Adventurous Printing With Epson And GoPro

Well, you can't fault the logic of it. Buy an Epson inkjet printer and get a miniature adventure camera. The best of both worlds.

Go out and video yourself skateboarding over a cliff with a jet pack, wings, and a motorcycle attached - underwater - as you do...and when you are sitting at home safe and dry and comfortable...in your cast with the traction weights pulling your hip straight again, you can get the lady from Silver Chain to make some great A3+ prints of you.

Okay, that's more cynicism than Epson intended when they bundled the R3000 printer with a GoPro Silver edition action camera in a special offer, and you will probably do no worse that take pictures of the kids falling off the trampoline onto the concrete.

The printer is great - I have one and it hasn't failed in anything I ask it to do - gloss, lustre, or matte - the prints are what I expect to see and the thing is quite economical with ink. We use one to make shop advertising posters and it is as good as the commercially printed material the manufacturers send us. Plus we get to do it on the spot. Thoroughly recommended.

The GoPro cameras are the doyen of this sort of machine. Whether you are recording carnage on Russian roads or swimming carnivals back home, it produces sharp, spectacular footage of whatever passes in front of the wide-angle lens. There are any number of accessories to latch these to people, vehicles, and objects and you can work Wifi and remote operation in case you don't want to be attached to it when it hits the rock face...

Nurse! Time for my sponge bath!

Camera Electronic On The Battlefield Of the Future

Here at Camera Electronic we are proud to be able to say that we are at the cutting edge. We bleed frequently.

A new product in-store will make this all happen faster. We have taken delivery of the Phantom - a four-rotor drone system capable of lifting a small digital camera. It has space on-board for a GoPro camera and is controlled by a digital radio-control set.

The average photographer may not have experience flying a spy drone but the makers of the Phantom are confident that the skill can be picked up easily. Those readers who have built radio/controlled aircraft, helicopters, or boats may be a bit skeptical about this, but they are not selling the Phantom. In any event the Phantom is equipped with  GPS system that will sense when it flies too far out of the range of the transmitter - if this happens it takes control and returns the aircraft to the launching point.

There are 4 powerful motors lifting the Phantom and the propellor rotors are readily replaceable when you crash. If you are concerned about slicing through a sunday school picnic on the local oval with 4 razor sharp whirling knives there is a set of optional prop-guards. Spare batteries are quite inexpensive.

The light weight of the GoPro cameras is perfect for this sort of platform. You can record amazing detail with these on the ground or water so the results from the air should be great.

Please note we are not authorised to sell HVAR, Hellfire, or other air-to-ground missiles. You will have to be content with using the Phantom for surveillance over obstacles.

Hey Mum, Look At Me!

The business of the selfie has become big business for the digital age. Of course there have always been self-timers on cameras ever since shutters became mechanical rather than animal-powered*. But nowadays we can get many more options for self-recording than ever before.

Case in point is my own Fuji X-10 - the standard 10-second self timer coupled with the integrated flash means I can record myself in a number of restaurants whenever I go on holiday in glorious colour and good exposure.

But if I am determined to capture myself on a Gopro or Ion action camera - or a DSLR or mirrorless that has video recording - and I plan on bouncing about in front of the thing wrestling Schnauzers or whatever, I need someone to track my movements. No mate to watch me run into a wall, and no video to post on EweTube**.

The answer for the new photographer is the Soloshot. The orange box you see in the images is an electronic tracking system that mounts the camera on top. It is in turn set up on a dedicated tripod and the subject of the video is given a small padded transmitter to strap on the arm - about the size of a matchbox.

Set the device to talk to itself, go out about 50 feet away from the tripod, and let it lock on. Then as you
run back and forth it moves physically to track you and you appear in the middle of the video. It works - we've seen videos of water skiers using it and they look as good as a professional tracking them.

In store right now.

* Photographers fingers and the lens cap...

** New Zealand website...

Timely Protection For The Road

Residents of Leeming, Bull Creek, and Winthrop may be interested in this posting.

We have a good supply of the GoPro cameras in stock this week - enough so that drivers may wish to purchase them in multiples of 2 or 4.

We can particularly recommend the GoPro Silver edition and we're happy to be able to report good stocks of suction mounts and curved adhesive mounts. You should be able to secure your cameras to most surfaces on the motor car and with a little careful measuring you can make arrangements for the cameras to see the front and rear bumpers as well as all the side doors.

Don't forget to purchase some of the SanDisk micro SD cards for your cameras - you'll want them to operate any time you are parked in local shopping centres.

Happy motoring...

Uncle Dick