09 Feb Who To Sell What To When The Door Is Open
It might seem an odd question for a shopkeeper to ask themselves...
February 2018
08 Feb A Phone In The Hand…
Is worth two in the pocket. A phone on a video rig is worth three just held out at arm's length! But before we begin: A regular reader of this column has asked why I seem to be showing a lot of the packages and boxes of the goods that are featured. Aren't these extraneous to the reviews? No, actually they're not - they are a recognition that photographers are image people and customers have a visual memory. Every person who has ever worked retail trade with multiple products - like a bookseller - knows the client who comes in and says " I can't remember who wrote it or what it was about but I want a copy. The cover was green ". The same applies to camera gear - if people see a box, they will remember it, even if the exact details of the product inside are hazy. As they move about the shop their eye may light upon the thing and if I've given them an image of the external packaging, they might be able to pick up on it...
07 Feb Products For the Season-Of-Relativity – Part Two
A recent meme on Facebook asked the difference between in-laws and outlaws. Apparently outlaws are wanted...
06 Feb Guilty As Charged, M’Lud
" My client wishes to plead guilty to the charge of using camera equipment to do things that it was never intended for, M'Lud. He tenders images taken with the Nikon 1 camera in evidence. He wishes to have it noted that he is well aware that most of the customers of the shop probably make just as many inappropriate experiments as he does and would like to see what their results look like...
05 Feb The Prairie Oyster
Before you ring up and complain, the title of the piece was chosen because I am going to try to use an underwater camera out on the Alberta plains - not a place known for fish, corals, or oysters. Just another scale model flight of fancy. But there is a core of good sense to it. I've just come back from a week away photographing cars and tourist sights in Melbourne. I hauled a mirror-less camera about with a modest zoom lens attached...
02 Feb The Universal Bracket
Putting a bracket on the universe sounds like rather a large undertaking - daily we are being told that it expands ever further from our comprehension - rather like federal taxation reform and the GST. Stephen Hawking understands the universe but has thrown his hands up on the other two...
01 Feb Viewing The Moon
Like Admiral Yamaguchi, I spent a good deal of last night admiring the moon...
31 Jan The Sigma Difference
People who read this column regularly are getting pretty used to the flights of fancy that sometimes occur. And they are more critical than you might think. So I don't think I will have any luck telling them that the lens in the heading image is the Paul Hamlyn part-work Built-Your-Own-Lens in 204 parts and that we have been faithfully buying the magazines every week for over a year now...
30 Jan Getting A Grip On Virtuality – Part Two
The great thing about the photographic trade is that it is so diverse and inventive - if a need is identified - or just created - there are a number of manufacturers who will leap up and offer a product. Some of the products may turn out to be frank commercial copies of other designs - but some of them are rather special and unique. I think we can assign the Manfrotto Twistgrip to this exclusive group. The need was for a device to hold a mobile phone steady for video work. That's steady in a flat orientation with the long side of the phone horizontal. Then the shots that come from it will go through the conventional editing processes and be displayed on a wide screen. Anything else may be art, or science, but it does not please the eye of the audience. A mobile phone is a slippery fish - just ask the innumerable people who have had them drop out of their hands and hit the ground - Goodbye Mr. Screen. Hello Mr. Repairman or Hello Apple Shop. I've...
29 Jan Getting A Grip On Virtuality – Part One
It seems that everything we see these days on the computer screen is taken with a mobile phone. This was not the case in the 1950's. Many people in Australia were still connected to land lines and it was awkward ringing up Central and trying to arrange for a YouTube of kittens in under an hour. Plus if you were out in the street you needed to use the red phone box and frequently you didn't have the small change ready when they told you to drop it in. I used to call in to Midland Police Station and ask if anyone had a couple of coppers. Police are not as patient as you might think...