The Swiss Pagoda

The object in the heading image is not a refugee from a Transformers movie. Nor is it  the main mast from a Japanese battleship. It is a European tripod head that is constructed in the grand tradition of trying too hard to go too far.

Those of you who remember the advertisements for large format cameras made in Europe will recognise the principle. Make a piece of mechanics hinge upon itself in 14 different ways and then bend them all on for the publicity shot. Never mind that you only ever move the thing in very small increments in the studio or out in the field - it is a game of advertising excess to compete with other machine shops.

Notwithstanding the above, this is a superb tripod head. It tilts, pans, swivels, and then twirls around for panoramic pictures. It clamps onto Arca mounts...not surprising because it is made by Arca Swiss. It is terrifyingly adjustable for friction and position. First-time users will be lost in a minute and even old hands will spend time over-correcting themselves.

It is possibly the most precise head generally available and would suit everything from a mirrorless to a monorail. Indeed, with a fully-configured monorail large format camera the photographer would not even need to use film or make any exposures - their entire studio time could be devoted to adjusting the movements until their subject died, rusted, or blew away.

More practical landscape workers could eliminate the wretched ball head and substitute this for far more control - it would make sunsets mellower and rocky shores more rocky...

Going On Safari? Come Up And See Me Sometime...

The Safari Season is upon us. People are gearing up to look at the wild animals in Africa, Alaska, and Europe*. As we speak tourists are packing backpacks the size of refrigerators with DSLRs, lenses, flashes, laptops, and waterproof apple corers. Because you never can tell when you will need to can apples in Constantinople in a rain storm.

Wise tourists who have done this before and have the chiropractor's bills to show for it may elect to take a smaller rig this time. Consider if your ambitions and plans might well be suited with a camera that has a 30X zoom lens, 4 second to 1/2000 second shutter, manual aperture and shutter wheel, and GPS built-in. And a Leica lens. And a proper viewfinder on the LHS of the body. And full HD video with stereo sound.

And fits in your top pocket as you go through the door of the airplane. And for which you have not paid excess baggage.

Panasonic TZ-60.

You may not know which wine to drink with your biltong or cheese fries, and you may not know a bear from a banjo, but you can capture the fun and the scenery without making a guy or a mule of yourself. You will be less likely to attract the attention of the local pickpockets, or at least they will concentrate on your passport and wallet, if you are not carrying a camera shop on your neck. The grizzlies and hyenas will be less likely to demand a fee for posing if you do not shoot with a DSLR.

You'll still have to deal with the Europeans, but at least you will have your hands free while you do it.

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?

Xairete!

New travel photographers are always coming in here and asking for advice; which tripod to carry, what camera will capture the bears, how do you change the aperture on the new $5000 camera they have bought. We oblige by supplying the answers; the lightest one you can get away with, anything with a long lens, and don't change it...you'll never manage to get it back on the right setting...

Of course eventually they learn their own lessons:

First they get the spindly tripod and shaky pictures and then they take the heaviest tripod they can manage...and get good pictures and a a bad back.

They get a long lens and a short camera and try to take bear pictures from half a mile away. After they see the results they go out and bait a tree with a side of bacon and take pictures with a wide angle and a macro. And the bear follows them home and lives in the guest bedroom for a month.

And eventually their finger slips, the aperture dial moves, and they are launched out into the wide world of photography.

Now I can offer real-time technical advice for travellers here in Australia to ensure that their photos will be game-changing, iconic, world-beating,  judge-pleasing, classics of the visual arts. It is simple. Whenever you go anywhere foreign - Mozambique, Memphis, or Melbourne for instance, find someone whose name is Georgio, and ask him where the Greek restaurant is.

The menu may not be in English, but if you point to anything on it and ask for bread and salad as well, you will get a good meal. There will be dessert and coffee. There will be wine available. You may go deaf from the noise of other people screaming as they eat, but you will be nourished.

Note: Goat is good but composed of 92% bone.

How does this improve your photography? If you are well-fed you are content. If you are content you have a benign outlook. Your bokeh is far smoother. You do not shake with hunger, thus are able to use slower shutter speeds. The landscape is rosy, particularly after the retsina kicks in. - you do not need warming filters.

Final note: if there is no Georgio look for a Lucca. He will direct you to the Italian restaurant and you will be equally well fed and deafened, but with more of a tomato flavour.

Kalh Oreksi!

Black Or White - There Or Here - You Choose

We're just about to launch into the Christmas and holiday season and people are thinking about their vacation travel and their holiday snaps. The wise ones are, at any rate - and I am including the readers of this blog in that august group. Indeed - the smartest ones would have been starting to plan about August...

Let us not think about those who will pull a dead compact camera out of laundry cupboard, come down here to ask the technicians to fix if for free and claim that they never, ever had it at the beach - despite the dribble of sand and out of the lens and a starfish stuck on the LCD screen...Their vacation pictures will be fine, as long as they buy postcards.

If you're gearing up to do it right and to make the most of your chances on a domestic or overseas holiday, consider one of the Big Two from Fuji. Big Two? The X-Pro 1 and the X-100s. The black and white cameras in the picture. Please note that white is really silver but it reads better as white - I had my poetic licence renewed.

Okay, what do you get with the X-100s? An APS-C sensor, a lens exactly matched to it - 35mm focal length in the old filmspeak, and you get enough processor power and options in the computer functions to make it perform perfectly. The business of matching that lens to that sensor is really the key to it all. As well, you get a number of options in the way that you see the image - optical or electronic, and a precise framing for close-ups. It has a fill-flash and computer control that leads to confidence in any interior situation - you get a balanced result no matter what the backdrop is doing.

You can switch it to auto and give it it's head or do aperture and shutter speed via good big traditional dials. You can command a MF on the lens ring. Do it old or do it new, but do it.

Want to do it with interchangeable lenses? The X-Pro 1 really is pro. A superb set of Fujinin lenses made for the system all the way from 14mm to 200mm, zooms and macro in there as well. Superbly sharp with MF direct drive for a number of them. More automation and manual than its direct competitors. Excellent Q display to assist with settings. The basis of a thoroughly professional system of optics - a money-earner.

Both of these are in good supply right now and you can get up to speed with what they can do before you fly. Tip: If you're going to be doing closeup urban holidays pick the X-100s. If you're going to Churchill, Manitoba to see the bears, pick the X-pro 1. And the 55-200 lens. And a Mauser. Black bears are one thing but white bears are a whole different deal...

You've Got 60 Days To get Outta Dodge...

Which makes it the slowest posse on record.

No, no, what we really mean is remember that you can recover the GST that you pay on your new DSLR or other fine camera here at Camera Electronic if you are going to travel out of the country.

You have 60 days from purchase to departure, you must have your tax invoice and the equipment with you, and it must be a total of $ 300 or more - you can combine invoices from different shops, though we would prefer if you would only shop with us...

Yo visit the desk at the airport or seaport that deals with the TRS. They say on their brochure that you must give them adequate time to do he computer entry so it is no good running in with your underwear dragging out of your suitcase and the Boeing warmed up at the end of the runway. Arrive at a sensible time.

It's a nice bit of change to recover on the price of that new camera you've coveted.

Come In Here And Go Away...with an Olympus Stylus

Vacation season is almost upon us - or you may think of is as holiday season. I suppose the time off is the same but it depends on whether you intend to spend it being holy or vacant.

For those of you who want to be active and artistic I think we have a good camera to help you. Note that I say active - if you are going away somewhere it is always better to go away with as light a burden as possible. The principle is to go to the casino with a dollar in your pocket and come home with a thousand more - those of you who may have experienced the opposite effect are obviously entering and leaving by the wrong door...

But back to the burdens of pleasure - if you are flying you don't want to carry our entire store on your back - you want a camera that you can carry. Equally, you don't want to go to all the trouble to go to Upper Wazutoland and get ill and robbed and not come home with some good photos to reward yourself - you want a competent camera. The Olympus Stylus  XZ-2 is a good bet for both these reasons.

Basic specs include 12 Megapixels, 4 x zoom, an f:1.8 lens that will wide out to the equivalent of 28mm and full HD video. In addition you get the special programs that Olympus champion - diorama, film, soft focus, and grainy film amongst others. My favourite, because it closely equates to my own vision of life - is the Key Line Effect.

You get a guided panorama mode that makes your stitching perfect.

The layout of the camera also favours using it on a tripod ( Cullmann, Promaster, or Three Legged Thing come to mind...)with the LCD screen acting as a waist-level finder. I should use a black focussing cloth or a Hoodman screen shield to make this easier in bright light. If you switch the art filter to soft sepia you can make historic pictures even when there is no history. Like some of our newer suburbs - the civic architecture that has tilted up on the fringes of civilisation is truly worthy of soft sepia. At night. In a rain storm.

Now, cynicism aside, the XZ-2 is incorporating a lot of the processing power that Olympus pack into their mirror-less cameras, but in a compact form. Not that the mirror-less ones are monsters, but this camera is all in one. You can add a useful accessory if you wish - the  electronic viewfinder slots into the data bus at the top.

The thing that impresses me is the easy access for the programs - I favour manual myself, but that is because I like making my own mistakes and blaming others. Hey, it works at home...

If you don't want quite as big an Olympus there are others here that are equally good for travel - but someone will come and buy this one and make absolutely wonderful pictures.

Travel hint: Cullmann Magic Monopod. Steady pictures, steady video, useful baton for South American streets.

Fuji Traveller - A Good Idea

I'm always banging on about tourists doing tourist picture taking with comfortable cameras - not taking 500 Kg of lenses and bodies on their back when they are trying to go away and relax. I cringe to see them at the airport under a backpack with bulging side pockets - trying to look nonchalant as they attempt to smuggle the 600mm tele lens into cabin baggage. " It's a water bottle, love...really it is...".

Take a small camera, Guys. Put a small lens on it. Take the tourist landscapes with a medium wide and save yourself the grief...Do the selfies with something that looks good.

And here's the answer for the Fuji X user. The new 27mm f:2.8 travel and general purpose lens. very Sharp. Gives the same angular degree of view on the Fuji X cameras that a 40mm lens would give on a 35mm film camera - just perfect for general views and landscapes.

And light as. I've combined it with the new Fuji X-M1 body and It would be the preferred combo for a European or Oriental visit. Even tempts me, and I'm a confirmed Fuji X-10 user...Imagine - tourism without looking like a tourist. Take pictures all day without needing a physiotherapist the rest of the week.

Paddington Bear's Camera Bag

 

Those of you with children - or who were children - will remember Paddington Bear, particularly when he dressed in his yellow mackintosh and sou'wester hat. That is the image that came to mind when I saw the new Dryzone bags and it will take some time to eradicate it.

In any case this is the second offering in the new Dryzone series. smaller than the backpack, but the same form of roll-over watertight seal. It has a unique plastic hook latch that straps over the top of the case when closed to evenly distribute weight - it would be a good bag for heavy bodies and lenses.

We joked about the wet places where you could need this - but we neglected to mention that wet needn't necessarily be dank. There are plenty of snowy landscapes that need cameras and you need water protection there too. If you are going to break your leg in Thredbo this year, consider doing it with this Lowepro case. Also thoroughly recommended for Alaska and Churchill, Manitoba.

 

Just don't expect to sneak up on your subject while carrying it - unless it is through a field of buttercups...

We Sell On Sale And You Win - Panasonic FZ60

Yay. We have a big 'ol new stack of Panasonic FZ 60 cameras downstairs and Saul sez we are cheaper than our competitors! We this is your chance to come in a score a travel bargain.

The Panasonic FZ60 is a long zoom camera -a bridge camera if you will, that takes your photo possibilities far beyond the little compacts. If you are setting out on an African safari or wish to participate in the Canadian government's program to feed tourist to the polar bears at Churchill, you can take this camera with you and be confident that you will bring back great images.

You see, 24 x zoom is nothing to be sneezed at, and even if you do sneeze, the power OIS optical stabilizer will help to dampen it down. The lens is from the Leicaq company - a Vario-Elmarit f: 2.8-5.2. that zooms from 4.5 to 108 mm. The 4.5 means a very wide shot indeed and you'll also be pleased with the macro capability.

There is a high-speed burst shooting capability that will allow 10 frames per second - useful for when the bears get one of the other tourists - and you can also shoot the camera as a full HD 1920x 1080 video.

This package is complete with a fitted case - have a look at the image - small enough and sturdy enough to go on any tour.

Best bottom line - We sell the entire kit for $ 349. And there are a stack of them ready to go. Yay.

Calling All German Flyers - Billingham Has Your Bag

If you are going to choose the best of German camera equipment - Leica - you really should give some thought to choosing the best way of carrying it - particularly if you intend to go out on he street or travel in aircraft.

Street photography is, by its very nature, fast and discreet. If it is slow and obvious, it comes into the category of argument photography, followed by fist fight photography, followed by arrest photography. Those of you who do not wish to use your new Leica M camera with the 0.95 Noctilux lens as a fighting flail should elect to house it in a good bag and haul it out only when you need it to take pictures.

Leica themselves do make very good bags for this - there are satchels and neoprene cases and fitted  cases for a number of their cameras, and some of them are masterpieces of fine design and leather work. If you want a Leica bag, buy one with full confidence.

Walther Benser used to make fitted cases as well that were module systems for the film Leicas - you bought little leather boxes for each lens you had then tried to fit them together like a Chinese puzzle into a stiff leather box. Very much the enthusiast's device, but impossible to access quickly.

Billingham, on the other hand, have just delivered a case designed and marked for the Leica M series of cameras. The bag is supplied inside a characteristic silver Leica box and is further wrapped in a soft fitted Leica-marked black cloth bag. Undoubtedly there is a You-tube video of someone somewhere unwrapping one....an undoubted boon for those Leica users who are unsure of how to open a cardboard box.

The more confident user will note that the bag has ample space and three interior compartments in the main section for the camera body plus a lens as long as 135mm in the down position and for two smaller lenses on either side. The diagram suggests that you will be carrying a 21 and a 50 Noctilux, which we would also be delighted to sell to you. Don't stint yourself - there is also a digram of an MP camera body there so remember to pick one up before you leave.

The Billingham cloth and leather-trim quality are all there, with a Khaki twill and medium tan trim. The shoulder strap has their deluxe pad included. The zipper pulls are the tradition solid brass.

Please note the dedication tag on the bag itself....Leica.

This bag will attract admiration from other Leica users while remaining discrete enough to pass the attention of the average camera thief on the street. Dedicated Billingham bag thieves will zero in on it and attack you instantly, but if you are incautious enough to flaunt this sort of thing at Leica camera club meetings you have only yourself to blame...

A Green Light For Your Holidays

So you're going on holiday? You're going to travel? And you want a camera that will take good clear pictures? And you want it to be compact with a real optical viewfinder that you can see through even if it is in the full glare of the sun?

And you want to pay under $ 500?

Have we got the answer for you - if you are quick. We've just got a snip of Fuji X-10 cameras bundled as a package with their fitted leather case for $ 499. This camera is the closest thing to the 35mm compact camera that digital has yet produced - and it has the added fillip of a zoom lens and and a whole fridge of fresh film built in...

The Fuji X-10 has a wonderful section in the menu for film simulation - you can take pictures as if you had Fuji Velvia, Provia, or Astia film. as well as the black and white Acros film. You can switch between films with a button push and you can make the pictures bigger or smaller at will. If you remember the old days when you carried a packet of filters for contrast control in the sky - well you have them built-in.

Does it take a good picture? The heading image is taken with an X-10, as is this one. No special processing - jpeg straight out of the box. It will do RAW files too, but the jpegs are gorgeous just as they are.

Limited number in the shop right now - pop in as fast as you can and pick up the bargain of the season.

PS: If you want a silver one, you'll have to get the new X-20. Bit more money, wonderful camera.

Something To Your Advantage

Those of you who will be travelling shortly, and wish to record images of exotic scenery and native customs would do well to repair to the shop of Camera Electronic in Stirling Street in this city, where you will learn something to your advantage.

You would be well advised to bring your purse with at least $ 500 in it and be prepared to spend it. You will not regret the decision.

Ask to speak to Gavin or Dick in particular or any of the other staff should they be free.

Go Away - The Government Will Pay You To Do It - TRS

Ah, how I miss the 1960's - particularly when I travel on an airplane. I can't begin to describe the pleasure that was an international flight then - the smoking in the aircraft, the morning fry-up high above the Pacific ( and it was lamb's fry ,too...), the complex procedures and bureaucratic diddle that was involved in getting a duty-free camera in or out of the country...

You had to buy it from a shop that could fill out the forms, then you had to have the bag containing the camera sealed, then you had to present the sealed bag to Customs, ten you had to stand on one leg and do a jig, then...

All that has gone. Up until yesterday we could get quite a decent little return for the Tourist Refund Scheme by presenting the tax invoice and the goods at the airport - there were restrictions, of course, but all in all it was a civilised.

Good news. It gets even better.

As of yesterday there have been key changes to the TRS:

1. Travellers can claim through the TRS on purchases made up to 60 days before leaving Australia. The previous ruling was 30 days. This applies to sales made as of yesterday.

In practical photographic terms, this means you can buy a new camera, read the instructions, try it out, take a course on how to do it, and get yourself up to speed technically before your trip. Better tourist pictures.

2. Travellers can submit more than one tax invoice to make the claim. Each tax invoice must be from the one Australian Business Number  ( ABN ) retailer and the total value of the goods purchased is $ 300 or more ( including GST).

People intending to use this scheme and then bringing the goods back into the country may need to consult with the TRS people or Australian Customs to see if they will be required to do anything upon re-entering Australia. I should imagine their website or their phone line will help in this.

Please note that it might also be necessary in the case of some equipment that you already own, and that will not be subject to this scheme, to register the serial numbers so that there is no debate when you haul it back after your trip. Check with Customs.