Belt Up With Think Tank - Cheaply!

The Bargain Bin Gnomes have been busy today clearing a pathway through the bags and belts section of the shop. The Bargain Bin section near the counter now contains a number of the Think Tank bags and accessories. I noted the Speed Belts in various sizes at 30% off marked price.

Speed Belts are the padded waist belts that are sewn with strong nylon webbing loops in a horizontal pattern. These lops allow you to suspend no-end of little pouches, holders, and other  little accessories. They are in black with quick-release snap buckles.

Lets face it - if you're prepared to wear a batarang and a loop of strong wire as well as some sleeping gas capsules there is nowhere you cannot go with a utility belt like this. They may not let you in and they may not let you out, but I'll guarantee the small boys of the town will be fighting for your autograph.

Stacka Pods - We Make The Great Pyramid Of Cullmann

In the interests of having enough room on our second floor to turn around, we have corralled a lot of the Cullmann Magnesit tripods and made a pyramid of them on the sales floor.

They are new, but older stock. They will be sold at a considerable discount to our customers and there will even be a bonus discount if you pick a tripod from the top of the pile and do not compel us to restack it every five minutes.

As these are new stock they will all carry the Cullmann 10-year warranty.

Pot 'O Gold - The End Of The Rainbow Here In Stirling Street

Faith and Begorrah! The Little People have visited us...and left us piles of gold!

These are far more valuable than ordinary piles, and not nearly as itchy. These are piles of lenses, teleconverters, 35mm film cameras, and flashes made by Sigma and Pentax.

If you have ever sat worried about your inability to purchase a 1.4 X AF teleconverter for the Pentax system you can put your fears to rest - we have made adequate provision for you and your children and, quite possibly, your children's children. If the pile of Sigma 1.4 x teleconverters that we have in the special bin here shifts sideways and engulfs the customers we are going to need FESA and we'll all be in the national news. In short...we have teleconverters...

We have them cheap. Like all the other items in the Pot 'O Gold Sale they are $39 apiece.

I note in one of the bins that there are Pentax-branded lenses, as well as the Sigma ones. There are lots for Pentax mount, some for Minolta and Canon and one for Nikon.

There is a whole separate bin for Sigma cameras and Sigma-mount lenses. All new, but older stock. Students can pick up real bargains here.

Note: There is also a vast pile of soft cases for 35mm cameras that would suit most mirror-less cameras. These cases are $ 5 each.

Fell Off The Back Of A School...Canon Bargain

If 12 people have got $99 and need pocket digital cameras they would be well advised to come in and see us this week.

We've got a small batch of Canon IXUS 145 cameras that were destined for a school order but it never eventuated. In black, as befits dignified scholastic instruments, they feature 16 megapixels and an 8X zoom lens.

There is a little on-board flash  and a 28mm -equivalent wide angle lens. Complete with battery, charger, little strap, and complete Canon warranty.

You'll have to buy a memory card for it, but these are also inexpensive - photography never got cheaper!

Have We Got A Bag For You?

You bet we have and if you are a canny shopper we have some rare bargains.

We've put out special stickers on some selected Lowepro, Kata, Lomo, and other bags that have up to 40% discount.

Time to house your good gear in good bags and save a good chunk of change in your pocket - you'd be surprised how far your bag dollar will stretch between now and Christmas Eve here at Camera Electronic.

Well, The Roof Is Still On...

Not a bad thing at all, considering the wind last night. I noticed that one homeowner along Leach Highway who forgot to trim his palm trees last week need not worry this week...and all the natives downwind of his property can now thatch their huts.

Apart from this windstorm - and I blame the government - the other news this morning is good. I advised you to read the paper to see our offer of Olympus E-Pl5 camera kits for a blazing $ 399. We got 'em, you need 'em, and now is the time to get 'em. Before the next windstorm comes through.

While you are here pick up a tripod bargain - we're selling a number of the Cullmann models on a three legs for the price of two basis.  In other words we have dropped the prices on quite a few of the Magnesit models and bargain binned the Magic tripods and Nanomax models. The stocks are running out so run in.

More news from the party circuit - as you'll see tomorrow, the Fuji X 100 series of cameras are surprising machines. Couple them with a suitable flash and....but that is tomorrow.

Note: if last night was Bin Night, today may be Find The Bin Morning.

* Windier than I thought...boy, are BHP going to be mad...

Enter The Bargain Zone For $ 5

Those of you who remember our shop a few years ago...indeed a few decades ago...remember that we often had large amounts of strange equipment jumbled about. it could be like a voyage of discovery to find a long-dead civilisation. Sort of an Indiana Jones movie but without the big rock that rolls down on you...

Things have changed here on the sales floor with the advent of new cabinetry and the more ordered display of cameras and lenses. This is welcomed by most of the customers and all of the staff.

To cater for the explorers, however, we have unearthed a seemingly endless supply of small camera bags and oddly assorted filters. There are four easy-access bins at the front of the sales area near the Fujifilm cabinet that we have designated as the Bargain Zone. These are filled with the rich harvest of new little pouches and you are welcome to take all you wish at $ 5 apiece.

Think outside the square and inside the case...memory cards...car keys...change and credit cards...small sandwiches...ammunition...accessories for strobists...well you could use these little guys for just about anything. I am thinking of making a utility belt for myself out of the more colourful ones. When guests come over I'll wear it round the house. That'll ensure they don't stay too long.

$ 5 never bought a better bargain...

Channelling Fred Spira - The Clear Lens Cap

A free clear lens cap to the first person who comes up to Uncle Dick and correctly identifies Fred Spira.

The rest of you will have to buy your own, but the cost won't be onerous. We have a whole rack of extremely useful clear lens caps in our Frugal Foto Fun section. They range from 62  mm to 77 mm. and have good solid mounting rings. They are uncoated optical glass that will protect your valuable lens.

If you have ever missed a snap shot in the confusion of trying to take off a conventional cap and screw on a lens hood...well, just keep one of the Emolux clear lens caps on and shoot as fast as you can. UFO's and costume malfunctions wait for no-one!

And they're only $ 10 each.

Bargain of the Century

Looks like I wuz wrong about the price of the new Zeiss 55mm f:1.4 lens for ZE and ZF mounts. I initially calculated it to be $ 6000 based upon UK reports...

Turns out it will be available for $ 4695. What a snip! When we see it, if we see it, I will do a feature on it.

Worshipping At Strange Altars - With Stroboframe

I think we can all agree with Ms. Jane - see heading image - at some stage of the day. I favour the mid-morning service, myself.

But on our sales floor we have many altars - some are sent to us by equipment manufacturers with clever television sets attached to the top and captive video programs that show the wonders of whatever is stacked on the racks below. This is a definite advantage for some customers as it provides the visual stimulus to mental activity...and may eventually lead to them purchasing the product. To some extent these are infomercials in as far as they show the cameras in use and in another sense they are suggesting that the prospective purchasers will look like the brave and clever people in the videos. Just like on the shopping channel.

We didn't get quite so slick with the Stroboframe altar...errr..stand. It is just a workaday product with very little glamour and really only serves to make your photography more successful. You are unlikely to attract girls in bikinis or be sitting in the seat of a Porsche sports car while using these frames, though you might well be paid good money for taking pictures of the girl or car with them.

You see, Stroboframe really does one thing, and really does it well - it gets your on-camera flash off-camera and puts it right up above the centerline of your lens regardless of whether your camera is in the landscape or the portrait position. You get consistent shadows on faces and bosoms from the top front position for maximum beauty and minimum fuss. Shadows drop behind heads instead of across the entire group. Red-eye is a thing of the past, even with long lenses focused out into the distance.

Please note the above reference to bosoms. You can light a high neck dress or top from lots of positions and get an acceptable result, but when the model has a rack and it is exposed with a low-cut dress, you have to get the shadow down the cleavage absolutely right. If it is good it is lovely but if it is bad it is the first and only thing that viewers of the image see, and they will complain bitterly about it. Harsh shadows, angularity, hot spots all attract the eye and spoil the effect. Front top lighting with a little diffusion is the general key to success.

Stroboframe make brackets and frames for all sorts of cameras - they were really big in the 2 1/4 square and 6 x 7 days. Even the biggest and toughest of the 6 x 7 cameras could be accommodated and tilted sideways on a frame. You could fasten them to a tripod and then rotate them from vertical to horizontal without losing the central position. There is a wonderful adjustable circular rotation bracket that is available right now for DSLRs that does this even when you've got a battery pack under the camera. I highly recommend it for any studio worker. You can frame a shot then do it in the opposing framing with one flick of the camera.

One final note for Stoboframe. They make a quick-release mounting set that is perfect for most DSLRs. You get a mechanical block that attaches to your tripod head and a thin plate that screws onto the bottom of your camera body - or onto the footplate of a long lens. These then pop together or apart like other quick-release systems, but the real advantage is the fact that the plate IS thin. You can have it on the bottom of any camera or battery grip and still use the grip as per usual. It does not force your hand away from the grip.

Needless to say, I have this system on my Nikon D300 cameras, with grip and without. It is so simple to clip the camera onto either the studio or the field tripod for a quick solid shot - even if the Press-T flash bracket is attached - that I tend to use it a lot more than before. And I tend to have a lot more shots with no camera movement spoiling the image. Also note that in the studio setups that need consecutive shots with not a pixel moved - sometimes 4 of them for one image set - this bracket is tight and steady enough to let it happen, even if I have to refocus the lens manually.

Oh, in case you were wondering why the label links brought you here - we have altars for all these products on the floor. The Bargain Zone is resplendent with two coloured slat walls and some really arcane old lenses. Be sure to drop a coin in the plate when you visit.