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I spent my childhood taking Hasselblads to pieces:
The most wonderful noise in the world is the sound of a Hassy shutter, a sort of completely mechanical, springy, windy, cacophony of clunk-clicks, the whole thing unreasonably loud, and lasting an unreasonably long time, completely dominating the studio for ages, every time, even though the exposure was a tiny fraction of a second. It was a noisy studio but that shutter...was always there.
If you've got to this page to look up Digital Canon repairs and modifications, then please click here, but meanwhile, it's about 1970, I'm ten years old (you're right I AM well preserved) and we're in a fashion studio down Grafton Mews, round the back of Euston Station.
And I'm juggling two Hasselblads, with different lenses, different film in the detachable backs, and a test roll for each (which is processed first to find out whether we got the exposure right) in a room full of agonising pretty, half dressed young ladies. Is it any wonder the rolls got mixed up sometimes? It was the detachable cassettes that I used to fix for him: full of tiny springs, levers and pins, they used to get dropped from time to time and they were jolly expensive to have repaired. So, at the weekend, I'd sit down with three that didn't work, take them all to pieces and make one that did!
I've still got one of the cameras, and I even use it occasionally, careful to preserve, for posterity's sake the Dymo tape along the side of the body "John Dixon 2". He had, I think three Hasselblads but sold the others when he retired, giving me just the oldest, the most venerable.
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I took it to pieces before I tried to use it, sweeping out the fluff and Central London grime with a camel hair brush before applying tiny spots of clock oil to the moving parts (I'm not sure Dad was ever that hot on planned maintenance). It didn't need any more work than that, though, and still takes fine pictures. Someone told me recently that Hasselblads were superb for portrait work, because the subject could still see your eyes. You weren't cutting yourself off behind a viewfinder. It's an interesting thought and the square format (two and a quarter inches) meant that you never had to turn the camera to frame the shot. I love it!
He didn’t just do studio work, he went all over the world, and photographed all sorts of people:
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The photograph of Prince Charles and Lady Diana is particularly interesting because it was probably taken on the camera that I am holding at the top of this page. Some of his work is still selling, (he's 85 now) on www.jadedpalette.co.uk , a photo-library for artists to paint from. He taught me the trade, from exposure to composition, and drilled into me how not to miss a picture of someone famous by going for a pee at the wrong moment. The worst thing I ever did as a kid was to tread on one of her Majesty’s Royal Corgis while scrambling out of a car in a hurry.
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"Rickie framed the shot carefully, zooming right in to emphasise the woman's bottom and adjusting the exposure to catch the thin sheen of sweat on her buttocks. He must hurry, for her moans were merging now, so he inched one pace further forward into the tiny, wooded clearing, re-set the focus on last time and pressed the shutter.
Click...clunk.
The camera was noisy, a double-edged, mechanical rasp that cut through the buzz of the flies, the swish of the leaves and the low, laboured gasps of the couple before him. It was a long exposure too, set for the deep shading of the forest glade but without, he hoped, too much blur of the motion."
Click here to read the rest of the story.
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More recently, at Badminton horse trials this year, covering an up and coming rider called Phoebe Buckley www.littletiger.org.uk , I completely missed a shot of her standing in the water chatting to Captain Mark Philips….because I didn’t recognise him!! Phoebe, riding a tiny mare called Little Tiger, went on to complete the event, to the delight of her owner, Dr Polly Taylor. There's a diary here of the event and the build up to it. |
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I didn't take over his business when he retired though; I was already a scientist, working, among other things, in the ink jet printing industry. But I kept taking pictures (and occasionally selling them) and when digital SLRs came along, I just had to have one...
One of my other childhood memories is of hours and hours in front of a row of processing tanks, painstakingly putting precious rolls of film through a cocktail of around eight chemicals, each for a prescribed time, some at a prescribed temperature, and with a water rinse between each step. The responsibility felt huge, and I spent the whole day checking and rechecking the sheet on the wall, terrified that I would lose track of time and ruin the film.
But with digital, you can see instantly if you’ve got the exposure correct (especially if you know how to use the histogram), and you can have the picture on your computer in minutes. Interestingly, the basic rules are still all the same (not surprisingly really as we are still just recording light) and you can still take plenty of lousy pictures if you don’t think about what you are doing. I started taking more pictures than ever before.
And selling them, which is even nicer. There's a page here about the trials and tribulations of foal portraits...
For the technically minded, I now use Canon 300 and 350D bodies, with a range of Canon and Sigma lenses up to 600mm and I take photographs whenever I see something happening, or about to happen. Or just happened.
I post process in Photoshop and print on an Epson A3 R1800 digital printer with archival inks and papers.
The Canons are excellent cameras but, like everything else, can have their little moments. If you missed the link at the top, please click here for a page that will direct you around the repair pages.
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I also cover horse trials www.situpandkick.co.uk , selling pictures to riders and owners alike. This is fun because nothing is ever constant; the light changes, the sun moves round and, most important, each horse and rider combination approaches and jumps the fence differently. One of the first things you learn is how to jump out of the way quickly (preferably still getting your shot), followed by how to work in a howling gale, with driving rain going up your sleeves and into the lens. And this lead recently to my latest little invention, the CanoHat....
But then the clouds roll away, the sun comes out, the evening approaches and you get a wonderful sunset shot. And it’s all worth while again.
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When I'm shooting cross-country pictures at a horse trials and it starts to rain...I just get into the car and point the camera out of the window. It's not so easy, however, when you're covering show-jumping. There's usually not room to get a car in safely, and the other option, sheltering under a huge flappy fisherman's umbrella is also not helpful to the competitors. So I built a hat for the camera. It slots onto the flash shoe and is secured onto thetop of the lens with an elastic band. I made it from polystyrene sheet which is wonderful stuff; you can buy it in lots of different thicknesses in model shops, it cuts easily, can be bent round a former and if then dunked in boiling water will retain its shape, and you stick it together with the polystyrene cement.
Here you see an enthusiastic photographer pursuing her craft in the happy knowledge that, however wet she gets, the camera will stay dry! The camera is a Canon 350D wth a Sigma 55-200 len, a good combination for long days as it's not too heavy.
The bigger, Canon lenses are sharper, but they're hard on the wrists....and hell on the wallet.
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It worked so well that I made another one, for my long range cross country camera. When out on a track I always try to take at least two shots of each rider. The first is a close up, usually three-quarter view as they take a fence in front of me, with the sun behind me. The other, with a Sigma 400mm lens racked right out, is usually of the fence before, often portrait style. The pictures are softer, with the horse and rider blending more into the background, but they look good..and people certainly buy them. It is, of course, absolutely essential that the elastic band is red. Sometimes I take this long shot right into the sun, which is tricky, but you can get effects like this. |
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| Occasionally, I use two cameras at once, with one mounted on top of another via the tripod mount. The top camera takes the standard shot, and the one underneath, with a similar lens, is set to a really slow shutter speed. The better you track the horse in, the sharper the picture, and the blur gives a wonderful impression of speed. It works best when there's a lot of colour around to form streaks. These two pictures were taken with Canon 300D cameras, and the kit lens (the 18-55mm lens that the camera come with). There's a page here about the mounting rig and how to use it. A WORD OF CAUTION: Horses don't always jump the fence in front of them. I was standing quite close here (these shots haven't been cropped), but I'd parked a LandRover right behind me. A horse that "runs out" rather than jumping the fence (it happens quite often) won't necessarily see a person in their way...so it's dangerous. They are, however, unlikely to jump a truck. (This isn't Badminton!) |
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But this is Burghley, this year. Zara Phillips, going like a train on Ardfield Magic Star, and this time I got a long way back to get some height and used a long lens (Canon L,200mm). It's even more difficult because camera shake is exaggerated by the distance. But it's fun! |
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