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.

Fish Or Cut Bait - With Kata

For all of our clients who want to get a bargain - and are always pressing us for them...here is a stand in the middle of the main traffic area of the shop that should serve you well.

Kata bags are good gear - I have one myself that contains the wife's video camera. It is the best fit I have ever found for a very awkward piece of equipment. Win for me.

Win for you with the Kata bargain stand - we're dropping 20% off all these bags. They are new and in such a variety of shapes and capacities as to swallow up whatever you throw at it. Kata have long prided themselves on the unique construction of some of their range and they also point out that their bags are the lightest containers per se for photo gear.

Of course the makers of paper bags dispute this, but then few of us want to house a DSLR in a mushroom bag.

Sale on now until stocks run out.

Jemima Is Waiting Here For You

Would the little person who forgot Jemima Puddleduck here in the shop - near the camera bag section - please return and take her home. She has seen all the cameras and lenses and bags and is getting rather bored by it all. She needs go home where she is loved.

Please ask your little person if Jemima is missing and give us a call.

Photography And the Sense of Smell

Of all the seven senses - sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, cinnamon buns, and road rage, the one that least suggests itself as connected to photography must be that of smell. Yet it has played a crucial part in many a photographer's career and needs to be nurtured if any future success is contemplated.

The smell of ether is distinctive and once formed a large part of the universe of the professional photographer. Gun cotton was dissolved in it to produce collodion - a sticky glue that was poured over glass plates and then soaked in silver nitrate to produce wet plates for large-format photography. How many early workers anaesthetised themselves preparing the collodion - or blew themselves up seeing where that funny smell came from with a candle in the darkroom...?

Then again when the flexible film camera came into being -and later the motion picture film - the first films had an acetate base. Fine in the initial stage but prone to breaking down chemically later to form flammable and explosive compounds. A distinctive smell coming from an old 35mm reel of motion picture film should serve as a warning.

Sniff some more. Is there a musty odour associated with your camera or the lenses in your old camera bag? Is the bag itself redolent of old socks? Or cheese? You may well be growing a fine crop of mould in your equipment. You'll need some fresh air, bright sunlight, and professional cleaning to return it from the grave - and no fair trying to trade it in to us, either. We've got noses too and we prefer our fungus sliced and fried over a steak.

The odour of a Soviet camera is also one that will never be forgotten - the Fed, Zorki, Kiev, Krasnoyarsk, Quarz, and many other products of the old empire were issued in real leather cases - presumably from pigskin in many cases - and in many instances pretty fresh from the tanning vat, if the smell was anything to go by. They were lubricated with fish oil. If you used a new one you didn't need Vitamin D tablets for a year - you just breathed deeply.

Is there a distinctive digital smell? Not really - most of the lubricants are artificial and while you might get a new camera smell, it is generally very subdued. It might be worth while for the manufacturers to enclose a scent sachet in the boxes - freshly-brewed coffee or garlic prawns or something to make you feel you have something to look forward to besides reading another manual and getting a firmware upgrade.

Kata Casket - Studio In The Field

Anyone who has ever tried to carry an entire set of studio monoblock flash units, stands, cords, and light shapers to a shoot outside their own studio knows how difficult it is. Everything has sharp edges, delicate parts, and a mind of its own. You CAN be tripped up and strangled by inanimate objects, particularly if they have discussed it amongst themselves beforehand...

Beat them. Store them safely and securely in the Kata PALMS-2 rolling casket. It will hold three monoblock heads, three stands, folded umbrellas, cords, and reflectors - in short a complete studio light setup. It is padded and armoured on the edges that will hit the ground, and the rolling wheels are extendable to the side for extra satability. Look at the sad pictures - the editorial studio is currently full of people and I have to use the yard... - the casket is a big blue one with the characteristic yellow Kata lining.

If you are a constant user of a field studio, you might elect to replace one of the monoblock heads with a camera and one of the tripod spots with a folding backdrop. Then you can really be portable - everything in one case.

Note that the casket is also big enough to hold earth from your own country if you need somewhere to sleep during the day...

Lighten Up On Monday Morning

So, it's been a big weekend, has it? Feeling a little wrung-out, are we? Tired and emotional during the weekend?

Perhaps it was the effort required to haul 100 Kg of camera equipment to the BBQ that did it. That weatherproof pack with the automatic rain cover and the tripod strapped on the back in case you needed to do a quick award-winning landscape photo while the snags were cooking. The pack with the integrated water bladder, in case you were trapped more than 200 metres from a Dan Murphy's...

Bit of a pity that you didn't get a chance to take all your cameras and lenses and laptop out of the pack and hook up the tethered cables - it would have been the hit of the night. They could have done selfies in HDR at 36 megapixels and 120,500 ISO. And the waterproof feature of the bag would have been useful after the third slab of VB...

Steel yourself to look at the illustration of the back pack. If the background colour is a little hard to take, just think of Berocca...The interior colour is absolutely correct - KATA have realised that photographers work in dim spaces, not a few of them mental spaces, no I never said that, and the black-coloured equipment that the Pro's use is easy to lose in the black-coloured bags. So the made it bright yellow and clean and soft in there. You might still be grubbing around desperately trying to fish out the fisheye but at least you'll be able to see it.

The rest of the bag is tough but light - it has a set of human-shaped straps that will not dig into your diaphragm, and it has enough interior space to take anything that you could humanly need on a tourist holiday or a your next BBQ. Including the Berocca.

Now You See It - Now You Don't...The Art Of The Travelling Camera

No good me poking fun at you, like I did in my last post, without holding out some hope for the future. In the future I will also poke fun at you...

No, folks, what I mean is we do have some really good solutions down here at the shop for the tourist who wants to travel light and safe, and bring back good images.

First - cameras. Well, I favour my Fuji X -10. Other people love their Leica D-lux or their Panasonic Lumix cameras. Canon make the ever-popular G 15 and it is ever-popular because it is a great tourist camera. The Olympus Pen people also know the value of a lot of good in a small package. Pick one that you like and can afford and go with confidence

But the business of taking it along is what we are considering here - I mentioned the heavy-lift thing in the last post. If you have eschewed that look at some of the pictures of camera bags from different manufacturers that are being used to house the same example camera.

The camera is the Fuji X-20. Soooo nice. If I could think of a plausible reason to get it as well as the X-10 I would buy one, but so far...

1. Kata ZP-6 DL

A classic square bag with the addition of a sewn finger loop at one corner and a nylon neck- cord. Battery/card pocket and nice padding. $ 22.00.

2. Think Tank Lens Changer 15 V2.0

Round drop pouch with drawstring top and a very sturdy belt loop in back - reinforced with a nylon bar to rest on your belt. $ 29.50.

3. Lowepro ILC 50 Classic

Traditional box pouch with a heavy shoulder strap - the roomiest option here and well suited for quick grabs of the camera. Plenty of room inside and on an outside pocket for cards and batteries. $ 45.00.

4. Op/Tec Digital D-Shortie Soft Pouch

Wrap the camera in this soft neoprene case ad you can safely bundle it into a pocket or your main luggage. There is a harness strap that lets you pop the camera out for use but still tether it to the case.
$ 24.20.

And the model in the leading image? Jo Armstrong. I just included her because everybody needs to see beautiful girls sometime...

Thinking Inside The Box - A Modest Proposal

'Tis nearly the tourist season - the safari and cruise tour companies are gearing up for the influx of Australian tourists and the Australian tourists are gearing up for a world of pain. We are assisting them.

Not a day goes by down here but what someone comes in and tells us that they are going on a holiday and they want to take their camera. And their camera. And their lens, lens, lens, lens, lens...and the laptop and the three chargers and the flashes and spare batteries and....perhaps a spare memory card, if the price is right.

And a lightweight tripod that folds into the size of a pocket pencil and can hold a Canon 1Dx with a 100-400 lens on it rock solid in an arctic gale.

And the whole lot should go into a bag that can be put in the overhead locker, leaving enough spare room for he 1 litre bottle of duty free Drambuie.

I find lithium pills help a lot these days...

Let me put forward a modest proposal - as Johnathon Swift did - that will make your trip successful. It will involve a week of experimentation but pay giant dividends when you are out across the globe.

Day One

1. Go to the linen press and get out all your teatowels. Find the empty cardboard box your TV came in and bring it in from the shed. Get some rope.

2. Set out all the camera bodies, lenses, chargers, laptops, batteries, and tripods that you are going to take on your trip in your lounge room.

3. Wrap each component up in a teatowel. Pack the parcels into the TV box. Jump on it if they will not all fit in, but get them in there.

4. Rope the box up and then tie it onto yourself. You can tie it over one shoulder, over two shoulders, or around your waist - your choice. Use Boy Scout knots.

5. Put your hat on, go out the front door, and set out to walk to Mundaring Weir.

6. Give us a call down at the shop when your vision starts to go. We've got a book down here that records the distances of various customers - one chap made it to Welshpool from Belmont before the St. John's Ambulance people got him.

Day Two

1. Put one camera body, one lens, and one spare battery into a shopping bag. Add a tripod if you must.

2. Rope that to one shoulder.

3. Hat, door, Mundaring.

4. See how much further you got? Take the bus home.

Day Three

1. Put a mirrorless camera and one lens - or a bridge camera, or a compact zoom into your jacket pocket. Put a Cullmann pocket tripod in the other pocket

2. Mundaring is nice this time of year, isn't it. I remember coming up here when I was courting. They had water in the dam then...

Scientific note: It is possible to get an entire 2-body, 5-lens, laptop, refrigerator, and year's supply of cheese into a Lowepro Santiago DV 25 pocket pouch. All you need to do is remove all the space between the nucleus and orbiting electrons of each atom of the outfit and shake them down together. It can be done with a black hole, but only once. The unpacking is the problem...

First Fruits From The Kata Tree

The big yellow Kata stand is up in the shop and the new bags are blooming on it. It has been a little time since we have had such a variety of this product and in the interim, the Kata people have added some very useful products.

The following is my own take on two bags as the perfect answer for two problems:

1. The photographer who takes a Canon G1X or G15 - or a Fuji X-10, or an Olympus E-P3 on holidays wants a protective case that does not weigh a tonne and does not take up the entire cargo hold of the airliner. Thus the Kata ZP6 DL bag is the best recommendation for them. This is a light but padded bag - with rip-stop cover so that you can safely stow it amongst the knives and coshes in your pocket as you board the plane - and fitted with a draw-string tie that can serve as an impromptu belt. The case is perfectly sized and is bright yellow inside. This is more than just brand recognition - it lets you find black photographic equipment in the recesses of the bags much more easily. Kata feature it throughout their range.

2. The more ambitious photographer who is looking to house a consumer's DSLR kit like those available with the Canon 650D or Nikon D3200 and who knows that they may well need to clap on the longer zoom lens while still carrying the shorter zoom with them will welcome the Kata ACCESS 14PL bag. This is an ambitious little container that has three expandable panels - one on each side and one on the bottom - to let you have a place to store the lenses and accessories you will be shifting as you work with the kit.

If you're caught in the rain, there is a raincoat included, and the shoulder strap is particularly broad, stable, and comfortable at the top of the loop.

Rip-stop nylon cover again, and bright yellow inside. Clip and zip secure on top and you can zip up the bottom panel for a smaller profile.

All in all, well thought out bags.

Something happened in the Japanese camera industry between the time I was a kid working in a camera shop and now - when I am a geezer working in a camera shop. The wonderful skill of encasing cameras has been lost. Or at least it has been moved elsewhere.

When we sold Pentax Spotmatics and Minolta SRT 101 cameras they were always accompanied in their boxes with a standard lens and a leather case. The cases were as sharp as the lenses. The leather work was precise, the fit of the case was tight, and the little details like plush lining and snaps or release fittings were top-quality. These ever-ready cases sometimes meant that the cameras were never ready, but at least they could travel slung around a sweaty tourist neck and protect the contents.

Nowadays you get the camera, a handful of cables and an opportunity to go try to find a bag that will fit the damn thing. This is a boon to the bag manufacturers like Think Tank, Lowepro, Tamrac, and Kata and to be fair when you get the right bag for your new camera it can be a beautiful and functional thing. And some of the tougher bags that hold pro bodies and lenses are really way better at protecting the gear than the old black leather ever-ready.

But elegant? No. The little ones can look like hooker's handbags and the big ones can look like upholstered apartment blocks. There are even ones that look like satchel charges. Oog.

All praise to the Leica people. The cases they sell - separately, it must be said - for the D-lux and V-Lux and X series cameras are superb - all that leather work was and should be. Their M series cases are still the epitome of the ever-ready and I would be willing to bet that the same could be said for S-series cases if there is such a thing. They may have been forced to give up their seat to a clown on the tram with the X-2 cameras that come in colours - apparently there are to be camera protectors, which I take to mean half-cases, in the same pop colours that grace the actual bodies. Let us hope that the the aesthetic is rewarding.

And Hooray for Fuji - I've got a leather case for my X-10 that is all I could want for retro style - and they do similar ones for their X-100, X-Pro1 and XE-1. Their straps are well-finished and the whole thing hangs right.

On a reflective note - perhaps the demise of the fitted leather case happened when the leather workers who worked in Japan retired. They would have been of a generation who worked in leather for military cases prior to '45 and would have been a boon to the camera industry after then. Let us hope a new lot of leather artists arises.

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

It has finally arrived - rain. Time to consider what to do with your photography for the next three months:

1.   Stay inside and drink.
2.   Go outside and take pictures.
3.   Bring your waterlogged equipment in to the repair department and hope it can be rescued.

Assuming that you won't be permitted to do the first, and you would like to avoid the third, give a thought to some of the products that we stock designed to cope with wet weather.

If you are going to be outdoors in intermittent showers or mist, good camera and lens protection can be had with flexible hoods and pouches made by Op/Tech, Aquatech,Think Tank,or Kata. They range in price, durability, and complexity from simple plastic bag sleeves to fitted raincoats that cover arms, flashes, and long tele lenses. The really cheap ones are really cheap and are a good insurance policy for landscape shooters. The expensive ones are intended for working sports pros or wildlife photographers who might be standing in a drizzle for hours. Of course those of us who have elected to stay inside and drink may burst into laughter at this point, but let's move on.

If it is going to be splashy as well as drizzly, consider one of the Dicapac DSLR or compact housings for your camera. You won't be able to use a long tele, but you can go to a moderate zoom and the thing will happily exclude water to 5 metres. That's money well spent with an expensive camera.

If you don't want to haul out a big DSLR but still want to stand in the rain, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Panasonic, Olympus, and Fuji all make dedicated little waterproof compact cameras that can dive right in to depths of 3 to 10 metres. Some are even shockproof so when you slip over during the football riot no harm will be done. They give compact results, but these can be very good.

Finally, if you must, you can get specially-made cases for even the largest or oddest DSLR and film cameras. These are the pro jobs that are made of fibreglass, perspex, aluminium, and crystallized money. Expect to be quoted a price that would feed a third world village for a month.

Now, I have to go. There is a Mr. Toddy waiting for me ....inside.