Amy Hunter is nude on the carpet, frogtied and in a tight, tight chest-harness!
Hywel's note: this is an old set from 2010, lost behind the sofa in a cache of partially processed sets. It's interesting to
compare technically with the stuff in the cache from 2008. We definitely made some technical strides in those couple of years,
not least the switch to shooting RAW.
In the early days of the site, camera sensors weren't anything like as fantastic as they are today. The dynamic range and the readout noise levels meant that there wasn't THAT much difference between the information in a RAW file and a JPEG, and the main advantage of RAW
back then was the ability to white balance in post. The downside was the increased file size, which was a concern when disks were small. I remember having a RAID array in a rack mount box, perched in a cupboard, which made noise like Concorde taking off. Total disk space was, if I recall correctly, a MASSIVE 2 TB. It cost a small fortune at the time. A few years later it was literal junk, I remember hauling it off to the dump for recycling (after proper decommissioning of all the drives of course).
Today the only reason to shoot JPEG is if you're a journalist working to a tight deadline (and even then I'd probably say shoot RAW plus JPEG just in case you need to go back to the one stellar image). File sizes have increased with bigger sensors, but not as quickly as hard drives capacities. I've just had to install a new RAID array after my workhorse photostore lost a drive and won't rebuild (it's all backed up, don't worry). New drive size: 12 TB. Per drive. What used to take up eight drives and a cupboard now fits on 1/6th of one drive; I'm replacing 16 drives in my most recent drive arrays (which I've had a fair few years now) with just four- and space in the cabinet for another four.
What's really interesting is that some of the kit we're using has stayed the same in continuous service all that time. The Hensel Porty flash packs we used in Sweden in 2008 were in use in these shots from 2010, and are still my work-horse units today. It's worth investing more than you think in lighting kit, especially flash which is a relatively mature technology. They'll still be working in 15 years' time
when most of the rest of your tech has become landfill.
barefoot, nude, brunette, rope bondage, frogtie