September 2019

I approach the Leica Boutique cabinets with care - the goods within them are top-quality and deserve more than just a casual glance. If you have the price, they are generally very well-made and backed up by an extremely reputable manufacturer. You just have to be prepared for a little more brand-culture than some others. This is also the case for the companies that provide accessories for Leica - they have to provide the same standards that the main company puts out - so that if you see a bag or strap from Artist and Artisan in Japan or a Leica cameras that bears a lens made in Japan, you can be assured that it will give you sterling service. I was mega-intrigued by the brown leather pouch in the island cabinet: the Artist and Artisan ACAM-78. It looked like a tiny doctor's bag, and I couldn't imagine what Leica thought they could fit inside it. It turns out they intend it for small mirrorless bodies but they show pictures on the net of it swallowing an M-series camera plus short lens. There...

Carlos and Sam at the Stirling Street Store are real life savers. When I'm casting about for a topic to include in the week's reports here on the weblog column, they always have something new - or newish - to show me. This time it was Carlos and a new little accessory from Manfrotto. Note: I am a fan of Manfrotto, as my studio will show. Nearly everything that has to stand up or hang down does so on something from either Manfrotto or Bunnings ( and if Camera Electronic did sheets of MDF board and sausages in a bun I could cut out Bunnings...

You've seen those war movies of the aircraft carriers in the Pacific or Korea. There's an officer standing on the port side aft with a flying helmet on and two big cloth paddles in his hands. As an aeroplane comes into land on the deck he'll raise the paddles up or lower them down and dip from side to side to let the pilot know what he needs to do to get in safely. The pilot must obey the flags if he can and he is under disciplinary orders to strictly obey two of them; the cut and the wave-off. The first drops him onto the deck in time to catch the arrester wire and the second makes him climb and veer off - hopefully for a better try next time. Both are mandatory. Oh, that it could be the same in the photo trade. The idea of the flying helmet and the paddles is very attractive but a little impractical in the shop during lunch hour - someone would get bopped in the crowd. But the cut or wave-off would...

I wasn't allowed to look inside this box last Wednesday. It was plastic-sealed from the factory with a $ 3795.00 sticker on the outside. If the clear plastic wrap and the admonition weren't enough to keep me out, the orange sticker was...

Now's the time to stop and make use of something that Adobe has offered for years; the ability to control individual colour channels. If you never fiddled with them - and I admit that heretofore I never did - the newfound facility with which they can be altered on the Loupedeck Plus means that a lot of images that were either dull or overcooked can now be saved. You may have deleted material in the past due to the wounds in just one colour when you could have gone in there surgically and sewed it up. The colour rotaries are located just under the P buttons that deal with cropping formats. At least these are sweet to deal with - they are coded with a dot of the colour that they deal with. Eight of them from red to magenta. It's really a better way to present these options than the standard Lightroom panel. You tap on the left for three criteria: hue, saturation, or luminance. And then scroll the wheel up and down to add or subtract the effect. Here's an example...

I used to like secret codes when I was a kid - letters are written so that no-one else could read them. No-one ever had anything secret to say, but we all knew dynamite ways to do it. That's sometimes what I feel like when confronted with the buttons on digital devices. They can be marked with F or Fn for " function ", or C or CU for " custom". Occasionally you'll get a "Ctrl " marking or a " P " and then it's a case of diving into the manual to see what the designers actually meant. We all appreciate the extended functionality of cameras and the fact that we can switch them around to match where our minds have gone and where our fingers can go to...

Today's column was to be a report on a piece of stock from the Stirling Street Store taken with my portable studio and the new coloured backdrops. That can wait. Something wonderful has intervened. I arranged with my family for a Father's Day gift to be ordered through the shop - a Loupedeck editing console. Sam told me yesterday that it had arrived and would I like to take it home. Would I...

As you progress in your career, it’s easy to lose track of some of the photography basics for photographers. You gain skills, learn new tips and tricks, and forget some of the essential aspects of it all. Of course, you’ll remember that photography is all about light. You always have to keep in mind the exposure, aka the brightness or darkness of the photo. This will be affected by the aperture and depth of field, as they dictate how much light reaches the sensor. Your camera’s shutter speed dictates how the photograph will turn out. The higher the speed, the cleaner the action photos are, while the slower speed can create a surreal “motion blur.” The ISO speed will affect your camera’s sensitivity to light and allow you to take excellent photos in darker settings. Lastly, the white balance allows you to bring the colour temperature back to neutral. All of these works together to help you create the perfect photograph. But there are other photography basics for photographers, have a look. Basics of Professional Photography It’s not easy being a professional photographer. It can be...

The heading image is taken in the " E " gallery of the Camera Electronic Art Gallery. The artist has displayed the essential Geistangstgekraft that troubles us all by juxstaposing the techological symbolism of electronic code upon the dou-coloured universe. This work was offered at auction but withdrawn when the reserve price of $ 56,000 was not reached. The artworld is not ready for some movements. But this does not stop the clients of Camera Electronic from balancing upon the cutting edge of fine-art photography themselves. All that is needed is a simple camera, $ 5000 worth of computer, $9000 worth of inkjet printer, $ 300 worth of paper, and an Adobe Photoshop  Elements program. The more determined may wish to get a Wacom tablet and a takeaway cappuccino as well - art can take some time. Once the art has been seen, captured, uploaded, and mangled, it's time to attach the Artspeak. The best source for this is, of course, exhibitions at galleries or courses in art appreciation at technical colleges. But there may be no exhibitions on at present - sometimes the...