Testing Extremes By photographer and photo dealer, Bruce Pottinger (Hon FAIPP AIPP), L&P Digital Photographic, Australia Bruce Pottinger is passionate about photography and that passion is never more evident than when he s talking about and using Phase One digital backs. This is understandable when you learn that Bruce is the managing director of L&P Digital Photographic, distributor of Phase One equipment in Australia. However, Bruce s passion is heart felt. He simply loves photography and even though he calls himself a retailer, he s an experienced photographer too. I m not a professional photographer, I m a photo dealer, Bruce explains. However, digital technology has given me the opportunity to get involved with the capture side again and I m loving it. Over the years I ve attended literally hundreds of professional photography seminars as a sponsor and many of the photographers I ve listened to have taught me a lot about technique, inspiring me to have a go myself. 1
Always open to challenges I also like the challenges I receive every day as a photo dealer. When a photographer tells me something can t be done, I like to check it out myself to see just how far the equipment can be pushed. For instance, some years ago before digital was as accepted as it is today, a photographer told me you couldn t capture fireworks with a digital camera because the highlights were blown out. My answer was to grab a Phase One H25 (the current back at the time) and try it myself. With the back tethered to a computer so I could check my exposures, I proved that digital could indeed capture some wonderful fireworks images, something we take for granted these days. I guess that s one of the advantages of being a Phase One dealer. I always have the latest equipment in stock and I love using it myself. After a shoot, I can t wait to download the files onto a computer so I can see what I ve done. Bruce is often seen before and after seminars at various locations around Australia, testing equipment from his rental stock in temperature and climatic extremes. In heat, cold, snow, dust or rain, I want to see how our equipment works, so whether it s a forty knot gale (hurricane) in Far Northern Queensland or a snow storm up the top of Mount Wellington in Tasmania, I m never scared to put our cameras and digital backs to the test. 2
Bruce began his career as a professional photographer, working after he left school with one of London s leading wedding photographers. Our studio would photograph 100 weddings in a day, so it gave me a good understanding of the importance of workflow and production in a busy studio. Our weddings were shot, proofed, sold and album-planned on the same day, all one hundred of them! Try before buy However, Bruce discovered he had a real aptitude for the mechanical side of photograph. When I left the U.K. for Australia, I found I had an ability to pick up any type of camera equipment and understand it instantly. This lead me to work with a major professional camera dealer in Sydney and when a few years later they closed their doors, we opened our own business which has been operating until today. Providing photographers with good quality equipment hasn t really changed over the years, even if the products are completely different. And while photographic styles might have changed, the basic photography skills are still the same. It always comes back to the fundamentals of light, focus, exposure, composition and, importantly, the quality provided by your materials and equipment. Listening and talking to professional photographers over the years at seminars has helped Bruce understand and explain the pitfalls of shooting with DSLRs and the reasons for moving up to a medium format digital back. I still meet professionals who think JPEG is the ultimate way to shoot, until I show them a RAW file and the information they discard by choice! And because we sell and hire a wide range of camera brands and all of the Phase One backs, it gives us a chance to make comparisons. Most photographers only get to test one camera brand and a couple of lenses, whereas we get to see pretty much all of the equipment on the market. 3
The best way to test equipment is to demonstrate it. We take our equipment to seminars and workshops, show photographers how it works and then take it out into the field and shoot with it. There s nothing like having twenty photographers critically working with your equipment and software to teach you the advantages and limitations of our technology. Two years ago, Bruce was awarded an Honorary Fellowship (Hon. FAIPP) by the Australian Institute of Professional Photography. This has given me the opportunity to exhibit my work in Australia s best photography competition, the Canon Australian Professional Photography Awards. It also lets me show my clients that I understand photography just as well as I understand the business side of our profession. Pioneering In an Australian first, Bruce Pottinger travelled with a friend and fellow photographer and balloon pilot Kevin Cooper, to an Aboriginal settlement in the centre of Outback Australia, to teach the children photography and take them for a balloon ride. This unusual combination of purpose, was spearheaded by landscape photographer Ken Duncan and photographer and friend David Oliver. 4
I think I was probably the first photographer to shoot from a balloon with a P45 and a Horseman SW-D II Pro with a 24mm Schneider lens. It was quite a challenge to work in a confined space 500 feet above the ground, cocking the shutter, checking focus and composing the image. Although you would think a balloon is pretty stable, even its gentle movement was a challenge in the low light of the early morning. Bruce says the most traumatic part of the flight was coming into land, cradling his expensive camera outfit and hoping the basket wouldn t be dragged along too far in the fine, red dirt and tree tops but this went fine. Thanks have to go to Balloon Safaris http://www.balloonsafaris.com.au/ for the use of the Balloon. On a visit to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney recently with Landscape photographer Mark Lang and Editor of ProPhoto magazine Paul Burrows, we compared the Phase One P45 with Fuji Velvia 100 in a Horseman SW 6x17 panorama camera. Naturally the results from both platforms were excellent, but even with a high quality drum scan, the film couldn t match the dynamic range provided by the P45. The digital image had detail in the shadows that film simply couldn t see. The test proved to me that a medium format digital back with the Capture One Software can produce a cleaner, more accurate result than film and it s faster. Contact information: Bruce Pottinger L&P Digital Photographic http://www.lapfoto.com.au 5