by Tim Gander

Tool or Toy?

As September draws to its conclusion, I’ve been surprised to realise it’s only been a couple of weeks since I got back from an all-too-brief holiday in Brittany.

Now I could bore you with my holiday snaps, but I’m only going to bore you with two. And they’re not even typical holiday snaps.

The real purpose of this post is to share some thoughts on a new addition to my kit bag, a Lumix GX9 camera (and two lenses). This isn’t so much a camera review, more a ‘why did I do that?’ sort of musing thing.

For My Pocket

For a long time (I’m talking years!) I’ve been in the market for a properly pocketable digital camera. Something I could chuck in my coat pocket, but with more versatility and better image quality than my iPhone – a Holy Grail for many photographers.

I looked at all kinds of options, from the eye-wateringly expensive Leica Q2/Q3, to the Ricoh GRIII, but nothing quite hit the spot. Then I started to notice the Panasonic Lumix GX-series of cameras. Again, not perfect, but as close to the right balance of versatility, quality and price as I was ever going to get.

Since I wanted a camera that could potentially find a use in client work as well as be a personal carry-around snapshot option (my Brittany holiday was starting to focus my decision-making too), Panasonic’s Lumix GX9 has the added benefit that it takes interchangeable lenses. I didn’t want the built-in zoom that many cameras in the pocket-friendly category have because I wanted the best quality I could get.

The only potential downside is that the GX9 is discontinued, and the GX-line seems to have reached the end of the… um… line. So a used camera was my only option. Even some of the lenses seem to be discontinued, such as the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7*, which is mounted on my camera in the photo.

That 20mm is, on this camera, equivalent to a 40mm lens on a regular SLR (I won’t explain the technicals here, just believe me). That’s my favourite focal length, so I was pleased to be able to pick up a genuine Ebay bargain.

For a second lens option, I bought a Lumix/Leica 15mm (30mm equivalent, see above) for wide angle shots. For this I bought new as the used prices weren’t all that attractive, and it is still available through retailers.

For Work

So how does this slot in with my work gear?

As a rule, I favour fixed lenses for my work – I just prefer the quality. However, even with two main camera bodies, this can leave me changing lenses rather more often than I’d like. So the GX9 with the wide lens on it gives me the option to do the general views at events without having to switch out the standard or long lenses mounted on my other two camera bodies.

There is compromise here though. The GX9 isn’t exactly a wizard of low-light photography, so I don’t use it where I need to crank up the ISO (sensor sensitivity) beyond 800. Things get awful noisy from 800 onwards, though the end-use of the pictures can mean low-light noise isn’t always a problem. The camera can also take an external flash, which can get me out of a fix in certain low-light situations.

The viewfinder is pretty dire too, but I knew that going in and actually I’ve got used to it. In most other respects, it’s a highly usable, capable camera – you just need to know how and when to use it.

For Fun

Beside the personal/holiday/family snap use, and to make the camera even more versatile, I also bought a lens adaptor which allows me to use some of my lovely Nikon lenses on this camera. Ok, so I lose a lot of the automation of the purpose-built lenses, but it’s another chance to play and experiment with other looks and styles. For example, I haven’t (yet) bought a longer lens for portraits for the GX9, but I have a Nikon-fit Voigtländer 40mm lens which becomes an 80mm lens on the GX9 – perfect for portraits! The adaptor adds value to the camera, as well as allowing me to use those lovely older lenses more often too.

For the Future?

I suppose my biggest fear is that one day this camera will die and I won’t be able to replace it easily. Modern digital cameras don’t always have the robustness of some film cameras. For last year’s trip to Brittany I took a very pocketable 35mm film camera. It was manufactured some time in the 1990s and yet it still functions. However, I can’t use that for work since no client wants to wait for film to be processed and scanned.

In an ideal world, Panasonic would bring out an updated version of this camera. Sensor technology keeps improving and this camera’s format (known as M43 or MFT, and pronounced ‘micro four thirds’) has a lot of advantages in terms of portability. If they’re thinking of doing this, they’re taking their sweet time about it.

For the time being this toy/tool will get use while it lives. If/when it dies, I’ll see if there’s a decent used replacement available, and keep going until I finally have to ditch the lenses. Maybe by then some perfect alternative will have emerged.

So keep an eye out for future posts featuring this dinky camera, in the meantime, here it is in all its cuteness alongside two of my favourite ‘holiday’ photos.

A panasonic Lumix GX9 camera on a wooden table with a yellow background. The camera has the Panasonic 20mm lens fitted and is shown next to a Lumix/Leica 15mm lens.
The Lumix GX9 with 20mm lens mounted and the Leica 15mm lens next to it.
Golden evening sunlight illuminates the curved wooden chairs on board the Portsmouth to Saint Malo ferry as a cleaner moves through, vacuuming the floor.
Passenger lounge on the ferry to Saint Malo.
Small snack cabin and bar in evening light at Batz-sur-Mer, Brittany, as a man and a woman stand outside chatting.
Snacks and drinks cabin, Batz-sur-Mer, Brittany, France.

*Wherever the lens is listed new, it’s shown as Awaiting Stock. I suspect Panasonic ceased production some time ago.

in Personal Opinion / Personal Work / photographer / photography / Uncategorized 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Three In One

The majority of my work is based around photographing people; professional headshots, people in business, in their office environment or at corporate events. However, every so often I’ll be called upon to make purely architectural images too.

It’s a side to my practice which I enjoy, so it’s a particular pleasure to get to work with property development company Bellhammer through their design agency Blast Design Limited.

Those with a good memory will recall that my relationship with Bellhammer’s Bristol city centre project (Assembly Buildings A, B and C) started during a headshot session for another client, when I took an opportunistic photo of Building C under construction. Since then I’ve returned to the site a few times to capture various stages of the project.

I was there again in June, with a brief to capture various aspects of Buildings B and C, but also to get an angle which included all three buildings in a single shot. That’s not as easy as it might sound, requiring some consideration of how the light falls on the buildings at various times of day, as well as trying to exclude other buildings or scrappy bits of cityscape.

However, give me a challenge and I’ll rise to it (within the bounds of feasibility of course).

What I came up with was two options. One based on a reference photo supplied by the client, the other an angle I found by walking the site until I located a spot which would work.

The more ‘standard’ angle is the stronger of the two images, but the one looking up at the buildings also has its strengths and uses. Giving a client a choice allows them to adapt images to whatever design and format they need, even if they don’t yet know what they need it for.

Sections of three modern office buildings shown together in a 'compressed' view using a long lens. From left, a burgundy-coloured building, the centre building has yellow accented balconies and the righ-hand building features green external steel girder construction.
Left to right, Buildings B, C and A.
Wide angle view looking up at buildings C, A and B with blue sky beyond their rooflines.
Left to right, Assembly C, A and B

Some of the images are included in the micro-sites for the buildings, including this (see below) from Building C taken during a previous trip.

Screenshot from the Assembly C website showing the open-plan reception area with the letter C layered over and the square footage available. A blurred female figure is striding through the photograph, carrying an opened laptop.
Still from the Building C web page.

Architectural photography, done properly, won’t generate anything like the quantity of images that something like a headshot session or event coverage might. More time and consideration is required; finding the best angles, setting up a tripod, making sure verticals and horizontals are correct (unless you’re after that leaning look, of course) and often having to wait until a person or lorry or whatever has cleared the scene.

The challenges of architecture are very different to pretty much any other genre of photography, but if you have a project which needs photography, I’d be delighted to hear from you!

Email me, or call 07703 124412 for that initial creative chat.

in Architectural Photography / Bristol / Case Studies / corporate communications / photographer 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Going for G-old

Have you been watching the Paris Olympics? Like most big events that I’d like to see (Wimbledon being the annual classic), I usually miss the whole shebang.

This year though, I’ve managed to carve out a little time to catch a bit of the cycling and swimming – the two areas of sport I’m most interested in.

In particular with the swimming, I’ve been trying to pick up some clues for improving my personal performance in the pool. Well, let’s say that’s a work in progress. Most of the athletes have a 40-year advantage on me. Plus they swim every day (for several hours) and spend hours in the gym when they’re not in the pool. I mean really, it’s cheating!

Of course their performances are also enhanced by things like, I dunno, raw talent. They’re coached in techniques to the nth degree, drilled until they want to cry and many have been swimming since early childhood.

Contrast this with my “swimming career”; I left school with only a basic breast stroke, and no real drive to improve even that. As for front crawl (for the Americans reading this, that’s freestyle), until a few months ago, I couldn’t even get off the side of the pool. I was, in short, a drowning windmill.

However since rediscovering the joy of swimming while on holiday last year, I’ve signed up to regular sessions at my local pool, where my breast stroke has blossomed, and I’ve taken lessons in front crawl. I can now just about manage 50m without feeling sick, which is a huge step up from where I was around three months ago.

So why am I wanging on about the Olympics and my swimming now? Well of course it’s so I can shamelessly showcase the fact that 16 years ago, I had the honour of photographing double gold medal swimmer Rebecca Adlington (Becky) when she came to the University of Bath in 2008 to help launch the Youth Olympics.

There is a little more to this tale (not much tho) than just wanting to share an archive photo.

Bearing in mind Becky had only just achieved this huge success in the Beijing Olympics that same year, the attention she received would have been a whole new experience and perhaps slightly disconcerting.

As we settled into one of the university’s lecture theatres for a press call, I was just checking my focus and exposure on Becky when she leaned in to the person sitting next to her and said, “I suppose I’ll have to get used to this,” meaning “being photographed”.

As she sat straight again, she looked directly down my camera lens, and I took the shot you see here.

Becky Adlington looks directly down the barrel of my lens.
Double gold-medal swimmer Rebecca Adlington holds her two gold medals while looking to camera.
Becky Adlington holds the two medals she won at the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

The comment didn’t strike me as anything more than a very matter-of-fact observation of how her life would change; there was nothing hostile in her tone, and she posed patiently and with good humour for more pictures after the sit-down press conference.

Becky’s career beyond the pool has flourished. Clearly, she got “used to this” a long while ago. I doubt she remembers that moment or her comment back in 2008, but for some reason it always stuck with me. Perhaps because I care how someone feels in front of my camera, even if I’m just doing my job.

On that day, we were both there to do a job. I’m still a photographer, Becky is still in the media spotlight and seeing her presenting from Paris 2024 alongside Clare Balding and Mark Foster reminded me of this one moment.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue with my own swimming career, though I’m not expecting to slip into professional swimming any time soon. That ship might have sailed unless there’s a VERY senior league out there?

 

in My News / Personal Opinion / photographer / press release photography 0 comments
 by Tim Gander

Case Study

When an old photo of my lighting kit popped up in my Facebook memories, the first thing I spotted was the bottle of wine. Of course it was. Not only did it remind me of the generosity of a particular client at the time, but it also sparked an idea to write an article about how kit has changed over time. So I took a photo of my kit today to compare and contrast.

Picture 1 was taken in 2015 and shows (apart from the wine) my portable studio flash lighting equipment of that era (in fact, this kit was already several years old by then).

Sadly the photo was already cropped square, so I can’t tell you what was in the rest of the bag; I’m guessing you’d see the second flash head, a spare battery and some other bits and pieces. I clearly took the photo for the purpose of showing off the bottle of wine I’d been given.

So, apart from the wine (shut up about the wine now, Tim), what else is different? Let’s go through some of the components in the bag, and then compare them with today’s kit in Picture 2. I’ve made these pictures BIG so you can see the labels.

Photo 1
View inside a camera case showing two Godox portable studio flash heads and associated accessories.
Photo 2

At the top-left in Picture 1, you’ll see a trigger and receiver. Nothing remarkable there, except today’s receivers are built into the flash heads themselves. This saves having to Velcro a trigger to the back of the head and rely on a cable to send the firing signal to the flash. It’s a little bit tidier now.

The other disadvantage of the old system was that you could only adjust the power of the flash head by walking up to the controller pack and turning a dial. Modern units can be controlled from the camera, which saves a lot of time and back-and-forth.

This old kit was pretty revolutionary in its day. It was the first properly powerful, affordable kit that ran off batteries. It could be used outdoors and the light could be adjusted through softboxes, umbrellas or any number of other modifiers to achieve a particular look.

But technology moves on, and its main disadvantages over my current kit are power and control. The kit in Picture 2 is at least 50% more powerful than the kit it replaced. This might not seem that much, but it makes a big difference in photographic terms. The more modern design also has the advantage that each flash head is independently controllable from the other, and the increments of control are far finer than with the old kit.

The other disadvantage of the older kit was the build quality. The manufacturer, Lumedyne, is US-based and their kit looks and feels as though it’s been built by keen mechanics in a shed. Sometimes not all that well either. I remember screws dropping out, a control knob falling off and on one occasion, a loud POP! and a puff of blue smoke as an internal component blew up.

I probably had that kit for a decade though, and while it was expensive at the time, it more than paid for itself.

Thankfully, I’ve had the newer kit (made by Godox) for almost as long already, and it’s not showing any signs of ageing. I’ve added an extra spare battery as one of the originals isn’t taking a charge as well as it used to, but that’s about it.

Apart from technological advances, the other reason I switched to Godox was because Lumedyne is no longer distributed in the UK, so replacing parts or expanding the kit would be difficult.

Possibly more impressive than any of the technical advances of the contents is the case itself. Both flash kits have been safely transported inside the same LowePro Pro Roller 2 case, which must now be circa 20 years old. About a year ago, I finally replaced the wheels but apart from that this case just keeps… rolling.

The wine, sadly, is a distant memory, but good quality wine is readily available in several outlets. So next time I work with you, have a peek inside my rolling camera case while my back is turned. If there’s a wine bottle-shaped space in there, feel free to pop something nice in, like a Tempranillo or a Malbec. Some technology never really needs updating, just replenishing.

 

in Case Studies / My News / photographer / photography 0 comments