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03 Mar

Posted at 08:53h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

Call me Ishmael, if you will, but I cannot see the harm in the Great White Camera - in fact I see a great deal of good in it. If it is the Small White Camera it can still be great. The "Moby Dick" nickname came from a sales staff member, and it is funny, but pokes fun at the colour of the camera without taking into account the basic goodness in the device. This is a Sony compact camera - in itself a good concept - and is nothing more than the stylish version of the Sony ZV-1. This is one of their newest cameras dedicated to helping you with video contact and broadcasting - vlogging. Don't be afraid - this column will not switch to talking to you over YouTube - you'll still be able to keep me at arm's length and turn away from the screen in despair. For those who may be much better broadcasters than I, the ZV-1 has a number of dedicated features; 20 Megapixel 1" CMOS sensor - Bionz engine, -4 K recording. Three-capsule directional mic...

01 Mar

Posted at 10:19h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

I have always been a sucker for tiny equipment - ever since I traded a Crosman CO2 pistol for a Minox B camera in 1966. The facts that the guy who got the pistol lodged a pellet into his forehead while target shooting and I never actually took a picture with the Minox are beside the point - I still think I got the best of the deal. It sensitised me to tiny photo gear*. I never actually owned a Swiss Tessina film camera - the next stage of miniature wonder in the film  era. But I've seen one for sale in CE and if you were prepared to be dedicated like a watchmaker, you could take pictures. Possibly of mountain goats and chocolate factories. And my experience with the Pentax 110 SLR and the Pentax Q digital cameras is just as a spectator. Oddly enough there is a keen enthusiast with the latter camera who turns out excellent photos. But the NiSi lenses that are coming out now have whetted my appetite afresh - albeit with frustration, as the shop copies Carlos...

19 Feb

Posted at 09:25h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

  I have owned a few motor cars in my life - and lots of cameras. The difference in those numbers is partly due to the capital cost of  vehicles compared to photo stuff. But partly it is due to the look of the things. You see, I respond to design details more than overall concepts. I suspect everyone does to some extent. I bought a French motor car because of the seats - and because of a sales diagram that showed a four-wheel independent suspension with 4 disc brakes. I bought a Leica camera because it had a chrome silver lens. I gloried in these things and they satisfied my soul until they wore out and were replaced. I bought a German car based in the colour of the paint - and a Swiss camera based on the brushed metal of the top plate. Both were disasters. To this day I have not spent another penny with either manufacturer. I suspect a lot of people have had this same experience - and that the chiefest aim of the advertisers should be to find...

17 Feb

Posted at 09:20h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

A very good question indeed, and one that needs answering before you press the button rather than after: a. How many pictures do you need to document the event? If it is a human-wave infantry attack and everyone wants to have a souvenir to send home you could be there for a week. Ditto a school or big corporate dinner. Be prepared with enough batteries, enough chargers, more batteries, a mains lead, and another battery. Be prepared with enough memory and think whether you would be wise to commit it to a multiple of cards. Not only to back up the images, but to separate them out into easily-processed batches. At the very least decide what system of numbering you'll use for the shoot; start afresh, break it into batches, or just carry on with whatever the camera is doing at the time. This latter choice can be fraught. I did just this on an interstate hot rod shoot and the camera in use clocked up to the end of its numbering sequence and decided to quit. I had no idea how to...

15 Feb

Posted at 09:21h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

Can be greater than some of the parts. Put another way, you can mix and not have to match. Let me show you. I found the following in the Murray Street show cabinets: A 17mm Zuiko f:1.8 lens. Equivalent to a 35mm lens on a full-frame. An Olympus Pen F camera body. Equivalent to any good mirrorless camera. An Olympus hand grip - equivalent to any Arca-Swiss grip for any system. Note the rails on the LHS of the camera body. Also, note the central tripod screw attachment. This grip seems not to be made in precisely black colour and I suspect it is really intended for one of the other OM-D EM camera bodies. But no matter. Bolt 'em together and you have: As good a little fighting reportage or studio camera as anyone else makes. The swinging screen at the back will have to be negotiated past the horns of the Arca-Swiss rails, but if you're fussy, you can unbolt the side rails. If you do not need to do this, those rails can be the foundation of an entire series of accessories. I...

12 Feb

Posted at 09:47h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

As soon as a ray of light bounces off a subject and hits your camera, compulsion starts. It'll either be you doing it or you suffering it. When you first start out with photography, it's all new. You want to do everything - there's a widespread compulsion to take your camera everywhere and shoot anything that passes in front of it. This is like getting a .22 rifle when you're 14 years old, except the street lights in your town will suffer less from the camera. Eventually the overall pressure starts to coalesce and become more intense in certain areas. You'll find that you like taking pictures of surfing and the ocean...

10 Feb

Posted at 09:12h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

Last week's shots of the shop's cameras behind glass were taken in the landscape mode. The camera was on the tripod or held with a flash poking out the top. But what happened if the subject was just not a horizontal one? What if I needed to do it in portrait mode? Well. I could step back to the tripod as before, but with the camera held vertically. Some tripods do this with more grace than others - come experiment yourself, but take my tip of trying a camera cradle with Arca -Swiss mounts on bottom and side and a corresponding clamp in the ball head. Changing from down to up is super-simple. There are several types on the market. Of course the people who invested in Stroboframe camera cradles many years ago could do so without even unclamping a thing...