07 Aug Peak’s Legs
I was trying to get a catchy title that played on Pike's Peak but nothing came of it - you're safe for awhile...
Author: Uncle Dick
05 Aug Leica Or Not, You Need Me
If you have always sighed to own a Leica camera but quailed at the price of the new ones, there is an opportunity for you now in the secondhand shelves of Camera Electronic. Ignore the gold-washed Leicavich 35mm camera - that's just an ex-Soviet Fed faked up for the sucker market. Buy it for a talking point, if you fancy, but know what it is. Look more closely, however, at the Digilux 2 sitting behind it. The camera with the silver finish and leather strap. It's not new - and it's not ex-Wetzlar - but it is a genuine Leica made in collaboration with Panasonic of Japan and it has a genuine Summicron lens ( probably made in Yamagata ). All this is good. The camera will not have the screen or the resolution of a new Leica Cl or M10. You cannot expect that. It has nowhere NEAR the number of numbers in its price tag as those modern cameras, however - and there is your advantage. The rest of it is made to very high standards indeed and can serve very well. And,...
03 Aug Have You Heard The News?
Don't wince. This isn't a bulletin with viruses or politicians in it. It's concerned with cameras. Briefly, Olympus - the makers of the Zuiko lenses and the Olympus OM-D micro 4/3 cameras - will be selling their imaging division to a Japanese consortium in September. Some people have imagined that this will be the end of Olympus cameras - I suspect it will be nothing like that at all. The consortium - Japan Industrial Partners - is very likely to get the camera division in toto - and that will mean R&D, plans, tools, machines, patterns, materials, and perhaps even factories. I would think that it will also receive the bulk of the optical workers that the camera division has been using for the last decades. it would make sense to transfer the people skilled with the brand at the same time. So what does this mean to you, the Australian camera user? I would suggest that it means you'll have an opportunity to get some very good camera gear and lenses in the next few years: a. There will be a flurry of...
31 Jul The Show Goes On
Our virus year so far here in WA has been a strange one - locking down, lurking around, looking up...
29 Jul May I Speak To The Person Who Asked About Classic Cameras?
I'll have something for the rest of you later in the week. Today is for the analog landscape and portrait artists. Some people see them as a dying breed - what with the rise of ever-larger or ever-smaller digital sensors. But they are not unhealthy at all - just selective in what they photograph and what they use to do it. This Fujifilm GF 670 Professional camera is sitting in the secondhand cabinet at Camera Electronic - ironically on an X-system plastic plinth. It is one of the last of a very long line of traditional folding cameras - remember the Zeiss Ikon camera you saw here a few months ago. But this one gives no quarter at all as far as lens quality and resolution. It is superb. The format that the camera seems to support is 120film in a 6 x 7 cm gate. However, if you prefer a sqaure format you'll find that there is a switchable mask inside the camera that can pare it down to 6 x 6. You choose as you load the film. Users of other...
27 Jul So…Who Influences You?
You. The reader. The photographer who spends five minutes on one of my essays every two days. Is it me? I hope not. I should be terrified of causing anyone to do anything. Whether it worked out well or ill there woild be great danger of them coming back to complain or praise and I am so very shy...
24 Jul Selfies Lie
And they lie shamelessly. Sometimes it does good and sometimes it does bad. Let me explain...
22 Jul Improving The Bride
Wedding work can be a very strange sport. I mean art...
20 Jul Just Because You Can…
Doesn't mean you can't as well. And always remember that you might not, should not, and would not...
17 Jul ” Which Camera Would YOU Buy? “
The question. If you are known to be connected with the photo trade - seller or shooter - or with the art or science or hobby or culture of it - someone will bail you up at a barbecue and ask you. You can grasp your chest and sink senseless to the ground but they'll still pester you as the ambos stretcher you away. " Is the Flapoflex better than the Digiclunk? Which lens should I get? How much discount do I get? Hello? Hello? Are you conscious? Hello? " Save yourself the theatre and the St. John's fee. Have an answer ready instead. The short one will be to name the camera that you own. Just a word will be all that is needed to send your questioner off to someone else armed with this - they'll ask the same question again and get a different answer. Then off to a third one...