16 Jul Was Photography Ever Simple?
Or easy to do? Or inexpensive? I used to think I knew the answer to those questions but now I'm not so sure. Everyone reading this...
July 2021
14 Jul Inadvertent Art
When I was in Grade 1, I made a great many works of art. My mother curated and displayed them on the refrigerator door. Few have survived the 68-year gap since then, though I am pleased to be able to say that I can now say my entire ABC's and count past 30. The art was fun but it only paid in graham crackers and little bottles of warm milk. I note from the family keepsakes that a few works of visual art have indeed been paid down from high school art classes. This is not because they were good - but because they were deliberate. They may not have made sense, but I worked hard to make them as bad as they were. Thus also with photography. The film era was rife with error - from light leaks to film advance errors. From misjudged exposures to bungled processing. I can review my fingerprints from 1967 as I have evidence of them in silver patterns on old negatives. Modern shooters who make bad decisions can see them documented in EXIF files and...
12 Jul Nikkor Z MC Lenses – Nikon Z Macro Essentials
Nikon recently announced not one but two new MC lenses - the Nikkor Z MC 50mm f/2.8 and the Nikkor Z MC 105mm f/2.8. All Nikon Z mount shooters enjoying a Nikon Z5, Nikon Z6 II or the stellar Nikon Z7 II should take note. The new Nikkor Z MC lenses are here to take your macro photography to the next level. In recent years, macro photography has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. It is no longer considered a problematic photography genre to master - one that requires expensive specialist gear. It is now more affordable and more accessible than it has even been. If you’re already shooting with the Nikon Z5, Z6 II or the flagship mirrorless Nikon Z7 II, these lenses open up a whole range of new challenges. The Nikkor Z MC lens duo release provides the option to suit your shooting style, budget, and kit size. If you want a more compact and cost-effective macro kit, the Nikon Z5 mirrorless digital camera and Nikkor Z MC 50mm f/2.8 are your go-to solution. However, enthusiasts shooting with the Nikon...
12 Jul Rainy Day Fun For Photographers
All right children, settle down. Uncle Dick is going to tell you how you can have fun on a rainy day with your camera. First go to the camera cupboard and get the equipment out. Then have a good look at it. a. Is it covered in bits of fluff, cat hair, and Doritos crumbs? You can spend the morning with a soft cloth, some cotton buds, and possibly a wet wipe. Do not open the camera - gently get all the external crud off it. Then go look into your gadget bag or camera box and see where the gunge came from in the first place. Vacuum, sponge, and brush as necessary to expunge the demons. If you find old film tab ends that say Kodachrome A you might consider doing this sort of maintenance a bit more often. b. Is the battery dead? Try charging it. If the charger refuses to do anything investigate whether it will boost your spare battery. Some chargers cannot recognise a battery that has been left to go too flat - seeing it as a foreign...
09 Jul Down The YouTubes
And round the S-bend. Welcome to the wonderful world of minefields. You are a click away from one...
07 Jul The Art Of The Dirty Ear
Before you get too concerned, I am writing about the business of following photography in Perth in 2021...
05 Jul Oliver Twist’s Camera
You may remember the famous scene from the 60's Oliver Twist movie when the the little hero bravely went up to the beadle at the workhouse and asked for more gruel. I'm not sure of the exact passage in the Dickens original, but I suspect the end result was the same; he got thrashed and starved. I've taken it as my model for family relations...
02 Jul In Which We Firmly Grasp The Principals
That's not a typo. Principals was what I wrote. In this case we grasp the principals of the computer design teams for Macrohard and Rutabaga - the people who decide what your next Rutabaga or Macrohard computer will look like - firmly by the throats, and explain what we want. a. We want the foot of the desktop computer to be wider and deeper. This may seem to be counter-intuitive. Everything these days is meant to be slimmer and smaller. But be realistic - go to the mirror - are you slimmer and smaller than you used to be? Is your desk slimmer and smaller? Not if you are actually doing any work on it. Mine is the size of the flight deck of the NIMITZ and even now I'm contemplating folding the wings on the graphics tablet to make it fit better. In short, we have bigger desks, and multi-level desks. The footprint that the Rutabaga rests on can be bigger to give the screen a lot more stability. b. On that stable base, you can add ports. You can thunder, lightning, or be...
30 Jun Nikon – Flyin’ Through the Flak
The new Nikon mirror-less camera body is here - at least here in the interne reveals and reviews. They will be here on the line, so to speak, in the fullness of time. Pre-orders are possible and there is a good deal of interest amongst the photo community. As with every new thing, there are the people for whom it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Then there are people on a diet who cannot afford it and will assure you that they never eat bread...
28 Jun Yellow Pad Engineering Pty Ltd
Or you may prefer to deal with the Chip Paper Design Bureau. Or the Back-Of-An-Envelope Studio. All fine organisations who take modern concepts and wring them out like dishcloths. Careful they don't drip on you. Last post we speculated on Nikon's possible retro-styled APS-C mirrorless camera. Interested parties can google off to the Nikon Rumors site and read the details. Beware, however, as the digital images presented may have been done with more hope than science. Yellow Pad has taken the retro idea and applied it to a mythical camera - one made by the Flapoflex company. It starts with the basic Flapoflex 35mm camera they sold in the old days; the Falpoflex Beulah . This was an almost-Yashica design with semi-Petri overtones and the occasional outbreak of Ihagee-ism. It cranked through 35mm film behind a fixed 45mm lens and was cheap enough to be sold everywhere from Abe's of Maine to Steamer Point in Aden. Innumerable Australian tourists sat with Flapoflex instruction books on their knees on cruise ships or package flights and tried to understand how to load film. The...