Sir Michael Caine

Or Maurice as he has always prefered to be called, is a “bloody funny bloke”… We have rarely laughed so much in as short a time, both the studio assistants were crying with laughter from behind the  reflectors and stands. Shooter One famous for being a very prepared and a fast photographer; completed the shoot in almost no time at all, and preceded to exchange jokes with this amazing actor until the “cars came” to take them both away.

Shooter One: “I have for a long time got the feeling that this man is little changed by 60 years as a professional actor, and that 6 Oscar nominations, a knighthood, 10 houses, and the rest have not gone to his head one jot. I have had the exact image I wanted in mind for a few months before the shoot. When I met him, I set up, framed and shot a short run of test frames, after which I took the shot followed by a few back up frames. I stopped and looked though the lot for a few moments in total silence, looked again at my third frame and stopped the shoot satisfied that it was as perfect as I could make it. What is the sense in wasting any more time shooting one of the coolest and still busiest “geezers” on the planet when you have your exact shot and you can be asking him about the script pace changes in the film Alfie: in person!

Some days I really like being a super fast worker, it took a while to get this fluent with lighting and with people. Sometimes it backfires a little as people wonder if you are worth the fee, as I walk around doing everything with apparent ease and talking about whatever feels right, people sometimes think I must not care; as I just have the light put here or there. I guess what some subjects will never get is I have tested every thing several times before going to bed, the night before every shoot I ever did for years, that kind of confidence is a massive investment in time and does not in itself make you a cleverer or better photographer, but it paid off today. Some one once told me Leonardo DaVinci worked very very quickly; he knew that things could never be perfect, but still he kept trying to get there anyway. Not by trying the same thing again but by trying it differently until he had something. I can relate to that; in as much as I can try to relate to a real genius.”

We guess any image of Maurice is going to have a little bit of genius about it, but shooter One’s image seems to have more depth and gravity than any other picture we could find of this English icon. If any image conveys the man this is it and it has more than a little of that magic that makes the photograph.

Shooter 1 got his hands on the new Nikon D4, the latest incarnation of “top of the range” the flagship in Nikon’s professional Camera line, (we got the camera via an old friend who was given one to evaluate by the company and who may be “killed” by Nikon if they figure out who he/she is after they read this review). Our man, pushed even button, tried every feature and ran a few hundred test shots across a wide range of subjects and lighting, all in comparison with some other top professional cameras. When he got back at Photography-Factory’s London HQ, we all sat about looked at the results in obsessive detail and finally talked long into the night about what a real top of the top professional camera should have, today in 2012. After that we had a look online at what people have been saying about this new camera and… Wow! The hype and the spin around this very unexciting offering was gut churning, so we thought we would immediately publish a full review on the Nikon D4; coming as a group of working professional photographers and not as journalists, or tech writers. These are strait talking views, with a few suggestions and ideas for you to consider, if you like and….  if any camera makers would like to talk to us, feel free to call, we are happy to share patents ideas guys, no stealing though ; ). 8th Jan 2012.

What is it? It is big, solid, ruggedised, state of the art, professional tool that can make the most precise calculations and then act instantly, sort of the “action hero” of the camera world. When you cannot fail, you will reach for the D4. It will hardly ever mess up your shot, it is tough, drilled and it is disciplined. If an out of focus shot is not an option D4! It almost loves the situations that make other cameras give up squealing for their mama. Low light, sand, rain, extreme cold or humidity, “difficult” changing lighting, super fast moving low contrast subject, into the sun, even the odd explosion, smash and grab hyaena press pack, it can handle a n y t h i n g – it feels a pity to take it out of the box for less. Though it “only” has 16 MPs, we will review it for all-around use and studio, as we all know that this will be the exact basis for the D4x, that will have 25+ megapixels, (a little bird told us). So what is wrong with it?

1. Ergonomics. The D4 is the camera that sets the standard for handling… i.e. it is almost exactly the same as the D3x… which is to say they could still be a lot better. We have always found the D1/2/3/4 shape is a little clumsy for people with big or small hands but the important stuff is where you can find it: a little easier than Canon or Sony. Modern digital SLR camera shape is a legacy feature handed down from a time when film had to go into cameras and wind across the back and be wound up again, this is not needed anymore! So the shape could change around the real needs of a DSLR and the people that use one every day: comfort, balance and ease of control. You will get comfortable with the classic layout in time, millions have. The button size, feel and pattern is fair. Menus: there is a lot to pack in here, there is little typical user consideration in the menus structure (the general way that people navigate to a feature) is not based on the way photographers think or common access need order, but just grouped by importance priority and by section within in the menu trees. At least if the menu hierarchy were fully customisable it would be a start, we (the users) could just make our best custom menu profile available on line or download someone else’s if it were better, that would be letting the public do the work, but I bet the guys and girls at Nikon might learn a thing or two. Once again as with Nikons latest offerings, in the D4 you can only set up custom modes. Canon is a lot better here. It does have a new joystick controller that is way better than the old one, but joysticks are quite 90′s tech. Nikon have back lit the buttons (AT LAST!!!) and you can link your iPad etc with an HTTP mode with the wireless controller WT5 accessory; that should have been included and built in to a slot in the body. The iPad software looked pants to us, but we have not seen it up close  (pants is more british slang meaning - crap)

2. LCD Screen. The screen is also a slight improvement on the D3 about 6% bigger and a bit more res @ and it has very good anti refection coatings (alas often pointless as most macho D4 type pros I see, put an anti scratch-film on the LCD)  The back screen has a thermal break gel between the glass layers, instead of just air, to prevent fogging in super cold or humid locations (i.e. england and japan).  So, why oh why is the whole back of the camera not a lovely big LCD? We are photographers BTW and generally we like to see the super high quality images we shoot, properly, at a glance with out zooming too much. There is a ton of space, when you look at the back of the camera all you see is the button areas on the back that could just be touch screen, when needed as input and screen when you are reviewing images (like an iPhone guys). Touch screens are a little dead but the camera could just have a little clicker or vibrate: so you know when you have actually pressed something. If a bigger screen sucks too much battery: it could be dim until a face looks at it, (i.e. put a little low res/consumption back facing camera that has face recognition, when it sees you looking at the screen it can turn up the brightness and try and guess what you would like to see next from you expression!) Hell while you are at it how about speech recognition for the most important 30 hi-speed situation commands? “full auto on!” “AE lock” “lighter” “burst mode”…..  Also a live-view monitor feature is badly compromised, if the screen can’t tilt a little, and the D4 can’t tilt at all: you are almost never sitting or standing with your face at the same hight as the camera back for a perfect 90 degree head on view, of course it should tilt up a bit and maybe down a bit at the very least, especially when the  camera is on a tripod and you can’t get down to the viewfinder. come on Nikon this one is so easy and it could be done so as to be almost just as flat when not in use and would add 12 grams. Also if you think the moving screen is not macho enough, you could always have it flip all the way over and become just tough plastic back with a few buttons for real rough stuff. The D4 view finder is brilliant, as it should be at that price, it makes almost every other DSLR camera look claustrophobic.

3. Low light performance. The C moss sensor and the processing engine work together to make this the best Camera in low light out there today. The scene/Af/meter now has 91,000 pixel sensor of it’s own and really never misses even when it is too dark to see! It is fast and locks on every time – probably the single real best reason to buy this camera. Nikon have missed a few tricks, but it would take half the night to explain why the camera needs a built in scatter burst laser pointer to evaluate reflectivity at distance in the dark, but what the hell, I just shoot a second bracket shot like everybody else.  I think, owl photographers, paparazzi hiding in bushes at 3am and night club photographers will be pretty much overjoyed in this area. Video at night is surreal, and starlight stuff photography almost possible. Win!

4. Video. Full HD uncompressed – nice, the results look slightly better than the Canon 5DmkII especially if the detail is complex, the skin tones are brilliant by comparison and as good as RED or PANASONICs $50k offerings (actually the skin tones are much better in stills performance too) But where the hell is a slow motion Mode??, Nikon have one of the best and fastest processing engines in the world on this camera it would have taken just a firm wear tweak to get real 500+ fps Slow motion vIdeo at a decent resolution. possibly by bust dumping though the cache, maybe just for few seconds of slow mo, (but hey, how much SM do you need?) Oh Nikon, if Casio can do this on a $200 camera… We love slo mo just look at some of our SM tests on this website. http://www.photography-factory.co.uk/photographyreviews/gallery/slow-motion-films/we-dont-shoot-weddings/    It does however have a very usable time laps mode, this is menu driven and can shoot an image sequence that will be saved as a Video file. The range goes from 1 frame per second all the way up to something like 1 frame every 25 minuets or 36,000 faster than real life (at 24fps playback), the possibilities are endless: maybe you could film the almost inevitable fall of western civilisation over the summer and watch it back over a coffee and bagel?

5. Picture quality. Super duper, let me just say film is now finally dead. The latitudes are HDR like at the lower end of the curve, the shadow detail is amazing, the skin tones the best of any SLR, I just have to say the image quality was a knock out. We shot back to back with a H4 Hassleblad, a D3x and a Canon 5dII and it has the best of them all: in terms of the basics of image quality. The new sensor / processing engine just ate up everything we could think of (low light large colour areas, bands and gratings, tiny hazy blue-green detail that always messes with the algorithms. But the differences are very slight, between all good cameras and the previous models, if quality matters to you it matters a lot. All the standard cmos “big chip” woes are significantly reduced, ringing, fringing, pit to pit light spill, local contrast retention effects are below 25 millisecond. It is a great setup form the ground up, but hell what do we expect it is Nikon’s best and most expensive camera bar none? It should be sorted. If I had a complaint it might be that they could incorporate a sort of “one frame HDR type latitude boost” feature in the camera with out a second shutter actuation, a double burst frame?, sort of a Raw+,  hell it is almost there anyway with the existing HDR, just that it is no use if the subject is in movement and that the kind of what this Camera is all about? Maybe the question is why has it taken this long to make a chip that feels like you are getting most of the colour detail that film cameras were getting 30 years ago?

6. Auto focus. The Nikon D4 has the best AF in the world, bar none; The “Multi-CAM 3500FX, with 51 Af points” . This is THE deal breaker when choosing Nikon over Canon. This camera never seems to mess up focus, even in candle light, it is like a stealth helicopter gun system, god help those it has locked on to. Canon’s always seem to miss a few shots in the AF department, it might be a low as 1 in 50 but it is always THE one fame I like the most that is soft for some murphyistic reason. The D4 has facial recognition that works well, and finally, the face area is used as the basis for the focus, AND exposure and tone control (something Shooter One suggested in a coffee bar Brainstorm to the guy who heads up the Aperture team at Apple about 12 years ago!) There are so many variants of this basic tech, that could be taken in hundreds of Professional directions it is a bit disappointing that the camera can ONLY do face recognition, like a little $100 compact only a lot faster and dependably… there are a ton of “low lying fruit” modes here for the taking, that could be really great for Professional Photographers needs (and we are not talking just nipple recognition for the Britney paps (probably an idea worth about $500,000 a year to the right paparazzi)).

7. Resolution. 16.2 MP full frame cmos sensor – Ok we are not fools, anything over 10 mp is “enough”, but a 40mp camera blows away any 16mp SLR in certain common situations, thats just pixel horse power for ya. The D4 has about the best 16 megapixels I have ever seen, it is that good. But why not 32? the tech is there on the shelf, the chips exist as do the buffer and processing. We all wanted it yesterday….D4x? We shot most of our tests as 12 and 14 bit raw  uncompressed to try and get the most direct information from the sensor, but we experimented with tiff and jpeg and to be honest unless you are in a colour critical situation jpeg at 1 to 4 compression is great. We found that this setting gave us a 180 frame burst into the buffer at full 11fps speed (an actual 10.7 frames per second by my stopwatch). If you look at some of the more detailed areas of the frame one thing is slightly strange, and that is the massive amounts of processing that are going on before the image is written even as a 14bit uncompressed raw, the work path id is full 16bit then the image processor does “stuff” to the image, this is all back room stuff and each brand has it’s own secret recipe for these unseen image adjustments. If you blow up shots with a lot of fine detail and look at these at 1 to 1 you will see that “identical shots” can be made to change how they handle the fine detail and colour just by turning the camera on and off, and recomposing very very slightly, this can occasionally fool the processor into thinking the scene needs a different algorithm and so the result in particular areas is suddenly very different. I guess there is always going to be a lot of black box tech that we must just accept, but I am slightly unsettled that I can’t know how rubbish those “cheaper” cmos chips actually might be, without all the hidden state of the art digital magic!

8. Connectivity. Ok the Nikon D4 has all the usual suspects and an ethernet connection; as they like to stream Video that way, in Japan. Not putting the new super super super fast thunderbolt in, for these big video files, and because we are professionals and our time is money, that omission seems stupid to me (not even USB3!). Thunderbolt makes the simple things faster too and supports an external monitor better than HDMI. Maybe it was the extra $8 who knows. Just buy the thunderbolt or USB3 card reader I guess. “best camera in the world? hmmm”        Nikon added a XQD memory card slot. This is a new format card, but the read speeds are not all that much faster than the best CF cards, so why? So we buy a lot of new cards? Who has a XQD reader? I guess we will find out if this is a smart move at the same time Nikon do. Having a backup CF slot was a nice feeling,  I guess you will have to buy at least one XQD card now; in case you bend a pin pushing a CF card in! Finally there is no Bluetooth (good for wireless headphones when shooting Video) and no GPS, the later seems a little ” Target market insensitive” when this camera is aimed at news, sports and wildlife shooters all of whom have a real need for GPS metadata in every image they take and sell.

9. Exposure. Does a great job 99.7% of the time and I am convinced that Nikon have the best exposure set up of any Camera maker, though the Canon EOS1 mkIII is superb here too. The Nikon can mess up, but lets face it, it is only a little computer trying to please all the people all the time… Still it is funny how the ambient meter on my 1963 Rolleiflex 2.8f is only about 1 or 2% worse in almost every situation and the meter on an old Nikon F4 is a probable halfway between the two and just as quick as the D4. There is a lot of progress in the scene recognition, but all that is achieved, is you need to think less…. I have a feeling all that computer power could be put to a lot cleverer ways of sorting out the trickier but common light situations, there is room for improvement. This camera, like every other I have ever tried, still messes up when the sun is in the frame, and just like my Rolleiflex.

10. Battery Life. The D4 uses a new bigger battery pack, the EN-EL18 is a nice Li ion unit. It slots along the bottom of the unit and snaps into place in a reassuring sort of VW golf kind of way. We got over 3k shots out of it, so you could probably get away with just 2 batteries even between two bodies. It uses a quick charger, and we stupidly did not time the recharge, it was about 40 mins ( a lot shorter than you could ever realistically burn though 3000 shots before the spare was dry)

Buying Advice. In a word there is no point buying this camera at this price, unless your daddy or boss is buying it. It should be half the price or a lot better than the D3x in major ways. The improvements over the D3 are Ok but there is no inovation at all. So what should you buy? For almost everyone, inc video heads: probably a pair of Canon 5DmkII (or the MKIII ; )) unless you are going to loose a low light money shot that might be worth the difference in price, i.e. in that “can’t do it again ever” situation were you need the best AF and exposure that there is: the Nikon D4. If you are the kind of professional photographer that would like something to take the ultimate picture, then a device with more MP res is what you need: (you might try a D3x or wait for the D4x but this is our suggestion)  there are some brilliant digital medium format cameras out there now, and coming soon, that have serious pixel power and great lenses, people do not buy them in very great numbers because they are expensive, but if you have D4 money you would be in the running and your images would love you. However you might have to do some thinking on your feet compared to a D4, as they will almost certainly not have the state of the art focus and metering. We think the Pentax 645D is a tremendous camera for value v resolution, the big Blad (Hasselblad 200MP H4D to you and me) is better but it is quite big write when you are putting down six figures for the whole kit.

So, hang on a minute, we love Nikon here, no? Why are we bagging on the D4 when it seems pretty decent? Especially while a lot of other people are blowing gold plated trumpets for the D4 from their roof tops?

Because in a few words,we are ashamed of the D4, and we are professionals that do not wish to waste our money buying last years ideas, it is only a lot of tiny advances on the D3 in real terms there are no game changing ideas in this camera, and yet we managed to think of about 70 real features that a could easily have been a part of “the latest best camera from the Pros best company” All our ideas were just hybridising existing technologies, we are not engineers, just looking and thinking outside the box for a second. If we can do this with no formal training in camera design, why can’t Nikon? What is this Vanilla with low fat update all about?

As great fans of Nikon for most of our lives, we have been holding out for at least some REAL technical, ergonomic or video advance from Nikon for some years now. The D4 was their last chance to keep us from buying a serious amount of Canon stuff next time we upgrade…. True, we will not be selling our 40 odd Nikon lenses on ebay just this week (the primes do come in handy on the RED I must say), but basically Nikon have blown it with this new Camera for us and I dare say a lot of other people. There are no excuses for this camera in 2012! This is mostly the camera you should have brought out 4 moths after Canon put out the 5DmkII in 2008 not a few weeks before they relase the MkIII in 2012. We think that the reason the guys at Nikon think they can dust off a few improvements on their old camera as something exciting is because the guys running the company are accountants and the engineers were sent home early when they finalised the D4. (Photographers have obviously been nowhere in the building for several years) Well screw you Nikon, I am buying something else, we might hire a D4 from time to time if we need infallible or bullet proof. I guess the Nikon guys will be laughing to themselves when my Canon breaks down, but what the hell… I shall just go out and buy another, with the money I saved!

This was a make or break shot for Minestry of Sound – Fantazia album cover, the modle is the sexy sister of their Bosses girlfriend, but she has to pass muster with the best looking girls on magazine covers and TV adverts. A little computer is used in almost every shot we do, the most important thing normally is it should be impossible to tell what is changed. Take a look at this image and try to figure out what looks unreal.

Here is the raw shot… maybe a bridge too far… but fantastic work and great fun to do.

Shooter One photographed Daniel Craig recently, as a clash of two amazing talents we knew this image was going to have a confrontational quality well beyond Daniel’s intense gaze. Most of the still images of the actor to date have been massively disappointing, some of the very best photographers have consistently failed to capture the detail complexity of this brilliant english actor and none of the presence and fire for which he is renown. Though this is just the simplest of black and white portraits, and like all of Shooter One’s studio sessions , it was completed in extremely short time – none the less it has already been hailed as one of the finest images of the actor ever. We have already had collector enquiries for prints, from as far as Japan and Germany.

It is the second time they have worked together the last time was in 2009, on that occasion things ended in sparks with in Daniel leaving the session in middle of a shot; possibly annoyed at shooter ones intrusive style of photography.  This time Daneil gave Shooter One the unguarded access into his personality that he has so obviously given to very few still photographers in recent history, and from this session emerges a starkly different character to the ice cold James Bond or distant lady killers we normally see on magazine covers.

Shooter One has photographed many of the most famous actors, musicians and politicians in the world, but even so this portrait seems to stand out as something brilliant. “Daniel stands with a new confidence, his air is that of a master at the top of his career, a man in charge of the landscape before him assured and loaded to step forward into greater challenges” Nothing seems to convey this point in the actors life quite as sutbley as this outstanding personal portrait, but it burns with so much more as well.

We will be producing a single limited edition of ten art prints from this image for collectors. Please email us ASAP if you would like to purchase, when they are sold there will be no reissue or extension of this print run. The price is $5,000 a signed and numbered black and white silver gelatine prints in 70cm by 50cm plus a large white border.

So that I will never loose it again, I am putting one here online our diary for myself to have access to 24/7 and all of you… Enjoy

The interesting thing about the A ratios are that they are made in the so called Golden ratio 1.61803399  (sexy no?)

This ratio is the one that looks the most pleasing to the eye, according to countless generations of artists and mathematicians, personally i am not convinced, but maybe we have just been over exposed, i so far have never found a ration that i can say i like a lot more… the other point to note is that each size is exactly twice the area of the preceding one, and as the ratio is preserved you can make the previous one by folding in half in the middle. This chart should show the whole thing as well as “legal” or foolscap (what ever that was)…

Table of Paper Sizes: 4A0 to A10 in cm and imperial

We build websites too so we are very familiar with an essential new adage “a website with great photography is a great website (even if it is quite simple) where as a fantastically well designed website with poor photos is usually a poor website”, I guess on the internet people “eat with their eyes” or look for the nearest place so you need to be well presented, and we do that very well.

Our objectives were quite complex, as the production is entirely by hand and the tools used are almost identical to those that would have been used in the 1700s, but the business is shipping to deadlines world wide. The images and have to simultaneously show artists at work and a modern production facility. The photography needs to be web friendly and quick to load. Some people say that website photography is easier and of lower quality, this is rubbish all professionals should do the most they can regardless of the medium, plus websites can be seen by the whole planet. Your work can go a long long way, more reason to take a pride and do a brilliant job.

Sometimes we are hired as location scouts without any filming or photography component, just because of our expert knowledge of London and UK locations, and I guess the fact we get results quickly. We just finished a 9 day job finding locations for an US/Italian film company and we are very soon going to undertake the finding and photographing of 4 or 5 very special locations for a new Twilight Film. I will do more posts around these projects as they develop, but back to our App idea.

Almost every time we take a journey outside of central London, whether it be for professional photography or just for fun, we are always distracted by some perfect hillside or an amazing building with unbelievable architecture. So many times I personally turned up 5 minutes late complaining about the traffic when in reality I just had to stop to take a few reference pictures of some cows in a field etc etc that I passed on the way to a meeting.

Amazing sunsets happen anywhere, even in London!

The App: We need a little soft wear that would seem to make the whole process a little more scientific, half the time when we are asked if we know a good location for x or y, the first thing that happens is we sort of remember that we did know a place but can’t quite remember where exactly it is, and usually that means a second trip to go and:

a) make sure we can find it

b) be certain it exists

c) check it has not changed or been removed, torn down, built over, fenced off or just over grown.

d) work out what the light will be like at different times of day

e) check local logistics, we we been a loo, can we find food or do we need to bring it etc etc

These extra trips would be less essential if we had a better idea of the location, but often the best we have is a photograph w have taken ourselves  and our memory of taking it…

Enter the iPhone (well any smart phone or tablet), it has a video camera where you can dictate a little description and at the same time record the views and angels as they are in front of you. this is a massive step up, but one still needs to fined the relevant films and work out where they were taken. I was suggesting that we build an app to help us. But before we sat down to make it i though i would scotch out what it would need…

This little app basically needs to log a location to GPS, find the nearest street address, save a photo with direction information and have a field for notes. But to be really perfect it needs some sunrise and sun set information (maybe with image overlays showing the path of the sun though your picture on a given day of the year) and a video recording feature so one can annotate the scene, ideally with speech recognition to transcribe ones thoughts so they are searchable and editable. Also a good way of hierarchically organising the locations by projects and categories. Then I would like an online data base of locations that could be uploaded by users so one could find out if someone else had a location idea in the area, maybe tourist boards could be encouraged to upload their own locations to help encourage local filming and photography…

So if anyone would like to help me partner/developing a new scouting App. Get in contact…

Here are some locations that we have found accidentally in our recent travels.

A view of Saudi Arabia from a beach in Eygpt taken during the recent revolution.

This rock has been polished to a mirror smooth finish by millennia of wind blow sand and wadi waters

The bases for the logo is an image of the founders bride to be; her eye to be exact over laid with the bezel (we think thats what it is called?) of a £50,000 1932 rolex time piece, apparently a holy grail for certain types of watch collector. We will post the full campaign as soon a the final art work is finished. Here is the approved image, there is a little retouching still to finish, a little glint around the left hand side needs to be replaced with the reflection of eyelashes that would be the natural thing to see, and I guess shooter one will ask to have his handsome refection removed as he is clearly visible triggering the Hassleblad H4 (and a carl Zeiss cf marco planar 120 f4) as a reflection in the eye ; )

Shooter 3

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

Sorapol Fashion Show

From that day on I have to say I have used the 7d more and more and damn it, I am slowly falling for it, it is a nice shape easy to use and the IS clearly best canon stills camera we have ever used, and between us here we have used them all. So here is the info as a professionals summary…

Ok the best things about the Canon 7D “pro” stills and video Camera are in order of importance to us: Video, custom settings, viewfinder, and colour (in jpegs) the worse things are basically the areas where it looses traction to our nikons, flash metering, viewfinder display, out of focus shots, grain/depth of field v full frame.

I will fill this in a bit,

Video –  Ok the video here is super, It is not quite as good as the 5D mkII as the sensor is smaller and so lacks the super shallow depth of field and also it has a slight problem with noise in the darker areas of the frame or in low light. But if you use it in the right way it is pretty much as good as a movie camera for shooting things designed for TV, it has inspired us to shoot a bunch of tests for a possible short film! (if we can ever find those brilliant unknown actors to collaborate with….)

Custom setting – the camera has three settings on the big dial on the LHS top of the camera, these say C1 C2 C3 and when you set them they remember stored presets for just about every setting on the camera, in other words you do not have to go into the menus to adjust stuff. Nikon are better than canon in many ways but they do not have these totally presets and once you have used them you really want them on your other cameras. The reason is simply most settings go together in groups, for certain types of photography, i.e. night shots, candid people stuff without flash, hi quality image landscape. basically if you are shooting one type of photography and see something else you can quickly reset up the camera with one touch of the dial and then set it all back again just a s fast… Brilliant it is like having 3 cameras in one.

The viewfinder is one of the best i have ever used, clear bright and detailed, it has an auto brightness feature that work very very well.

Canon seems to be the king of warm colours, and warm light, it aways seems to get the right AWB settings. I almost always shoot raw so we set our colours later, but this takes time and often the canon seems to get it just right. I have taken to setting the Camera to save both a jpeg and a raw of each frame, and giving the jpegs to the client to look at and choose from, they often need no work at all to look great especially if the photography is canid stuff in natural light.

Normal metering is fine but the flash metering is rubbish and never seems to get it right or the same twice. The most expensive flash is a little better, than the built in in this regard, so maybe it is a lack of power control?

The viewfinder is too busy, the AF stuff is in your face too much, nikon is better here by a country mile.

Focus…Now here is the main Canon Nikon thing, canon’s focus a little faster than nikon, but it gets it wrong for about 1 in 30 of the shots that matter. A nikon almost never gets this wrong but it is a “little” slower in most cases. A slightly out of focus shot is no use to anyone, and often you can’t tell until you see it big on a screen. For a professional this is a deal breaker if you do any sort of hunt and peck photography. The 7D is just like other Canons here, you can bet the image that the client was hoping for will be the one that is out of focus. for video this does not mater as we are alway using manual focus, or non canon lenses that do not even work with the auto focus.

This is a 1.6 size sensor i.e. it is a fair bit smaller than the full size 35mm sensor in the Canon 5d, this has two down falls for us, the depth of field is deeper, although this leads to better focus it looks less filmic, secondly the smaller chip is more closely packed and this leads to higher noise, the problem with noise is that unlike the old film grain it does not look very nice, and tends to be much more obvious in the data areas of the frame. Full frame cameras are better especially for cool filmic video…

We have shot some breathtaking video some cool stills and a lot of great candid work, this is a very very good camera. If a friend of mine was buying one camera for themselves to be all things at all times (as well as possible) and they were looking to spend under a £1000 on the body, this might be our 1st recommendation.

Could it be better? not really without being a new camera, but then if it were a fantasy camera there would be no contest: a Nikon 700D with, 20 mp, five full custom memories and brilliant 1080p (or better) video, now that would be …..

Shooter one

Recently did a shot for our long term art photographic project called “Workers”, there is no one paying us, it is a bit of “personal work” as they used to call it. That process led us into contact with some little known illegal activity, namely the decoding of premium sky TV satalite broadcast without paying SKY. I have a few friends who worked for sky in the UK and I guess there jobs depend on Mr Murdoch making enough profit to pay them each month, so we decided that we would explain in detail (and expose) this little know activity to everyone who is interested, you can then understand it completely and hopefully judge it for what it is…

What we stumbled on was a “free” HD system was blaring out nonstop Sky TV, sport and movies; what was very interesting was that it was made of simple kit (that one could get from a number of shops locally or online), and an all important internet address where one can instantly download the latest sky codes for free – and what is quite amazing is almost anyone could copy this set up and get “free” Sky TV, the whole system cost less than quarter the cost of a years subscription to the top Sky package, and as well as being free actually work better in some ways… But before I go into technical detail of how it all works –  a little backstory.

We have been doing this project for a long time and we have photographed, mechanics, doctors, shoemakers, singers, ministers, prostitutes in there places of work. We are not judging people, just showing how in our times these different individuals go about there professional daily lives though our photography. On our list of modern professions was drugs selling, as illegal as it gets but a large part of the big invisible economy and thus something we felt we needed to photograph if we were going to tell a complete history. As I have never touched drugs I asked a property developer that I know (who is well know to have made his first million in the sale of drugs at large scale rave parties in the 90′s) if he could help us find and photograph a real drug dealer (with a great face if possible). He said he could help me, but took three days before he provided me with PAG mobile number and an all important recommendation that we were real photographers and we had photographer a number of A-list celebrities,  they were apparently impressed by our work with Puff Daddy, Usher, Xzibit and Kelly Brook? Welcome to “The Wire” west London style…

After some negotiation by phone and checking with my references, I was picked up in Shepard’s Bush on foot and given a pair of sunglasses that were painted black inside to serve as a blindfold and not get too much attention, I was carefully led to a car, then driven for a while and then led to a flat on an estate i think, somewhere in close by but for sure in west london. There I was led past a large number of people into a front room (where i could finally take off my blindfold/glasses), I will not go into the scene too much here (come to our next exhibition and see the picture), but i never saw an drugs at all i got the feeling that some were close.  The room had closed curtains and the scenario was strangely dominated by the flicker of a muted 50′ 1080p plasma TV and the sky Movies playing of all things – Scarface. As I considered the irony and the intentions of my portrait subject (still to make his appearance on this scene) I admired the great 1080p picture with a look of cinematic wonder on my face. Suddenly a slightly proud but also slightly menacing voice came from behind me, offering in sort of explanation; “Cee Cee Cam init, Sky for free, football,movies, porn, everything, everything free” I quickly turned around and gave the person standing behind me a look of puzzlement, (as i had no idea what he meant by CCcam) he smiled a smile that would have done a hyena justice (he was part of the scary security, he looked like a very skinny deadly part of the security but maybe that was just me…) never the less he, with great care, explained how card sharing worked and answered my several detailed technical questions. I was amazed that this was possible, let alone quite easy to set up and use.

So this is exactly how it works (will try to explain all the concept of digital TV encryption and decryption as I go):

Satellite TV was once FTA or fee to air; that means that anyone with a simple dish pointed the exact right place in the heavens and receiver could see those channels like normal TV. A younger Mr Murdoch who owns Sky and other services, realised many years ago, that rather than just sell adverts they could could encrypted the channels and sell people the means to decode the signal: No pay No Television, easy.

Since the very beginning a device called a Cam unencrypts the signal, this is an extension to the receiver box itself, those original analogue cams’ internal function varies depending on the type of encryption (with thousands of channels on satellite TV there are several forms of encryption used around the world and a different cam for each was needed), some receivers have more than one cam build in to them or a slot where the Cam can be removed and changed. The sky box has just one cam for its own kind of encryption method. The CCcam is a virtual or soft wear cam, it emulates just about every cam ever made in one… very clever bit of community soft wear that is free to down load from hundreds of sites on line.

The final piece of the puzzle to unlock the TV signal is the encryption code key, this is a numerical sequence like a password that will unlock the encryption, it is provided by the company that encrypts the signal in the first place i.e. Sky etc. This code needs to get into the cam so that it can complete it’s work. But people are not expected to input a very long numerical password themselves so it comes in the form of a special card that is supplied by the company, this card fits into a slot on the receiver or in the cam module and if the card is up to date hey presto – You are able to watch your premiership Football etc.

Within a few months of this system being established people had figured ways to copy the cards and sell the counterfeits. This started a long game of cat and mouse between those wishing to sell TV subscriptions and those wishing to copy these and sell or give them away for free. The TV companies eventually realised that what they needed to do was to change the code regularly so that it would be impractical to copy it and distribute these replacement codes, firstly they changed them every month and sent out a new card every four weeks-  but that did not really work as the counterfeiters invented re-programable cards that people could be reset at home with the aid of a PC and a card reader/writer. Then the TV companies invented cards that updated the codes dynamically, self changing continuously in a way that could not be copied and was so fast that distribution of the new codes would be impractical, but some people got very fluent at finding “that days’” codes on the internet and putting them in. So we have now reached the point where the codes update every few seconds making it near impossible to manually enter codes before they are changed. For a while things looked good for Mr Murdock as the hole in the system seem to have been plugged.

So how is this system now being cheated so elegantly today? As you can imagine, like almost everything these days, the internet is the answer. The first bit of kit is the HD satellite receiver, but the device I saw in west London was the state of the art £140 Dreambox DM800HD. The interesting tiny box is openly on sale in most satellite TV shops, it is actually a very small computer, with a satellite tuner and HDMI output built in, it only needs to be connected to a satellite dish, your TV and the internet to give free Sky TV. Also this receiver/computer is basically capable of anything that a computer can do, to keep things inexpensive it uses the extremely good and totally free UNIX operating system instead of Windows.  The clever part is that the cam is no longer an actual physical device but is actually an emulation (kind of a virtual cam in software) this enables the device to decode any number of different encryption systems without needing to change a cam ever, the most popular virtual cam is the well know “CCcam” it is just a little bit of clever soft wear written by a consortium of dedicated volunteers and hacker computer geeks. The final piece of the puzzle is the key code number normally supplied by the TV channel , and as you can imagine this is provided in real time live over the internet, all that is needed is that one person (anywhere in the world ) has a legitimate Sky card that they put into a computer (or the Dreambox can be used for this too) and they can share the codes it produces almost instantly with any number of people via a simple internet connection. There are lots of people who do this for free across the world of the internet, though you will find people who will do this for a small fee a tiny fraction of that charge by the original TV company, because these people can resell the same codes many times over they can quickly turn a profit on this procedure. the user gets to watch expensive TV content for a very modest charge.

So what do people need to do to and buy to make this work for them in their own homes? Unfortunately for the satellite TV companies it seems that they need very little, a dish, an intelligent  programable receiver like the dream box DM 800HD (but there are several others), some special software called an “image” with is basically the program that runs the receiver, the Cam with is basically a sub-program that un-encrypts the signals, a connection to the internet, and finally sky (or whatever service) codes for someone who presumably has a legitimate card and is willing to share: hence the name of this game “card sharing”. The way the receiver is told how to locate the server it needs and the password to log into it in order to establish connection, is done via a short line of computer text called a C-line, it is a short internet address like a www. and it tells the receiver exactly where to find the latest unlock codes as it needs them. It will then update them as frequently as needed to be able to watch TV without any interruption. “Clines” as they are called can be bought (for about £5 a month for the full sky package) from a variety of different people over the internet, often based in countries that must be beyond the reach of the authorities…some people give clines away or they often exchanged between people, i.e. A give’s you Sky you give them Virgin lines etc etc it is basically very easy to do. The cline needs putting in the device once only and if it works it will update it self as needed! Needless to say the owners of the content and the TV companies are not well pleased.

I looked around the net for some free ones to et an idea of how complex this might be to set up:  it is about as basic as copying and pasting a line of text: A typical C-line for a CCcam takes this form-          C: <hostname> <port> <username> <password> <wantmus> { caid:id:uphops,caid:id:uphops, etc,etc }   with real values it is about 100 characters long, that’s not much effort for free sky football, movies, everything except the on demand stuff plus all the other channels that may be included, some services online claim to offer full Sky Italia (with the best football package in the world: Calcio)  and loads of movie packages from around the globe. The guys in the Bush told me they were paying about £7 per month and they just about had everything, at least one subscription TV service from france, italy, germany, holland, poland, spain, russia, etc etc. I think I must have counted about 500 premium channels that my guide flicked me though in the tour I received. You might ask what is the point of having so much free subscription TV in languages you can’t understand? Thats where speaking english seems to be an advantage (for once) as nearly all films made in english are shown that way by foreign TV companies! plus most of the sports sam to have an alternative soundtrack in english, this meant changing the sound track to the B track on the satellite receiver sound menu (it seemed to remember the setting for all and each channel, so you could leave them set to english, meaning it did not have to be done twice, handy.

So was it real? some of you have asked. Maybe they had an honest sky box under the stairs and the whole thing is a scam for selling fake recover boxes… Good point, so to test the thing out we purchased a c line via pay pal of all things, and i took it to a friend who has a Dreambox DM800, and it was very complicated to set up, the sever was in Russia and did not work, (I published this Cline here but was asked to take it down as it might help people decided on the best was to copy the setup). So convinced what we had seen was real we risked a few more dollars (the prices for the clines are often in euros or dollars) and tried again and this time it worked flawlessly and was as easy as copy and pasting the line into the box via a computer and a £2 cable, the cline server this time was based in Algeria and was all too easy to buy online via a popular auction site. Proving without a doubt that this whole activity is perfectly real and if we can do it anyone can do it. The quality was quite frankly AMAZING, I rather suspect there is no difference between HD from this box win this way and skys own equipment, the german Dreambox actually looked a little better in terms of sharpness, compression and colour fidelity to my professional eye but a huge amount depends on the TV used. I have to admit my friend sort of wanted to keep using the cline once he had seen it work, -just to watch a little football “now and then” – and he is what one would call a very honest person, but when I explained to him that thousands of peoples jobs are at stake if everyone chose to just “not pay”, things looked different, but who is saying this to the general public? No one it seems…

We have to admit,as professional photographers who work with computers we were amazed at the ingenuity and the technology that has been invested here, but it should be no surprise that people do this, I guess the problem is the whopping £700 that the full sky thing costs for a year, is seen as so much and the desire to see some of the content (esp the sports) is so great, that people have gone to these lengths on both sides…but then we live in strange times…. we are all hackers, and consumers of copies in some way, large companies all rip each other off when they can, like it or not. Normal people get caught up in this selfishness, and so it is not a very difficult step to becoming a criminal.  Maybe all this seems like some “computer fun”, and “full wow 1080p HDTV for free!”  At first it seems a victimless crime… but not quite.

The main problem I foresee with all this; is not just mr Murdock loosing a few dollars, that it is not just the dodgy legality stuff,  it is the fact the the TV and film industry will loose money they need to make decent programs, and in that we will all be poorer when these obviously popular (and less popular but good) channels go away because of lack of revenue. A free lunch is not often with out cost…

Finally what can poor old Mr Murdock and TV companies do to stop this? right now not much…. I foresee one of four outcomes:

1) All sky TV etc becomes over the net on demand style,

2) All the sky boxes use a new type of encryption that is very hard to make a cam for i.e. 256 bit

3) They stop the whole card thing and people must get there codes on line live though an account, which sky will cut off at any time if the catch people sharing…

4) They can try shut it down, close websites talking dealing in card sharing, and put pressure on the courts to give big fines and even sentences to some people involved in selling or possibly even buying card sharing in the UK, in the hope that a series of show trials might put people off.

In short, what we think… the only thing that is going to stop this very real activity in the short term, in our opinion is if we all realise what we see when we see it and understand that this is: a form of stealing, and shun it, and the people using it for what it is.

PS Obviously do not try and do this yourself it is almost with out doubt not legal to watch encrypted TV without paying the right people for it,!

This is not a guide on how to do it, there are no links to bad stuff on this site. This post is just an explanation of something fascinating we have seen that we have exposed for you all to understand and see.

If you read this far would you be kind enough to share or like this page using the share link on the top right.

shooter 3

We do quite a lot of top quality commercial still photography, most of the time the clients have a very clear idea of the type of glossy image they are hoping for. We almost always do a far better job than the clients were expecting, mainly as we have between us a vast experience of lighting setups and studio techniques, unfortunately most of this work has a slightly familiar feel to it. The most interesting work we do is usually for ourselves or sometimes for a glossy magazine who are trying to break the mould and out do the competition with something very original.

Earlier this year we did some tests into creating some commercial product photography by shooting the same product under several different lighting conditions and slowly adding the results together in photoshop to evolve a very unusual product image. something that lacked the zazz of hi contrast lighting and bold reflections,

the reason that this is unusual is that this image is impossible, it could never have been produced in camera, the various exposures would have canceled each other out. We used various masks and blending options just to be able to put these composite images together, and a whole lot of seat of the pants judgement to find the right balance. It is not quite there as we did some conventional stuff a few day later that the client like much more.

In total we made this image from 11 separate exposures and including rim living and backlighting versions.

I hope you will agree that the results have a certain something, i think we need to take this idea a lot further. I hope we find the time soon.

a huge amount of work produced this enigmatic image... but is is better?

The images were shot on a 105mm nikon micro lens mounted on the most solid study stand we could find in the UK.

Location is everything when trying to establish atmosphere this kind of image, the visual environment is king, the face of the individual is best represented as close to original sitter as possible (i.e. no clever flattery with the computer) and the artistry is in finding the setting and then using that make the atmosphere real.

We were so inspired that we when out and shot a few extra images for ourselves of people that were not in our clients book, primarily of the love of photography itself and as much as not to pay some small homage to a few brilliant craftsmen that we have run into over the years. Here is one of this photographic portraits:

The sitter is a certain martin wittering: he is among the finest motocycle tuners you can find, his loving hands will turn any off road motocycle into a small heep of angry joy. His face tells the story.

looks like nothing at all, doesn’t it…

I like Nikon, they make nicer cameras and lenses than canon, they auto focus better, they feel better, they just seem to be ready fast and a more willing partner than any Canon.

But sometimes Canon just get it so right, and this lens is one of those times. No other company has managed to make anything quite as good as this lens at these focal lengths / aperture.

The way this lens pulls in light is just somehow different to all other wide zooms and even the very best wide angle primes are only as good.  The images just look alive, the boken is great and the pictures are sharp and contrasty in a way that makes every image almost 3D. Side by side this lens just knocks the boots off anything that i have ever put up against it.  If you have  a canon 5D mkII or a 7D do your self a bit favour (at £1500 it is a very big favour) and get this lens.

If you use Nikon professionally like we do, maybe you should have one canon body so you can use this lens?….

the dream collection

The first album is for a male singer guitarist (we can’t say who for now), this is a fantastic multi level project for one of the most talented recording artists in the world, we are frankly amazed that they gave us this project, we did a very small job for this client a while ago (less than £200!) and they were so impressed they asked us to do this top level job ahead of virtually every other photographic agency and top professional music photographer in the country, and it is 200x the previous budget! They said it was because our emails are so funny… I think our photography and ideas might have a little to do with it  ;) Plus they already know we will do the best work that is possible. This project involving a large number of people and has led us to some really interesting top locations in the music business, we have only completed the work for the booklet so far and the planing for the cover and PR shoots. Unfortunately our contract prevents us from sating anything about who our client is for the time being but you can bet your bottom dollar tat this is going to be a monster album when it comes out in Feb next year. We have a few outtakes of these amazing studios, these are the locations where some of the best know songs in the music business were first recorded, it was humbling to stand in front of the microphones where the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Adel etc etc have sung, long into the night . We have included a few of our own compact camera “starstruck” images just for a taster.   Our other current music project is a solo female singer called Mara, She is producing a self financed album on very limited funds, with enough talent to go around twice over. She asked very us politely to do our best to help  her career with the funds available. We did a few test shots to get a feel for the project and see have Mara works on camera, take a look for yourself: Next stage will be a full shot and viral videos.

We are currently working on the imagery for the new killer website, magazine advertising and some very clever bill boards. This is a major international campaign that we are undertaking, we are making a lot of amazing creative content for a small budget, but it is fun to do this giant killer stuff. We like new media and are inspired to be treading new ground almost daily in this emerging and very young viral space, still there is little substitute for photographic talent; so we need to come down from the great ideas tower and get into the studio and shoot images and make films. The best ideas often come to us when shooting other ideas, forward motion. I often wonder how advertising executives get any inspiration sitting at a desk?

film? not in London...

We are going to paris and milan to do some castings and make a few virals for this project, in the coming weeks. After that we are undertaking a special effects and animation idea that is really crazy and will top the 3.3 million views our last set of virals achieved in the 2 or so months it has been active. We will put these new works up as soon as we have an Ok from the client to show some stuff (i.e. as soon as they have gone to “print” themselves).

This kind of fashion photography relies on team effort, you are only as cool as your “weakest” link, the makeup artist is as important as the model as the set builder as the retoucher; one can easily ruin the good work of the other. Fining creative people of this level of talent is sometime the hardest part of this kind of work. The search for brilliant talent to work with who will not drag down our ideas is never ending. If you are really something special get in contact ; )

It is all go at the factory this week, i have hardly has a moment to polish my old Rolleiflex still this stuff is fun.

Shooter one

We were approached by a bespoke gym frequented by celebrities, the ultra rich and some professional athaletes! They had been to several adverizing agencies and seen ideas from about 12 other professional photographers based in LA, and New York. They were basically very unhappy with  the standard of work. They contacted us because they needed some portraits of the UK directors, but they were so happy with the job we did that they asked us if we had any ideas for their advertising. Normaly we do not get involved in competition with advertising agencies; as they are some of our best clients and they are having a tough time of it right now, but as they were dealing with agencies in New York and were not dealing with any London agencies we came up with up with a series of photographic images and ideas to give some sense of fun and style to the Campaign.

Most of the campaign material produced by the USA based add agencies for the large gym chains like LA fittness and Virgin gyms are by and large rubbish, and serve mainly to let people know about special offers, they are in our opinion a waste of space. So when they liked our work so much that we were asked to direct the whole campaign: we jumped at the chance to have a little style fun… And low and behold we won the work!!!

The objective was to get more young women to join the gym, we only had a budget of £29,000 (an add agency had quoted $175,000) but we managed to do all the photography at the gym and on location in Canada, produce the graphics and the banners and update the website.

We are happy to report that we were informed that membership is up 47% on the same period the previous year as a direct result of our work (70% of these were women between 18 and 25).

As a bonus for how effective our work was we were all presented with free memberships.  (now we just need to find some time to go…. : )

Here are a couple of out takes that we did for fun….

Like almost everywhere we have been on location to do professional photography, in thiscase advertising photography, Cuba is full of little possibilities to snatch a little image or two with a compact camera that can (even when set to auto) be in many ways the key photographic evidence of the actual experience of the location without really showing any of the real “shoot” . So here are a few images without the models, makeup, photographic equipment or computers….

mmmm

In the process of doing this work, we have been working with some of the most interesting people in this sector. One of them was a young lady called Donna Grey, donna is a enduro champion, she has been helping train us in the ways of riding high power bikes on loose and shifting surfaces. While we were filming some pretests she was on hand to give us technical advice. As we were on hand with a 3 Canon 7d’s we could hardly turn down her request to take a few images for her new website. You can see the results below:

one finger on each lever...

perfectly normal

Oh Jacko…

Michael Jackson had been living in public since he was ten. He was the prototype for ‘The Truman Show.’ Imagine going through puberty and adolescence in front of a fleet of cameras. The world gets to see, hear and comment on our sexual awakening and cluelessness, on our bodies going bonkers: zits, voice changing (a singer’s voice), too fat, too skinny, nose too big, not nice enough, not down enough, too politically conscious for Young America, too soft for the streets, too black, too white. Too much responsibility. Not enough fun.

The Jackson 5 hit the charts during the chaos of the anti-war movement and the militant phase of the civil rights movement. Michael was too young and too driven by the commercial demands of his family and his mentor/employer Berry Gordy to tap into the political/philosophical side of youth culture — a rare sliver of time when young people had goals deeper than fun and status. His major breakthrough occurred in the 80′s as a solo artist during the Thatcher/Reagan era when our lingering humiliation over the recent past sought relief in nostalgia for the certainties of the 50′s.

Coupled with the birth of MTV, materialism replaced social consciousness as the reigning aesthetic of youth culture. Artiface and acquisition, vogueing and coke, polyester motorcycle jackets and business suits. Fashion models became superstars just because they were pretty, corporate CEOs because they were rich, and Robin Leach because he publicly swooned over the rich and pretty for our amusement. Jackson was the most famous rich pretty person on earth.

The pressure to stay young and pretty, coupled with the onset of his alleged skin condition (vitiligo, which causes irregularly shaped white blotches on the skin), must have put this hopelessly exposed and fragile man-child into an ongoing dull roar of panic. The extreme nature of his fame, visibility and the pressure to maintain the winning formula in a formula-bound youth culture must have been crushing to a person who had known nothing but pop music success.

The call to surgically derived youth had been answered long before Michael Jackson got to it. But Jackson, unlike his nipped and tucked predecessors, was introduced to the scalpel at a time when the technology of virtual youth offered transformative potential that would have given Mary Shelly the creeps. And few humans of any age had Michael Jackson’s enormous wealth with which to indulge surgery to such monstrous ends. Only in horror stories of the “undead” were these transformations previously contemplated: ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘The Island Of Dr. Moreau’ and zombie flicks like ‘Dawn of The Dead.’

The enormity of his talents has only been surpassed by the depths of his preventive isolation. His pathological drive to stay young for his adolescent market and his lack of intellectual curiosity and maturity precluded evolving into a “mature” artist like Al Green, Sting, Mick Jagger and Robert Plant, whose records are no longer guaranteed to sell multi-platinum but allow for longterm creative careers.

The audience that grew up with Michael Jackson would certainly forgive him for aging along with them. He could have let the teeny boppers serve the teeny boppers. Instead he chose the reality-defying strategy of being a teenager for life. Steven Tyler proved that a popstar could remain a teenager in the head for life. Committing one’s body to this goal is a hard wall to bang and Jackson is a banged up old guy for trying.

Fear is a soul-twisting thing; but no fear is as distorting as a generalized fear of reality. The cult of fear and its antidote — artifice — leads to a dead end. Artiface is a facsimile of life — the aesthetic of the “undead.” Death metal, fashion models posed and lit to look starved and devoid of consciousness, serial face-lifting that renders a person’s face a cadaverous mask, the Tarrantino fetish of graphic violence as comedy.

The eroticism of deadness is everywhere. The punk era popularized the black lipstick and mascara look of a cadaver. A woman’s face with so much makeup as to obscure emotional expressiveness is generally associated with sexiness as is the dissipated manequin-chic that typifies so much fashion modeling. The exquisiteness of design and the fact that much of this aesthetic has a nudge-nudge-wink-wink aspect doesn’t lighten its weight in the overall cultural lexicon, particularly as it filters down to younger generations who are unaware of the original ironic allusions.

If all of us could afford the excesses of Michael Jackson, how abnormal would he then be? Could I go that far and not know it? That’s the scary question we ask ourselves when we rubberneck our tv every time he appears. It’s our own cult of necrophilia that causes the air to vibrate when we see that face and hear that voice recite the Peter Pan platitudes in a woozy soprano. We’re terrified but can’t look away. His music is now merely an asterisk on his resumZ\Z. Removing him is the only way out of our discomforting addiction to sensational coverage his ever-evolving creepiness. And pedophilia is the silver bullet.

Last year I watched the BBC documentary on Jackson. It was a truly repellant experience. The only thing more horrifying was the parade of coverage and commentary that revealed a bizarre giddiness in its malice. Whom did he murder? Whose life savings did he scam? Whose job did he outsource?

Why are so many people so sure he’s a pedophile despite the absence of any reported clear evidence? We believe what we’re comfortable believing. And we want to believe Michael Jackson is guilty. We want to believe that it’s impossible for an adult to lie in bed with a child or adolescent without any sexual activity or motivations.

I have no way of knowing what Jackson did or didn’t do. I do know that our slow collective public murder of this man is one of the ugliest media spectacles ever witnessed. If we’re not ashamed, then we truly are the undead.

My opinion on this is…We as a society fail every day, that’s nothing new, we let the vulnerable down in our world in a thousand ways, and we have no desire to fix these problems. So it counts for very little when we allow a man to hide behind his wealth, to go septic in the damp humidity of his own deluded fantasies. And as he plainly seemed to be some kind of danger to young people, leave him almost unchallenged? Funny…. after looking into every crack of this mans life… we turn away because he has paid people to tell us to, and are happy to make jokes… then i feel we are simply as much to blame as the people who took his money, took his big wads of cash and told him they could do whatever he wanted done no matter how wrong that might be.

We failed Mr M Jackson – 50, even if we simply failed to get to the truth and failed to put him in prison…firstly to protect others from him but also to protect him from the people that exploited him (to his death), plastic surgeons, lawless lawyers and private doctors. One thing is plain and obvious to everyone; he is better off dead…and most of the people around him should be made to do his prison time.

Naomi is 16, and works with us at photography factory when she is off school pretty much as an equal member. Lets be honest age is irrelevant in a great picture, plus she has a sense of the social media space to rival the best new media agency analysts. All the newest trends are always playing out as only she predicts. Her detailed clear and analysis of youth culture on the internet is worth a million dollars to us and she is a key member of our team. More importantly her simple black and white photographic portraits are utterly brilliant, an evocation of sub suburban teenage life as seen though the eyes of a 15 (now 16) year old girl. But on the day of this slow motion test Naomi was not her normal beautiful smiling dry sarcastic self (think Juno with a camera). Recently she had a relationship with a Hollister lookalike boy end in an unfair way (what was ever fair about being 16?) and have to get it all dragged around the internet as the aftermath played out on FaceBook in a very modern and very public way. So in other words she was putting on a brave face. We all involved setting up the high speed camera and needed someone to stand in as a lighting dummy, When shooter one had the idea to getting someone to shake their hair around… and see how it might look at 2000 fps. Naomi stepped up to the plate and quite shocked us by the force and passion she used to whip. The beguiling result is here… if you look at here closely you can see something else:
Something about that action and the air swishing though her hair just seemed to change her mood, as if she had just tossed away the weight of an the old nightmare, something thick and heavy that had been clinging to her, but suddenly it was gone. As she was hair whipping for the camera, shooter one quietly said to himself:
“Go girl, shake that boy right out of your hair…

We don't do weddings!

We are taking a while to get our next bunch of slow motion tests under way…

They will be worth the wait…