20 Feb Boxing Clever – The Retail Package Jungle
If you are in retail or wholesale trade you'll get what I am about very quickly - if you're just a customer, read on gently and you'll understand at the end. Warehouses, storerooms, stock rooms...
Olympus Tag
06 Feb The Macro Show Must Go On
A circus must go on...
29 Jan More New Olympus
Let's face it. With Olympus there is always going to be something new coming out. As with many other manufacturers, the have rolling program of new and updated equipment that takes advantage of new sensors, new circuitry, and new operational features. They spread these over several levels of sophistication in their products and try to have something for everyone to buy. And that's the operative term: buy. They make, you buy, they have enough money to make more. In this case you are buying a new version of Olympus's OM-D E-M5 camera...
05 Nov Warning: Trigger Words
You might be forgiven for thinking that wireless triggers are simple things. So they are, when all you wish to do is tell a circuit to close at a distance from the camera. You put a transmitter on the hot shoe of the camera, a receiver under the speedlight out in the distance, and fire away. As long as the things are plugged in correctly and the AA batteries are fresh, it works every time. When you start to go TTL, however, and start to introduce different models of different maker's flashes, the whole thing becomes as complex as a spider's web. Here's a collage of images from the different trigger systems here in the shop on just one day. Beware that not all triggers made are shown - you have miles to go in this forest before you can sleep...
16 Oct Talk To The Hand…
The one with the Olympus Voice Recorder in it, please. I want to remember your every word. To be honest, I want to remember every word I've spoken as well, and I can't. This makes it very awkward later in front of the partner, kids, and in-laws. They cross-check my stories and you only have to get it wrong once to never hear the end...
01 Oct The Dust Of The Pharaohs…
Not to mention the camel exhausts and general air pollution of Cairo and surrounds. I not to mention this because a friend is touring Egypt - the cities and the Nile up as far as Aswan - and has sent back some glorious photos via our social network. Unfortunately, I think many of them have been taken with a mobile smartphone and the lens has not coped well with the atmosphere. Perhaps it has been fingerprinted as well...
20 Sep Olympus. Super. Zoom.
I have to be careful with that title - I tried typing in Olympus Superzoom to the net to see what help it could be and it routed me off to old eBay sellers who have 35mm cameras for sale. Eek. I wanted to see if there was a comparable model from them that matched other major makers - something that had a small sensor but an enormous lens out the front. The sort of thing that cruise and safari tourists take overseas. It looks as though they might have had something like that some while ago, but are concentrating now on the things that can be done with their Micro 4/3 line of mirrorless cameras - and that they have just come out with a new lens to do it. The lens Carlos showed me is the Zuiko 12-200mm f:3.5-6.3 - possibly the longest zoom range lens for any mirrorless camera. It's the 35mm film equivalent of 24mm to 400mm. And we never thought of that in the day...
10 Jul Comes In Four Flavours…
I stopped dead opposite the Olympus binocular shelf at the Murray Street store this last week - and that's exactly what the Olympus designers intended me to do. That's why they made the 8 x 21 RCII WP field glasses in four colours. For visual appeal outside to match the optical appeal inside. Other makers have done this as well with smaller sets of binoculars. I won't detract from Olympus here by adding another brand name but suffice it to say that if you had wanted their small field glasses in bright yellow or aqua you would have been set back a considerably higher price than these. If you want style for value, Olympus are your go. Who needs 8 x 21's? Race goers who don't want to carry massive glasses with them. Tourists on Alaskan cruise ships who want to see the bears or moose close-up. Mountain hikers - indeed anyone who has to hoof it and wants to see further without bearing weight. Who needs colourful 8 x 21's...
08 Mar Broader Shoulders, Deeper Chest
The heading image is not manipulated, apart from increasing contrast and dropping tones to give a silhouette. It shows the newest of the Olympus micro 4/3 mirror-less cameras alongside a workshop example of my first digital camera - a Nikon D1x. They are continents apart in digital performance and capability but look how close they are in physical size...