The Swedish Fortress Stands Secure - HB Defend Their Honour

Looks like the internet has struck again.

Inaccurately, of course, and anonymously, and with the worst possible motives*. But the victim has fought back.

Someone somewhere posted rumours that the finances of Hasselblad were in trouble.

Hasselblad themselves - with the authority of Ian Rawcliffe, the CEO of the company - have instantly quashed this. They are in damn good shape, they have an excellent product in their new medium-format camera, and they have new products coming in the pipeline.

Visitors to their stand at the forthcoming Photokina will be rewarded with glorious images and glorious devices to play with. Professional users of this brand will always be rewarded with the best working system there is.

Note: The Backstabbers Guild Of Australia never indulges in rumours about cameras. We recognise that the internet market is saturated with this form of nonsensical speculation already and we prefer to confine ourselves to more exclusive treachery.

* Commercial advantage. Rivalry. Moolah.

Reading The Book

" I don't know anything about cameras but I want one to take good pictures and I'm going away tomorrow and which is the best one? I get discount."

Good thing , that. Not the discount bit, mind... the going away part. You'll have a good 3-6 hours on a Boeing with your knees in your chin and you can balance the camera instruction manual on them. If you can't become an award-winning iconic master in that time well where is the world coming to.

You're in good company - a long line of Australians have headed to Singapore, Bali, and Bolivia with a new 35mm camera in a leather case and a little Japlish instruction book in the bag. The ones who took a boat were better off as they had more time to read and were not likely to have their ( mostly blank )  colour slides back from the processor until they returned home. It was disappointment deferred.

It was a bit better in the 1960's as there was a longer time-frame for a number of things. Items came from the eastern states at a slower pace and people in the west accepted that they might not get what they wanted inside a fortnight. There was no instant view of an item bouncing on a screen to promise them instant delivery. The wise ones used the time interval to study up on what to do with the new camera that was coming. The less-wise just opened the instruction book ( " Thank You for the buying to this fine instrument...") and winged it.

I must complement the writers from Japan. They now make an instruction book that instructs - it may be plodding and patronising, but it actually explains what happens when you press the button. The more cynical members of the trade sometimes feel that there are too many features offered ( full-time birthday face recognition predictive AF exposure compensation for pets being one, particularly when the Schnauzer is in HDR...) but people want to push buttons anyway so you might as well give them buttons to push. It keeps their fingers away from the front of the lens.

As for right now, please remember to put your instruction book into airplane mode before you buckle up.

Buy Two While They Are Cheap - Hasselblad Make All Your Lens Dreams Come True

Hasselblad would like you to buy one of their new H5D-40 digital cameras. Now, please. If you have space in the car, buy two - saves coming back later when you discover that the kids have taken yours. And got marmalade on the lens.

To reward you for this purchase they are are proposing to sell you some of the razor-sharp Hasselblad lenses for remarkably reduced prices - in some cases you can save up to 50%. The lenses that are offering are:

HC 2.1/100mm
HC Macro 4/120mm
HC 3.2/150mm
HC 4/210mm

The reasons for buying the Hasselblad H5D-40 actually do extend a little further than just saving money on the lenses. The camera is the top of the medium format digital world with 40 megapixel sensor, Phocus 2.8 software, and the unique True Focus AF system that maintains correct focus even when you recompose your composition.

Please check out their website now. The images that Hasselblad feature to showcase their own equipment are excellent, but I would also go to Alexia Sinclair's website to see what more can be done. I saw these presented on a big screen a couple of years ago and thought them the best of the profession.

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.

Free - One To Every Customer. Some Restrictions May Apply.

Are you a small camera user? Do the operators of bigger cameras look down on you? Does your brother-in-law push his big zoom lens in your face and laugh?

Take heart - now you can fight back with Fuji. The Fuji X series are small cameras. They are handy and fast and light. You can take them anywhere where they won't fire bullets at you. You can look as cool as by wearing the latest designer clothing and sunglasses and shooting pictures with them. You can use the terms "bokeh" and "social responsibility" and "gluten-free" in the same sentence. They are legal in Canberra.

And if you buy an X-20 or X-E1 or X-M1 from our shop you are entitled to a Ferrari. And not just any old Ferrari - you get a copy of the photograph of the Ferrari that you see at the top of the page - printed out on Epson paper and signed by the world-famous international superstar ambassador mentor writer who took the picture. Oops, sorry - that is " hand crafted the image ". With his own hands and a Fuji X-10.

If you buy an extra lens you get a picture of a Maserati as well. Even your brother-in-law can't beat that.

Big 1000 - The Blog Post That Turns The Corner

Social media is like social disease - everyone has read about it, hardly anyone has seen it for themselves, and no-one wants the old-fashioned treatment for it. The little umbrella...

Writing for it requires a combination of Charles Lamb and Woody Allen; serious essay and one-liner. Plus a dash of Ansel Adams - plonkingly complex technical advice clothed in  art. It is an exhilarating experience when it goes well but very sad when there is nothing inspiring here in the shop. That is also when it becomes most dangerous - you start to think on a tangent and pretty soon the irate customers start beating on the windows with rocks.

We have a company slogan: " We Love Photography." and by-golly we do. Everyone here on the floor is a photographer and we actually do what we talk about  - in most cases with the stuff we sell to you. It is the best way for us to get knowledge - if we can do it we can show you how.

Sometimes we can show you how not to do it, as well. Every one of us has approached a job at some time and shot it in the best way we could and had it look like a horrible mess in the end. Sometimes we have been consultants for other people doing the same thing. This sort of experience is wonderful, particularly if you survive and the warrants expire.

Are we doing better than the anonymous writers on the forums? I think so - in the end we can actually demonstrate the gear in front of the customer, and even if we need to have a shop-huddle to all figure out how to make the device work, at least we all learn.

We are always asked which camera or lens is best. The answer is, of course, yes. Or no, depending upon the prejudices of the questioner. Some people really do want advice - some just want a fight. Quite a few want a place to eat their lunch when it rains. In the end, we ask as many questions as we answer, and sometimes the customer actually does their own answering. Then we can argue and eat lunch.

It is fun, the business of selling cameras. Not as much fun as social disease, but you don't get itchy in awkward places in hot weather.

Uncle Dick

Tick Tack Toe -The Business Of Feeling

Never mind the quality - feel the width. Boom boom.

Those of you with Linhof Technorama cameras may grin now. Widely. Now back to the regular digital camera world.

Never mind the specifications. Pick the damn thing up and see if you can find the shutter button with your finger. If you can't see it from behind, ask someone to look from the front and give you hand signals - like steering a tank onto a transporter. if neither of you can find out which bit sets it off, set it down and move on.

Are you right handed or left handed? If the former you will be able to operate any camera easily - if the latter, give up all hope of photography. Since the demise of the Exakta, you have been cast into outer darkness. This is one of the meanest of decisions in today's electronic world. All that would be needed is a simple electric switch on the left to fire the shutter - even if it did double duty as some other control for the right handers. Maddening, isn't it - you can get more left handed can openers and shotguns than you can simple little cameras.

Okay, say you can use your right paw... is it a big mitt or a little one? This is important because a number of the more fashionable mirror-less cameras are made for Asian hands. You may be trying to hold it with 2 or three of your fingers excess to requirements  and your fingertips might be pushing three controls at once every time you try to operate it.

Try the thing to your eye. If you can't do this because there is no eye-level viewfinder, go outside and let the sun fall directly on the LCD screen. Can you see anything at all? No? Go get one with a viewfinder. Now, when you are peering through the finder, where is your nose going? If you want to spend your holidays with your nose smashed flat you can either do it on the back of an LCD screen or go for a sparring partner with Danny Green. You choose. Alternately choose a Fuji or Leica camera that lets you see through a finder on the northwest of the camera body and leaves space for your nose at the end. It can make a difference.

Are you going to change lenses? Somewhere on the body will be a button that releases the lens so that you can bayonet it off. Some of the designers have put this button in a concealed or stylish place and you may have to search for it. If the lens needs more than two movements to remove it,  you risk catching it in mid-change and dropping it.

Where is the tripod screw socket? On the underside, one hopes...but after that there are a number of options. Central is good - off-center means you cannot rotate the body for panoramic pictures quite as well. way out at the end of the baseplate is pretty horrible, but it is traditional for a couple of cameras.

And one more test. Do you want to use a camera that has an in-built flash? Is it going to be one that pops up over a central pentaprism? Does it lock in place? The reason we ask this is the fact that some of these flashes are used to control off-camera speed lights and they turn off as soon as they are folded. The danger is if you wear a hat with a brim while shooting in this manner, your hat brim may push the flash in and turn everything off. It can puzzle the most expert user.

Please note we have not commented at all about the usability of the cameras for video - about whether the focussing and zooming is smooth and whether basic camera handling is easy or starts to make alarming noises on the microphone.

Another Stellar Landing By Hasselblad

The You-Tube phenomenon of people un-boxing equipment as entertainment has a certain charm. I should dearly love to see them unpack some of the stuff that lands in this shop - in particular products from the O corporation. I think they spring-load the cameras and accessories so that they spring out of the cardboard and can never be put in again...

Not so the latest offering from Hasselblad - the Hasselblad Stellar with mahogany wood grip. Here it is peeled layer by layer through the packaging. The box is undoubtedly the most luxurious container I have ever seen. It deserves a place in a museum.

The camera also looks wonderful but I have stopped at the sealed stickers over the screen and lens. The new owner, whoever they may be - will want to dig them off with a pen-knife themselves. Camera people are like that and who are we in the trade to deny them their pleasures.

It is not the camera for the masses - unless the masses are packing money bags the size of Volkswagens. It is the camera for the connoisseur. Bring your wallet and knife and come see us.

We're So Proud - A Hasselblad Baby!

Here is the family picture of a new Zeiss Vario Sonnar 10,4mm-37,1mm f:1,8-4,9 lens ...with the proud parents standing beside it. Note that the markings have commas instead of periods as this is a European lens design and they do that in Europe.

It is the featured optic on the fabulous new Hasselblad Stellar camera. The cradle you see it in is possibly the most elegant packaging yet for any compact camera - it makes cardboard boxes look like cardboard boxes.

Notice the grip - this is the ready-for-action carbon fibre grip, but with a camera this exclusive you are not restricted to just one style. There are 9 choices, including exotic woods like mahogany, walnut, and
zebra. The grip is very comfortable and would hold the camera perfectly for photographing things.

I have not exposed the back screen -preferring to let the purchaser do this - as you can see the advertising mentions the 20.2 megapixels, full 1080 HD video,the f:1,8 lens, and the 3.6X optical zoom. Please note the H-marked rubber thumb rest at the upper right corner that allows the  front grip to function better. That is an H-marked pad, you understand.

The camera will be on display here in the shop - it is the perfect complement to the Hasselblad H4 medium format cameras and makes a bold brand statement for any photographer.

Good to see that Hasselblad and Zeiss are working togetner again.

Still On The Square - Hasselblad

After all these years we can still proudly take one of the Hasselblad 500 C/M cameras out into the winter sunshine and do something that we can't do with the digital camera - see the damn screen. Note that the waist-level finder has been erected and has shaded the image of Stirling Street. Did I want it, I could have popped up the magnifier lens and put my eye down for a closer, brighter view - essentially a built-in loupe.

So simple - yet even with all the swivelling screens that proliferate on DSLRs or enthusiast compacts, none of them have thought to give us a folding hood. Hoodman do make the HD Camcorder hoods which may do the trick - they come in different sizes from 200 to 450, so it is worth the effort to come in and test them out. Not quite as quick to flick as the Hasselblad, but then you never do get quite as much convenience from the digital as the film cameras...

You'll also note that the Hasselblad is easier to charge when you are overseas - you need not take a bag of plug adapters and cords when you go to foreign hotels. The recording medium is 120 film and this is not dependant upon electricity. Those of you who enjoy a cocktail will appreciate this - you end up with more time for drinking with a film camera.

Of course there are always trade-offs. Carrying a secondhand Hasselblad for the next twenty years will deprive you of the kewl points that you get when you come out with the latest digital a half-hour after it is announced on DP Review. You will no longer be the focus of envious glances at the camera club when you pull it out and brag. Everyone will be bored with the old film camera - this will leave you more time to go out and shoot photographs. If that is the sort of thing you want to do.

Worse yet - as it is a Hasselblad you will inevitably have to put up with the conspiracy theorist who knows that NASA used Hasselblads but is going to buttonhole you at a party to prove that they never landed on the moon. Take it in good part - wait until their attention is distracted and hit them with the camera - it is stainless steel and will come to no harm.

Reverse Engineering In The Studio

We all know how reverse engineering goes in the commercial world - A Chinese company rep sends a new European product to his factory, they take it apart and make computer plans, then turn on the CAD-CAM machines and churn out low-priced copies. 

Their advertising office adds a vaguely-European name to it and then floods everyone's emails with promotion. This accounts for the Montgomery-Fitzhugh ffitch-ffitch Smythe tripod range from Guangzhao. It's a long way from Harrow to Herro...

It also works in the military field - wayward B-29s are interned by the Russians and Heigh-Ho here come 847 Tupolev 4 bombers. 

Well, a conversation yesterday with an artist alerted me to the fact that we sometimes have to do a little reverse engineer thinking in our camera shop. You see the artist wanted to take photographs that would serve as guides for her own paintings - portraits - and then wanted images to be available for further commercial reproduction. Once she had finished a canvas, she wanted a camera and lens combination that would be able to photograph the artwork for full-size reproduction.

So here's the reverse - I could have said a small-frame Nikon or Canon DSLR for the initial shots, but that would leave it wanting for the art copy. I could have said a moderate telephoto for the portraits, but that wold have made the art copy difficult - these are going to be large canvases. Zoom lenses and art reproduction are problematical due to distortion. Compromise, compromise.

In the end the best balance seems to be a Nikon D600 with a 50mm f:1.4 G lens or a Canon 6D with a 50mm f:1.4 EF lens. There will be more discussions about the business of lighting for portraits and flat artwork, but funnily enough some of the simple Elinchrom D-lite and RX sets are perfect for both applications.

It is good when a project like this can be looked at in detail right form the start - potential difficulties can be avoided - and it is also fascinating to think how many ventures would benefit from being seen and engineered in reverse.

Are You Nervous Enough?

It was with great relief that I heard the announcement today that anxiety was to be made a mental health issue. I have never been able to afford full-blown paranoia on my salary and every time I commence a project in hypochondria someone slips me a couple of paracetamol tablets and I get better, damnit.

But now that we have a ...Foundation...employing a... Movie Star... to promote it, I can get Government Money to develop anxiety. This is wonderful - the site has lain dormant for too long. Time to erect an edifice and start advertising. I wonder if there are any buses available for those big stick-on posters.

Here at the shop I will be doing our part to promote anxiety and I think it behooves me to start the ball rolling with several photography questions:

1. Do you have enough megapixels? You know your brother-in-law has more...

2. Where was your camera last night?

3. Did you turn it off when you put it away? Better go home and check to make sure. Tell your supervisor it is an emergency.

4. Is the camera you want going to be superceded in the next ten years? Wouldn't it be better to wait until 2023 just in case there is a new feature - like automatic beer dispenser - on the new model. Okay, the one you have now is broken and the kids are growing up, but you can make now babies in 2023, right?

5. Is that ED or EF? Or AF-S - wait a minute - what does the N mean, and the L? There is a Z on this lens. How did this Z get here? Who put the Z on my lens? Come on, own up. I can wait all day...

6. This USB port on my computer is upside down. Now what do I do? I don't want to have to turn all my pictures over in Photoshop to see them.

7. If we are entering an age where all devices are connected all the time everywhere wirelessly, how can I be sure someone in Bermuda won't delete my family photos from their iPhone just to be mean?

8. Is my screen really calibrated or is the colour meter lying to me? Why would it do that? Why won't you answer me?

Once we have worked our way through these preliminaries, I think we are ready for the really important question:

How can I get my hands on some of that public cash?

If you know, write in. Use secret code No.31A.

Uncle Dick