What's your 'day off' camera?

Enthusiasts and professionals alike, photography becomes a passion that seems to fill much of the waking hours, and for those bitten by the bug really hard then it may fill your dreams too. Today we're looking at the cameras you use on your day off.

If the big bag full of EOS-1 and EOS 5D cameras is your work kit, what would you have to have in a 'day off' camera? Probably you'd want some form of control over main photographic controls like aperture, shutter speed, ISO etc. Do you need RAW? Recently Canon Ambassador and wedding photography superstar Jeff Ascough has been taking his PowerShot G10 out on his days off and producing some great work. Jeff's been bitten by the landscape of the Northwest and is getting some great results. In a recent blog post with some stunning landscape images Jeff wrote that the PowerShot G10 has become his main camera for personal work, pretty neat endorsement for an EOS 5D Mark II advocate.

For many photographers the camera they keep in their hand is often an iphone these days and they seem to take delight in the technological restriction of a fully automatic camera with few manual controls. Probably the complete freedom - or should that be isolation - from the technology of taking the picture is good for the creative juices to see pictures. A popular example is someone like Chase Jarvis who is posting a lot of his daily iphone pictures on facebook.

Here at blabpictures the 'day off' camera varies from the standard iphone to the PowerShot G10 and for ultra compact options then an old Digital IXUS 80 for when we need simple, small and easy to deal with pictures; 8MP JPEGs oh joy!

What's your ideal or current 'day off' camera?

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Strobist comes to town

The Strobist was here. David Hobby aka the Strobist was delivering his own brand of off-camera lighting seminar in London this past weekend. Around eighty people attended the two seminars held at University of London Union (ULU).

David's blog at http://www.strobist.com has a massive global reach with some 250,000 readers who get great lighting advice for free, and the chance to share their work with other strobists via the flickr strobist group.

In this workshop Daivd mixed presentation and practical shooting using models carefully hidden as seminar guests. Here David is adjusting a gobo that's in front of a shoot-thru umbrella. You need to try this at home since the effect is quite evident in the photos, yet really quick to achieve. David's gobo was made from a bit of cardboard box found somewhere on site at ULU. If you put a box down on Sunday and it went missing - here's your box.

Peter Geller from California Sunbounce was also on hand dispensing some free compilation DVDs of videos previously featured on the the California Sunbounce site. There was also a lucky prize of a new Sunbounce Micro Mini for one seminar attendee each day. You can see the Micro Mini in action in the hands of fellow strobist and Belgian professional photographer Bert Stephani.

The overall seminar was highly entertaining and valuable with almost seventy percent of the attendees on Sunday being professional photographer looking to sharpen their lighting. I think you may find pocket wizards a little in short supply in the run up to Christmas.

David's almost legendary shorts were out in action, he makes a pretty incongruous sight walking up the street to the pub in shorts and t-shirt on a December Sunday evening with the temperature hitting a cool one degree celsius.

If you want to check out his site, you may find a need to be watching carefully for his next visit to London. David describes London as the next strobist city after the Seattle Strobists, though they have Chase Jarvis on their doorstep.

If you'd like to be a featured photographer here then leave a message in the comments.

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