12 Mar Do You Have Everything You Need?
I hope not - the shop hopes not - and the wholesalers and manufacturers certainly hope not. We are not trying to be monsters, but the photo trade is a business after all...
Olympus Tag
10 Mar Hide, Birdie…
Because the new Olympus Zuiko 100-400mm 1:5.0-6.3 lens is in the Stirling Street shop for sale - and none of your privacy is safe. Not that it has been in these last few years of digital development - the camera makers have all tried to add longer and longer lenses to their sales line-up and this urge has extended into the zoom range as well. No names of other makers in this Olympus column, but they've all been at it. And mostly they have been at it hard and heavy. Again no names, but consider the fact that in most cases the lenses made for the keen wildlife and bird photographers have been long, awkward, and massive. In most cases they've had to feed an image onto an APS-C -szed sensor or a 24 x 36 one. In the case of the medium format systems some truly memorable lenses have been produced - all with great aplomb and seriousness - but they have been beasts to carry. I know - I owned a 500mm Hasselblad lens once complete with shoulder stock and...
15 Feb The Sum Of The Parts…
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...
25 Sep Why Did I Not Do This Before? – Part Two
Well, the new computer was full of the new program - Photoshop 2019 - and I didn't understand 1/50 of the commands and shortcuts - but the YouTube teacher had shown the two or three steps to engage the focus stacking machinery - and I followed from an iPad as he did it. I took a series of pictures of a model airplane from the machine gun tripod - changing the focus with the lens ring along the model as I went. I used manual focus and just watched the red focus indicator line move along the wing from closest to furthest, producing 15 separate exposures. Fortunately the Elinchrom lights I use are very consistent from one shot to the next if you give about 5 seconds for a re-charge between shots and then 5 minutes for a cool-down at the end. I'd shot RAW images and then passed them through Lightroom for correction and onto Photoshop for the stacking. PS tries to automatically align the 15 shots - dead easy if the subject and camera are static. Then it makes masks...
03 Aug Have You Heard The News?
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...
01 Jun The Little O.
Don't be angry, Olympus...
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...
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...