This topic contains 4 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
We just finished a very fun few days of shooting. First we had feisty Faye Taylor visit us then a return visit of the gorgeous Penny Lee. Here’s a few sample shots and video grabs hot off the camera.
Disappointingly, Dave the Hasselblad decided to go on strike towards the end of the day shooting with Faye (his shutter release button stopped focussing, then stopped working entirely). Another rest cure in sunny Elstree is in his future I think. So we boldly carried on shooting with the backup Canon 7D, a camera which I’ve never really grown to love but which really saved my bacon this time! 🙂
I’ve just sold the last two old Panasonic video cameras on eBay and am wonderful what to buy next. Very, very tempted by a gimbal rig for video. Also tempted by a Panasonic GH4, mostly for video but also as a lightweight backup stills camera.
Shooting with the 7D again has certainly made me appreciate the need for a backup stills camera, and also reminded me how flexible a photographic tool something like a 7D plus 18-135 mm STM IS lens is for general shooting.
I love the images from the Hasselblad and the RED, but they are specialist tools. There’s a lot to be said for owning one camera which you can just turn on and shoot in almost any conditions shy of total darkness and get SOMETHING useable out…
Instead of buying a super-sexu new anything, what I actually bought was £2400 worth of Synology boxes and 4 TB hard drives, because Dave and Lady Scarlet have filled up my current 32 TB of data store already. This is not a very exciting thing to have to buy!
Hywel.
“Dave the Hasselblad” – I didn’t know you named your cameras. Or is it only the elite cameras with levels in PC classes that get names?
I’m getting ready to go the Fetishcon again, and as usual I’m worrying about not having anything better than a point & shoot as a back up camera. How often have you run into situtations where your main camera died and you had to rely on a back-up?
Hi Sablesword,
It hasn’t happened that often. My original film Canon SLR died on a shoot and I had to cycle into town to buy a replacement (wife had the car), wasting a couple of hours of model’s shoot time.
The shutter mechanism gave up the ghost on one of the Canon dSLRs, 10D or something like that, but I was wise to it by that time and had kept the previous generation dSLR so just switched back to that. Those cameras were only rated to 100,000 shutter actuations or something so it was a fair cop, I had the shutter changed then flogged it and bought a new next-generation one. I think the same thing happened to a subsequent generation 10/20/30D camera too, which is when I moved on to the more pro-spec 5D Mark I.
The Hasselblad got cranky at the end of a long location shoot in Spain one time, I think we’d maybe jolted it because the autofocus calibration went out. Just switched to the 7D for the last day of the shoot and send Dave back to Scandinavia for a rest-cure.
So I always try to have a backup camera that’s capable of manual exposure control and hotshoe with me at every shoot. In recent times the 7D has also been the backup video camera in case Lady Scarlet plays up (which thus far she never has).
I’ve got a GF1 as a backup to the backup in case the 7D dies while Dave is getting fixed. Sure, the images won’t be as lovely, but a 16 megapixel image on a micro-four-thirds camera is a hell of a lot better than trying to shoot with an iPhone with studio flash.
As to why only the Hasselblad and the RED have names- you’ll have to ask Kate. She was the one who started calling Dave by name 🙂
I’m thinking it is time to replace the 7D though, I’ve never really fallen in love with its ergonomics despite it being a very capable performer. Dpending on what Canon come up with in the next few months, I might just pick up a second hand 5D Mark II. I’ve used Steve’s a few times and it is one of the nicest cameras I’ve ever shot with.
Cheers, Hywel
-
This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by
So it sounds like it happens just often enough to worry about, but not quite often enough for a person in my position to actually do something about :/ But it also sounds like a good reason to keep my D90 around as a backup when I do finally give in to the urge to upgrade.
Yes, that’s about the size of it. It’s happened often enough that I always take a backup camera with me.
It does have spin off benefits if the second camera has somewhat different strengths and weaknesses. The 7D has much (much much) better low light performance than the Hasselblad. That’s let me shoot available light sets in some circumstances where lighting for the Hasselblad would have been impractical or ruined the mood:
would have been tricky to shoot with Dave.
I also have a long-range zoom for the Canon which makes shooting in cramped or dirty conditions a lot easier than with the primes which are all I have for Dave. The Canon speedlight with a diffuser over the flash is a useful option to have around for fill in shots like the sunset ones of Penny Lee where we had to move fast, too. I’ve just never got around to getting the Hasselblad/Metz equivalent for Dave.
So generally I like to have a backup camera that complements the main camera… but failing that, I’d definitely keep hold of the old camera when you finally upgrade.
Cheers, Hywel.
-
This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by
The forum ‘Previews & Announcements’ is closed to new topics and replies.