15 Sep Where’s The Kerboom?
There should be an enormous Kerboom...
September 2017
14 Sep When Adventure Calls…
Make sure that Adventure pays the phone bill - otherwise you are in real trouble...
13 Sep A Great Deal In A Small Compass
The Muraro " Heavy Compact Small Stand " looked like a pretty simple box to bring home. It was sealed and I expected to find a Manfrotto look-alike inside - Boy, was I surprised. To give you a comparison I have included my Manfrotto compact stand in some of the images today. Not trying to play one wholesaler off against another, but there are some interesting design features here. This is the two stands folded up. The Manfrotto is the smaller one, but it isn't all that much smaller. It's a great accessory for taking to dance shows - I put a Hahnel Captur receiver and a Fujifilm EF-X500 flash on it and set it out some way from myself. It sometimes gets a more central position in front of the audience than I do but is unobtrusive enough to sit out there all night. I do sandbag it as the legs are short. But look what happens when you fold out the Muraro in comparison. About 6 inches more height and a great deal wider base for the legs. That's as wide...
12 Sep A New M Enters The Studio – From Italy
We all know about the big M from Italy - the Manfrotto company. They have been making professional lighting and camera support gear for decades and are the mainstay of studios from here to...
11 Sep The Odd Man In
At any one time, our choices in photography can be surprisingly limited. Limited by artistic convention, fashion, and commerce. Often we do not notice it until some exception to the rule comes to hand - then we feel it all the more. This is the case with today's offering - the Think Tank Retrospective Leather 5 Sandstone. Colour is not exactly new to Think Tank - They have experimented with sandstone, olive drab, and RAF blue for years, and have made some wonderful large bags. Their DSLR bags are a standard of the industry. Now in the smaller mirror-less, they have combined that distinctive cloth with 50's leather style. Of course, it is far more business-featured than anything we bought back then - The iPad mini pocket on the back gives that away. Also the myriad of internal pockets and slots for pens, cards, phones, business papers, passports, etc. It would not be too much to say that this could be a complete mini-studio for the travelling pro. That impression is re-inforced in the equipment compartment. Besides the main mirror-less cradle, there are...
08 Sep The Long Haul Machine
When we think of long-haul planes we think of Sunderlands, Condors, and Superfortresses...
07 Sep The Fighter-Bomber
What do you do if you have to cope with targets both on the ground and in the air? Leaving aside the suggestion of a Flak 88 and a set of ear plugs, we come to the answer of the fighter-bomber. An aircraft fast and agile enough to deal with a dogfight ( assuming that the pilot is incautious enough to get into one ) and big enough and heavy enough to haul bombs and drop them. On the enemy, and preferably a considerable distance from home. The aircraft has to be rugged, as the business of both aerial combat and ground pounding puts a heavy strain on the airframe. The engine has to be big enough to cope with this weight. The armament...
06 Sep The Bomber
Well, if you need to do a heavy job and you need to do a lot of it, you need a bomber. And a ground crew. It need not be a light machine, it need not be dazzlingly fast, and it need not be fashionable-looking. It does not even need to work in pitch-black conditions. But it does need to carry a heavy load, and to do it reliably for a long time. And it does need to be able to hit the target accurately every time. Likewise with the cameras. This is the field of the portrait studio, the product shoot, the fashion coverage. The camera might very well live on a tripod or studio stand for much of the time. It will be working with studio lights, and may be able to hover down about the native ISO of the sensor...
05 Sep The Fighter
If we are going to extend yesterday's analogy about aircraft and doughnuts to cameras, let's start with the fighter; the pursuit ship that has to climb, dive, and turn faster than the opposition. This would equate the agile camera that can respond quickly out in the field, as the fighter plane does in the air. Well, logic tells us that it needs to be fast - the camera with a high rate of continuous exposure plus the ability to empty the buffer will be the winner. It needs to power up quickly and to find focus in the shortest time. It needs to be able to resolve a scene adequately for all this rapid action - perhaps not as detailed as the heavier machines, but it must still shoot accurately. It should be quick to deploy, and not so large as to prevent carrying it for long periods. If multiple bodies are needed, they should be small enough to pack away. It should be easy to maintain. No good having a marvellously sophisticated aero-engine or camera if it is always in the repair shop...
04 Sep Those Magnificent Men With Their Image Machines
Air forces in the 20th century loved to get new airplanes - in part to replace the ones they lost and in part so they could have new toys to play with. And there was probably a strong streak of the collector in them - the desire to own one of every kind. If you are a fan of any particular brand of camera you may recognise that feeling. This played out in classifications of aircraft; fighters, bombers, transports, reconnaissance types, etc. Then it got even more specific; day fighters, night fighters, interceptors, long-range escorts, etc. Then heavy day, light day, and so on. One air force even issued specifications for an all weather cannon-armed twilight escort for doughnut runs in the month of May by pilots whose first name started with " T "...