Photo shoot for Robert John Godfrey’s new album

A few weeks ago I went to Northampton to take some photos for the cover of Robert John Godfrey’s new album “The Art of Melody”. At the same time, I took along my video camera and recorded an interview.

You can see the cover of the album already, at:

http://www.theenid.co.uk/news/3/271-new-album-from-robert-john-godfrey.html

Some other photos from the session are here:

The video will go online once it has been edited.

UPDATE (14.Feb.2012)

I am absolutely delighted that Robert’s double-single (with the same photo as the album) is at both #2 and #3 in the amazon.co.uk Classical music Bestsellers list:

UPDATE (15.Feb.2012)

And today they are at #1 and #3 in the amazon.co.uk Classical music Bestsellers list:

Photo and Video Libraries: the good and the bad

Many years ago, I started selling my photos (transparencies from both 35mm and 6×45 film in those days) with a physical photolibrary, based in London, called Greg Evans International.

I made some sales, earned some money.

Then one day (for reasons which I don’t know) they closed. Despite repeatedly asking for my photos back, I received nothing except promises that they would be sent.

It took me several years to actually track down the elusive Greg Evans (with the help of several other photographers who had the same problem) because he resorted to using false addresses.

At last I got most of my photos back. But he still has several of my best shots.

This agency goes in the “bad” section!

Now for good agencies.

These days almost every agency is online and you only need to send them digital copies of your images. Safe and easy.

So who can I recommend?

Well so far I have only signed up with two, but as I find more, I will add them to this post.

1. iStockphoto

They accept still photos, video clips, illustrations and sound clips.

They pay royalty rates of between 15%-20% to its non-exclusive contributors, and will pay by PayPal.

2. Shutterstock

They accept both stills and video footage.

Image payout rates range from $0.25 to $28.00 USD per download. Footage contributors earn a 30% commission each time a clip is purchased. They will pay by PayPal.

Another daylight shot…

I then took a shot with greenery in it.

Epic, straight

5D straight

Epic, processed in RedCine-X

5D, processed in ACR

and 100% crops:

Epic 100% crop

5D 100% crop

This time the Epic seems to have better detail and colour.

Although overall the Canon shot seems “smoother” but a bit too yellow again.

And now for Daylight shots

Today the rain let up and so I took the 2 cameras out for a test of their performance in daylight.

First I shot the pier at 1/100 sec and f11.

Epic, Daylight, straight from camera

Epic, Daylight, processed in RedCine-X

5D, Daylight, processed in ACR

The RedCine-X settings used:

RedCine-X settings

Both cameras do a great job with this shot.

The Epic produces fantastic colours in the sky, whilst the 5D2 is somewhat yellowish.

But in the 100% crop, the Canon 5D2 has the edge in terms of  detail.

Epic 100% centre crop

5D 100% centre crop

Still photos from Red Epic and Canon 5D2

Currently my Red Epic is not very portable.

The battery module still hasn’t arrived, so I am having to power it from 240V mains. Luckily I have a 150W inverter in my car, so I can power it from that.

So… how does the Red Epic compare with the Canon 5D2 for stills?

Jim Jannard claims that the Epic looks so good it beats top of the range stills, such as the Phase One, in tests with Peter Lik. But they are not releasing any R3D files or disclosing how they made it look good. Hmm. So I will do my own comparisons.

Technically:

Max resolution

Epic: 5120 x 2700

5D2: 5616 x 3744

Sensor size

Epic: 27.7 x 14.6 mm CMOS

5D2: 36 × 24 mm CMOS

Shutter speeds

Epic: 1 to 1/8000 s (not usable for long exposures)

5D2: 30 to 1/8000 s

Let’s look at some actual images. For these comparisons, both cameras were set to 800 ISO, 1/50 second shutter.

Firstly shot under tungsten light. This setup was backlit with a 150W Dedo.

Epic image, no processing, resized to 1920 wide.

Epic image, curves applied in RedCine-X, resized to 1920 wide.

5D image, no processing, resized to 1920 wide.

 

The 100% crop shows the Epic looking much noisier than the 5D2:

100% centre crop from Epic

100% centre crop from the 5D2

Tests in daylight will follow soon…