Who Can You Talk To About Photography? Ten Good Ideas...

We all need to talk to someone. In my house they do it when I am in the john - no end of conversations seem to be vital to the other members of the family whilst one is sitting down. The only way I can think of breaking of this habit is to open the door but this involves some loss of dignity...

For photographers, talking to someone is essential. Around your birthday you talk to the family about how you really, really need the new 12-2500mm zoom lens that has just been announced at Photokina and how much better it will make their lives. Sometimes this works.

Of course there are different divisions of photography and it occurred to me that each one has a different form of conversation:

1. Family photographers talk to the family. Initially in soft sweet words and eventually in parade ground tones.

2. Good portrait photographers talk to their subjects. Bad portrait photographers talk to their assistants.

3. Landscape photographers talk to themselves.

4. Food photographers talk to themselves but in different voices. Sometimes the voices talk back.

5. Sports photographers talk to the St. John's Ambulance  attendants.

6. Fashion photographers talk to the models. Slowly, and with little words.

7. Leica photographers talk to the Almighty. Once, in the morning, to give orders for the day.

8. Camera collectors talk to their cameras.

9. Darkroom workers never talk.

10. Photography Art collectors talk to their brokers.

If you wish to add any to this list please pop it onto our comments section or onto the Facebook page attached to this blog.

Uncle Dick

Forget Forgetting - Carry A Spare In The Boot - With Promaster

No end of people need a tripod for the occasional landscape or group shot, but never want to carry their big studio model with them. They sometimes try to get a tiny travel tripod to attach to their camera bag but are horrified when they see the weight and size equation that this creates.

Overseas travel needs this equation to be solved with very small figures - but that means that the price goes up. That is inescapable - and if you add a further requirement of large lenses or camera bodies you need to go even further up the price scale. Eventually it becomes cheaper to just import the landscape rather than buy the tripod that you need to go photograph it...

If you are only going to be in the city, state, or country and plan to drive your car to the shoot, think about having a really cheap and light tripod in the boot of the car. It will be best suited to mirror-less cameras and it will not have carbon fibre or super complicated head but it will be there when you need it. If your wife drops a bag of superphosphate on it you'll only be out 50 bucks.

We've got good, cheap Promaster Vectra Delux tripods in store right now  for $ 50. Flip-lock legs, central rising column, three-way video head and even a little quick-release plate. You can afford it and you might just need it.

Something for the weekend, Sir?

Rubber Balloons

Those of you who remember the Benny Hill sketch on television that ended up with the punch line " Rubber balloons " may now blush in shame....

The question of rubber arose the other week when the new Nikon D4s was shown here at the shop. The Nikon representative took all of the staff into her confidence about the new features of the camera. The more arcane aspects of predictive double back bounce around tracking focus were a mystery to me - other than realising that the camera makes pictures in focus in spite of the user  - but I did fasten upon one new aspect; Nikon have changed the rubber composition for the grips on this new camera.

Not before time. I use the Nikon D300 and D300s and love them for the images they take and the ease of use that they exhibit...but I hate the grips.

Oh, they are comfortably-shaped and soft and squishy, but that is because they apparently contain a large proportion of silicon in the rubber. They are fastened to the body panels of the camera with double sided sticky tape and while the tape takes to the body it eventually peels off the grips. They flap open under your hand. I've had the D300 ones reset by Ernest but my sweaty fingers will undo them again the the future.

Joy of Joys, Nikon changed the formulation of the  rubber for their new flagship camera. A little less squishy and a lot more likely to stick onto the camera for the foreseeable future. Good boys.

Note: the big Canon cameras don't do this, but their grips are a little harder and thinner. Leica has opted for a bare metal body on their new T, though you can cover it with a clip-on plastic surface case. Fuji, Panasonic, and Olympus seem to be able to stay together pretty well.

Now whether they various manufacturers have opted for well-shaped grips or not is another matter - and the subject of another blog...

Circle The Wagons - Here Come The Native ISO's

The question about natives is...are they friendly natives?

The answer to this question sometimes depends on which side of he conversation you are on. ie. Don't ask General Sheridan and expect a comfortable answer...

In the case of the native ISO of digital cameras, this seems to be fixed around the 160-200 mark. I suspect that it is a characteristic of the actual component and is a function of the composition of the silicon layer and whatever the current state of division thereof. I have discovered that these sensors are manufactured by a very few companies - and in many cases well-known camera companies are using sensors that are manufactured by business rivals.

And they are all perfectly okay with this as each manufacturer takes the sensor and then does different things with the signal - one optimises it for one thing and one for another.

I was apprised of this by reading a book this weekend - " Mastering the Fujifilm X-E1 and X-Pro1 " by Rico Pfirstinger. It is a Rockynook book obtainable at Boffins Bookstore in William Street.

In the chapter that deals with ISO settings it makes the point that the native ISO of the two cameras it deals with is 200, and the camera always takes its picture at this 200 - even if you set it to ISO 1600 or higher. What it is doing to present you with a picture at that higher ISO is underexposing the image and then dealing with that underexposure through software. And apparently doing it very well.

This strikes me as true of all of them, and explains the improved characteristics of each new model of camera from any one manufacturer - they are not adding a new sensor in many cases - just re-writing the mathematics of the signal processing. Then I realised I was not reading carefully enough...

Fujifilm has a different sensor from others - it really does have a different pattern of receptor sites from most of the others, and can benefit users greatly in the way of resolution and clarity. The X-trans sensor may very well be quite different indeed. But I take it that it still looks at the world at 200 ISO and then just shuffles the electrons to get up to a clean 6400.

Who'da thunk it?

The Answer Is Right/Left To Hand

Yesterday I was discussing camera operation with one of our clients - he had just finished a trip to take surfing and landscape shots up through some wild country in the Dutch East Indies.

He was using a couple of the bigger DSLR bodies for his work, and was very successful in his capture - the surfing shots are perfectly timed and the village and lagoon images are wonderful art. All good for him, but he mentioned the difficulty he had in trying to operate a camera while he was travelling on a motorcycle.

The M/C had a throttle on the right handlebar and trying to operate a standard DSLR while controlling the bike sounded like a juggler's nightmare. Lucky he and the cameras are still in one piece. Right-hand operation being the absolute for all cameras now, he was in trouble.

Readers will remember that film Exakta cameras were left-hand operation, but this was a long while ago and a long way away. No-one seems to have been inclined to repeat  the design for the digital era.

Puzzling - the operation of digital cameras is electronic. That means the shot is done with the closing of an electrical switch. It might then cause a lot of electronic commands inside  but it starts with two bits of metal touching because you pushed your forefinger down.

Well, you can push your left forefinger down as well as you can your right one. More particularly, if the little designers in Japan can make a bolt-on camera grip with a trigger that sits on the right of the camera, they can make one for the left hand side as well. All it's gotta do is close that first circuit...

AND WOULDN'T THAT BE A HELLUVA WAY TO GRAB THE CAMERA MARKET AWAY FROM YOUR COMPETITORS?

You could dial into 30% of the population right there and you wouldn't have to redesign the main body. Just make a LHS grip with a switch.

GO, Boys. DO it. And remember that I could use another trip to Japan as a thank-you for the idea...

Moving Light Artillery Into Battery - With The Fuji X-T1

It has often been said that putting a battery grip onto your digital camera will make you look like a professional photographer*. Perhaps, but that is not the best reason for using one.

Think in terms of the ergonomics of the machine. If you want to take a picture in vertical or portrait mode you are going to have to throw your right wrist over the top of the camera and the weight will depend upon your hand. The grip you need to hold the camera against gravity means more muscle pressure and stiffer muscles. Your hand and arm get very tired over an hour of doing this.

If you use a battery grip your hand remains upright and your muscles are more relaxed. You have the other hand free to operate a zoom lens and the whole rig can be held safely all day.

Plus some camera grips accommodate a second battery in there - you get twice as long to shoot before recharging.

This is evident with the new Fuji X-T1 battery grip - we've just gotten them into stock for the Fuji X-T1 cameras and can particularly recommend them to the users of the large 56mm f:1.2 lens. You can pick one up for $ 329.

* You can look like a professional photographer just by getting a bad haircut...much cheaper.

Tiny Studio With Cullmann And Promaster

 For the last year I have been shifting a number of interesting boxes from Cullmann around the shop shelves. The studio support sets come in various sizes - from basic to humongous with every camp known to man - and up to now I have never experimented with them. And normally I try everything that is lying around undisturbed. Ask some day about the container of hydrochloric acid and the pool chlorine...

Any rate, the Flexx Support Set is the one I raided to make the editorial studio. The desk drawer slides backward and provides and edge to attach the camera support. I elected to attach the X-10 camera to it and it is totally solid. Exposures of a second are no problem.

Fortunately the exposures can be shorter than that with an aperture of f:8 to f:16 - the camera runs at ISO 500 now and there is a Cullmann Copter tabletop tripod that acts as a light stand. On top of it is a small Promaster LED 30 light unit. If I can wangle one of the new LEDGO units we'll have even more power and shorter exposures.

None of this lighting is Steve Sint stuff - it will take a little more time to figure out  good main and fill for this tiny area - but the ability to shoot fast and illustrate as soon as an article is written in invaluable.

Anyone who shoots products or tabletop subjects would be well advised to come browse among the Cullmann accessory kits.

Elegance As Part Of the Equation

I have been looking at the pile of cameras in the corner of the studio - from the newest digital ones on top down to the old daguerreotype ones mouldering into mulch at the bottom - and have decided that there is very little beauty in the business when it comes to equipment. For all we go on about the magnificent L..... or the classic design of the N.... or the C.... they are either utilitarian or overblown.

There are space-age constructions from the late 90's, Soviet optical tractors, and a few Disney characters with lenses in their stomachs, but few that could be described as elegant.

Contrast it with the Fuji X-M1 we have been stocking recently. This is a fully-equipped APSC-sensor digital camera with a 16mm-50mm zoom lens, articulated LCD screen, and all the associated bells and whistles incorporated inside it...but have a look at how nicely the Fujifilm designers have encased it.

Leather is always elegant. If it wasn't, cows wouldn't wear it all the time. Cows and French people are elegant and they wear leather a lot. The Fuji you see here has a wonderful body covering like tan leather. It combines perfectly with the silver finish on the rest of the body.

Now some professionals think that they can only use black cameras to create their art...but then some professionals think that they need to dress in dreadful old ratty clothing to express their individuality. I could show you albums of identical ragged professionals...

Wouldn't it be great if some of them got a shave and a new suit of clothes and a good looking camera? You can beat them to it - buy a Fuji X-M1 now.

First Fruits Of The Furniture - The New Fuji Lens - With The Old Fuji Lens

Okay, that could have been clearer, but as long as you have read this far, you might as well continue...

The new editorial desk has been equipped with a seamless scoop to facilitate taking product shots. In the grand tradition of the Hazel Leaf Studio AKA DIY Palace, it is comprised of two sheets of A3+ matt paper and one big piece of mounting board. It wedges into the tabletop of the desk and a tripod holds the Fuji camera to take pictures of the Fuji lens.

The lighting is supplied by the Catch As Catch Can Company, but this will be improved upon. After all, we ARE a camera store...

The subject of the photograph is the latest and nicest of the Fuji X-Mount lenses. 56mm f:1.2. Sharp as on the focus plane and soft as behind it. The ideal companion for X-E2, X-Pro1 and X-T1 if you are gong to be a low-light street photographer or natural-light portrait artist.

Be prepared for a hefty lens - not as weighty as some of the DSLR lenses, but more than some of the other Fuji glass. It is a deliberate lens to use. Be prepared for a real snap as it comes into focus.

The picture of the 56mm is pin sharp itself because it is taken with he Fuji 60mm macro. Almost the same focal length but an entirely different philosophical approach to it - it is a lens that will produce extremely big extremely close images but only opens to f:4 - hence the tripod. But what a magnificent working optic for art copy or collection recording.

Numismatists and philatelists please take notice - A Fuji X-series camera and this lens will make the best images of your possessions that can be done - and you can do them yourself. You've been promising yourself that you will document the collection. Winter is coming - now is the time.

A Conflict Of Disinterests - Camera Choice For The Perplexed

Working at a camera shop is wonderful. You can play with cameras all day.

Working at a camera shop is horrible. You have to play with cameras all day.

Neither of the sentiments above apply if you are a customer. Then being at a camera shop is exciting...but totally confusing. The modern world is presenting you with so many choices and alternatives that you are hard pressed to make a decision. You might want to press the button, but unfortunately Kodak is no longer there to do all the rest.

The keen enthusiast dives into the internet and reads every forum and rumour site there is.  If they are of an (ahem)..."older generation"...they look out CHOICE magazine from the local library and photocopy pages of advice. I can say this because I am of the same generation and go to the library regularly to look at the lingerie magazines. Readers of CHOICE would do well to remember that every public library has a fiction as well as non-fiction section...

Okay, armed with a looseleaf of papers and a mind full of internet camera equipment flame wars, the prospective customer comes in the shop. If they know what they want, see it on the shelf, open their wallet and whack out their credit card, the whole thing is easy. If they present 5 different opinions about 5 different cameras gleaned from other sources, it all starts to look like the battle of Verdun on a wet night.

One of the smartest things that the prospective camera buyer can do is draw up a list for themselves...in their own handwriting...of what they are NOT interested in. If they don't do portraits in the studio they don't need a portrait lens. ie. they don't need an 85mm f:1.4. If they don't want to go out taking landscape shots of the beach they don't need a 10-20 f:3.5 lens. If they are not interested sports shots they don't need a pro-DSLR with 10 fps capability. And so on...This can eliminate a lot of worry.

After the person thinks out what they don't want, they can think what they do want. Family shots, wedding coverage, fungus in the forest at f:4...whatever. Just as long as they are honest with themselves about their core interests.

Finally, they can see if there are any really odd things that would be fun, but not be absolutely necessary. Automatic toast recognition. HDR food baby sunset mode. With star trails. No matter what the customer can think of, they cannot think wider than the Japanese designers, because the Japanese designers drink at lunchtime. The trick with this category of features is not to make them the central point of choice.

Or CHOICE, if it comes to that...

New Film Format Arrives - Exclusive To Camera Electronic

Well, it arrived. The sample film from my friend at Corrigan AFB arrived today - see heading picture. Dominic was unsure whether we should keep it in the fridge but as we are going to be loading it into the special camera later in the day we decided that it could be left out.

 This is a point that we get asked by a number of customers - generally we reply that while we keep the film in the fridge against the chance of colour changes in hot weather, once they take it out there is unlikely to be such a long period of danger before they expose and process it. All that being said, I did make the mistake in my own studio of leaving several 4 x 5 colour negative holders out of the fridge over several months of summer and the results when I did use them were dreadful. It was funky but not by intention. Discretion is advised.

The new Kodak film will be loaded into a M/Y Cro IIIA surveillance camera fitted to one of the visiting aircraft. I haven't been given details of the mounting but I guess it would be one of those external pods similar to the ones that the RCAF used. From what I can find on the net this sort of thing is demountable and can be shifted between different aircraft. It means that a basic air force or in this case a " civilian " user can make use of smaller vehicles - it is unlikely that they could stretch to a complete RB 36 unit.

It's surprising how the aerial photography thing has taken off here in Perth. Guess it is driven by the real estate trade as much as anything. We see a number of our clients utilising power-extending poles and computer-controlled mounts to get an elevated viewpoint. Several have tried to make powered drones do the job but I think the DCA has put restrictions on this. At least the user of the new film in the M/Y Cro IIIA won't be troubled with that sort of interference while working. We're looking forward to seeing the pictures once they are processed.

Adapt That, Sunshine!...With Fuji And Sigma

Having watched one of my workmates go through a little fit of adapting strange and horrible lenses to his mirror-less Olympus camera...with all the resulting distortion and confusion that you could predict, I vowed never to follow suit. The Olympus lenses he had were wonderful and the old lenses from the back of the drawer were terrible.

Then I got a Fuji mirror-less camera that would accept X-mount adapters, and visited a camera shop that had adapters for it and of course I bought one. I am nothing if not inconsistent - constantly so, in fact.

All seems to be well. Western civilisation has not fallen any further than the Crimea and they still make beer in breweries, so we may be able to carry on. But the adapter business is starting to make me nervous. Not on the question of resolution or  distortion - more just a worry about the physical forces that are called into play.

Any time you stack a long lens onto the front of a camera you have to think how you are going to support that lens. This applies equally if you are coupling up an adapter as well as a lens - there is a strain on the lens mount. Okay if you are cradling the lens and taking the weight there - the camera body just goes on for the ride. When you have to attach the body is where it gets bad - the moment of force on the big lens can be fierce, even if the lens has a short focal length.

Good adapters would have feet like telephoto lenses so that they could become the fulcrum point. The one I bought doesn't, and if I am going to clap the Sigma 8-16 lens on the front of it with the Fuji X-E2 on the back, I am going to have to figure out how to balance the assembly - I don't want to ruin the tripod mount on the underside of the body.
This sort of thing is probably catered for by Manfrotto or Velbon but I have a feeling that it is also amenable to a little shopping at Bunnings.

You can get a lot of camera accessories at Bunnings, and power tools as well. If you go on Saturday they also serve sausages in a bun. Which might just work for the Sigma 8-16...

Like Peas In A Pod - With Fuji

Are all mirror-less cameras the same? Are the systems really identical - like peas in a pod? Can you buy one camera and use other lenses? Should you get a body here and the accessories there? How many forums should you read at any one time before your brain explodes?

To give you a quick series of answers; no, no, yes, no, none.

There are at least 6 mirror-less systems that I can think of and only two of them share similar lens mounts. With a bit of a fiddle and two trombones you can adapt some of the other maker's lenses to some of the other maker's bodies but you always drop some of the maker's automatic features...and you frequently pick up optical distortions that make the whole thing an exercise in futility.

While I love to hook up unlikely combinations of optics and sensors - after all I work in a camera shop - I have come to the conclusion that in general you really should stick to the lenses on offer from the particular manufacturer of bodies you have chosen. The exception to this rule would be if  Zeiss offers a lens for your chosen lens mount. These are likely to be very good lenses indeed and you will be asked to trade many potatoes for them.

All the above leads to the subject of this post: the new Fujinon 10-20 lens for their X-mount cameras. Fujifilm are forging ahead with the APS-C sensor cameras - the new X-T1 being hot at present - and they needed to supply a wide angle zoom for the landscapers and interior shooters. The 10-24 will give the same angle of view as a 15-36 would on a full-frame camera, but with a fast autofocus or focus peaking on suitable bodies.

Note: The focus peaking really does work well for manual focus in a studio situation - it makes it easy to see in dim conditions when you are dead on for focus. It also costs a few potatoes but is well worth it.

A Thursday Night Party - And Friday Morning After

I was not here. Dang. I wish I could have been here. But then I was there
where I wanted to be anyway...

Last Thursday evening saw a promotional night here at Camera Electronic for the Fujifilm X-T1 camera. This is the new flagship camera for Fujifilm that uses the X-series sensor and combines it with a top-quality professional system body.

As is the wont round here, there was food, drink, new cameras, and a guest speaker - Megan Lewis. I note that she has a wonderful eye for people capture as she has left one of her hard-bound books here; "Conversations With the Mob". She photographs widely in the indigenous community.

The Fujifilm night also featured bargains on cameras and lenses - Saul has saved me a flyer of the offers that were available on the night - and I have had a chance to compare it to the Fujifilm price I saw at a camera store in the Ginza last Friday morning. The heading image is the window shot I took, though I suspect that this was considered bad manners in Japan - certainly another store along the street had some nasty little signs scolding English-readers for attempting to record the prices.

This seemed a little harsh to me - people here ask prices all the time and then dive into their mobile phones to try to find a cheaper price to wave in our faces. We accept it philosophically. At least they are waving the phones at us instead of breaking off the conversation every three minutes to discuss the noodles in the food hall...

But back to the prices in Japan. Once I got back and looked at our specials and did the Yen conversion I realised that we were just as good value as Japan. And if you bought from us you got Fujifilm Australia backing up a legal warranty. I suspect this might very well be the case with other manufacturer's goods as well. The money and safety moral here is to shop locally.

I might also say that the camera stores and departments in Japan are fun and noisy, and in some cases as crowded as our floor, but sometimes they do not have any more stock than we do, and some of their stock looks decidedly...decidedly...well, let me just say that I know where the world breeding stock for really, really BAD camera straps is, and it takes a strong man to look on it without blenching. I had to sit down and ask for a glass of water.

X-E2 - Picking The First Fruit

It has recently fallen to my lot to possess a Fuji mirror-less camera. It is not the first camera of this brand for me - I also use a Fuji X-10 and a Fuji X-100 - but it is the first one that has an interchangeable lens.

It features the new X-trans sensor, and the literature promises great things in terms of resolution and freedom from distortions. I ventured out yesterday to test the camera and to compare it to the others.

At the start, I have to say that the images were taken on jpeg rather than a RAW setting. My current operating system does not support an update of the Photoshop Elements to decode this new RAW. Nor does my Aperture program - but I am not too worried, since I know that the jpegs that come from the Fuji X series are nearly perfect...as long as i do my job and get the exposure right.

Of course if the scenes I take are evenly and brightly lit I can just trust to the matrix metering in the camera to deliver the right settings. Putting the shutter speed and the aperture ring on "A" and just letting them get on with it is totally successful. But I'm a awkward soul - I deal with subjects that are brightly coloured, reflective, and parked in appalling light. Cars are fun, but the lighting isn't.

To defeat this problem, I use a rig made of a Nikon Sb 700 flash, a flash bracket, and whatever camera system i have at the time. Sometimes it has been big film cameras, sometimes big DSLR cameras, and sometimes a small Fuji. The flash on the fuji bodies can be switched to command an external flash and I just dial up the power I want on the SB 700. I also run an outboard SB 700 on a small Manfrotto stand.

Yesterday's cars were veteran and vintage - a majority of which have solid colour paint schemes. This is good - metallic paints can be a pain to photograph as they send back troublesome hot spots from flash. I set the X-E2 to the bog standard settings and blazed away. You cannot say to start with what custom settings might be necessary for each new camera in each category of subject, so it is better to start from a central point.

In the event, I think I will dial down the saturation for car shows in the future - the dull-coloured cars are helped, but if the owner has decided to paint his Maxwell red the result can be a little Mexican...This will also apply to belly dance and Bollywood shows as the dress designers generally turn their colour control to "9" and throw the knob away to begin with.

I noted that there was little need to invoke unsharp masking for the images from the X-E2 in Photoshop. the jpegs seemed as sharp as needed straight up. Indeed there was very little PShopping done to the whole shoot - as long as I dialled the SB 700 anywhere near the correct fill ratio the results were ready to crop and save.

I will experiment next with the X-E2 at a belly dance hafla in April. You get to see the results so make sure you are over 18!

NOW It's Hands On. Fuji X-T1

Came in early. Made sure the battery of the Fuji X-T1 was charged. Put on the 18-55 lens and popped around the place shooting. Some of the results are here on this post, though the nature of a blog picture can never show the entire quality of the file - it is too small.

Right now, I can't see what the RAW work would be like - this computer has too old a copy of PE to do it and Aperture doesn't support the X-T1 RAW file yet. This will be added, no doubt, in the next few months. Until then I would have to use one of the jpeg file settings.

This is not a limitation with Fuji. I discovered a long time ago with my Fuji X-10 that the jpeg files were so good that I didn't even bother to update to RAW work for two years. I could go to the car shows and shoot happily and just show or print the jpegs as is.

Of course, since I decided to get fancy and add to my fill-flash setup ( see previous posts ) I had glorious opportunities to stuff up the exposures....and seized those opportunities...so starting to use the RAW has proved to be a benefit. I can recover my sins gracefully in a darkened computer room with the door shut.

For the time being, I would shoot the X-T1 in studio in jpeg readily - I can see the results straight away and modify them with studio lighting. I would also feel perfectly confident in using it as a field camera dependant upon the camera's meter - it does a far better job of exposure than I do, as long as I do not try to help it out.

And Adobe and Apple will beaver away in the electronic background and one day announce that you can use their products with Fuji X-T1 in RAW.

Note, I suspect that you can use the Fuji RAW conversion in the camera right now on a picture by picture basis.

Please also note one ergonomic/design note. Like some Canon lenses for Canon cameras, Fuji X lenses for Fuji X cameras have a metal lens mount and the electronic contacts that are recessed slightly into the mount. Fuji have the advantage over Canon that there is only one type of mount - you don't get confused with red-dot or white-square when you try to mount a lens. Fuji have the advantage over my large Nikon in that the Nikon mount is filled with sharp edges and protruding levers and can be a bit crunchy when going on and off.

If I could offer one request to the Fujifilm company in their lens design, it would be to follow the lead of manufacturers who place a raised dot or other external indicator at the point where their lens mount engages the body. Just to be able to feel the orientation as you bring the lens to the camera. I suppose you could always sew a button to the lens with a strong bit of twine...I must try this with the shop lenses.

I'll let you know how I get on...

Very Nearly Hands On With the New Fuji X-T1 camera

Okay, we HAVE got our hands on the Fuji X-T1. As I type the staff are fighting tooth and nail to get a play with the new camera. I got two quick shots before it was whisked away, but at least I got to see some good bits.

One, the hand grip is perfect for the balance of the camera.

Two, the viewfinder is brilliant. Big.

Three, the classic front and back control wheels are exactly where your fingers need to find them for the operation of aperture or shutter speed.

Four, it looks as though the TTL control contacts in the hot shoe have been changed from those on previous Fuji cameras. There are four silver contacts plus a gold one as well as the central contact. This argues a new set of flashes coming. Hip. Hip. Hooray. Should this be the case, this camera will be the central pivot of a new professional system. I wait with bated breath.

Five, the inclusion of the tilting screen is welcome. Forget peering down through the gloom in the studio when you can pull the screen out and use it as a waist-level viewfinder.

Six, the focus assist button that boosts the center of the screen to allow you to focus is as precise as you could ask for. Beats the old microprism screen all hollow.

In short, an extremely desirable object. Watch out for our launch night when we get this baby in action!

Long And Low At the Hot Rod Show - with Fuji and Nikon and Metz

The great experiment conducted over the six months regarding a camera for hot rod photography has yielded results. The Fuji/Nikon/Metz lash-up does pretty near everything that the Nikon/Nikon/ Stroboframe outfit did, and it does it easily enough that an old guy can carry it round in the sun all day.

If I am prepared to carry a second Nikon SB 700 on a little Manfrotto stand I can get great illustration of the front grille and the side panel of even the long cars. Of course, if you are dealing with something white like the '59 Impala you can get a lot more value out of those flashes.

How does this help you? If you are going to go out and climb Bluff Knoll with a camera kit bouncing in your backpack, consider whether you want that camera kit to weigh 3.5 Kg or 1 Kg. It's your back going up and it's your back coming down, and it's your back sitting in the chiropractor's waiting room...And those of you who have spent a fortnight on Ibruprofen and Voltaren can back me up...

Also consider whether you need to go to a shoot with 5 lenses. I used to do just this in the dear dead Hasselblad wedding days. Everything in the HB box including the 250mm tele lens in case the bride escaped and I needed to shoot her before she got over the horizon...My assistant, Igor, used to hump the bag and the tripod and the extra flashes and the film and the bag of rocks...( I never actually told him about the bag of rocks...) and never complained. Fainted occasionally, but never complained.

Eventually I discovered that I was using two lenses for the whole wedding. An 80mm and a 50mm, and the 50 only came out of the massive case for 5 exposures. I eventually rationalised the whole thing by leaving out half of the glass and most of the fancy little accessories. It freed up a lot of space in the case...for more rocks.

That is history - the Hasselblad outfit is long retired and recently sold, and the new owners can risk their vertebrae at their leisure. Weddings still need extra gear for back-up safety, but this can be hauled in a roller bag. Lithium AA cells power all three flashes and these are light weight. Igor looks healthier, and after-shoot processing is so much faster.

I still pack a bag of rocks but these are only in case the bride proves sluggish. And I never throw rocks at hot rod shows. Some things are sacred, you know...

Moral of this tale: Buy right, pack light, allow for wind direction when throwing rocks.

To Market, To Market To Buy A Fat Lens...

Did goe to the Photographic Markets yesterday and was greatly entertained.

The view from the seller's side of the table is different than from that of the buyer's. It reminded me of diagrams I have seen of the circulation of the blood - the individuals representing the red corpuscles drifting by. Occasionally pausing, and sometimes aggregating. Which is a nice way of saying acting like clots.

For the most part people are very nice. They look at the gear, hoist it round, put it down, move on. Or ask the price. I have learned to make a large sign with the price on it, so that we are both able to see it - it saves a deal of misunderstanding.

Of course, the nature of a market being what it is, some wish to bargain it down. I am not offended by this, though I generally pitch my prices low enough that this is not necessary. And I have learned to politely maintain my pricing...it works out well in the end. I have also learned never to offer anything that is not good value for money, nor anything that is unreliable. Better to throw it away at home than offer to sell it if it is going to disappoint someone else.

A couple of words of advice to those who would be buyers...you will get better reception for your bargaining if you do not attempt to talk down the equipment you are bargaining for. In the case of gear that has been personally owned and used by the seller, they understand it far better than you, and have at least some residual interest in it. If you pooh pooh it you are effectively criticising them...they may take umbrage.

Likewise do not try the old trick of bad ears...where you ask the price and then echo it but subtly alter it down to something that sounds the same but is 10% lower...hoping that the seller will be confused and agree. Particularly don't try this is you have a large printed sign in front of you...it won't work. Not even if you do it in a heavy accent.

When someone has no price tag on an item, you can legitimately ask "What is the price?" or " What will you take?". You cannot use this latter question if there is a printed sign - you would be asking the seller to start bidding themselves down while you stand back. By all means haggle -  but do your own haggling and don't expect them to do it for you.

Are you free to offer advice to other buyers while you are standing there on the buyer's side  about buying or rejecting something on offer? Yes, it is a free country. Of course the seller may then suggest that you are doing this for your own benefit, and raise suspicions of you being either a shill or vulture. If the feathers sound like they fit, be prepared to wear them...

All the above being said, the morning can be fun. The people who purchased some of my surplus equipment are intelligent and artistic people who will benefit from their purchases. I will benefit from the return of cash. We are both happy. And the coffee stall always has some very good home-made baked goods.

Baked goods are also necessary for the circulation of the blood.

Uncle Dick

Dark Or Light?

It's been years since I owned a silver-coloured camera - the last one was a Pentax MX in the 1970's. It was a superb compact film camera and one that i can readily recommend to anyone who encounters it in the S/H market. I noted at the time that even then, there were no silver chrome Pentax lenses to accompany it - they were all black.

Years passed, all the cameras were black until I hit the Hasselblad 500 C/M and 553 ELX era. Chrome bodies both of them, and I noted that this was a wiser choice - the black-painted Hasselblad bodies of the period nearly always seemed to wear poorly. I daresay they were all the same inside, but the chrome looked better.

Now we have the Nikon Df in silver or black. Also the Leica M cameras. also a number of the mirror-less Olympus, Fuji, and Panasonic cameras. In some cases there are lens option to match the body colour. I am shortly to acquire one of the Panasonic Lumix GX7 cameras and have asked for the silver version in both lens and body.

Why? I don't contemplate taking it into such high sunlight that the silver would be required to reflect heat from the body - indeed next month may well see the entire opposite for me in terms of climate.

Am I not afraid of appearing to be an " amateur " photographer? No, no a bit. I will be a travelling tourist photographer with it, and travelling where a tourist would attract less interest than a professional. I will be seen, but not, hopefully, as a threat to public order. Just a tourist.

Likewise the choice of lens for the front of it. Now you can get marvellous micro 4/3 lenses for the Panasonic cameras but if you put a big long one on there the people you point it at may take exception. Intrusive is as intrusive does, so I am going to pick the 20mm f:1.7 Lumix and just wander about harmlessly.

The results from it should be marvellous - I've tested the combination here in the shop. If you are going away for the Northern spring or summer you should call in here and see if the same idea will suit you.

Note: Unobtrusive clothing is a good idea too. Forget the camouflage gear - wear quiet colours in quiet locations and loud colours in tourist traps.

Printed messages on tee shirts also bear a little thought...I remember being behind a young Asian man in the checkout line at the old IKEA store in Scarborough Beach Road while he was wearing a tee shirt advertising the Waffen SS and it was all I could do not to welt him one with the table lamp I was buying. I suspect he was completely unconscious of what it all meant...