November 2020

Specifically, Wha Cha Got Noo? My standard question when I visit the Camera Electronic Shop. Sometimes the staff will throw something to me - sometimes it'll be at me. It pays to be alert. This week I mooned around looking for novelty until the Sony representative - Sheryl Mauger - came in the door and I battened upon her with the question. She plucked out several items - one of which I've put on the heading Image. It's the Sony FE 12mm - 24mm full-frame lens. The reason she pulled ti from the cabinet for my pictures is that it is apparently flying off the shelves. No wonder - an f:2.8 wide-angle zoom for the 24 x 36 sensor size that goes that wide is actually a sensation. Remember that this is a rectilinear view of the world - not a barrel-distorted one or a fish-eye. Think architecture and landscape with the lines straight. This is apparently the widest 2.8 zoom made, and I can see it playing a major part for interior coverage at weddings or conferences that try to look good in reduced...

You never know what these things do - you never know that you want them. Till you see them. I can't tell you what the little metal spider is called - it was sitting in the Edelkrone rack at the Stirling Street store all folded up like a dead arachnid. The fact that it had a 3/8 in. treaded stud on the top sort of gave away that it might be to support a ball head or other camera device, but that was all. Then I tried unfolding it and it refused to open - until I figured out that the legs only open one way -and once they are out, the structure can spread like an " X ". At this point the rubber feet that form the ends of the legs set onto a flat surface and the whole device starts to make sense. It also starts to be a very sturdy support. A little more experimentation shows that the stiffness of the joints in the arms is deliberate - you can set them at intermediate points and they will...

Is archivist a fancy technical word? It is in a job description for a State Library position. You can probably get away with a simpler term for the person in your family who has control of the shoebox. The shoebox full of postcard prints, slides, and negatives that form the bulk of the historical images for you and your relatives. We are well into a digital age but our family pictures have rarely joined us. Of course we all take hundreds of superb digital portraits of our relatives ( don't we...