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News

12 Jan

Posted at 10:22h in Blog, Dick's Rant, News by [social_share]

The burgeoning business of recording video is starting to make me look at camera stuff again - specifically lighting equipment. My first discovery was that standard room lighting is horrible. My studio has downlights that run on big circular fluorescent tubes with a colour temperature of old liver. They are positioned to make everyone look like zombies. If I ever start filming horror movies, I'm set. The trial reels using the modelling lights on my standard mono-head studio flashes showed them to be too dim, too yellow, and too cumbersome for the game. They are dynamite lights for still photos and the light modifiers are just what I need, but the difference between a flash tube and an incandescent light bulb is far too great. The next stage was to look at odd little LED and ring lights. Let me excuse myself from sounding foolish - these lights were hauled along to a recording session by the dancer who was appearing in the reels. Bought from some eBay seller, they were literally falling to pieces as we tried to set them up. Gaffer...

05 Nov

Posted at 16:41h in News by [social_share]

Previous Next Have you heard the saying “You don’t know what you don’t know”? That’s how I would best describe my relationship with professional, colour calibrated photography monitors. I’ve been a full time professional photographer for the past 12 years and during my career I’ve always used high end, all in one desktop PC’s to edit my images. Now these computers did their job as far as running the internet, storing client record management database and saving my word docs – but little did I understand the damage they were doing to my images. I finally realised something was wrong in late 2017 when I changed over to a new computer and started experiencing dramatic variation in the colour output of my prints. What I was seeing on screen wasn’t what I was achieving in my prints – they were filled with colour casts and over saturation. I print at a professional photo laboratory, so I knew the problem was at my end. Yikes! It was costing me time and money to try to rectify the issue by editing blindly, hoping I would...

22 Jul

Posted at 07:14h in Blog, News by [social_share]

It's time for the big PhotoLive Expo event! Are you ready?  What You Can Expect When Attending PhotoLive This Year   On Sunday, 1st August, the Camera Electronic team and the representatives from the imaging industry will join forces to put Western Australia on the map again with the largest expo in Australia for 2021! Adding to the excitement will be selecting the finest speakers and talented artists who will share their knowledge on their chosen craft. It's all happening from 9am - 5pm at Edith Cowan University Mt Lawley (Building 3).   PhotoLive Expo   If you have never been to a Photo Live Expo before, you're in for a treat. For the gear enthusiasts out there, you'll be able to attend the expo area from 9am to 5pm. It's here that you'll get to engage with industry representatives to ask them your burning questions about cameras, lenses, filters, tripods, bags, cases, and lighting equipment (plus much more). What's more, the best thing about the expo is the show specials you won't find anywhere else! So if you are coming along to try out some gear, know...

21 Jun

Posted at 08:57h in Education, News, Reviews by [social_share]

When planning and packing for an outdoor adventure, most of us grab our trusty DSLR or mirrorless camera. Add to this some suitable lenses for landscape or wildlife along with fresh batteries and memory cards. But have you ever considered that you might be missing out on something? A handy addition to any wildlife or landscape photography kit is a pair of binoculars.  Binoculars have come a long way since the models our grandparents handed down to us. Bulky, heavy and optically imperfect antiques have retired. These have given way to modern binoculars with the same level of build and optics quality as a modern camera lens. It is also astounding just how many styles and variants of binoculars there are. What’s more, brands such as Nikon, Canon, Olympus and even Leica develop precision binoculars. They all have a long history of making precision optics for more than just camera gear.      There’s a lot to be gained from packing a pair of quality binoculars on your next outdoor adventure. For wildlife photographers, it provides a means to quickly scan a location and...

04 Feb

Posted at 07:25h in Blog, Dick's Rant, News by [social_share]

Thirty more than the  D750 , that is. This is Nikon's newest camera yet - the one that supplants the D 750. If your lenses mostly say " Nikkor " somewhere on the front and mostly feature an F mount somewhere on the back, this is going to be of interest. The previous number - the D750 is a full frame FX DSLR that has occupied a spot in the high-enthusiast section of the Nikon marketing spectrum since 2014 and it has functioned as a lighter body with complete specs for all this time. There is a D850 above it in equipage and features, as there is a D5 above that, but the enthusiastic shooter with the D750 and a slew of Nikon lenses has never been handicapped in any way. So much more so for the new D 780. You'll see that the form is much the same as before and most of the changes are internal revisions and upgrades: Improved AF - faster with better subject racking. Newer sensor with improved jpeg performance. You can shoot video at 4K now...

04 Jun

Posted at 07:53h in News by [social_share]

Well, once you start me going, it's difficult to pull me up. Best just stand aside, let me run myself into the ditch and then turn over. In this case, it is searching the Camera Electronic shelves for lenses that bird photographers can make use of. I've been reading further into the schedule of the BirdLife Bird Photography Conference in Fremantle on the 21st and 22nd of September and it's actually pretty exciting. I count ten Australian presenters and one chap from Canada - the keynote speaker, I daresay. They are all award winners, published authors, or recognised experts in the field and they are all there for you to listen to and ask questions. And the wonderful thing about the digital era is that they can bring their images and results with them so readily - and show them with such brilliance. I remember that a travelling show by the CR Kennedy company back in the 1980's on the Hasselblad film camera system used the best slide projectors of the time - they were a licensed product that Hasselblad made -...

16 May

Posted at 09:18h in News by [social_share]

I remember reading somewhere that the blink of an eye is around 1/40th of a second.Pretty small beans when we look at shutters in DSLR and mirror-less cameras that can fire at 1/4000 or 1/8000 of a second. I mean, Crikey - at 1/8000 you could record the time interval between when your tax refund arrives and when it goes out again in utility bills...

29 Aug

Posted at 09:16h in News by [social_share]

I have been asked to apologise for making terrible puns in this column. I'm more than happy to do so as long as it does not prevent me from doing it again and again. But today's temptation is really difficult. It's not a surprise to anyone - even to me. It's the black workaday version of the graphite-silver Fujifilm X-Pro 2 we saw earlier in the year. Same beast - darker coat. Every technical thing I said last time still goes  - so nip back in the column and look at the glorious grey version as well. The difference for me is that this one gets a run with a card in it and some colourful subjects out the front. And this time I have the ability to decode the RAW file information and to tweak the files a little. I have been re-reading my book by Pfirstinger on mastering the X-Pro 1 to get a few ideas on how to deal with RAW via Lightroom CC and have implemented a number of his suggestions. In the case of the X-Pro1 and...

14 Jun

Posted at 07:23h in Dick's Rant, News by [social_share]

If you ever want to feel as if the unbounded springs of life are about to burst inside of you, I suggest that you try not to attempt it on the roads on Sunday morning. At least not in Perth. In Margaret River springs might burst - in Meekatharra springs might burst - but in Perth the mechanism is rusted shut. At least that was my experience this last Sunday whilst looking for a suitable subject to exercise the Nikon 18-55mm f:3.5-5.6G AF-S DX lens attached to the new Nikon D7500 camera. I was looking for where it was all at, but was forced to the conclusion that it wasn't anywhere. Even the rail museum was shut. You'd think that Rotting Locomotives R Us would at least be open for business - even if they were not fired up. No. Not until 1:00. Until then you could cruise the streets, slowly work your way through the detours on Tonkin Highway, and then drive past the lost souls along James Street in Guildford. Wind it up with a tour down the back streets...

24 May

Posted at 10:19h in Dick's Rant, News by [social_share]

That is not exactly just a bad pun - I have already commented upon the DJI drone announcement in a different weblog column. But I've been asked to give a more authoritative version of it here on the Camera Electronic page - a note was sent to us by the importers of the DJI drone systems - and the details may well concern a number of the shop's customers. Here's an brief outline: DJI have sent word that they are going to introduce a new activation process for international customers ( I take that to mean everyone outside of China, where the devices are made.)  It will apply to currently-owned drones as well as ones purchased in the future. You will be required to send log-in information to the company in relation to update with a new version of DJI GO or GO4 app. This involves you having internet connection on your mobile phone or tablet to do this. The reason stated by DJI is that your drone needs to have the correct geospatial information and to be governed by geofencing bondaries and altitude limits. If you don't...