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August 2018

07 Aug

Posted at 14:02h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

Recently it was pointed out to me that I sometimes cook up the posts here in the Camera Electronic weblog column with a lot of the same ingredients - specifically with items from the Fujifilm shelf. That's actually a fair call, and I looked in my photographic pantry to see why. It turns out that I am in the habit of reaching for the ingredients that I am most familiar with - and I noticed that I also do so when I am cooking food in our kitchen. There is also the factor that I have a number of recipes that I have perfected and that I know will turn out* - when I've got guests coming I revert to the old standards. Well, now that I realise it, it's time to change the pattern. I am going to try to feature more brands in the future and to find some way to give them more cooking time before they are served. In photographic terms this means I'll have to find some way to operate the equipment that people want to read about for...

07 Aug

Posted at 08:16h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

The Alpha 6300 camera is not a new camera in Sony's terms. New in Sony's terms is whatever is behind the green door and is going to be released at the next trade show. They have a wonderful variety of new, and if you are a fan of it, you can always anticipate something. But this is a tried product. It's an APS-C-sensor camera that is designed to do pretty much everything you want in a small sensor travelling machine. It is ergonomically nearly perfect - with a north-west viewfinder, tilting LCD screen, good RHS grip, and all the wheels you need to steer it all under the right thumb. It's E-mount, with onboard extending flash, and a dedicated Sony hot shoe. Built like a brick, and sort of square like one as well, it could ride in any traveller's bag with whatever lens they though best suited them. Note that Sony use the wheel around the D-pad as the second adjuster when you are in Manual mode. There's enough custom buttons to suit most sensible users. You can shoot 4K video. My...

06 Aug

Posted at 09:51h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

The Orange End Of The Shop is sometimes a little bit of foreign territory to me - many of the boxes are sealed and I do not get a chance to dive into them for the treasures. But occasionally the seals are opened for business and I get to see what's inside. This week I have taken out three diverse products to see if they are: Any good. Any good together. Any good for me. From the conclusions I may be able extrapolate to see if they would be any good for you. I have a long respect for Sony, though in my case it was hifi and radio gear that sold me on them - the early 70's were a burgeoning time for Sony and I got to use their amplifiers, tuner, and Trinitron colour television sets for several years. At the time, they had some of the best value for money audio gear avaiable here in Perth. The televison tube burned itself out in a few years - it was operating on a pretty high pressure - but while it worked,...

02 Aug

Posted at 09:34h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

Recently at the Camera Electronic Photo Live 2018 Friday night special event - the boxing spectacular - someone used their imagination in a rather dramatic fashion. Of course they had access to some of the most imaginative equipment in the business, as well, but let's remember that the buttons and the lenses only do what someone tells them to do. You've probably all seen historic boxing photos that have been taken from a vantage point up above the ring. In the old film days they would suspend a motorised 35mm camera with a wide-angle lens up there fixing its focus on the canvas. They might have been able to rig a flash on the camera or at least wire-synch it to other strobe lights up in the gantry that hangs over the ring. It was a complex rigging job and somewhat uncertain...

01 Aug

Posted at 10:04h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

That's a very good question for any photographer to ask themselves - for whom do they work? I sometimes wonder if some of the people toting cameras have asked themselves that - and if the answers they might discover could be entirely different from what they themselves think. Let's explore the question for different groups...