I like visiting Camera Electronics - having worked in the shop for eight years it is still a familiar spot to go to - there is a free coffee, and I get to see new things. Note: I do pay for parking at the council meter machine out the front for my time, and I advise you to do so too. The meter maids in the area are not dressed in gold bikinis nor inclined to mercy...
I cannot decide whether camera and lens reviews on the internet are a good thing or not. On one hand they could be the one way a remote photographer might be able to order their thoughts...
Relax. I'm not advocating doing bad things to four-footed animals. This is all about practical science and inveterate curiosity. The photographic test shot is the most basic of Australian images - even more common than the one of the three children in the back yard under the Hills hoist, squinting into the sun. We have all taken them, and some of us have taken a lot of them. But few of us make the best use of the equipment, time, and materials. It is all a matter of doubt. It is the same with scale model building. Anyone who has an airbrush has also had doubts - doubts about air pressure, dilution of paint, humidity, dust, air movement, thinners, retarders, undercoats, overcoats, matt, gloss, satin...
You don't have to be surreptitious in Camera Electronic when it comes to looking for camera bags - we've had them on the south wall since before the turn of the century - actually it might have been before the turn of several centuries. They've been piled, shelved, hooked, and binned in various combinations and the manufacturers have gone through any number of fads and designs. It is a dangerous section of the shop as you start to think of things that you could do and pretty soon you are buying something to do them with...
I suspect that Peak Design made this bag before they decided what it was going to be used for. That's alright - many of the models I make and the images I take are halfway done before I know what they are going to do. Some sit on the shelf or in the hard drive for years before inspirations strikes...
You are not really a keen enthusiast photographer until you have done three things; stood at a seashore for 3 hours waiting for the sun to come up or go down to take an image that looks like a postcard - sneaked a box full of new equipment into the house unseen - and dropped a lens onto a concrete surface while changing it. Those of you who would like to see the exact spot on North Wharf where I dropped an F:4 collapsible Elmar in 1973 are welcome to attend the annual commemoration service. Expect weeping and wailing. We all do it - we all juggle two lenses and a camera body while on the move. We try to quickly replace one with the other on the camera ( and aren't we grateful that all modern digital lenses are on bayonet mounts...
The heading image is a box of film. To be more specific, it is a box containing a plastic canister with a pop-off lid. Inside the canister is a metal cartridge with a plastic spool in the centre. Around the plastic spool is wound a perforated roll of plastic film, 35mm wide. it's about a yard long give or take a few inches. On one side of the plastic strip is a tough emulsion with a number of layers of light-sensitive material - three colours that react differently to light that falls upon them - however briefly. The cartridge is shaped to go inside a " 35mm " film camera. his might be made by Leica, Canon, Nikokn, Zeiss Ikon, Kodak, Mercury, Argus, or any number of makers. strip of plastic film inside the cartridge is engaged by a set of sprockets and rollers in the camera and drawn past an aperture 24mm x 36mm in the dark. At the appropriate time, a shutter exposes this aperture to light with an upside-down image focused upon it. If you are very good and...
Or, more accurately, a drawer full of volts...
Or...
What do you do when you run out of arm? When you cannot hold a camera high enough - or low enough - or far enough outside a railway carriage - to get the shot you need? Why you hire an assistant who is built like a giraffe or a toad - and is disposable enough that when the railway train goes through an unexpected tunnel you need not worry. Or you get yourself a Zhiyun Crane 2 - the gimbal arm that adds extra function to itself. The gimbal as a means of stabilising a video or still shot was covered in one of the previous posts. It's principle is simple - it is slippery enough in several planes and can be programmed to keep you camera pointed where you specify even if you do not have your eye on the viewfinder or your hands on the body. It can smooth out the jerks and swoops that you make as you film a scene. It is the small version of the big apparatus that Hollywood uses to stabilise cinema cameras (...