Equipment Evaluation

What equipment have you used over the past year?	Advantages	Disadvantages	What did I create with it? What features did I use?
Photoshop	This software is amazing at editing photos; it gives you a huge amount of variation of what you can do to a single image. Another advantage is that you can very easily take a 300 dpi image and put it onto Photoshop this is what most cameras take in.	Thought Photoshop is good at editing images it doesn’t work as well at editing large amount of text this is because once you rasterize a text layer then you can’t edit what it says. Photoshop can also get quite complicated, there is so much to do and so much to experiment with that it is hard to know what you are doing.	I’m Photoshop I edited all my images, made my final product and made small blocks of text to see which I liked the best. I used many different features in Photoshop, mainly the hue/saturation as I think it gives a good selection of different colours and shades. Another tool I used a lot was the magic wand tool, this lets you select a certain area and works of the lighting of your picture, it’s very useful taking out little bits or even big bits of unwanted image out.
InDesign	InDesign is brilliant for editing big blocks of text, this is because you can make text boxes and edit the text whenever you need to, there is also a function that lets you take the text from a word document  an place it into the text boxes. Another advantage it that you can set how big and how spaced you want your page, you can put in columns and margins to makes sure your product is lined up.	The main problem with InDesign is that it is rubbish at handling images, there are no tools that let you change how an image looks. Another problem is that it is really hard to use, especially if you are used to Photoshop, there are so many different ways you can do a task and it is really hard to get used to the different controls.	I used InDesign for my double page spread, I used most of its features, but the best ones were the tool that allows you to add a word document and take the text from box to box, this is very good when you need to inset a large block of text. Another good feature is the page set up one. It means you can choose how many columns you want and how big you want the page, I think that it is a very good tool for making the perfect double page spread.
Cannon E350D Camera	This camera is very good for taking images in different environments; you can change so many setting and get a lot of different effects. This camera has a 1 gb flash card meaning it can  store up to 260 photos on at any one time. You can chose between manual and automatic focus meaning you can get a huge variation of shots depending on how you take them.	The camera is quite big meaning it is really hard to move around, not to mention the cost of it. It is very risky to take it for a location shoot. Also these big cameras aren’t the up to professional spec, they are only 8 mega pixels. Most professionals wouldn’t go any lower that 12 mega pixels, so that they can print clearly on A3.	I used this camera to take all of my images. I think that it is good because it has so many different features, I really like the shutter speed and the quick viewing tool. The shutter speed feature lets you decide what kind of image you want.  You can have a still or a motion blur you can make the image dark or light, it’s really your choice. The quick view feature  lets you look at the what you have taken instantly after you have shot it, this means you can change your settings to make the next image even better.
Olympus OM10 SLR	This camera is much smaller and easier to carry around. The images are also put onto a film meaning they are really good quality.	The main problem with this kind of camera is that they take much longer to get eh results, you don’t know if you have taken a good or bad picture. Another problem is that it is easy to make a mistake on the film as you have to put it in the right way, there are some many thinks that can go wrong with it.	I didn’t use this camera in my production as I think that it isn’t as good as the Cannon. The main reason I decided not to uses it is because of the way you have to see your image, they are shot on to a film which has to be developed, where this is very good quality, it takes a long time to see the end result
800 watt Arrilite redheads x2 continuous lighting	This kind of lighting is very good at giving the photographer an actual view of what they are taking. It doesn’t really require any training how to use it, all you need to know is where you want to point it. They are very easy to put up and also last a long time.	The main problem with this kind of lighting is that they are nearly impossible to work under, they heat up really fast and the constant stream of light burns your eyes. For this reason professionals tend not to uses them.	I didn’t uses this type of lighting as I think it harms the model you are working on too much. Although it does give you a clear idea on what lighting you are going to get, it prevents your model from working to their full potential which means the shoot won’t be as good as it could be.
Bowens softbox and flash lighting equipment	Lighting like this really good because it gives you complete control over lighting.  It also means that you can use some cool filters like honey combs and coloured filter.  These also don’t get hot, and can be looked at without hurting your eyes	For this kind of lighting you need a light meter to makes sure you have the right amount of light. Another problem is that they can get complicated as they are meant to be used in professional shoots.	This lighting is much better than the Arrilite as it is a much softer light, it means your model can work under the light comfortably. Another feature I really liked is the fact that the light covers everything, meaning that shadows are lightened and everything is softened.