Christmas brought a few sad notes in cards, telling of deaths earlier during the year, with families having to cope – on top of all else – with constrained funerals amongst Covid-19 restrictions. One such death was that of Colin Bygrave, well-known in Norfolk as a painter and, especially, etcher. Colin was a friend and, for several years, a neighbour (I even have one of his aquatints of the side of our house viewed from his). Back in 2013 Colin and I made a film on etching. Divided into five short sections, this was intended as a guide to those interested in etching and, especially, aquatint, perhaps thinking of having a go themselves, so it follows a simple step-by-step structure. I’m so glad we did this, not just for the purpose of being a Youtube guide, but also since it captures something of Colin’s gentle enthusiasm and skill as a lifelong teacher.
Filming in Colin’s purpose-built garden studio was appropriately low-key, over a few shortish sessions (Colin was already over 80): I used a single Nikon DSLR, while another friend (Adam O’Grady) with an interest in etching (he had previously attended a course or two run by Colin) operated the boom mic.
For a commemoration of Colin’s life and work, see https://colinbygrave.uk/
And here is Colin’s brief five-part guide to etching and aquatint:
I’m a fan of omni SDC pairs for outside recording. For music I will often use these in Rycote Baby Ball Gags mounted on a stereo bar, itself on a substantial stand (usually the Manfrotto 1004BAC). But where I want something more portable and more windproof, I mount the two omni mics end-to-end inside a single windshield – the Rode blimp Mk1. Joining the two mics end-to-end is easy with a rewired and drilled female-to-female xlr coupler (well, actually, the female-to-female XLR connector is actually not off-the-peg, but made up of three items: two Neutrik NM3FXI and one Neutrik KM. Neutrik’s own female-to-female XLR connector doesn’t unscrew). This places the mics (a pair of Rode NT55 mics with the excellent NT45-O omni capsules) at a 360mm spacing, which renders a good stereo image and is exactly the ideal length for the Rode blimp (i.e. the same length as the straight part of the blimp). Being pure pressure omni mics there is, of course, no phase issue arising from the fact that they are pointing different directions.
After years of Nikon DSLRs for stills (from D70 to D810) I have recently adopted Micro Four Thirds (M43) for both stills and filmmaking: with close-focus like most in their 50s, a mirrorless camera with electronic viewfinder seemed a wise move, and I was getting sick of lugging a rucksack of full-frame gear up scaffolding ladders to the top of cathedrals and castles for the day job. I already had a couple of M43 bodies (Lumix GX80) and some Panasonic lenses, so added a few more lenses and a Panasonic Lumix G9: in 2020/2021 this is a real bargain, with 10-bit internal recording giving near-GH5-like video, on top of much better stills (not least the 80MP high-resolution mode).
