February 2022

Not if you're me, you can't. Nor can you see as well, nor so far nor as closely and finely. In fact, the little batteried box with the glass on the front can beat nearly all of us when it comes to vision and memory. This is a humbling thought for we monarchs of creation, but we've brought it on ourselves by creating photography. Be of good cheer - the camera and lens need not be your master if you enter into a bargain with it; you tell it what to do, and how to do it, and give it the freedom to operate. Reserve the rest of the artistic process for yourself. The camera cannot tell you what you are interested in recording - the closest it can come to this is to provide program icons that suggest activity or vision; sports, parties, portraits, etc. These are just shortcuts it suggests that might ( ...

Sydney, Australia, February 16, 2022 - BenQ, internationally renowned brand of digital lifestyle devices and innovator of professional display technology, announced it has become the world’s first stand-alone displays to achieve Pantone SkinTone Validated* for selected DesignVue PD (PD3205U / PD2705U) and PhotoVue SW models (SW321C / SW240). *Please visit here for more information “Having forged AQCOLOR Technology to deliver accurate colours for the global community of colour professionals, we look forward to incorporating Pantone SkinTone Validated for technology products that are more inclusive than ever,” said Grace Tran, BenQ Australia and New Zealand Product Marketing Manager. “Pantone SkinTone Validated gives designers and photographers confidence in displaying authentic real-world colours and accurately representing the world’s palette of skin tones.” Leveraging the Pantone SkinTone guide, the first science-based system for matching and reproducing human skin tones, the program comprises 110 discrete skin tones based on thousands of human skin measurements from a diverse range of ethnicities and age groups. As an extension to the Pantone Validated program, Pantone SkinTone Validated assures colour professionals that certified devices comply with the Pantone Matching System (PMS) and...

No matter where you are. If your device can receive a signal you've paid for, you can watch your favourite show. There is an intriguing shelf at Wanderlust on the right side of the shop. It contains digital projectors - but not the big industrial ones that you see in lecture halls and theatre venues. These are smaller, personal devices that project an image for a small audience. There's the word - small - think in terms of a couple two, three people sitting around a table or lounge. If there's a big TV screen to watch, fair enough. But if there is only a laptop, tablet, or mobile phone screen then some of the watchers are going to miss out - and they will all likely be straining to hear the sound. Let's not forget social distancing, either. These projectors are designed to throw an image onto a subsidiary screen. This can be as sophisticated as an Ektalite surface or as simple as a plain white wall. Some have screen included. They have to have enough brightness to overcome ambient lighting -...

Well, let's be honest with ourselves - they've been doing that since their first Photoshop program. And we've grumbled about it as we learned what their odd words and commands meant. But this time Adobe can give us good advice. A lot of people use Lightroom to process their images - even if they do not fiddle with them later in any of the other Adobe programs. They get up a library of whatever the latest shoot is, throw out the duds, and clean up the rest. Then they sort and send the resultant images to other areas for storage, printing, or delivery. The lucky people who have discovered Loupedeck + do this with great ease and can power through large jobs a lot faster than the mouse jockeys. Ask me, I know. The best day I had in the last decade was the one when I saw the Loupedeck+ at a PhotoLive event. I watched a friend buy one and when I knew it wasn't dangerous, I followed suit. CE sell 'em...

SPECIAL RULES: Two lenses only. Photographers proceeding past this point will only be allowed two lenses. More than two will result in the excess optics being confiscated and put into landfill. You have been warned. I don't take anything for granted these days when I read official notices - particularly if it is me writing them. I have no idea whether anything is real any more so I just play along and edge closer to the door. The idea of One Lens To Rule Them All is popular in some circles. It makes a good debating point for a camera club meeting or a cage fight. Everyone can have an opinion and after they have expressed them, you can have a good time going around and seeing if they actually uphold their own ideas. The number of lenses in the average camera bag or equipment cupboard put the lie to this one. Note: No sensible retailer would deny people the chance and advantage to own multiple lenses. We've got our own opinions too, but they need not confine you. Buy as many lenses...

As we are all watching more screens these days with moving pictures that show people speaking, we are all familiar with the slightly out-of-sync presenter. They are generally heard slightly before or after their image is received and the sounds do not match the lips. This is not much of a real problem, but our brains keep poking us and complaining that something is not right. We start to lose concentration, watching the disparity between sound and vision. Pretty soon we have to actually stop looking at the speaker and just listen to what they say - a dangerous thing, as the quality of audio may also be poor - and the quality of the thoughts being expressed even worse. We all remember the wagon wheels in old cowboy movies that went slowly backwards, even as the Deadwood Stage went rollin' on over the hills. A slight disparity between the speed of the spokes as they turned and the frame rates of the movie cameras - each spoke being the same, they could be made to go forward and backward at will....

Or, The Good Old Days. Of course no-one ever shoots film in old cameras and of course they never develop their own negatives and then scan them. This would be absurd, now that we have 100+ megapixel digital cameras all over the place. And wait until you see the 1000+ megapixels cameras that my brother-in-law said he heard about...

As a kid there was a standing joke in school when it came time for English assignments. Every year some other student would attempt to sneak in a holiday book report on " My Friend Flicka ", and every year they would get a failing mark in English. Mary O'Hara was not a bad writer, nor was the book awful in itself, but English teachers used to use it as a yardstick of committent and then beat the students with that yardstick. Well, Flicka may have been friendly, but flicker is not. The person who makes videos will encounter it in many guises, and they are all bad news. People are sensitive to two things when watching moving pictures; audio quality and flickering light. You can generally get an adequate level of the former by choosing a camera system with a separate mic input and then attaching a good quality microphone like a Røde onto it  ( Shameless CE shop plug...

If you have a need or desire to spy on people or animals, come on down. We've got just the things for you. The trail camera concept is a one that a lot of people can share. Hunters, farmers, wildlife researchers, and security-minded individuals who may have valuable crops growing in inaccessible portions of state forests spring to mind. In all these cases the photographer cannot be on-site all day, every day - nor can they afford to keep the cameras rolling 100% of the time in hopes of seeing Big Foot, Yowies, or Judge Crater pass by the lens. A selective sentry is needed. This is where the Minox trail cameras come in. Minox has long been famed for tiny cameras and excellent binoculars. Now they have unattended photo stations that you can place in bushland and forests to monitor and record activities for you. The reason they work is better battery performance these days, micro recording media, and circuitry that can monitor activity over a specified area and start recording when movement is detected. A number of these cameras have black-LED...