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28 Jan

Posted at 07:58h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

Before you leap to your feet and wave a flag, this is not about that sort of emotion. Nor is it the last night of the Proms.* This is about panoramas. Those wide pictures that spread out over coffee tables, railway stations, and lounge room walls. The ones that are wider than they are tall - and by a considerable margin. The boundaries of what is considered a panoramic shot seem to vary with different authors or equipment companies, but I just take them to be anything I have to turn my head to view. Bear in mind I wear spectacles and they tunnel my vision somewhat - you may be able to see in a more panoramic fashion just when you gaze on the landscape unaided. Panoramas used to be hard work - you can see examples of them taken in the wet plate era - or even earlier - and made up of multiple shots stacked side by side. There may be differences of tone, of texture, of exposure between panels, and the distortions of the lenses may be compensated...

21 Jan

Posted at 08:51h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

Well, this is Western Australia and it is high summer this week, after all. Out is hot and in is cool - and where does the Siamese cat in the fur coat choose to sleep? You guessed it. But the Godox people are smarter than the cat  - they realise that bringing the Godox AD600Pro inside will have the benefit of letting us use it as a studio flash in the cool  - and we can access the AC mains current as we do it. The Godox AD 600 Pro is supplied with a good big lithium-ion battery to power it in the field. That's the picture below, with the charge lights lit. Not much power in the battery as supplied, but you charge it before use and the lights all go on. Plenty of power, a warning sign for the hot surface, and no wonder. That is a big LED panel in there - along with something I've not seen before; a user-pluggable flash tube. The specs say 360 full power shots  - more if you're dialling down - and a 38...

19 Jan

Posted at 08:21h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

Smaller Solutions - Part Four The business of supplying constant light for video recording is not just confined to the studio with big panels, soft boxes, or banks of light. It can also be needed out in the field. Two Phottix products currently on the Stirling Street roster would seem to be very elegant answers to the problem. I noted them on the floor and again up in stock in the storeroom. a. The Phottix Nuada P is a 250mm x 100mm soft LED panel on front and a digital control on the back . Colour temperature can be adjusted between 3300º Kelvin and 5600º Kelvin with a power output of 860 Lux. Small and intimate, it would be ideal for vlogging and other close encounters. There is a shoe mount on the bottom as well. Note that the light has been attached to the shop display rack with the Phottix umbrella mount. This is an all-metal bracket that is very good value for money and contains a number of safety features like spring buttons to prevent you dropping the lights at an inadvertent...

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...

10 Jan

Posted at 08:39h in Blog, Dick's Rant by [social_share]

Or so it would seem from an article in DP Review. A recent posting noted an change in the command structure at the Twitter organisation and a decision to stop allowing pictures of people to be posted without their permission. It raised an understandable cry of concern from a number of quarters; notably street photographers and people who like to post social pictures of big crowds. Further reading seems to make the ruling a little less severe - there can be a lot of posting still going on, but if any complaint is received images may be pulled from the site. I suspect time will tell whether this is going to be a real problem for real people...