"No pictures please" ... for health and safety reasons!!

[Mad Doug Biker]

Thanks for the explanation.

I can see how flash can cover for motion blur (camera-shake if we're going to be blunt!) but not how it covers for bad focus.

Because it freezes things dead, and stops motion blur. The extra light also gives the lens slightly more parameter. Or something like that.

Anyway a skilled photographer ought to be able to get to focus in an instant.

You are only as fast as your camera or your hand focussing the lens, and in a fast moving situation it isn't always possible to get everything exactly as you would like it. Autofocussing can also get 'confused' and focus on the wrong bit!

Also, shouldn't metering be either automatic,

Yes, but if it is a dark situation, automatic metering wont suddenly make it light

or compensated for in the processing?

You can play with it later on photoshop or, if you are hardcore, the darkroom, but at the end of the day, you can't polish a turd.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Ah well. Let those who can't focus a camera and can't keep it steady, try astro-photography!

It has NOTHING to do with that. Flash just makes it easier to get the results the Editor (and the readership*) wants - this is a newspaper, not some piece of pretentious arty farty rubbish.
ALSO, flash helps eliminate colour casts.

* - Would you REALLY want to buy a newspaper with only had dark and blurred pictures and which were an odd colour??

No??

Thought not.

 

[661-Pete]

OK: sorry if I got on your t*ts Mad Doug BikerPhotographer, I thought I was answering David1701's point not yours!

I freely acknowledge that I know very little about photography per se, but I had heard of fill flash, I thought it was a specialised technique used by experts, seems I was wrong: it's more widely employed.

All I will say is, being exposed to rapid-fire flashbulbs (what if they all had to go back to real bulbs, which had to be ejected and a new one put in, after each shot? That'd slow 'em up!) is an excruciatingly unpleasant experience for many people. I'm not an expert on photography but I do know a bit about the strobe light/epilepsy link, especially seeing as some of my work concerns strobe lights for alarm systems. We generally set a limit, on our equipment, of 1 flash per second, well inside the HSE's recommended limit of 5 flashes per second. Ten flashes or more per second, which often occurs at a hot news event, is dangerous for photosensitive epileptics. I agree these are a tiny minority of the population, but the rest of us suffer annoyance, and it is irritating even to watch this on TV.

Oh well, if there's no better way I suppose we just have to live with it...

 

[Norm]

If we can revert from the critique on press photography to the topic of pix of school plays...

Also, shouldn't metering be either automatic, or compensated for in the processing?

Probably not. Automatic metering in the cameras you mention, Pete, is generally average or centre weighted. For a decently exposed image in a dark hall, you would need a spot metering system or, as david said, to blast it with flash.

The issue of selfish dicks at school plays is not just about the flashes, though that is off-putting for the kids and pretty annoying for the audience, it's also that the cocks with man-jewels either stand up to take stills, or hold their video cameras over their heads for the whole production.

 

[Shaun]

I hadn't thought about the argy-bargy of parents jostling for position with their cameras ... I agree that can be a right pain. So they should just say "Photography is not allowed during the production, to enhance the enjoyment for the audience and the performers!!!".

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

OK: sorry if I got on your t*ts Mad Doug BikerPhotographer, I thought I was answering David1701's point not yours!

Sorry, I don't do photography now, but when I did, it always used to annoy me when people used to say things like

'Why have you got that big camera? I have this dinky little compact that can do X Y and Z!'

and then treat you like you were some sort of idiot, even they knew nothing about what they were talking about, and their pictures were invariably s**t to a trained eye.

Sorry, you just opened the floodgates on all the memories I had of that time.

By the way, you know how I mentioned the analogy of the guy at a wedding wondering why the photographer is using a flash on a bright sunny day?? That does happen and will treat the photographer as if they don't know what they are doing (normally fueled by alcohol, I'll admit) .

Like I say, I don't do photography now and quite frankly, I don't miss it (all the fun went out of it for me when things went digital, but now, I have got it out my system anyway).

The issue of selfish dicks at school plays is not just about the flashes, though that is off-putting for the kids and pretty annoying for the audience, it's also that the cocks with man-jewels either stand up to take stills, or hold their video cameras over their heads for the whole production.

I was once asked by a charity to photograph at an Opera evening many moons ago. I was in the audience, and would have to do this just to do my job (admittedly, I did explain to those round about me beforehand and apologised in advance, etc etc). Sat at the front, I was able to position myself so that there was noone behind me, but still, the noise of my camera must have been rather offputting

 

[Archie_tect]

Well put Shaun.... now try enforcing it!!

 

[david1701]

Quality, the the higher the ISO, the more grain, or 'noise'. Whilst it might look ok to you, to a trained eye it can be utterly horrendous and nobody will want to use it unless there is nothing else.

High grain or noise should only be used for effect, not as a matter of course.



It is a bit like the guy at a wedding wondering why the photographer is using a flash on a perfectly sunny day. It is for what is called 'fill flash', and helps eradicate any unwanted shadows (the dreaded 'Panda Eye' for example), and produces a picture which is both looks a lot more sensible, and is easier to work with.



Amen!



I always preffered using ambient light, but then, I appreciated the use of flash at certain times (not that I had it on my camera). It was a real challenge not to use flash, but how it makes life a LOT more easier!



Ahem, fill flash?

the only acceptable use for on camera flash, but I'm primarily a commercial shooter so almost always when I have a flash on the camera is as a wireless ttl master

 

[david1701]

The issue of selfish dicks at school plays is not just about the flashes, though that is off-putting for the kids and pretty annoying for the audience, it's also that the cocks with man-jewels either stand up to take stills, or hold their video cameras over their heads for the whole production.

primarily dicks, either I work from the front (gigs) or the very back/sides being subtle for pr type events or even weddings

 

[Shaun]

Well put Shaun.... now try enforcing it!!

... without using the words "Health and Safety" ... lol

 

[XmisterIS]

I used to work as a civil servant ... you couldn't do anything without checking with H&S first. We even had a dedicated H&S officer who's job it was to be an H&S policeman and raise an incident report for even the slightest breach of the rules. I can tell you that I never ever once saw that guy crack even a slight smile, let alone laugh and he really did fulfill all the stereotypical critera for the humourless killjoy H&S jobsworth! The funny thing was he didn't actually have any real power and none of the managers paid the slightest attention to anything he reported. He once stormed into my office and in a fit of rage informed me that he was going to raise an incident report against me for moving a traffic cone - he said he'd witness me doing it from his office!! Oh, the horror of it all ... what had happened was that I couldn't quite get my car into a parking space because of a badly placed cone, so I moved it two feet. My God, I should have been sacked on the spot for that one! As usual, I never heard anything else about it and the cone stayed where I'd put it.

 

[ColinJ]

I agree that some people are going completely OTT with unnecessary H&S restrictions, but let's not forget why the rules were made in the first place. Here's a reminder!

I worked in a factory between school and poly. There were quite a few things going on there which were unsafe; accidents waiting to happen.

I've mentioned elsewhere the practice of loading we workers up with three or four 25 kg of sacks on our shoulders and getting us to walk up a metal staircase into the factory to the stores.

The thing that makes me shudder looking back was 'the shredder'! I was shown to a big machine in front of which was a huge pile of rubbery plastic strips. The things that you put cables inside to take them across an office floor. These were out of tolerance and needed to be shredded for recycling.

The foreman told me that the 'proper' way to do it was to switch the machine off, feed a length of the strip into the machine, stand back, switch the machine on. This of course took too long, so what 'everybody' did was to leave the machine running and constantly feed in strip after strip.

I got shredding. Sure enough, this was a much more efficient way to shred! I got into a rhythm and all was going swimmingly well until somehow a length of the strip got wrapped round my wrist and it tried pulling me into the shredder along with it!

I was yanked off my feet and pulled towards the mouth of the shredder. Fortunately I managed to pull my arm free before I ended up inside. After that, I went back to using the official 'slow' method, much to the disgust of the foreman!

Years later, after I moved here oop north, My blood ran cold when I heard about this horrific incident. It could so easily have happened to me back in the Midlands when I was 18.

 

[gaz]

A few years ago i was in a queue at McDonalds. Everyone was standing in one line and there where 3 tills serving. I had just got to the back of the queue when one of the staff said can you make 3 separate queues behind each till for health and safety reasons. I looked bemused but made a queue behind another till and was the next person to be served.

As i was being severed i questioned why this was needed, why was it a health and safety risk that we where in one queue? As i had essentially just jumped the queue and was now the first to be served. They didn't want to say why. But as i left, i said to the woman with long hair that was serving food and said that rubbish "Shouldn't you hair a hair net on whilst serving food for health and safety reasons?"
She tried to ignore the comment but quickly walked out back.

 

[coffeejo]

Healthy and safety legislation is, I think, bloody important.

The problem, as other people have said, is with cretins misusing it or hiding behind it.

So a sensible and logical "no photos during the performance / wedding ceremony / whatever because it's bloody annoying and off-putting" becomes an ambiguous (at best) "for health and safety reasons", which puts everyone's backs up and leads them to blame H&S.

 

[661-Pete]

As i was being severed i questioned why this was needed, why was it a health and safety risk ... ?

Sorry, I just had to pick up on that one!