Well, that's what the pack reminded me of when I saw it on the Olympus shelves - the Micro 4/3 specialists have decided to make an especial offer for people buying their OM-D E-M10 MkII cameras - three matched lenses in one box. This is both wonderful and dangerous...
Who cares? Quite a lot of people, actually. A roomful of 'em showed up at the Stirling Street Store of Camera Electronic yesterday - to see Michael Phillips of Nikon Australia unbox a real working example of the new camera and one of the new lenses. He had a couple of charged batteries and members of his audience could put their SD cards into the slot, shoot sample photos, and take them home for analysis. It's a class start to what is going to be a class act - the kit was presented with the new Nikkor 24-70mm f/4S lens as well as an adapter - the FTZ - to allow lenses from the Nikon F mount to be bayoneted onto the new body. The kit has one battery but Michael was wise enough to have several spares...
Yes, the weather. The wind. The piddly showers. No-one wanted to pull barrel rolls, stalls, or 9G turns in front of me when I had the new Nikon Coolpix P1000 camera at the airport viewing platforms. The commercial pilots at Perth were using another runway and the students at Jandakot were all inside drinking cocoa. I had to make do with the ground staff and the Flying Doctor. I suspect the RFDS would probably take off and land in a typhoon, possibly sideways. They fly over our house despite the thunderstorms of winter and the dark of night. Never pass by an RFDS collection tin without putting something in. If we put enough in they are going to have an aerobatic team with folding gurneys...
Let's start the day off right - peering at people from a long distance away and then pressing buttons. When I got the message from Saul that the new Nikon Coolpix P1000 was on the storeroom shelf I beetled into Stirling Street and checked it out. I was impressed with the feel of the box when I lugged it away - figuring that it was probably packed with accessories and extras. It was the sort of weight that you associate with truck batteries or artillery shells. Imagine my surprise when I turned up one small EN-EL20A, a charging cord, a strap, and a giant lens/camera. Coolpix cameras are not generally massive, being Nikon's answer to the compact-sensor consumer camera class - but when they are attached to a lens that goes from 4.3 mm to 539mm focal length you have something very special indeed. In mathematical terms, that is 125X zoom...
Or, in this case, De Boat, De Helicopter, or De X-T3...
Okay, let's cut to the punchline straight away. I want one of these. If you are a photographer who shoots weddings, shows, portraits, fashion, or editorial, you want one - or two - as well. Stefan Gosatti does all these things and he's just had a chance to test out the new Profoto B10 over the last few days. He's rapt with them, his pictures prove that they work like a locomotive, and he's spending some of his own money to buy some. He showed us how it all works last night at the Northbridge Hotel - courtesy of Camera Electronic and CR Kennedy. The unit has the classic Profoto mount and controls in a body the size of a large soup can. The style has the sort of Scandinavian slickness that we used to see with B&O and Sonab. There's a classic Profoto glass diffuser on the front and the large illuminated LCD panel at the back. The lump on the side's the lithium-ion battery. The light stand mount on the bottom is detachable - there is provision to swing any of...
Can you dig the fun that there is in a patch of dirt and some flowering plants? Do you remember that we are part of nature...
He's just playing - and he admits doing it deliberately - and I think he has a very healthy attitude to it all. Indeed I was trying to come up with some way that I could work " playtographer " into the title but it seemed a little awkward. Just take our word for it that Steve Parrish has a good time doing what he does. However, he does have some interesting thoughts...
When I worked on the sales floor at Camera Electronic I used to approach camera unveiling nights with some trepidation - it meant moving half the place into a corner one day and replacing it the next...
I took part in a Photo Walk sponsored by Nikon Australia and Camera Electronic this last week and had a very enlightening hour with a very enlightening bloke. The venue was Kings Park up near the KPB offices and the Old Tea Pavilion. I was delighted to discover ample free parking space at 1:00 in the afternoon - but I'll bet a weekend in wildflower season would see the place packed out. Cold spring days mean you're not over-touristed. Didn't stop the Camera Electronic and Nikon punters, though - there was a solid gathering there at the Tea pavilion when Steve Parish started to talk. It wasn't a dry lecture at all, because Mr Parish is not a dry man. He came right out and explained that his work was to promote good mental health through joy and connection with the natural world - and his best way to do this was natural photography. But then he explained how unnatural that can be...