Gregory GUIDA

Gregory GUIDA

Wildlife Photographer
based in the British Channel Islands.

Mobile: +44 7797 830 230

Agent and Stock Photography at Natural Visions:
www.naturalvisions.co.uk for the United Kingdom
and Bios Photo:
www.biosphoto.com for France

This Web Site was finalised using Apple iWeb, a task which only took minutes, contrasting sharply

with any other Web Design tools. Of course, Apple discontinued it, like most of their really good stuff.

Photographic gear is a tool for me. As such, I must be rigorous in its selection and can’t purchase anything on a whim. In 2004 I bought an inexpensive 10D digital SLR to test the Canon system as I had previously been a Minolta user and, after many additions to the bag, I now use the 1Dx Mk II as my main camera.

The lenses to accompany the cameras were acquired as they were needed and I have a complete inventory of everything useful for wildlife photography as well as many other subjects. I have acquired a fantastic portable microscope as well as a laboratory grade one. I also have a 9” telescope and an underwater housing system.

I use a Gura Gear Bataflea bag. Now inside the Tamrac range, it is the Rolls Royce of camera bags and will comfortably fit an EF 800 f/5.6 while remaining carry-on size. I can’t say enough good things about this product. I hope the Tamrac version is as good.

To catalogue pictures and do basic editing I still mostly use Apple Aperture 3.1. Years after it has been discontinued, I can’t believe nothing else comes close to the facility in which it deals with my 300,000 pictures library. I really want to like the powerful Capture One but I have had it for a year and still haven’t even been able to load my full library in it without it crashing. My 12 cores computer has 64GB of RAM, in case you wondered.

The workflow is fairly simple. I use 16GB cards which will hold about 400 Raw files or half a day of shooting. I don’t like having more photos in a single place so I don’t use larger cards (yet) and I want to keep the second slot free to keep shooting when the first card is full rather than using it as a backup. At camp, I transfer the files to several 500GB Western Digital USB pocket drives, one of which lives in my pocket, using a 11" MacBook Air. They are then ran through ExifRenamer which gives them their exact date to the second as an unique name (like 20051117-224036) and organised per day of shooting and subject. Once home, all those "negatives" are saved on a dedicated hard disk on my MacPro 2013 and backed up on several Thunderbolt external drives (24 Terabytes in total). When needed, I can print large format images on my Canon IPF 5000. It is a brilliant but now orphaned printer, without an equivalent successor. I don't use DVDs and certainly not CDs as backup as I consider them too slow, too small and too fragile. At up to 50 Gigabytes, BluRay disks make more sense and I tried using them but eventually fell back to buying inexpensive 500GB USB powered pocket drives. At £50 a piece, they make a cheap and easy backup and I have now a dozen of them safely in my house safe. I won’t get any larger ones as the plan remains not to keep all the eggs in the same basket.

Current Equipment and Workflow

Cameras:

Up-to-date Canon EOS 1 and 5 series

Lenses