Recent content by Lyope

When I need to buy in person (i.e. quickly) I go to Calumet in London. When it's not a rush job, Creativity Backgrounds are ace. In particular, their car-friendly rolls are bloody genius.

Yes, I have the Apple mouse and the trackpad and they are both without equal. I particularly love the trackpad and I don't think I could ever go back to a MS mouse.

There are no rules, really. These are two separate shots from a test shoot I did last week: They're both pretty much as I composed them in-camera and they both have that Peter Hurley negative space thing going on but for me, the first one is just that bit more punchy. Having said that, I...

Oh, I've done that, too. Just mount them on an umbrella swivel and it works really well. I find it best to leave the multifunction cap on to soften things up a bit.

I have one of these for when I'm using an Elinchrom 135cm Octa and it's bloody good. I use it on one of their C stands with a sandbag counterweight and it's rock solid. My advice would be this: Do not sod about with lightweight stands when you're using big modifiers. At best, it's a pain in...

I've got one and it's okay for when I'm travelling light and shooting with speedlights only. You really have to remove the front cloth to take it down, but that's not a biggie, it's easy to fit it. The main drawback is that if you're using it outside, it's BIG and you need a meaty stand and...

What about taking one of the cheapo Elinchrom 66cm Portalite boxes that they supply in lighting kits? They're only made out of four bits, a solid speedring, a front diffuser, a reflective cloth and the steel struts. The quality of light is great and they're fairly robist (if a little fiddly to...

When people ask me what camera they should get, unless I know they're the sort of people who will actually learn to use it, I generally tell them to buy a new iPhone. At least then, whilst they're getting over the disappointment of still taking crappy photos, they still have a nice shiny new iPhone

When I have to use a full length vinyl and I can't mount it on Autopoles (for instance, if the ceiling's too high or too weak) then I use a pair of C stands, each with the metal knuckle and boom arm. Most decent vinyls come on a sturdy tube (often aluminium) so just set the arms to horizontal...

Street Photographers like Bruce Gilden do use flash, it's true. Although there's no doubting the quality of his work and the soundness of his technique, even the most charitable descriptions of his attitude are often unprintable. I imagine he's had a whole lot of grief and it's not hard to...

I have the 1.4G and unless I need the speed for stupid low light stuff, I tend to shoot with it stopped down to f/1.8 and f/2 - at which point it is lovely. To be honest, it really doesn't matter which one you buy; you'll probably never notice the difference.

Meh, this is all starting to sound a bit like HiFi t***tery. It's only a lens and it's what you put in front of it that counts.

Although I'm not a wildlife shooter, I was facing this dilemma myself a while ago. I bought a used D3s and I'm delighted with it. From what I can tell, the step up in technology between D3 and D3s is much greater than the step between D3s and D4 (or for that matter, D4 and D4s, although I've...

Although I don't shoot weddings for money, when I was younger I had my arm twisted into it a number of times. On those occasions, I used a nifty fifty pretty much exclusively because it was faster and much sharper than anything else I could have got my hands on. If I ever have to do it again...