Camera Electronic Endorse New Camera From Flapoflex

The biggest news this season is the industry-shaking announcement of the team-up of Camera Electronic with Flapoflex Corporation...and the introduction of the Flapoflex Mini camera.

Here are the first images of the camera after it was handed out by Howard Frank. Let us walk you through the features:

1. Pure non-digital operation. Sharp eyes will spot the film rapid rewind crank and fast-wind lever. No more worries about charging batteries and corrupting memory cards with the Flapoflex.

2. Solid-state viewfinder system. We have not seen a viewfinder window this solid in years.

3. Compact dimensions. Micro 4/3, eat your heart out...

4. Helpful permanent branding on the lens cap and body.

5. Permanent lens cap. never lose it again.

6. Flash-free pentaprism.

7. Patented DeepSqueeze padding on all grippable surfaces. No finger strain.

8. Fashionable white/black/grey colours.

When people ask you what the Flapoflex Mini can do, we respond with " What can't it do? " While they are answering this we make a run for it.

Flapoflex did...

One Of The Dishes On The Buffet - Tokina

When we get a big-name camera we sometimes get a big name complex...and we cannot see beyond that name.

Members of camera clubs throughout the state are familiar with this as discussions of Nikon versus Canon versus Sony versus Flapoflex start up during the coffee breaks. The opinions expressed range from youthful enthusiasm to senile folly but fortunately there are few fist fights over the subject. Fair amount of snarling, but...

It can be the same with the lenses for the cameras. The big-name enthusiasts argue with each other and in the process sometimes fail to remember that there are other players in the game - and some of them are stars. Sigma, Tamron, and Tokina come to mind...and we're going to consider the latter brand.

I can make a personal judgment of this brand of lenses - I own one. It was purchased when I ran Nikon cameras and I was so taken with what it does that I retained it when I switched systems. It is the constant workhorse of the Little Studio and for good reason; it has a focal length and focus range that is unavailable in other brands , and it is very well made. For interest - you are looking at the illustrations on this column through it - the Tokina 35mm f:2.8 Macro.

But back to the lens in the heading image. Tokina AT-X 70-200mm f:4 PRO FX VCM-S. That's the usual advertising alphabet soup to tell you that it has a big enough image circle to work on all Nikon cameras, an image stabilising mechanism inside, and no aperture ring. You'll see that readily from the upright image, but what will not be evident until you handle the lens will be the weight of it and the solidity of the barrel. The secret lies in the fact that Tokina use metal barrels for their lenses.

The operation of the focus and zoom ring are as smooth as you could ever want. The focusing is internal so there is no pumping of the front element.

In every respect this is a first-class medium zoom lens that deserves your consideration along with the others in the class. The price is likely to be very attractive. I know the 35mm Macro was certainly so.

One other note: Made in Japan.

The Best Thing About Rental Is When You Take The Stuff Back

What?

What kind of a statement is that for an shop blog? What sort of advertisement does that make? Are you insane?

Nope. Sane and sober and closely shaved. Even smell good. And the thought is also a good one. Follow me along....

I used to take pictures of glamour girls and dancers. A lot of the pictures were taken on the Flapoflex camera with the deadly sharp Flaponar lenses. They showed all the wrinkles on the girls and they complained. I was losing business - so I bought a Mugugaipan Portrait lens with the variable fluffy aperture and the autojiggler circuit - and used it for about a year while the fashion for soft dancer photos was current. It was eye-wateringly expensive at the time but I figured I would eventually make the money back.

Then the fashion changed. An international superstar iconic legend photographer got a big feature in Australian Photo Wannabee magazine and everything had to be razor sharp, high-def, and with the contrast turned up to 87. My Mugugaipan lens was worthless as a money-maker. I tried to sell it at the shop, on eBay, and on Gumtree and the best offer I got was to go and do something rude with it.

I reflected that I had made a business error - putting my real money into something that was unreal - the fashionable image. What I really should have done was to be realistic - I could have come into Camera Electronic on the occasions when I had booked a wrinkled dancer and rented their Mugugaipan for the weekend.

I would have gotten all the pictures I needed in about four rentals in that year, and had none of the capital investment vanish. Each time I could have taken the Mugugaipan back with a clear conscience and the chance that it would be the last time it was needed. I did not need to own the Mugu - just use it four times.

The change in fashion is a factor that we cannot control - neither can we sometimes control our own tastes or the way in which our vision develops. It is no good having a closet full of gear that we have outgrown, or never grew into. Will ye or nil ye with the new lens or camera - curb your desires sensibly - rent it for enough times to find out if it is useful to you, and try not to hold onto it one minute longer than it pays you to.

Multiply Your Focal length By The Square Root Of The Aperture Times 43...

The business of the multiplication factors that people have to apply to lenses to figure out what their focal length means has always been a problem for customers and staff alike. Not that we are primitive people - well, I am, but that is beside the point...People can do and do do the mathematics involved...but it really seems to be doodoo.

The whole comes back to trying to get the idea of the angle of view that each lens encompasses into the visual mind. It has not been helped by the use of the terms 'standard' 'wideangle', and 'tele'. Standard for one person's vision may be entirely different from a technical definition of the diagonal of the sensor size and sometimes you really don't want to go down the road of explanations...

Had the manufacturers adopted a simpler scientific system of designating what you see it might have been easier - as it is many of the lens charts and promotional material they send out do contain the information but it is always secondary to the focal length and the multiplication factor. The scientific number would be the angle of view - it can be expressed in degrees.

Thus if you have a 24mm x 36mm sensor on your Flapoflex camera and you put a lens with a 50mm focal length onto it you see a certain number of degrees as the diagonal angle of view. If you put that same lens onto the 18mm x 24mm sensor version of the Flapoflex the diagonal angle of view becomes smaller. The pocket Flapoflex even smaller. No mathematics - just numbers.

Won't happen commercially - but if you care to look at some lens tables you can work it out for yourselves and then use it for all your own lenses. Might help you to navigate easier.

Uncle Dick

One Rung Above Ne Plus Ultra

The awkward thing about the advertising for new photographic products is the way that superlatives are written. If every new item is  described as the best thing since sliced bread, eventually you have so many of these about that you can't tell whether you are selling cameras or sandwiches.

The manufacturer's and distributor's writers also face the same problem - grabbing the public's attention as a way of loosening their wallets - and they frequently need to resort to what I like to call the verbal quadrille; carefully worked-out words that read well, are technically accurate*, and seem to differentiate the product in a nice way.

Dear Old Ken Rockwell used the term "weasel words" to describe this process. Careful selection of criteria and location and time to make things better. Like the phrase " Japan's best left-handed mirror-less macro low-light camera with a coffee-dispenser " which pretty well cuts out the competition. Tomiko, the tech writer for he Flapoflex Corpration just has to comb the spec sheet from the production department and compare it to similar sheets from everyone else. When he finds something that the new Flapoflex does that nothing else does, he is onto a winner.

Never mind if the feature is silly or so specialised that no-one would ever need or use it - Tomiko has the hook needed to make the advertisement. And if that advertisement is leaked via Flapoflex Rumors and then put in your local slick-paper photo mag with a picture of Ayer's Rock in the background you will be rendered incapable of resistance.

* Technically accurate: means that it is close enough to the truth that you cannot be jailed for saying it. Also known as Hansard-speak.

Uncle Dick

Cross My Palm With Silver...

Or at least cross it with graphite...

I used to frequent Madame Zelda and her Mystic Crystal Of Doom. Between that and the  tarot cards, secret golden sunbeams, and trained chicken that picked out fortune sticks from the red lacquered box, I figured that I had a close watch upon the future. I bought stocks in zeppelin airlines and pet rock farms accordingly.

Then one day the internet started and within 4 seconds of the first computer switch-on, a camera rumour site appeared.

I have abandoned Zelda and now use these exclusively. It is not so much that they are more accurate than she was - it is just that there is a boundless sense of  confidence about them that the chicken never had. I think it is a case of numbers - if there are enough people playing let's-pretend the fairy tale becomes realer and realer.

Perhaps the posters on these sites do have some influence - Several weeks back the Fuji Rumors site reported that the Fujifilm company monitors what people say when the site calls for a wish-list of features. Certainly any authentic consumer research data is valuable to commercial firms...the question is whether it is accurate or real. The internet hides motives as well as identities.

Of course each major manufacturer will be monitoring the sites of their rivals. As the sites will be multilingual, there must be teams doing it in each case. I can imagine spilled teacups and footsteps hurrying down corridors when a hint of someone else's advance is detected. Closed-door conferences to counter the promises of a rival. Late-night sessions trying to fabricate a formula of words to suggest that Manufacturer A's promised camera or lens will have the world's best whatever and that anything that Manufacturer B can promise will be rubbish.

Code Purple? Enigma machines? Listening at doors with a water glass? Nano-coated ninjas?

I think we can all stop watching the Agatha Christie shows on television and just do the rounds of the rumour sites every evening. Cheaper than Foxtel and far more exciting.

Total Recall - A Message From The Australian Agents

Flapoflex Australia would like to notify purchasers of their latest mirror-less camera that the war has not necessarily gone to the advantage of Flapoflex. Users are kindly requested to return the cameras to Flapoflex for minor adjustments.

Flapoflex customers may be a little confused at the term " mirror-less " as the company only makes DSLR cameras. Therein lies a clue to this announcement. Please bring the mirror in at the same time as the camera and they will glue it back on...

At the same time other small matters will be attended to. The white spots that have started to appear on the sensor will be synchronised with the black spots that have started to appear on the LCD screen. The lens mount will be tightened and the tendency of the digital processor chip to gurgle in the night will be lessened.

The mysterious white orbs that appear when the camera is put into Alien Abduction Mode are not a fault. They are a feature that sells well in Roswell, New Mexico.

Users are also requested not to wipe the coating of  bunker oil from the sensor before sending the camera in. The shipping line that delivers the cameras from Asia wants it back.

Flapoflex would like to reassure customers who have purchased their fine products in the past that quality control is paramount in their factory. They have kept it down to a minimum level for years and will endeavour to reduce it further in the future. This commitment will extend throughout the organisation - even as we write this the designers of the latest camera are being hunted through the swamps with dogs.

Flapoflex Australia would also like to point out that they have no connection with Flapoflex Azerbaijan or Flapoflex Equatorial Guinea and cameras purchased from these firms will need to be taken to Baku and Malabo respectively. On the third Wednesday of the month. Australian stock will be done here.

Please keep calm and carry on.

Which Colour Space Should You Use?

Here's a question to fill those long lonely nights at the camera club as you sit around the flames of the  blazing digital projector and reminisce about cocking a shutter.

Which digital colour space do you need? The old days ( Elvis, dinosaurs, 50¢ hot dogs...) were easy because you got the colour space the manufacturer handed you and were darned grateful for it. If you loaded Kodachrome you got Hollywood colour and paid a premium - if you shot Afga you got European art colour and watched it turn magenta - and if you purchased Ferrania you wondered where the strange smell was coming from.

Now we are generally given the choice of Adobe RGB or sRGB in our camera menu. The first for printing, the second for computer display, is the general tenor of the advice. Follow it if you like, but we earnestly suggest you investigate other alternatives:

1. FinalYEARstudentRGB

This is a colour space that is so dark and grungy that it feels like reading Kafka on a wet night in Pittsburg. The white portion of the spectrum never gets above the luminance level of a boarding house sheet at the end of the month.

2. CAMeraclubRGB

On the other end of the scale is this colour space that constantly bangs the saturation meter needle off the stops like a machine gun. You wondered why the digital projector started smoking? This is the reason. It comes pre-loaded with a sharpening algorithm that actually hurts the eyes to see.

3. Ilford CIBA RGB

This was first announced in the 1956 British Workingman's Socialist Camera Society Annual and will be ready for final release in about 4 months. From Pentonville.

4. FlapoRGB

Distinctive to the Flapoflex range of cameras, this colour space will not work with anything else. If you offend the clerk who sells it to you, it will not work at all. Mind your tongue.

5. soBRG

The sort of colour space that does everything backwards just to spite you. Slide the controls at your peril.

6. WellnessRGB

As a complete contrast, this is a kind and gentle colour space that lends itself to pastels, soft flowers and fluffy kittens. Actually it has no contrast at all - everything looks as if it was shot through waxed paper. A soothing choice if you can stay awake.

7. The New Colour Space

This is the setting that appears on your camera menu a month after you have set up all the criteria and just started to get used to it. It appears overnight with no indication of what it does - the David Carradine of computer programs. If you select it, it will disappear from the menu again.

There, that was easy. Now we can get on to calibrating your memory card for the northern or southern hemisphere. Complete instructions in the next blog post.

The Commemorative Issue

The mind is a funny thing. We tend to forget things until we remember them. Stomachs are also odd - you get all hungry and faint until you eat dinner and then you are not. These two principles have guided many camera manufacturers to release commemorative camera models - they remind you of something, you think about buying it, they get your money, and then they buy dinner.

The recent release of a special model of a camera to commemorate their awards for that camera model seemed to be a new departure. Nice camera, works superbly, interesting colour, tortured premise.

No more so, though, than the ones that have been issued to commemorate the lapse of a 99-year political treaty, the four-year Olympic show, or the name of a famously reclusive photographer. Or you can ask for your own name to be engraved somewhere. Users of Minx B cameras would be well advised to have a name like " Bob " or " Sam " to have this idea succeed...

At least the camera makers have not given in to the " Special Edition " fever of the automotive manufacturers of the 1980's...those lame swooping graphics plastered on the sides of humble passenger cars and vans to make them desirable. In some cases the stickers lasted longer than the cars. They were also the sort of designs that first-year graphics art students tend to do. ( Once they get better they tend to burn their first-year designs...) With the possible exception of Lomo, most commemorative camera paint or chrome jobs are at least explainable.

Flapoflex also are planning to issue their commemorative camera - it shows an engraving of an old fashioned brass merchant's scales. It celebrates the first time their books have balanced in 100 years. Accountants are studying this camera closely.

Students of history will note that we are about to have a set of big 100-year anniversaries occur over the next four years. Let us hope that the commemorative issues from Krupp, Vickers, Skoda, and such are intended merely for display, and not use. Or at least if they are making 420mm howitzers, we can get them in pastel colours.

The Earth - Shattering Kerboom

Where is the boom? There should be an earth-shattering kerboom...

The Flapoflex Corporation sent out an announcement on the electric internet yesterday that the old Flapoflex K/D/X 30,000T Special Superbo has just been replaced by the K/D/X 30.000 U Special Superbo but when we got up this morning the sun rose on a landscape that was remarkably un-devastated.

Dogs still barked, morning joggers still grimaced by, and the council trucks still moved sedately down the street breaking the lids off the wheelie bins. The world did not seem to have changed.

Granted,  the K/D/X 30,000 U Special Superbo now records video in full 27.3-bit in the fits and starts mode and there is no more need to damp the firebox down on it before putting it away for the night. And wedding portrait strobist landscaper photo journalists will appreciate the new armour plated shield around the breech, but really there does not seem to have been quite the reaction we might expect.

Still, it is early in the day. By lunch we should get the first of the people ringing up to tell us they can get it cheaper from Uzbekistan and demanding that we supply it this afternoon as they are flying out at dinner time. It might not be the earth-shattering kerboom that advertisers hope for, but it will be a start,.

Uncle Dick

One Roo More Or Less

Our Australian readers will groan at that pun, but at least they will be rewarded when they come to the end of this blog post...they will get to turn off the computer and go and get some work done. The North American and European readers may puzzle at the image and the title.

Well, the farm cart that you see is a traditional one that was used in Australia since before the turn of the last century. It was also adopted for use in wartime for water supply to Australian troops. As they gathered around it to draw water for their sections, they would pass the latest gossip...or rumour...amongst each other. Thus any unconfirmed bit of  news or plan - that might very well prove to be false - was termed a furphy.

We have them here in the photographic trade as well. Of course a lot of them can be rejected out of hand as nonsense...the planned introduction of the atomic powered helicopter bubble car camera that made full chicken dinners out of a little green pill has long been exploded. Apparently that was disinformation put out by the LOMO company when it was still run by the Soviets to prevent sales of the similar product by the Flapoflex company in America. The American one did sell in small numbers in Florida and Minnesota but was never a commercial success. The organic fur-covered slime monster camera took all the sales...

And that is how it still works, but this time the manufacturers merely have to prod the enthusiasts who write for the internet and let them do the speculation and/or lying to each other. There are enough people in the " don't-know " to make it work. The people in the companies that really ARE going to introduce a new product - or delete an old one - are probably bemused by what the enthusiasts say to each other. Possibly they make notes on it and steer the R&D department into new fields.

Whatever, we can definitely say that rumours always prove to be either right or wrong or none of the above. If we predicate our purchases upon the forum wrangling we might miss out on opportunities to get real equipment right now and then to go out and use it to make images that can never be repeated.

Think about the chap who went out to Lakehurst, New Jersey one evening to take a picture of the German zeppelin HINDENBURG  as it came in to land. He probably had an old Speed Graphic and a couple of plate holders that his editor had given him. Now, he could have been at home reading the trade press predicting the next fast lens and how much better it was going to be to take pictures of airships and he might have waited...

Oh...

Just Announced - Flapoflex Rangefinder Range Increased

Just in via the Flapoflex Rumours website:

Flapoflex Corporation, makers of the famous Flapoflex D, are set to announce a distinctive range of retro-boutique cameras that take the discerning purchaser back a century. These are fully functional digital cameras using the latest pixels but they have been configured to yield results that make you turn the page.

To see more, we hasten to add. Drawing upon the sort of image quality that made Fox-Talbot famous and Nadar drink heavily, the new Flapoflex Retro Rangefinder cameras feature sensors that disregard most of the optical information and concentrate on the nostalgic emotions of the photographer's great granny.

The Flapoflex Retro S only produces sepia-toned images. The on-board noise generator  and the patented Vignett-O-Matic assure an image that never gives too much away. You can hide an entire chorus line of Tilley Girls in the bokeh. It has been described as round and brown.

But it doesn't stop there. It never does. Internet rumour mills are like that. You will also be able to purchase the Flapoflex Retro C and the Retro F for blue or green-tinted images. Apparently the files are all recorded with roughly brushed edges and peeling emulsion.

You may want to look at a tripod with these new cameras as the shutters are limited to B and 1/4 of a second. Don't be too worried about the sunshine as the ISO is .06 and the maximum aperture is f:22. You may want to avoid using the cameras at basketball games.

Best news of all is the price of the new Retro range: 150 Guineas in the US, 700 Reichsmarks in the UK, and 25 US Golden Eagles in Europe. No sense having a retro camera that you have to buy with modern money.