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October 2018

24 Oct

Posted at 06:51h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

I asked myself this question as I shot a few reportage pictures for the recent Boxing Special at the Photo Live 2018. There were plenty of photographers around the ring with plenty of cameras but few of them besides me seemed to have flash guns in operation. As I am a relic, I wondered if the flash had become a relic too. It all started when the Nikon D3 cameras came into the shop in the 2008-2009 period. it seemed that you could boost the speed of the sensor to impossible heights and that no—one ever need to use a flash any more. A couple of staff members and customers with the cameras were taking them into dimly-lit night clubs and returning with fabulously bright pictures. My cameras could not do these high ISOs without terrible colour noise so I settled for lower speed and speedlight flash. And worked my way through various combinations of good old flash, bad old flash, good new flash, and bad new flash. I'm about evenly balanced between the light and dark right now, but I have...

23 Oct

Posted at 09:58h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

And we are not going to start on potahtoes and tomahtoes, no matter what George and Ira Gershwin would have us do. But we must learn to disagree politely with what the makers of our flash units would have us think - or else call the whole thing off...

22 Oct

Posted at 07:56h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

The wingman. The second who accompanies a fighter plane pilot on a sortie - who alternately sticks close or dodges away to watch out for the safety of his mate. Who shots down whoever gets on the tail of his partner. Who can switch roles instantly if need be. Well, you don't have to be in combat to need a wingman...

19 Oct

Posted at 08:25h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

A small apology to the readers  - you have been forced to read the back of the cornflakes box at breakfast instead of this column for the last four days. I'm lying in a hospital bed with my leg propped up and have just now got my hands on an iPad to start broadcasting again. I hope that next week is better, but keep reading as we have a number of columns in storage. Now on we go...

12 Oct

Posted at 08:52h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

The open and shut case for the digital camera. Look up the history of the Leica cameras - it is one of the most documented devices in all of the photography. It came along to give a new way of working, just at a time when there were more and more ways of writing about it and publishing the results. Leica themselves did ( and does...

11 Oct

Posted at 10:13h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

I have come to accept the need for aids in living. I'm not at the stage yet where I'll need an ear trumpet or a wooden leg, but the time cannot be far away. I already need aids to the memory - whenever I enter a room with a vague expression on my face the family has been trained to shout out " Now what have you lost? ". Sometimes they stop what they are doing and help me to find whatever it is, and sometimes they just push me back out of the room...

09 Oct

Posted at 07:46h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

I am surprised that Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton were not keen digital photographers - because anyone who attempts to do photography these days needs to be a mathematician - and it might have been the other way round. We're all familiar with the off-sets and multiplication factors that are needed for understanding focal lengths when people are assessing what big or small sensors do - but we're not that familiar. And it's still possible to flummox us with science when it comes to equivalences in exposure between f stops, T stops, and other ratios. Fortunately for most of us TTL metering and Automatic flash can put most of the hard work at a distance while we take the actual pictures. I was brought to this thought when i checked out two tele-converters from the Stirling Street storeroom this week, looking to tes them out with the lenses I own. I was prevented from this by the construction of the tele-converters themselves and by not owning the right lenses. I'm not alone in this confusion, though, and it is a recurring them that has...

08 Oct

Posted at 08:32h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

I proceeded to the Murray Street premises of Camera Electronic and interviewed the store manager, Domenic Papalia. He opened the Canon show cabinet and took out a Canon Macro EF-S 35mm f:2.8 IS STM lens and a Canon 70D camera. After ascertaining that there was a charge in the battery, Mr. Papalia admitted that the lens had an inbuilt lighting system that could be actuated by a button on the side. Subsequent tests showed this to be the case  - the button has three positions: high power, low power and off. The lens has aperture stops ranging down to f:29 - which is quite unusual for many small digital lenses. It autofocuses, as well as manually focusing once you release the locking. It contaains internal stabilisation. The picture of the SD card may not be art but it is science enough to show you how close and big it will go. The advantage of the two LED lights is seen when you are this close - otherwise, it is nearly impossible to obtrude other lights in front of the lens at such a distance....

05 Oct

Posted at 08:59h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

Well, you cannot fault the makers of cameras for being dull bodies - they let their design departments run with the colours and in the cameras we've seen this week we've had a different shade each day. The Fujifilm XF10 today is Champagne Gold. How the Fujifilm people got away with using the word " Champagne " when it is debarred from local winemakers is a mystery. Perhaps they have better lawyers. Whatever, they do have an attractive pocket product here. It's the newest of the quartet and probably contains the newest circuits - but it also has one design decision that the others did not make - no zoom lens. This camera has a fixed 18mm lens feeding onto an APS-C Bayer-pattern sensor. Due to the nature of prime lenses over zooms, and fixed construction over erecting lenses, as well as that large sensor...