Phil Rhodes

You're not shooting through strange bits of glass, filters, etc? Looks optical to me.

A career behind a camera could mean a lot of different things. All of them have different amounts of creative involvement and demand different skillsets. Probably a good idea to figure out what the goal is, first. Off the top of my head, choices include: - Studio camerawork on live (or as-live) television shows, or on sports events - News production out in the field (yes, these people are wearing bulletproof vests, but that's not... every day...) - Nature or other kinds of documentary - Movies and TV shows, on which you could do all kinds of jobs:

Couldn't you say that about more or less anyone in the whole industry, or anyone in any industry where different people do different jobs? What I've noticed, more than any particular role aspiring to more or less any other, is that there are people who don't want to specialise and lose access to certain parts of the process. Working on bigger, more prominent productions tends to require specialisation, so anyone who wants to shoot and edit and write and direct often has to give up access to tentpole features in order to do that. It's something of a pity because it leads to people existing in professional silos that can sometimes be very, very narrowly defined in a way that sometimes isn't great for either the individual or the production.

I'm sort of fascinated. What sort of projects are you likely to do?

I've never felt the need to tether anything and I'm honestly not that sure the original 7D will do it with modern software, but I'll certainly look into it.

Believe me, this thing is never, ever going to be a shiny steal me case ever again! I don't mind the old lettering but I might clean it up to the point where it isn't actively... Sticky... It is a rather odd layout. Either orientation makes it hard to exclude the possibility of things tumbling out if the latches gave way. I notice that similar cases with the handle on top of an opening lid tend to have the big flat paddle latches, as seen on flight cases, rather than the drawbar type.

Welp, the case I have here uses exactly the same style of handle shown in the promotional photograph in that catalogue, so I'm guessing 80s. This one is 24x12x12.5 inches, which pretty much makes it a natural camera case. "Rigidised aluminium," eh? Thanks!

It was all a bit before my time, but I know the name. That address on Cricklewood Lane is now one of the halls of residence for Middlesex University, a building which itself doesn't look like it was built that recently, so I guess the company has been gone for decades. This thing has a few unoccupied holes in it, which suggests it's seen a few different uses over the years. There were a few scraps of foam suggesting it had been used to store a set of substantially flat objects that could be held in slots. It's odd, because the handle is on what feels like the side, and the feet are on what therefore feels like the back. I'm going to put a camera in it which I'd rather not roll on its side to move around, and I'm pondering relocating the handle to the lid, but I guess then the whole thing is dependent on the drawbar latches to avoid falling open while being carried. I am currently attacking the tape goo with various harsh solvents. Could it be forty years' worth?

That is a good idea. I'd like to see it open up from its supplied state, which will require it being in water, but if I can drain the water (without moving the flower!) it should then wilt fairly quickly. Possibly, although we're sort of in a "we've got what we've got" situation.

How old do we think? Telex? Cable?

Presumably, yes. I wonder if they went down Northumberland Avenue and along the North Bank. Presumably we'll find out if they do the same thing next year.

Pretty clearly taken from the roof of the Grand Building (not to be confused with the Grand Hotel, opposite), looking southwest almost up the Mall. Building at top centre is Uganda House, now (and possibly then) the location of the Ugandan High Commission. What doesn't make quite so much sense is why the procession didn't immediately turn right down Whitehall, which would be the fastest route to Westminster Abbey. That's the turning with the row of people standing across it. Any other route makes almost no sense. Likely location of photographer is about here, given the flag-waving enthusiast at the bottom right.

It looks a lot better if you clamp the black level back down. It doesn't solve all the problems, of course, but look how sat up it is. Dubiously competent post production, I fear. To be fair, it is quite easy to accidentally do that when preparing things for YouTube and similar, but it'd be very much in the category of schoolboy errors.

I may have to shoot a timelapse of a flower which needs to start off fairly undeveloped, bloom, and wilt. This'll take - what - a good week, I'd have thought? The finished sequence probably only needs to be under a minute, which is 1440 frames; assuming a week that's a frame every seven minutes, though I'd be keen to shoot more than that if I can find a big enough flash card, then things which may happen unexpectedly quickly will still have enough frames. This is likely to involve something like a Canon 7D. Needless to say, I'll need to set things up with mains power, completely consistent lighting, lenses that don't suffer iris bounce, and as much physical stability as possible - and resist the urge to poke at it. I've shot some timelapse before, but mainly sunrises and things that take only a few hours. Naturally, given the time involved, I'm keen not to make too many schoolboy errors. Any advice gratefully received.

This is a complex one but suffice to say that a lot of different sensor layouts and arrangements have been tried over the years and the upshot has been a resounding meh. Sensitivity and colour performance are to some degree a zero some game at any point. I would say we now have more sensor performance than we really need in order to make it clear that this doesn't really matter very much anymore.