The Canon Pro Solutions roadshow rolled up in London at the end of October 2009 and richardgough.com took this opportunity to take a look at how technology is helping photographers enhance and enjoy their work, both at a professional and consumer level:

Next Generation Digital Medium Format Cameras
Although this was a Canon event the legendary camera manufacture Hasselblad were present showing off and allowing visitors to try out their  H3DII-31
medium format digital camera system. The H3D has a Ultra autofocus technology which makes it much fast to use. Hasselblad hope this entry level medium format system will attract more fashion photographers to their cameras, along with broadening the company’s overall user base.

Using the model, set and lighting rig provided by Hasselblad I spent 20 minutes shooting with the H3D and found it incredibly easy to use and quick to understand. However, at a entry level price of around £10,000 this will most likely be a hired camera for many photographers but it did highlight the improvements being made to the medium format digital camera market. My photographs taken with the Hasselblad H3D

Animoto – “Turn your photos & videos into pure amazing”
Of all the technology that lives in the Cloud I have to declare a love for Animoto as it combines my passion for photography, a love of music and of course, Cloud hosted technology. Animoto were on hand to highlight their amazing product that produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from photos, video clips and music for both consumers and professionals. I been using Animoto with a consumer account since August this year and remain constantly amazed at the quality of the end product produced. Professional photographers and businesses alike can produce unlimited full-length videos, each licensed for commercial use with no Animoto branding for only $249 a year which is around £150 at the time of writing.

Fantastic Lighting with Gary Fong

Gary Fong Demonstrates the Power Snoop – Photo: Richard Gough

Using flash lighting whatever your skill can produce some harsh lighting at times so in 2002 the American photography Gary Fong set up a company that produced his invention the “Lightsphere”. The Lightsphere is a system of mounted diffusers that provide a solution to unflattering images lit with direct flash lighting. After inventing the Lightsphere Fong built a veritable cottage industry around variations of the popular dome-shaped Lightsphere light diffuser including variations called, “The Origami” and “The Puffer”. At the Canon Pro Solutions event Fong demonstrated his new power snoop unit which provided almost studio quality focussed lighting from a flash unit. Coupled with a wireless remote firing unit this makes for an excellent portable lighting solution for wedding and event photographers.

Make Your Camera Wireless
Although not at the Canon event I have included the incredibly clever Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card  card which has been available since 2008 in the USA and Canada but is now also on sale in the UK.

Eye-Fi cards store photographs like a traditional memory card and fit in most cameras. When you turn your camera on within range of a configured Wi-Fi network, it wirelessly transfers your photographs to a pre-determined location like Flickr via the Eye-Fi website. You can also automatically have your photographs  sent to your home computer (PC or Mac) available the next time your turn on your computer and connect to the Internet. The Eye-Fi Explore card (not yet available in the UK) has an additional feature that allows the card to upload from public WiFi hotspots provided by Wayport who have 10,000 locations across the USA. Another useful feature  available on some of the cards is the ability to Geotag your photographs so you can also record the location they were taken on maps like those provided by Google. The technology that powers this simple solution is provided by the US company Skyhook Wireless. Using the Skyhook network Eye.fi enable geo-tagging of photographs without native Wi-Fi hardware and also eliminates the need for cumbersome and expensive external GPS hardware.

Finally, there is also a pro version of the Eye-Fi card that allows the use of RAW files as well as JPG format images. It lets photographers quickly upload files to their laptop, using a Wi-Fi ad-hoc connection, in the background while they continue with their photo shoots. This allows clients to choose their best shots in near real time.

Portable Printing
Canon demonstrated how their new ES40 Selphy Compact Portable Printer can be used to provide instant photo printing at weddings and other events at a very cost effective alternative to professional event printing solutions. Canon suggest that wedding and event photographers can provide printing at their events to delivery personalised photo guest books allowing guest comments on the day to appear along the official and guest photographs. “In a quite moment the photographer can select some of the best images and let the printer automatically create multiple copies for the guests, while he (she) goes back to shooting. With a print time of 55 seconds per print, the photos are ready to hand out by the end of the speech.” The  ES40 costs around £160 from Amazon.

Online Photography Training
Delivering photography training online is not new, Better Photography in the USA have being doing this for a number of years. However, fitting training into modern life can be a hassle so the UK company PhotoTraining4U believes they have an answer.  They market their solution as “…genuinely affordable, short photography lessons that you can easily fit into daily coffee breaks.” They offer over 180 films that are already on line and with at least one new film added every week. These films cover such topics as Lighting Techniques, Posing Guides and Wedding workflow to name a few. A years subscription costs £199.