
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As for the SLR, pro shooters will have a few, again for different occasions and, most importantly, as a back-up camera. Nikon and Canon are arguably the best pro, small format SLR camera, not a question. top-end of the body from these manufacturers are fantastic, the quality is stunning, they are built like tanks and they are a joy to use. They are also very, very expensive, weigh a ton and, in some situations, can be liabilities.
As for the number of pixels, ask any photographer who sells his paintings and he will tell you that the number of megapixels is not everything, indeed it is not the most important consideration.
This is less than ten years ago, when he became the first serious proposal for digital news photographers, the Nikon introduced its all-singing pro-Nikon D1 digital camera. This camera is still used today by some advantages, but it's a measly 2-megapixel imaging chip, smaller than almost all compact cameras today.
But it was good enough, as a paparazzo, the images will be used in newspapers and magazines, and the number of pixels around 12 million mark will be more than adequate.A more pixels will allow you to "pull" files still within the frame, which can be useful, but low-light performance degrades as the number of pixels increases, causing more problems and more.
"full-frame camera with image sensor which, for all intents and purposes, the same size as a 35mm film frame. This means that your expensive lenses will not work as they were designed to. Wide-angle lens will be wide -angle lens. It's very, very good thing, and if you can afford it you should do it.
Other considerations are the build quality, frame rate, speed of processing and the like, though, to be honest, I was at a higher level, pro-Sumer Canon or Nikon camera will be more than a match for 95% of situations you will encounter.
You're going to have at least two bodies, a majority of the work is done with 28-70mm on one body and 70-200mm on the other
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a quick word about the face-recognition, anti-red-eye reduction, digital zoom, scene recognition and all the other "features" that are actually tricks. You do not need or want them, there is no competent photographer would use them
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Lenses - It's going to be expensive! Without question, you must be able to cover 28mm to 200mm with two fast zooms. By quickly, I think a large aperture, f/2.8 lens. They are called fast because they allow you to use faster shutter speeds.
a very fast prime lens can be invaluable when the lamp or for portrait work, a nice macro lens for close-up work or to copy photos and documents, and 300mm lens and doubler are just what you need for "secret-squirrel "jobs, but they can wait as long as you have a 28mm to 200mm covered.
Top-end lenses have a very fast autofocus system and now are really necessary. Others have vibration reduction or image stabilization and it works. I have taken tak sharp images in the 15 second hand-300mm lens. If you can afford the VR or IS lenses, get them.
Independent Lens by manufacturers such as Sigma and Tamron are worth considering if your budget is tight. They are good, capable and useful lenses, but frankly nowhere near the quality of the lens in December offering big two. It's really worth spending money on your glass.
You May want to put a good quality, coated UV filter on your lens to protect the front, but otherwise the filters are not required for this type of work.
You will need two high-power flashguns, one for each body. Most snappers will use flash products of their camera manufacturer, although there are several good, third-party manufacturers flashguns. Nikon and Canon so that capable, powerful flash that integrate easily with a camera system and offer many features you'll never use. Metz is also very highly regarded manufacturer of flash. The German units are well made, high quality items that give the Nikon and Canon a run for their money and worth considering.
How often have you heard "Hold on, I'm just waiting for the flash to charge-up "? Of course, Angelina and Brad are not going to wait for your flashlight, so what do you do?
You use the external power pack. These packages contain some electronics and a sealed battery. I use a Quantum Turbo because it will work with most flashguns, very, very angry and will keep my flash going for a full, busy day. It will not hold up, if you're shooting very fast, but for 99% of the time will re-charge your flash almost immediately. It will pay for itself pretty quickly, because you'll have to buy much less expensive alkaline batteries.
Power Pack Power Flash-through cable and you should get a spare one of these, because they break down. You will also need to buy an adapter that will allow you to power two flashes from a battery.
You're going to need something to carry this around a lot, so that the bag is very important. For the news paper, the most important aspect of the bag is how fast you can get your gear and beyond. Backpacks are non-starters such as bags with a thick, modular padding.
I use Domke bags, others prefer Billingham or Lowepro. tripod, monopod always useful to keep in the boot of your car and some cleaning fluid and wipe the lens should be in the bag, along with spare batteries and memory cards, notebook and pen.
It's all shiny, expensive kit is very nice, but you must know how to use it and what are its special features. You must take the time to learn the equipment. A good way to do this is to use it at a wedding or a school sports day, any photography that requires you to think on your feet and adapt quickly to changes in light and composition will help you understand your camera with respect to news and paparazzi photos.
to cover kit, the following information to find out where the news happens? I'll cover that in my next article.
