I am puzzled at the position in the Fujifilm family that might be occupied by the Fujifilm X-H1 camera. Is it a little brother, a middle brother, or a big brother? Is it a cousin? The basics of the camera have been known since its introduction; a well-built metal body, slightly bigger than the X-T1 or 2 with a heftier hand grip. Many of the features of the X-T2 plus a few extras...
Daniel, the tech, has a special relationship with electricity. It's always entertaining to see the blue flash and watch him fly across the room trailing sparks. That's what you get when you repair studio flashes with big capacitors...
Or to put it more clearly - how to transfer your data into something that you can physically misplace...
I admire people who can coordinate multiple lighting setups in the field. And there's a lot of gear on the market with which they can do this these days - many flash makers have TTL and manual wireless triggers and controllers that talk to each other over various distances. The ultimate goal of a control inside the camera to do this - matched to multiple flash units - is not as common. Most makers seem to devolve this duty to a separate box on the hot shoe. This unit - the Viper - is available for Nikon, Sony, and Canon right now. The unit will do a number of channels and three groups at over 100 Mtr range. It will accommodate and pass through a flash on the hot shoe of the transmitting unit - an important help when you have several outboard flashes but want a central fill. It will also connect to many studio lights so you can make multiple use of it in your system. And hurray!...
I watch Carlos closely. He has good ideas and knows what he is doing. He takes good photographs. He speaks well. If he gets to be any more successful I may have to stab him. This is the photo trade after all...
You may be forgiven for thinking that the modern world is a fraud. In addition to some politicians we seem to elect, we always seem to be packaging up things and selling them to ourselves needlessly. The bottled water business - at least in clean western society - seems somewhat of a doodle. So are sun lamps in summer - and so might this can of compressed air be. After all, air all about us is for free...
Why bother with a lot of things, eh? Why to bother making the bed - you'll just be back in it in 12 hours. Why bother cleaning the car - it'll just get dirty again in thee months. Why to bother brushing your teeth - you'll be eating with them tomorrow anyway...
Daniel Ray, our tech, buttonholed me yesterday and asked me to pass a message on to the photographers of Western Australia. You know, that state on the left of the continent that is made up of red dust and grains of sand...
I do not often get a chance to test Sigma lenses here in the column - I don't own a Canon, Nikon, or Sony body to which they might be attached. But this week I got the opportunity to grab a demo-body Canon from the shelves to exercise a Sigma macro lens - and I am delighted that I could. I've had a good morning in the studio. The Canon body was the 75oD - a very capable small-frame body with a number of modern features - not the least of which is a modern and efficient processor. I cannot pretend to be a Canon expert, but the operation was simple enough to let me use it as I would my normal mirror-less. I did not figure out the live view in the small time I had it but I'm sure it was there somewhere. The body functioned flawlessly. The lens was the Sigma 70mm F2.8 DG Macro. I know that means that it could also function on a full-frame body, but I am used to APS-C sensors for my tabletop work...
It should be no secret to the readers of this column that I base many of my stories around the things I find in the Camera Electronic storeroom. A weekly walk-through lets me see if anything new and interesting has arrived and made it through the receiving and cataloguing procedures. Some weeks are replete with goods - some are bare. And some are puzzling. I find things. Single examples of odd equipment that need study - to see exactly what it might be good for. And large amounts of other things - nests of equipment, if you will. Bought in batches and sitting there ready for the shelves. This is an example of a nest of Canon superzooms. Before you squawk about how big a zoom needs to be before it is considered super, just reflect that a few years ago a 3 X zoom was considered daring. And people could go out and go wild with it. How much wilder can they go with the modern digital - in this case, 65 X. I know there's bigger, but this is a...