December 2019

Camera Electronic has always been an emporium - and you are encouraged to go look at the dictionary definition of the word. It has sold a vast array of goods over the last 50 years and it has had an advantage over many of the competitors - the owners and operators have maintained secondhand dealer's licences all during that time. This has given the shop the chance to see a lot more of the gear that is actually in use throughout the state - and in some cases it has allowed us to trade it in as well. Has everything that's come past the door sill been good? No. There have been some hair-raising cameras made in the past 100 years and quite a few of them got to Perth in the hands of tourists and migrants. When they palled, the owners would come in and try to sell them. In most cases they could be refused politely - and if we had a chance to show the more modern goods the customer went off with something more suitable. Some could...

No surprise that Sirui Optical is a Guangdong company - the products they turn out are excellently made - but it was interesting to google up their main site and see that they've been putting things on the market since 2001 and that they're also selling humidity control cabinets. I'll bet they sell like hot ( and wet ) cakes in southern China, given what we see of their weather conditions. The two products today are concerned with tripods, though they are accessories rather than the tripods themselves. Of course, we have a good range of those as well in store but sometimes you need a little more than the basic three leggers. This arm is designed to attach where you would normally put a or three-way head and it lets you move the action out and away from the centre line of the tripod. This is no new thing - I have a similar accessory for my giant Gitzo Studex but it is a much cruder casting and can only allow 90º displacement from the vertical. This Sirui HA-77 unit tilts as...

Or is it a business? Or a pastime? That's an important question for you to ask yourself - fortunately, you can do it quietly and no-one need hear your answer. But if you can get it straight in your own mind you have a much better chance of being successful and happy in the end. If you are in the photo game as a business, the end result of it needs to be money. Money in your pocket...

a. Camera. In the end it can only do two things - sit inert or take pictures. Most cameras make good paperweights and in the old days several of them made fine doorstops. It is when you start exposing film or sensors that the complications start. Not that we should complain - those complications are what keep the shop, the customers, and the manufacturers going. If they get out of hand, you can always switch the thing off and then on again. b. Lens. These are for looking through - either you look through it with your naked eye and curse your horse for running too slow, or you attach a camera to the back end and take pictures. Some lenses see images and some project images. Rather like people in the photo trade, really...

A recent talk by Warwick Williams introducing a new Fujifilm camera also gave him a chance to mention another very successful Fujifilm product line - their Instax instant printers. Here's one of the Mni Link I found at our Murray Street shop. The construction couldn't be simpler; one slim case in any fashion colour you like, one door to open for the Instax film pack, and one port to charge it from. You send a signal via magic waves from your mobile phone ( and possibly from other devices...

You used to take the kids or Grannie on holiday at the seaside. Now you leave them home and take the phone, tablet, and camera and give them an outing. Which is fair enough, because most photo enthusiasts think more of their equipment than they do of their family anyway. Get your priorities right...

The daughter has just returned from a trip to Japan. It was a short visit, but as she speaks a little of the language, an enjoyable one for her. As it was a quick decision affair, I grabbed one of the spare cameras to send her off with - a dear old Fujifilm X10 that has been serving since 2012. You've seen weblog pictures taken with it years ago here on your screen. My first worry as I sent her off with it was the battery supply - the camera batteries were small in those days and these have aged. But the Fujifilm charger could be configured for the Japanese 117V system and I figured out of five of them, at least two should work. As it happened, they all did, and there was never a time when electricity wasn't available. The second concern was the settings that the camera would shoot with. I dialled up RAW and jpeg initially and then saw that it would eat up a great deal of memory. So I opted for large fine jpeg and then...

And some of us have them in colour. Instax cameras from Fujifilm are often in some pretty fashionable colours - they are primarily sold in Japan and the Japanese people have a surprisingly bright taste in colour. Witness the Shinkansen train in Tokyo station a few years ago as a heading image. And that's just a conservative one - recent pictures my daughter brought home of the Japanese trains shows even brighter and more stylish ones. They're gearing up to make the Olympics look very good. They also gear up with colourful ensembles - cameras and bags to carry them in - and they never forget that you need to take a number of Spare Instax film packs as well. You can have your dark moments...

I say clambake, because that is essentially what these little gems are - mollusc shells for your photographic gear. You get to keep your pearls safe. The Hardside CS 60 was the one I first picked up and I was immediately impressed with the rigidity of the nylon shell - not stiff and crackable but not floppy either. No idea what it's made of but it looks like it would provide a great deal of shock resistance. The inside would be perfect for the Fujifilm X-100F that is their current premium compact camera - the back-to-front dimension of this camera's 23mm pancake lens lets it lie in there with plenty of room. The new Fujifilm X-100V coming out next year is rumoured to be getting a new lens, so we'll have to see whether or not it will fit. Privately, I think Fujifilm would be very wise to update the close-focusing capability of the lens on this iconic camera, but I really hope they don't change the focal length or the external dimension. If they do fiddle with the focal length let's...