17 Jul The Turn Of The Screen
A gothic mystery story by henry James with heroines and villains. Creepy mansions and ghostly figures. And nearly all of them in the Fujifilm design bureau...
July 2018
16 Jul Look Carefully At The Lettering On The Box…
Yes. Yes, this is the new Fujifilm camera; X-T100. Gotta look intently at Fujifilm packs because they are all so very alike. And the people in the company who name the new products often get the letters and numbers frighteningly close to the old designations. It pays to peer closely. If I'd been more casual about it I might have mistaken this for the X-100 or the T-T10. The internet is no help - a Google search often turns up a mixture of old and new posts that can send you out past where the buses run in short order. Well, with the box at home, the package opened like most other Fujifilm gear - well packed without being buried in frustration and sharp edges. I assembled the lens and camera and dropped in a charged W 126 battery and away we went. The beauty of Fujifilm now is the standardisation of the battery requirements - no more hauling three chargers in the suitcase for three different levels of performance. The body is sleek - in this case the graphite shade that hovers between...
13 Jul ” My Lens Is Only A Kit Lens So They Say I Need Another One…”
Hmmmm. Let's think about this for a bit. Your nose. That one there between your eyes. The one with the spectacles perched on it. Have a feel of it...
12 Jul One Light Is All You Need
Provided you have two lights...
11 Jul Somebody Got Smart – They Used My Head…
It might seem difficult to report anything new about the Joby Gorilla Pod these days - after all the original little Gorilla Pods have been in the shop long enough to register on the inventory of the British Museum.* Well, that is because they actually work. They are a silly little answer to a serious little question for the travelling photographer. The fact that they have contributed to the Selfie Plague on Facebook and Instagram is neither here nor there. If we must have selfies, at least we deserve sharp ones. This, Gorilla Pods will do. The 3K kit was new on the storeroom shelves when I swanned through this week. The legs are no new thing - Gorilla Pod ABS plastic sockets that wrap around solid objects and rubberised feet at the end to act as a small tripod. You can exercise your ingenuity with this sort of thing when you need to support a camera or an off-camera flash. You'll never get the legs as straight as they come out of the packet ever again, but that is not a...
10 Jul A Ramble Through the Chemical Side
We're lucky at Camera Electronic - we still have ties to the chemical side of photography. Unlike so many stores that have embraced digiatalisation, we find that it pays to remember the older analog processes. There are a steady stream of clients who also remember this and pursue their art in that way. Thank goodness they are also supported here in Perth by good professional laboratories like Fitzgerald Photo Imaging. The delights of a good film camera are not debarred from us. And sometimes we discover some interesting things on the shelves: A. The Ilford company...
09 Jul The Microphone For The Me Generation
Or the you generation, if you insist. The important thing is that it is a microphone that will make us sound good when we use our smart devices. The Apple iPhone and iPad are wonderful things for communication - they can be as complex as any millennial would wish for communicating with each other or catching Japanese electronic monsters. They can be simple enough for this writer to Skype his family from interstate. The battery life is even sufficient to allow me to annoy them until they hang up...
06 Jul Landscapers Need Not be Skyscrapers With Sunwayfoto
I am starting to seriously love Sunwayfoto equipment. It's not a new infatuation as I have had various bits and pieces from their factory for years ( even before Camera Electronic decided to stock it...
05 Jul Product Shipped In A Sealed Package
Kind of ironic, isn't it? A product that I want to take a picture of for the column is sealed into a tamper-proof plastic packet that defies opening. You'd almost think that they were trying to make it water-proof...
04 Jul Right! Sorted! Finally A Wrist Strap For Real Photographers!
Right! Now Chuck Norris can take up photography. Arnold Schwarzenegger can start shooting with a DSLR rather than a Gatling gun. Magda Szubansky can lay into her critics. We've got a camera strap for super-heroes. The Black Rapid Wrist Strap ( catchy name, eh? ) is the toughest thing since they started making breech blocks for 17 pounders. And hyperbole aside ( and we sell the biggest hyperbole in the trade! ) it is a good tough product in a place where tough is actually important. The Black Rapid products are all generally pretty rugged - we've sold the shoulder slings and harnesses for years and they've hauled tonnes of cameras for lots of shooters. But the big slings are just that - big - and if you don't want to shoulder the burden, you need something to secure your camera and lens just as sturdily. Hence the Wrist Strap. The nylon webbing's pretty soft but very strong. The carabiner and swivel are weapon's grade stuff - including a safety lock to keep the hook shut. The Black Rapid people advise you to get...