Tiny Studio - Little Lensing With Cullmann, Pentax, And The newsagent

Most of us in the trade have seen the Pentax Q7 camera - but sometimes we have failed to see it in it's true light. It is a tiny little studio camera - for tiny little studios.

Like most cameras, it has a number of white balance points - so you can adapt it to any sort of constant light source. Unlike many really tiny cameras, it has a standard hot shoe connector on top - so you can trigger studio strobes through a PC cord or a radio trigger.

It has controls that can be accessed easily from the outside - and a logical arrangement of them. It takes the standard SD cards. It has a an adequate battery.

And it is bright yellow. An important feature - this is a camera that cheers you up. You can ignore some of the funny features like the dial on the front that give you four colour looks. Unless you love one of them.

As the sensor is small, the interchangeable lenses of the system can have a short focal length for their angular coverage. Result? Great depth of field. Print to A4 and you'll be delighted with the results. Remember this camera has RAW so you might even opt to go bigger.

Now combining this clever little camera with a Cullman Copter tripod - or any of the Cullmann tabletop kits - means you have the core of a great tiny studio. Add a set of three lights from ( Gasp!) IKEA  - the ones on gooseneck stands - and go to your local newsagent for several big sheets of drawing board. Get white, black and grey.

Find yourself a table, some books to prop the backboard sheet up with, and light up! You have a great start to a tabletop business. Those terrific little Pentax binoculars are taken with the Q7 Pentax.

The reason this post concentrates on the small is because of a conversation with another photographer on the weekend who admired my full-size studio but bemoaned the fact that his housing agents wouldn't let him have the same sort of structure in his flat. Well, if your studio folds up into a suitcase you can snap your fingers at the agents - art can succeed in spite of space.

Furniture Porn

In the grand tradition of the selfie, here is the new desk that we have just made for the sales area - and the three new sales and display cabinets behind it for the paper, darkroom, and inks.

IKEA may be a boiling hell with meatballs during the day but at least the flatpack furniture does go together well. I would advise people to look very carefully at the diagrams in the wordless instruction book. Every little drawing has hidden meanings that are obvious when the next stage doesn't fit. I would welcome colour printing with red arrows and exclamation marks.