Andrew Macpherson

I was much touched to be invited to Mark and Megan’s wedding, and to some of the festivities leading up to the blessing in St Cecelia’s in Little Hadham, and the reception in Bury Green.  Great fun, and I also got to meet Greg and Teri Harris.  Teri is proprietor of Ladybug Photography a wedding specialist, and Greg has an enormous range to his photographic experience and qualification.

The first thing I learned, and it made sense as soon as I stopped to think about it, was to take off the lens and fit a body cap when putting cameras in to one’s bag.  That way one doesn’t need to have a continuously varying lens space in front of the body, and a partially unsupported lens, but rather can have a properly sized space with correctly placed padded dividers for body and lenses.  So obvious, so entirely different from what the bag makers are addressing in their marketing.

Teri had a problem with this wedding, as she was the bridesmaid.   Makes taking photos a little difficult, especially as she was, by office, an essential part of many tableaux.  Once the reception got going though, she succumbed to the need to get back behind a lens.  In the meantime Greg had ben shooting at a tremendous rate.  So that was point number two, keep going till well after you’re sure you have a shot for each scene, there are no re-runs.

I was offered 2 pieces of general advice — firstly to learn to shoot manual — or is that go back to shooting manual?  I think E-TTL flash mode was permitted, but I’m not sure .  The other was to never use flash for flowers.

Thanks guys! There is still so much to learn, and isn’t that great?

Every group has it’s own terminology.  For most purposes in the photography world one assumes that Pro means suitable for use by those who make a living doing photography. For most purposes.

Recently I’ve been looking at support systems — tripods, heads, L-brackets, lens foot plates as I’d got really fed up with tilt the tripod head 90° re-adjust the height and balance, take a couple of shots, reverse the sequence.  A better solution was needed, and the answer appeared to be an L-bracket allowing one to unclip the camera, swing it through 90° and use a second attachment point on the side.  This would mean that the eyepiece would stay roughly at the same hight, and the weight remain firmly centred above the intended support point on the tripod.  In fact it should work better with appropriate short lenses, than when one swings a long lens round  in its ring mount, as the eyepiece will not move so much.

So why did all the ads describe the L-brackets as Pro? It turns out that Pro means compatible with Arca-Swiss type fixings, and with no second 1/4-16 screw-hole.

Or to put that another way, Pro means

• Arca-Swiss / Arcatech
• Foba
• Giotto
• Induro
• Jobu
• Kirk
• Markins
• Really Right Stuff
• Wimberly

heads but not either Gitzo (though there is a converter), Manfrotto, Trek-Tech or Velbon who seem to dominate the tripod market.

Isn’t marketing-speak confusing?   But it does also point out that there is a quasi-standard that one might be well advised to go with.