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...

Strange Creatures - Glimpsed Briefly Though The Mist

I cannot decide whether the macro bracket featured in the lead image should be marketed as the " Muhammud Ali" or the " St. Hubertus". It seems to replicate the characteristic postures of each of these legends...Suffice it to say that it is actually a pretty useful way of suspending a couple of small flashes out in front of your camera and macro lens to light up the closer subjects. It has a metal coupling foot to let it slide onto your Arca-style ball-head block and is quite light. A clever idea for macro workers.

The big black angular objects looming out of these images are Custom Brackets flash holders with camera rotation mechanisms built into the base. They are perfect for weddings or reportage - also fine for Steampunk. The quality of the machining on the brackets and the materials used are of such a quality as to shame their competition. I must be honest - these brackets have been here as long as I have  and I have a decided ambition to outlast them so will someone PLEASE come in and buy them at a very low price. You will benefit, and so will I.

The Velbon bracket is younger - it is a device to allow you to couple big telephoto lenses and small DSLR cameras into one structure for better balance on a tripod head. Why it has not gone yet, I do not know, as there are people all over Western Australia struggling with odd rigs that would benefit from this accessory.

The black Tokar brackets were originally designed to allow pirates to keep a sandwich and a bottle of beer attached to their wooden legs while they watched television. Photographers have adopted them as a good means of keeping accessories attached to tripods in a studio during a shoot. People really are ingenious these days.

And finally, the SOB bracket. I've met many SOB's in my time, but it has been rare to find any that actually advertise themselves so clearly. Those of you who want to hold a speed light and fire it into an umbrella while mounting it on a light stand will recognise the design. Good product. Good price. Love to talk to the executive of the JJC company who thought of the name...