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...

Sand Bags, Shot Bags, And Tea Bags

I bags being in the next photo shoot!

This whole Friday morning footle came about when one of our good clients called a moment ago to pick up some rental lighting gear for a shoot in the city. I must record my admiration for his packing ability - he got more in the boot of a Holden than I could fit into a moving van. I think he will be getting some of it out with a crowbar, but that is his problem...

He hired some sand bags to help stabilise light stands. A good idea if you are working in a wind or in the midst of a crowd of tourists. There is a lot of weight on the top of a light stand and if it overbalances... it comes down like a comet. If you stack the sandbags on the  legs you prevent this.

He also mentioned that he had a bunch of sandbags that used to be standard equipment in ambulances. After speculating that these would have been used to cosh the noisier patients...an unworthy thought...I realised that they were the same as the lead shot bag I used to encounter in operating theatres. It was basically a dead pad into which the head and neck could be pressed to prevent movements while the patient was unconscious. As I was sometimes applying pretty heavy force to those unconscious heads, it needed to be solid to resist. I'm happy to say that ALL of those heads eventually became conscious again. Sore, but conscious.

I note that there are also commercially-made bags for lighting situations that are empty with quick-seal flaps. You can carry them empty to a shoot and then fill them with sand, rocks, or whatever heavy at the site. A very good idea.

I have often wondered if there would be a good point in providing a head attachment that would go on the top of a standard 1/2" light stand spigot with three additional rings - you could guy the the thing to the ground if you were sending the flash head up really high. Nowadays the Suberp Profoto Air flashes have wireless adjustment as well as triggering so once it is up you could vary it to suit yourself without having to demount the guys.

Oh, and the tea bags are or after the shoot. White and one for me, thanks.

Round The Houses With Cullmann

The panoramic photograph seems to have been to be the soupe du jour - or is that the suppe di anno? Whatever, everyone was doing them them last year. As a number of manufacturers make wonderful equipment for the specialty, we hope they do them next year as well.

The heavyweight star of the panoramic brackets is. of course, Manfrotto,. The MH057A5 head is magnificently equipped for horizontal or vertical panoramas with a great deal of precision and repeatability. It can accommodate the largest lenses that one might choose and has adjustable click stops to let you take your exposures rapidly. It is super-engineered and so heavy that if it fell on you from a tall shelf, it would kill you.

If you wish less risk but almost the same expense, I recommend Novoflex products. They are also engineered but with elegance and style. They are also lighter.

These used to be the two choices for the big player, but now Cullmann has come out with a design as well. The Concept One system from Cullmann has a similar precision turntable that bolts on to the stem of many Cullmann ball heads. I should mate it to the 6, 7, or 8 series - or onto the dedicated Concept One heads. The big ones are BIG, so do come in and find one that matches your equipment.

The Concept One mounting plates are Arca-sized and I note that they make a corner mount that allows you to mate up two of their longer plates to make an L-shaped bracket for vertical mounting. Neat use of the existing equipment.

One final note - for simple panos with little cameras try the Panomatic and for even simpler ones use the Fuji X-10 and X-20 in the SP mode - there are 120º, 180º, and 360º settings and all you do is spin around slowly. In the case of the 360º one you spin around until you fall down...

Goat Feet

Tripod manufacturers up till now have generally based their products on memories - generally the memory of the mount for the Vickers or '08 Maxim machine guns. Perhaps they used to make them in the good old days. In any event they have big spikes and knobs at the ends of the legs designed to lock into the terrain and take the recoil of a wide angle lens on a DSLR. Them 24mm' s can be vicious...

Manfrotto have re-thought the idea with an eye to the wedding market. Their new MVT502AM tripod has all the features that a lightweight videographer needs to support a DSLR or small videocam, and the feet are designed for the indoors.

Look up at the top first - the fluid head is big enough for whatever the legs will support and there is a captive ball and socket leveller to let you reach equilibrium quickly once you are in place.

In the middle are twin-shanks and clip locks for fast set-up. Light and rigid - the spreader folds with the legs.

Down the bottom there are rubber-covered goat feet to grip a smooth surface without marking it. No longer do you have to panic about turning the spikes inward when you put it down on a parquet floor. You can pick it up and chase the bride and plunk it down fast when you corner her.

This is a good sign for the future - Manfrotto have sometimes over-engineered and over-weighted their pro products. Now they have realised that we want to move faster, smoother, and lighter. Now they need to get someone in the front office to invent better names for the products - names that people will remember.

I vote for " Goat Feet ".

The Themed Studio - Narrowing Your Focus

So you've got your set of studio flash lights - you chose Elinchrom or Profoto? Good for you - they will work for decades and they will make your images look good. You've invested in manfrotto studio accessories like Expan roll holders and Autopoles and light stands? Great - Manfrotto make some of the sturdiest gear around and there are so many ways you can clamp and combine that you'll never be stuck for ideas. You've got your first roll of Superior paper? White, black, or Mardi Gras Pink? I've got TWO rolls of Mardi Gras at my place and they are wonderful!

So, What are you gong to do? What clientele do you want at your studio? What will make your studio....a studio?

If you are lost for an answer, now is the time to think of a theme or a niche - to make a business plan - or to resign yourself to artistry and Easy Mac for dinner...

There are studios that sell themselves upon their photography of...families, school groups, sports clubs, weddings, food, fashion, architecture, jewellery, catalog products, nudies and boudies, cats and dogs, and a whole host of others.

If you have a bent for something - I have my own specialties - this can tell you what to concentrate on. If your field of endeavour becomes a field of expertise, well and good. You might not be able to ensure that you make a living from this excellence, but it is a better bet than trying to trade upon ignorance and inability.

If you find that your first target choice is over-catered or is so swamped with over-promotion as to exclude a new studio, step a little aside and look for another approach to it - or approach a different clientele. If the town is flooded with baby studios taking the same picture of sleeping infants propped on their forearms, either figure out a new way to suspend the child or find another subject that could be stuffed into an oversize teacup.

If you find your pictorial approach is too far in advance of fickle public taste - or too far anchored in the past - change your approach to provide the current sort of fickle.  You might be one month behind the cutting edge of fashion, but Perth operates about 6 months slower than the rest of the world anyway.

When all else fails, brand yourself, market yourself, tweet, blog, and twit until everyone blocks you with their spam filter, and never, ever let an opportunity to attend an opening of ANYTHING pass you by. Whatever they are exhibiting, selling, or promoting, attend - there are usually drinks and bits of cheese on a stick. If you cannot get eating money out of your studio, at least you can survive, albeit slightly drunk and constipated...

Uncle Dick

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

If the most exciting thing that is sitting on your studio table is a dried up coffee-cup stain, it is time to head on down to Camera Electronic for something new. We have fresh coffee-cup stains.

No, no, apart from that - we have the perfect answer to the boring table top and the shaky camera - the little tripod.

If you are on a budget, look to the Manfrotto 209,492. This used to be known as the Table Top Tripod until Manfrotto got all streamlined and efficient and gave it a new number. It is a European number too, as you can see from the comma in the middle...

Apart from this, the tripod is a beauty - the thing breaks down into legs and head and the attachment is good old 3/8" at the joint - you can put other things on there. I use on with the Fuji X-10 and am delighted with it.

If you are not on a budget, consider the Leica Table Top Tripod. The three legs swivel under each other and lock with the wing nut. There is a standard 1/4" camera screw on the top, and the finish is glorious grey hammer tone.

If you are not easily startled, consider the Cullmann Magnesit Copter. You can break it down in the middle like the 209,492 but the screw is 1/4". The legs when clasped together with a rubber band have hole down the center that can fit on a standard light stand. The legs have rubber feet. If you are nervous, it does come in black as well.

Uses for table top tripods? Selfies in restaurants. Studio support for closeups. Light supports for speed lights. Balancing a camera on a fencepost or rock out in the field. Holding against a wall with a standard SLR for a long-exposure night shot. Impromptu chest pod. Low-level camera shot out at night. Low-level camera shot chasing flowers or fungi. Discrete tripod work at wedding receptions.

Henri? Well, you'll have to look that one up yourself...

Sticking To Your Post - With Manfrotto And Cullmann

Saturday night last was a  revelation for me. I attended a hafla - a dance show for Middle Eastern dance - at a local school auditorium. The evening was four hours of wonderful dancing to terrible music by talented dancers in colourful costumes. I hasten to add that the experience is not new - I do a half dozen of these a year. What was new was the equipment I took along.

Camera the same, flash the same, flash bracket the same...even the same old sandwich and bottle of beer in the camera case. The new bit was the monopod.

Four hours of holding a heavy DSLR rig is no fun, particularly if you are in a kneeling rifleman's position. Eventually your arms start to ache. This time I supported the weight of the camera and flash assembly on a Manfrotto carbon-fibre monopod and only had to concern myself with the zooming and firing. I was able to sit on a chair for some of the time as well, and my toes thanked me for it.

The one worrisome point was the fact that I had the camera in landscape position for most of the evening - fine for the wide shots when the whole troupe comes out, but it meant some cropping for portrait orientation on individual dancers. Fortunately my Nikon camera at 400ISO will support this sort of trimming and the resultant images should be all that the dancers could desire.

Oh, the blessed relief to be able to let the Earth support the weight and just move the camera around.

It struck me that the video people would also appreciate this facility with the dedicated Manfrotto monopod you see in the heading photograph. The thing stands fully a man's height and is in itself heavy enough to take even large video rigs. The fluid head means smooth pan and tilt and the monopod is equipped with a very wide-pread foot for use in boggy ground. There is a self-centering mechanism in that foot that basically allows the monopod to stand upright of its own accord, as long as there is no camera on top.

I know that sounds silly, but it allows you an extra degree of flexibility when you are mounting our dismounting the rig if no-one is there to stabilise it for you. You can't expect it to balance the full rig without you holding on.

I know monopods are not new to Perth photographers, and they are in the basic pack of many sports shooters. But there may be far more uses for the theatre and wedding people - particularly if they want to make use of lower light and a slower shutter speed. I know I was able to drop my basic speed to 1/15 second for the dancers - the flash froze them, the background burned in, and there are the occasional little speed lines where a fringe of beads moved. Magic.