The Transparent Work-Round - Part One - All Uphill

We are always being given ways of working-round things on computers.

Some times what we are working around is an old computer - sometimes an old program. Sometimes

it is money - we find that cutting our coats to suit our cloth means we are wearing Barbie-sized coats...

In the case of this dodge, it is not because I do not own other equipment - it is a case of the time required to let that other equipment do its thing. I've stopwatched the process I am undertaking and I can cut the time required in half.

The project is the digitizing and rehousing of colour transparencies - mostly 35mm slides from the last 50 years. It isn't like I am doing Time - Life's collection - I counted only 7800 transparencies - but the time needed to clean them, scan them, correct the colours, and write their information into a JPEG file is going to be significant.

Don't get me wrong about the Epson V700 - V850's. They are fantastic scanners that translate older works from print, transparency, negative, or book very well indeed. There is no other really good economical answer for good scans from 4 x 5 sheet film. For that alone, it is worth the money. It also has templates and holders to scan mounted 35mm slides in batches of 12 on a pretty automatic basis. The problem is the amount of time it takes to do so for each image; counting loading, scanning, unloading, and sorting, you spend 3.5 minutes per slide. That is without noticeable correction time. A great portion of that time is taken up with the scanner doing a preview, then having to specify what size you want the output, then doing the actual scan.

7800 slides x 3.5 minutes =  455 hours...or roughly the time it takes to get a teenager to clean up their room. To be fair to the Epson, there is an automatic colour restoration circuit that can really revitalise some of the faded transparencies.

Well, there had to be a better way. The key to it was the collection of gear that was lying unused in the cupboard - specifically a Tokina 30mm macro lens on an adapter and a very old Novoflex focusing track. That and a Metrolux light box left over from surgery days and a cut off bit of Bunnings 12mm MDF board.

Remember the old days of the Bowens and Illumitran slide duplicators? Those wonderful boxes that let you put colour corrected light behind a transparency and then held a lens, bellows, and 35mm camera body above it so that you could re-photograph the slide? They were great - why, I'll bet that are a few lurking around the old storage shelves of Camera Electronic still...

Well, I could make up an MDF stand with a cutout the size of a 35mm slide, mount my Fujifilm X-T10 camera and the Tokina lens above it, and adjust the assembly up and down until the image exactly filled the screen of the Fujifilm. A macro lens that focuses close enough to do 1:1 is what I needed, though due to the nature of the APS-C sensor it did not go out to full 1:1 - I stopped in focus at 1:1.25.

The second part of this posting - tomorrow, I hope - will take you further into the settings and experiments to get good reproduction. In the meantime  think about whether you would like to do the same - Camera Electronic has some goodies that might help you to do the trick.

Letter To The Camera Designers - The Wireless Trigger

Dear Camera Designers,

Thank you for the new features on my camera. I appreciate the Automatic setting, the Intelligent Automatic setting, and the Disturbingly Prescient setting. Last night my camera got out of its bag, went down the street, and took a picture of the showers at the Nurse's Quarters all by itself. Tonight I am deadlocking the door.

Thank you also for the smile recognition feature, though I must admit that mine seems to have died - I turned it on at it to the last family picnic and the camera refused to fire.

The little pictogram in the special settings menu is my favourite - the one that has the cocktail glass. I look at it fondly every afternoon about 5:00. I feel you have come to understand me.

Now that we have these ideas realised, I would like to suggest a further improvement in your design - the provision of a small and effective wireless flash trigger in the accessory battery grips of your DSLR and mirrorless cameras.

Already one manufacturer has pursued this in red-and-white terms for one model of their DSLR. They have provided a wireless link to their high-end speed light - thus leapfrogging aftermarket units stuck onto the top of the hit shoe. I would like all of you to consider the next step - come to an industry agreement with one of the professional flash system manufacturers: Bow---s, Elin----m, Pro---o, or whoever - and put a transmitter for their STUDIO flash into a handgrip that bolts under the camera.

This is a good place - you can combine it with a spare battery if there is enough room, but if not you can at least link it to a shutter button and fire the studio strobes in synch - without having a big 'ol box and a rubber antenna waggling away on top of the pentaprism. Doesn't have to broadcast far in a studio and shouldn't take more power than a wifi connection.

Come to think of it...would a little firmware fiddling with the wifi do it? If there was a receiver module that you could plug into the studio strobe dedicated to your camera's wifi signal and just go with that? Wish I knew...but as camera designers and masters of electronics, I am sure you will consider it favourably.

Yours sincerely,

 Uncle Dick

Stand Up For Your Lights! With Kupo And Promaster!

Studio light stands come in many sizes but only two types; too flimsy or too massive.

The former are usually cheaper than the latter but you tend to spend more money on them - they fail early and drop your expensive lights or backdrops onto the studio floor. Sometimes they drop your expensive lights or backdrops onto your even-more-expensive studio models and clients.

It is wise to remember the old studio maxim: Be prepared to either light carefully or to light out...for Queensland.

The too massive ones will not collapse on the customers nearly as often, but will take their toll when you try to move them up and down stairs. Chiropractors and physios love massive equipment, particularly if it has no handles or wheels to move it around. It is good business...

All the above said, consider the middle road for studio light stands - the "C"stand. It is a large and heavy device that has a standard 1'2" spigot on top, about 2.5 metres of height, and a set of three metal legs that can be splayed out at 120º each to secure it. The legs are different lengths, but finish up able to hold the central shaft upright - whilst tucking into the corner of the studio.

The central shaft unplugs from the legs for storage and handling.

You can get the stands in black or polished silver. The former is a help when you want to avoid unwanted reflections in a dark studio, but the latter is easier to avoid running into in that same studio. Walk into a lamp post at full-stride on the street and see what I mean.

Some stands are available with an adjustable boom arm that can hold a pretty substantial head and light shaper on the end. This can be the way to do product down-lighting when you want the effect to come from directly over the subject but do not have overhead suspension for the lights. Just suspend it over the set like a building crane.

Kupo and Promaster both make "C" stands that are well worth considering for your studio - you may not want to replace all your folders with them but there should be a space for at least one in the lighting setup.

Finally - A Battery To Get Charged Up About

Pardon the corny heading. Battery and charging and all that - it is he legacy of hack writing for newspapers and small publications. At least I didn't use the WAR! typeface or Gotcha!

The product that got me going is an answer to the enquiries we get regarding portable studios. Lots of people have studio mono-block kits made by Elinchrom and Bowens - as well as other manufacturers - and want to take the lights out into the open where they cannot access AC mains.

Some firms make battery sets that can power these mono-blocks.  I remember that they were lead-acid types that weighed a fair bit  and were bulky. Some units, like the inexpensive D-lite sets from Elinchrom, did not have a connection point for an DC battery. Users were forced to go over to the speed-light system and work with little AA cells.

Now they can have the battery pack option out in the field. Jin-bei is a Chinese manufacturer who has made a number of flash units, soft boxes , and light stands. They have brought out the EN-350 inverter set. Please see the images and note that they device converts the DC from the Li-ion battery to AC and allows two conventional Australian cords to plug in. Your D-lite will chug away quite happily just as usual for a hundred shots or so.

It is light enough to be packed easily over one shoulder and comes with a padded bag and a dedicated clamp that allows you to attach it to the side of a standard light stand. The whole lot in one small footprint. I should thoroughly recommend a D-lite 4 head, a 44cm Minisoft beauty dish , and this inverter for a one-light field portrait setup. I have tried it on me and it makes ME look beautiful...

Seriously useful for a small price - $ 399.

Standard Of the Industry...Again

They are getting clever there at Pocket Wizard. They have long BEEN clever, and exercised it to the max with their Mini TT and Flex TT, but now they have improved their basic transmitter and receiver unit - by simplifying it.

It is a dumb transmitter - ie. it does not do a TTL signal - but it does fire in any direction so you can feed out to a flash or back to the camera as a camera trigger with equal ease. They have catered to photographers in a multiple-worker situation by putting a 10-position switch on the side above the firing button. No need to go into the guts of it to fiddle tiny switches into harmony - just turn the side control on transmitter and receiver and away you go.

Turn it over - the battery compartment has been made as a hinged unit - no more losing it in the heat of the moment. And it works on two plain old cooking-variety AA cells. Get them anywhere.

We have a box full of output leads so you can connect it to almost any flash and you can get dedicated cables for the camera end too.

Throw away your old Radio Slave and go with this new unit.

Big Soft Sale For Big Hard Photographers

Go on. Harden up. Time to soften your photos.

We've just put out a sales stack of CL-brand soft boxes and suitable speed rings on our bargain floor near the front of the store.

The CL boxes come in all sorts of sizes - from little 40 x 40 squares up to massive strip and bed boxes. There are octas as well. Also deep and shallow types and some with recessed fronts so that you can fit egg crate grilles.

The speed rings are available for Elinchrom, Profoto, and Bowens - though there are a limited number of Bowens ones. As you'll see from the illustration, the rings are multiple-use types - they are colour-coded for where the rods are to be inserted.

These are well-built items and would serve a good long time in professional use.

The sale prices are 30% off marked retail for individual items - and if you buy the softboxes with a lighting kit we'll go to 40% off the softbox prices. It is a good opportunity to expand the light-shaping capabilities of your studio.

Hair's A Darn Good Idea - From Glanz

If you don't like puns, go look at cat videos on YouTube. We do puns here - Dad jokes as well - it is a form of pun-ishment.



Okay, we noticed a rival shop has put out some useful studio light sets in their flyer this week and one of our salespersons remembered that we have several of the same sets sitting up in our storeroom. Ever keen to whale the tar out of the competition, we have set them out on the floor and priced them $ 50 cheaper than the other guys.

You've got to be fast, because there are only two complete three-head kits available - plus a single head kit. They are the Glanz 160 Di kits - three heads per kit with a radio trigger included, stands and umbrellas, in a fitted carry case. Variable power, variable modelling lamp, charge signal, hard wire points and IR trigger if needed. 160 w/s per head.

Perfect for a small portrait or product studio - combine this with a Glanz light tent and you have a catalog illustrator's dream setup for a very cheap price. The 160 Di kits are $ 450 complete.

Soooo - why did I include the other manufacturers in the labels for this post? They are pretty prestigious firms and they make fantastically good big studio flashes....Well, the Glanz 160 Di heads have a wonderful property that recommend them to users of these other systems - they are light weight and just the right sort of power for a hair light. You could boom these up or suspend them from a backdrop stand easily without straining the system and they could stay up there permanently.

You don't need three hair lights? Buy the singleton kit. You got two friends with studio ambitions? Buy the three-head kit between you and split the cost - you get a hair light, a stand, and an umbrella for $ 150 then, and you can toss a coin for who gets the big old carry case.

Now - how would you grid or flag off that hair light...? I would look at some of the Rogue accessory grids at the front of the shop - or a Honl snoot.

Peter Coulsen Lite - With Hasselblad

I love Peter Coulsen evenings. There is always something good the see and do. So it was last Thursday at Hotel Northbridge when the C.R. Kennedy people rounded up a great deal of Bowens and Hasselblad gear - and the specialist trade chaps from Sweden and England  - and organized for Peter and his model, Natasha, to entertain us.


Entertain and instruct. Anders led us through the improvements and features of the new Hasselblad H5D cameras. It seems that they are available in 40, 50, 60 and Multi-Shot sizes so that all levels of professional activity can be attended to. He was able to explain the True Focus technology that means you get the focus point that you really intended when you first sight through the camera - even if you change your framing radically.

The Bowens light packs are also new - with a great deal of power control for studio work. Peter was able to use one during his portion of the show to good effect - the floor pack never faltered and delivered exactly repeatable light each time - not a bad thing in anyone's studio.

Peter is amazing - he used one light for most of his demonstration, just reconfiguring it with a softbox or hard head and shifting it about on a boom arm. Note: Camera Electronic supplied the boom arm and 'C' Stand for the demo and it worked well. The gravity that kept it all in place was already there on the evening...

He and his model, Natasha, have been traveling Australia explaining the lighting that he uses for his fashion shots - coincidentally using the new Bowens and Hasselblad gear. It was a bit of an eye opener to see just how little he needed to change the position or intensity of the light to get completely different looks from the model. Of course the model is good - really knows how to pose well, and I must record my admiration for her patience in standing so well for so long. Most of us would have collapsed from exhaustion and tumbled through the paper backdrop long before the end of the evening - of course most of us could not have climbed into those 6" heels without a ladder, so you can tell she was good.

As with all of these trade evenings, we watched the audience as much as the show - looking of incipient signs of someone reaching for their wallet - and they seemed to enjoy themselves as well. Now all we need is for a dozen of them to press forward and order new Hasselblads and the evening will be perfect.

PS: If you really want to have fun, wear red shoes to a Peter Coulsen night and see what happens...

Be Prepared - With Hahnel

It never fails. You are in the studio. You have set up the perfect shot, with 3 metres square of product, two anorexic models, enough flashes to be seen from space, and an alpaca. Neither the models nor the alpaca will take direction and the alpaca has been eating something all morning....this is a shot that needs to be done ...now.


You reach for your trusty radio trigger. Dead battery. No spare battery in your studio cabinet.

You reach for the good old synch cord. It has been wrapped up tightly and has a good old break in the wire somewhere in the 5 metre length.

You reach for the aspirin bottle.

If you are lucky enough to be using a Nikon D300, D700, or D800 you hurriedly dive into the menu and select Manual for the control that deals with the pop-up flash. Then you dial it down to 1/128 power, put your hand in front of the flash to shield the subjects from the flash, and fire it to see if it will trigger the IR receptors on your studio flash units. Yes? Let the alpaca loose and shoot that shot!

Or you could keep a new spare radio trigger in case your old valve and steam job packs it up. ( Note I have one so old that it is marked as the property of Benjamin Franklin...). We have the Hahnel units for a mere $ 110 that will do remote triggering of speed lights and for $ 20 more you can get a plug-in synch cord that goes into a Bowens flash.A little jiggery pokery and you can get that pulse into an Elinchrom.

Note for the studio cleaning lady - the alpaca was fine. That's actually one of the anorexic models. Sorry about that.

Bowens/Hasselblad Seminar with Peter Coulson Only a Few Days Away

Just a reminder of the Peter Coulson event is next Monday evening, we still have a couple of places left so if your interested in this rare opportunity RSVP as soon as possible to secure your spot.

This is a free event and a great chance to pick up some tips from one of Australia's leading image makers.  You will also have the opportunity to see the latest Bowens lighting equipment and the supurb Hasselblad H4D-60.

Bowens/Hasselblad Seminar with Peter Coulson

Camera Electronic is running a Bowens and Hasselblad seminar with the new Hasselblad H4D-60 camera and AIPP 2010 photographer of the year Peter Coulson.  

This is a rare opportunity to learn studio lighting techniques from one of Australia's leading photographers.  The seminar is free but due to limited places available you must RSVP us as soon as possible, simply send an email to sales@cameraelectronic.com.au to confirm your spot.

Click on the image below for more details....

Peter is also running three further workshops for early April, be sure to get in early as class sizes are limited to 12 people.