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14 Aug

Posted at 09:43h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

No really. Go ahead. I won't scream. Because if you feel it and it seems loose, I can tighten it. The maker of my photo tripod included a natty little Allen spanner that can firm up the leg lock. If I have lost the spanner, the technician at Camera Electronic can do the job for me - and check out all the other things to which a tripod may be prone. a. Corrosion - With the exception of very few specialist tripods, they can all go manky if you stand them in salt water or chemicals. This may not be evident from the surface but can affect the joints. b. Sand - And other particulate matter. This also gets its entry into the sliding joints of a tripod as well as the locks and screw parts. Enough grit and enough wear can loosen or jam any tripod. They don't mention this in the advertisements but lots of the beaches in  Western Australia are made up of sand...

12 Aug

Posted at 08:35h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

Why should I advertise Nikon D6 cameras in this weblog column? I cannot possibly sell one of them to any of the readers. Is it all just a waste of electronic space? Well, my detractors would agree with this. All that can be said about this Nikon flagship camera : a. Has been said by Nikon. b. Has been said by Ken Rockwell and DP Review. Ken's piece will be the one with the saturated colours and the bit about sending him $ 5...

05 Aug

Posted at 09:10h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

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

Posted at 09:28h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

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...

29 Jul

Posted at 08:10h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

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

Posted at 09:54h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

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...