For the record, it’s not always the best idea to hire a professional. We all started out as enthusiasts and proved our ground shooting for friends and family or picking up low budget jobs. There are some gigs that are simply better suited for your Uncle Steve or to that friend of a friend who’s studying photography at college. And then there are some jobs where you’re just not sure whether to fawk out for a pro or not.

This post is aimed at helping you make the best decision for your needs.

Okay, so when shouldn’t I use a Pro?

Sometimes the job just isn’t all that important: maybe its a family get together and capturing some of the moments would be a nice idea but it isn’t really essential. You’re already worn out booking the venue and making sure everybody’s travel arrangements are sorted out and you don’t want to have to search for a good photographer within your budget on top of all that.

In that case it might be better all round to ask Uncle Steve if he wouldn’t mind bringing the DSLR he got for Christmas to the gathering.

Sometimes you just don’t have the money for a professional photographer: maybe you’re just starting a new business and would like a photographer to attend the launch event but you’re already cutting your budget close to the bone and you have no guarantee that the business will take off. A professional has to charge a certain amount because they have their own business overheads to consider.

A student or enthusiastic friend however… they don’t need to charge as much and if they’re halfway decent you should still get some shots that you can use on your blog or post on Facebook etc

I see. And when is it important to hire a Pro Shooter?

Well, its important to hire a professional when it’s essential to get the shots, when you need consistency and guaranteed results, when you need someone who can interpret a loosely formed idea and turn it into an amazing image and/or when the photographs need to be taken in difficult lighting situations. There are many more situations when a pro is the best choice (most of them obvious) but those are the aspects you need to look at if you’re unsure.

If you’re having a party in a nightclub and you want some really good shots of your guests, then you probably need a professional; the mixed lighting is difficult to work with if you don’t know the craft and an enthusiast may well deliver pictures of white faces (bleached out by the flash) against a black background (because they forgot about capturing the club’s background lighting too).

If it’s your Ruby Wedding anniversary and you really want some nice shots of everyone -  perhaps you’re hoping for a picture you can mount and put on your wall – then you need a professional who can guarantee you quality shots and who knows how to format the files so they’re suitable for large prints.

Being able to work a camera is not the same thing as understanding the craft of photography, so if you’re unsure, then it’s best to ask yourself how important it is that you get good shots. If the answer is anything other than ‘not very important’, then you may want to err on the side of hiring a professional.

But professional photographers are expensive, is there really that much of a difference?

Other than the cost you mean? =D)

Well in a nutshell Yes. And it all has to do with craft and experience.

I stressed earlier that you need a pro if you want consistently good pictures. Well, consistency comes with experience; making and learning from mistakes; knowing your camera inside out; and knowing how different factors affect the exposure.

To give a few examples (I’m not bragging, honest): I recently did a shoot where my flash started playing up halfway through. It wasn’t recharging properly and would only fire on low power. A less experienced photographer may well panic or have to stop shooting. As an experienced shooter, I was able to adjust my settings and ISO speed to compensate for the lack of light and still deliver good quality images.

In a similar situation a few years ago, a fellow photographer (and member of the Freelance North collective) Bish, was doing a photo shoot for an important client when the LCD review screen on his camera stopped working, meaning he was unable to see what the pictures were coming out like. Being a consummate professional, Bish was able to keep shooting; intuitively altering his settings to suit the changing situations – and the shots came out fine (in the olden days of film, we had to shoot like that all the time but I can’t imagine those who learned shooting digital would cope as well with no review screen)!

I also said earlier that you need a professional photographer if the lighting conditions are difficult. I suppose its unfair of me to ask a non-photographer to predict when lighting conditions are going to be difficult and when they’re not, especially as you’d be surprised at how many scenarios are easy for the eye to take in but difficult for a camera to capture: A mix of different coloured lights, a mix of daylight and electric light, low-light (evening/night or even just indoors with one of those horrible yellow energy saving bulbs), outdoors when the sun is low in the sky, anytime where there is lots of contrast between the light and dark areas of a scene – all of these take skill and experience to photograph well.

As a brief example, I was recently shooting an awards dinner at the Natural History Museum and a lady asked me if I could take a photograph of ‘Dippy the Dinosaur’ (who dominates the atrium) and send it to her, because she couldn’t get a good shot with her point and shoot camera (very dark room with the dinosaur lit up in blue). What I did instead was take her camera and alter the setup so she could make a good picture with it herself (I did show her how to put it back to normal afterwards!).

In fact, taking a photograph yourself with a phone or point and shoot is a good acid-test of how well a camera can handle the scene and how good your photographer needs to be to make the pictures work!

I also mentioned using a professional photographer if you intend to make/buy prints. The reason for this is that professionals use colour managed software and monitors and know how to shoot, edit and format the files so that they’ll print well. It’s unlikely an enthusiast will have the skills or equipment to do this (having said that, if it’s just small prints you want and you’re not too fussy, then this won’t be a major concern).

Speaking of editing, that’s another skill that’s worth paying for. A professional photographer has this down and can edit your pictures to a high standard quickly and efficiently. Imagine letting Uncle Steve photograph your wedding only to have him send you a disc full of unedited pictures, or spend ages over-editing them! Wouldn’t you prefer a beautiful album of high quality prints delivered within the week? Of course you would! =D)

Well, I hope that wasn’t too boring for you! If I were to put it in one sentence for you I’d say, there’s nothing wrong with giving an enthusiast a chance to gain experience but if the images are important to you, then hire a professional photographer!

When I accept an assignment I do so in the knowledge that I’ll be able to deliver images the client will truly appreciate; that I’ll be able to manage the lighting conditions and composition, that I’ll have time to edit the pictures and bring out the best in them and that I’ll be able to deliver in a timely fashion. If I don’t think I can meet those self-imposed requirements – be that due to other commitments or because the job is not one of my specialties – then I’ll recommend someone who I think will be able to deliver what you need.

I hope that this blog has helped you decide when and why to hire a professional photographer – and remember – if you do choose to use a pro, you can book me by using the contact form on my site or just giving me a call. I’m based in Newcastle and will work anywhere (for the right fee!). If I can’t serve you, I’ll know someone who can!

So, check out some of the great Halloween costumes and enjoy the pictures and Happy Halloween everyone!

The easiest way to view them is to open one up and use the left and right arrow keys (on screen or on your keyboard) to cycle through them.

And remember, if you want to hire a professional photographer for your party in Newcastle pon Tyne – whatever the occasion – just give me a call or contact me through this website.

Nowadays, my aim is to make enough money with my corporate events photography business to allow me the time to shoot what I enjoy when I’m not working. We’re having such beautiful weather in the North east at the moment that you wouldn’t think it was autumn, so I took advantage of a free afternoon and went with my friend Mariella to take some pictures of Dunstanburgh Castle and the nearby Embleton Bay on the Northumberland coast line.

Read on for more pictures.

Embelton Bay isn’t exactly easy to find but that’s part of its charm. I suspect it’s deliberately kept secret by the locals to make sure it isn’t sullied by over exposure =D) You have to head for the Dunstanburgh Castle Hotel in Embelton and then take a reasonably long walk toward the Castle itself.

The walk takes you through a golf course, so keep an eye out for projectiles! Once through the course and through the reeds, you reach the long smooth sandy bay. Even in weather as good as this it was largely deserted.

If you head towards the castle you will soon reach the big, black, egg-shaped rocks made famous by landscape photographers such as Joe Cornish. These look best while still wet, if you want to take photos, try to time your visit for when the tide is going out.

It definitely felt good to get back to making some good landscape photographs. I even miss editing them – landscapes take more work in the editing suite than conference photography does simply because of the wider range of textures, colours details and contras. Taking the photograph is only part of the challenge, you also have to know how to get the best from the RAW file to really make the image.

I hope you enjoyed looking at these pictures as much as I enjoyed making them. As always, feel free to comment and let me know what you think. If you’re interested in buying any of my pictures as a nice wall print, canvas print or poster – get in touch!

I don’t own an SD1, nor have I tried one but in the past and this is not a review. However, I’ve owned pretty much all other Foevon sensored Sigma cameras from the SD9 & SD10 to the SD14 and the compact cameras DP1 and DP2; in fact, I still own and regularly use the Sigma DP1.

Briefly: I started out shooting with Nikon/Fuji bodies and then – when all my equipment was stolen – I did some research and decided to buy into the Sigma/Foveon/X3 system. Nowadays I use a Canon 5DMkII, having sold all my Sigma equipment. Below I’ll share my thoughts on the Sigma DSLR’s and the Foveon/X3 Sensor and the reasons why I switched to Canon after using them. I figure my experience with Nikon, Fuji and Canon – as well as Sigma, might count for something =D)

My Story

So, back in the days when people still used film, I was a Nikon shooter. When things went digital I first invested in a Fuji DSLR – The Fuji S3 – because it took Nikon lenses and was within my budget. I instantly fell in love with it; the colours were beautiful, skintones were rendered in nice pink hues and the dynamic range of the Fuji sensor was perfect for landscapes and cityscapes. Later I added a Nikon D200 to my camera bag and, to be honest, didn’t get much use out of it before all my kit was stolen but I definitely preferred the way the Fuji handled colours and dynamic range.

Skipping over the heartbreak of having all your equipment stolen (with a memory card full of pictures from a glamour shoot, which I will never get back), I decided to view this as an opportunity to investigate which digital camera outfit would be best for my needs. My passion is architectural and landscape photography and I also really enjoy doing glamour model shoots, so I was looking for a DSLR system that would be good at both of these.

Initial reseach leaned toward Canon, as Nikon systems seemed to be biased more towards sports shooters and suchlike (although, they’re both pretty good all round, I’m just a perfectionist) but then I discovered the Sigma DSLR’s and the Foveon sensor.

The Sigma System

I won’t go into too much detail about how the sensor works, because it seems like every review everywhere feels the need to explain it, so the information is easy to find but in short; the Foveon (now called X3 direct image) sensor stacks the Red, Green and Blue filters on top of each other so that each ‘photosite’ gets data from all three channels, whereas Canon, Nikon and Fuji use the Bayer array sensor which scatters red, Green and Blue filters in a mosaic pattern (biased toward Green, which takes up 50% of the sensor) and uses computer algorithms to decode the information and ‘guess’ what the rest of the data from other colour channels would have been (obvioulsy, its a very advanced, educated guess).

This excited me greatly because I value image quality over anything else. I shoot landscapes and architecture, both rich in detail and colour information and I want to produce the best quality images I can. The Sigma system promised true colour fidelity, no ‘guesswork’ regarding detail or colour information from any individual photosite and images that required little to no sharpening as a result of these factors (as well as the lack of anti-aliasing micro lenses).

On the down side, people were complaining that the cameras lacked functionality compared to others in the same price range, were clunky, old fashioned, difficult to master and that the RAW files could only be processed using Sigma’s own propriety RAW conversion software – which was similarly clunky, under-featured and difficult to use. By far the biggest sticking issue is that Sigma have designed the camera to use only their lens mounts, meaning you can’t keep your Canon or Nikon lenses; you have to commit to a change.

Incidentally, these pros and cons really haven’t changed to date. People are making the same complaints about the Sigma SD1 while others are lauding the same qualites. At the time, I decided that I didn’t mind the challenge of mastering a difficult camera/RAW conversion system and that most of the ‘lacking’ features (high speed shooting, low light performance and card read/write times) were not things I had to worry about given my shooting style and preferred subject matter. I also decided I would buy second hand equipment so that I wasn’t spending lots of money on such under-featured gear.

Taking the plunge

I started by buying an SD9 and SD10 with a bunch of lenses (a find on eBay). The two cameras are almost identical, with the SD10 being more of an update than an upgrade. The only noticeable difference was that the SD10 performed slightly better in low light while the SD9 produced slightly crisper images overall.

As predicted, they were awful machines when it came to using them. The viewing screen was tiny, the write speed was incredibly slow and you couldn’t access the (yes clunky, old fashioned) menus while wating for data to write to the card.

Having said that, the colours I got – especially from the SD9 – when shooting landscapes, were astounding: the skies were such a rich blue you would think I’d used a polariser and the greens were lush. I didn’t notice a fantastic increase in image quality, however, compared to the Fuji files I was used to (more on this later) and I still had to apply some sharpening, although in a different way.

After some time using the SD9 & SD10 I started to notice a greenish-yellow cast to the images, especially in skin tones. In anything other than glorious sunshine, the colours tended to drift toward yellow. I posted on the Sigma user forums and was met with three sorts of response: 1. ‘This yellow cast that people keep talking about is a myth spread by Sigma haters.’ 2. ‘The colours only drift to yellow if you don’t nail the exposure; learn how to use your camera before you post silly questions.’ and 3. ‘It’s to do with the coating Sigma put on their lenses, you can’t avoid it and have to fix it in post.’

I decided to develop Photoshop actions to correct for the greenish-yellow cast. Looking at old images now in Lightroom, they’re even easier to correct using the HSL sliders but suffice it to say, the colour cast is still there to be removed.

When the SD14 was released I got excited all over again. Here was a much more modern looking, ergonomic camera body with improved processing and greater resolution. I sold the SD10 and some of my lesser used lenses and bought an SD14 body.

It was a much nicer camera to use. The biggest improvement for me was the shutter/mirror sound. No more loud, clunky noises coming from the camera, this shutter just whispered. Also, the viewing screen was much bigger and some of the menu systems were easier to use. The colour rendition had changed too; skies were rendered more aqua than deep blue, reds were better rendered but the overall greenish-yellow bias was still there and constantly having to correct for it was getting annoying.

Artists tool or workhorse?

By this time I was getting more varied photography work; shooting conferences, nightclubs and festivals rather than landscapes and architecture. I also shot a few weddings with the the SD14. Big jobs like this, involving lots of images (and therefore lots of editing) really draw attention to the weaknesses of the system. Waiting for the camrea to write data to the card meant I was missing great shots, the poor low light performance was something I constantly had to fight against and the fact that the files need so much input in post processing dramatically increased my turnaround time.

By this point I was taking the image quality I was getting in landscape shoots for granted and complaining about the noise levels and colour casts I was getting on lifestyle shoots. Unfortunately, I wasn’t making any money from doing the stuff I loved and the camera was holding me back when it came to the paying jobs. Something had to give.

It was after shooting a wedding on a murky day in a church with virtually no natural light that I decided I had to get a camera that didn’t get in the way of my work. I was already borrowing a colleagues Canon 5D when shooting conferences and when the mkII came out I decided to get one. (Actually, it was between that and the Nikon D700. I prefer the way Nikon bodies work but the Canon system offered more bang for the buck so to speak – sometimes I still wish I’d gone with the Nikon but thats another story).

So, whats all this talk about Image Quality?

Now, the Canon 5D mkII is a 21megapixel camera capable of performing excellently at really high ISO and in low light situations. It writes data nice and fast and the colour rendition is accurate. In short, it doesn’t get in the way of the image I want to create, it does what its told, when its told to.

HOWEVER; while I took the image quality for granted when I was using the SD14, I now really miss it. I notice the inherent ‘mushiness’ of a bayer sensored, anti-aliasing micro-lensed camera. I feel like the images the 5DmkII produces are never quite sharp enough (and sharpening in post doesn’t help) and, when pixel peeping, there’s this weird cross-hatch effect that makes the image feel more like a painting than a photograph.

This comes down to me being a perfectionist again. Most people, certainly clients, would never notice any problems. The images from the Canon are perfectly servicable. Its just that the quality from the Sigma is… better!

How can I say that when I complain about colour casts and noise levels you ask? Good question!

Its hard to explain. Some people refer to a 3D effect of Sigma image files in an attemt to explain it but I think that is going too far. I think its something to do with the fact that the Sigma isn’t interpolating any chroma or luminance information; the micro-contrasts within the image, the way colours transition into eachother its all so much smoother and better and – most importantly – more realistic.

Conclusions

I can’t go back to a Sigma system right now, even with the improvements in high(er-ish) ISO that the SD1 promises. The reason is because I’m a ‘jobbing’ photographer and I now need a camera that can perform well in all sorts of varying situations. The Sigma/X3 system, to my mind, is an artists camera. It will excel in controlled studio conditions, it will deliver amazing images in just the right conditions for a photographer who is patient and masterful and has the time to absolutley nail the exposure and then spend the extra time needed with the RAW files to draw the best from the file.

Ideally I’d like an SD1 modified to take Canon L-series lenses, which I can use when I’m shooting for me; when I’m shooting landscapes, architecture or portraits and have the time to wait for or make sure the conditions are perfect.

I think thats why the Sigma SD1 has been released with such a high price tag. They’re aiming at those photographers who are at the top of their game and are searching for better image quality. They’re not trying to sell a consumer-grade product to a mass market and make a quick profit. If that is so, then I admire their business ethic and I hope that the top photogs take a punt and discover the magic of the Sigma system and the X3 direct image sensor. Unfortunately, its just not within my budget to own one – I guess I’ll just have to make the 5DmkII work harder and earn me some more money!

As for you, well you have to make up your own mind. I hope this post has been of some help =D)

While waiting for the plane home, however, I did have my camera handy and I was feeling kind of minimalist. Here’s what I came out with: