Cocktail Hour Vs Happy Hour In The Camera Store

We are not going to suggest that the clients of Camera Electronic should come in to buy stuff in a sozzled condition - far from it. It has been done, mind, but it was not a pretty sight to see. And it is hard enough getting the sales staff down off the top of the cabinets with a hockey stick at the best of times.

But there is something to be said for the concept of the cocktail hour consultation. Pull up a shaker and I'll explain.

Cocktails are made from a mixture of things - liquors, essences, fruits, mixers, etc. They can be very complex or very simple - provided the ingredients are good, they nearly always succeed. Okay, the pickled herring martini was a general failure but we still sold some in Holland...The point is to get good stuff to start with and mix it judiciously.

And in the camera trade? Well, give some serious thought to mating camera bodies to lenses and flashes. Your tastes and needs may be entirely different than those of your neighbour, and just as you might like a martini and someone else might do better with a Manhattan, so your optic mix muight be different. Here's your ingredients:

Canon bodies
Nikon bodies.
Sony bodies.
Olympus bodies.
Panasonic bodies.
Sigma lenses.
Tokina lenses.
Samyang lenses.
Zeiss lenses.
Nissin flashes.
Metz flashes.

And note - I didn't even mention the fact that the body makers have a full line each of their own lenses that fit their bodies...

Also note that I didn't raise the question of Leica cameras and lenses, or ditto for Fujifilm.

Or the adapter drawer full of possibilities.

Ask your bartender...err...sales assistant for a taste recommendation and try out  a number of combinations. You need not be frightened to mix and match - there are any number of combinations that work well.

Oh, Happy Hour? When the drinks are half-price? Well think of the cash-back offer periods that the manufacturers institute as the closest thing to this. Wait if you wish, and you can score some good savings. Or sip your way with a new lens or two while you are waiting. We are prepared to put coasters down under the telephotos for you...

Planning Ahead For Your New Camera Outfit - A Checklist

Those of you who followed the news from Photokina in 2016 - sent back in part by the management team of Camera Electronic and in part by the press departments of major manufacturers - will have been attracted to the new cameras and lenses shown. Lots of you will have zeroed in on new offerings and are starting to make vague plans to get something fresh...

Well, before the new cameras came onto the sales floor - in some cases this can be months - you could do some good for yourself by making a detailed plan of what to get...in what order. We've prepared a checklist for you. Please feel free to copy it and print it out.

TEN-POINT CHECKLIST FOR NEW PHOTO EQUIPMENT

1. Sell your old camera at the markets, pawnshop, or Gumtree. Hide the cash from the rest of the family. Do this first so that you cannot renege on the idea later. You can occupy your spare time by cleaning out the hard drive and finally editing those 5000 files of the dog chasing a tennis ball.

2. Decide which lenses you wish to keep. This list should also include the lenses that you bought at the camera market, the lenses that have been sitting in the shed for two decades, the lenses that fit the camera system you had two camera systems ago, the lens that your mate gave you, and the lens that you haven't actually told the wife about yet. If none of these match the new camera system you are lusting after...err.. considering...then you are morally justified in selling the lot. Morals play a lot in lens sales.

3. Lift up the bottom of the camera bag or Pelican case and see if anything has slipped down there. It is the photographic equivalent of taking the sofa cushions off and looking for small change but it can yield some surprising finds. Expect old filters and lint.

4. Analyse your photo patterns scientifically. If you have been taking pictures of orchids for 30 years, you probably will not need to invest in a 500mm f:1.8 lens. You can apply the money you save to the purchase of a 78-Kilo tripod and a focus stacking program.

5. Measure the boot of the car. Is it big enough to accommodate the new camera system? Is it big enough to fit all the boxes in if you have to store them in there to prevent the wife from finding them? If she does find them, is it big enough to accommodate you?

6. Check the specifications of your computer system. Does it have enough central memory to run the files from the new camera? If it does, will it overheat? If it overheats, can you make cheese toasties on the outer casing? Note: with some examples of computer from a very well-known manufacture, you can. Kraft Cheddar slices are particularly good for this.

7. While you are puzzling at the figures on the computer, look up the version of RAW converter that the new camera will require - and then look at what your current editing program will do. Of course it will not be adequate, but I just put this in to make you feel sad and alone. A new editing program will bring you joy again, until the next time you change systems...

8. No need the throw out all your old memory cards - they can be used to prop up small flower pots to promote drainage. The new ones that you will need to buy will be faster and have more capacity. You can always ask whether the new camera comes with a free card in the box, if you are not worried by indelicate language.

9. Will you want black or silver? Or silver with tan facings? Or an overall wrap of the national flag?
Or all four? If you sold the car you could buy all four. You can sell cars on Gumtree...

10. Do you need the new camera to be water-proof, water-resistant, or highly-absorbent? Decide now before you go down to the beach.

Hot Lights A Go Go

What is the appeal of the hot light? What? How can anybody love a lighting system that makes a studio hotter in January? That needs specially-ventilated light shapers to work. That makes the metal snoots so hot they smell like the grille at Alfred's Kitchen? What is the deal with hot lights?

Well it is June and the weather is getting colder, and if you are in a studio right now the constant light can be a bit of comfort. It is not as good as a reverse-cycle Fujitsu set to 27º but it goes a little way to heating the place. And the metal snoot? Well, you can heat that to welding temperature with the modelling light of at the average mono block anyway - learn to direct the head of the light by using the handle at the back instead of grabbing the light modifier at the front.

The real deal with the hot/constant light is that you can see what you get. If you are training students to see what their lighting is actually doing, or if you yourself find the leap of faith between a modelling light and the end result is a little too far to make, then the constant light is the answer. It pours out through whatever modifier you choose exactly as it is. You change your ISO and white balance to match the output - about 3200º to 4000º Kelvin - and your camera is happy.

There is the fact that other sources of illumination will also make themselves felt in the final exposure...much more so than with the fast impulse and brightness level of the electronic flash...and you may have to take them into account. Hot lights work best in a darkened studio.

But here is the delightful kicker - continuous lighting is perfect for videos. If you choose a set of lights that have no noise associated with them, you can film and record sound at the same time with no interference. Even with the lights that do have some sound - they may have a slight buzz from the internal transformers or whirr from cooling fans - it is generally kept down to such a low level that professional microphones can be positioned to ignore it.

Constant light sources can be large halogen lamps, incandescent lamps, fluorescent tubes, large LED panels, and banks of smaller LED lights. In some cases the housings are fitted with dimmers or rheostats that allow you to vary the brightness of the light without changing the basic white balance. Or there are arrangements in the multiple panels to turn on and off different portions of the bank.

Note that I may have inadvertently led you astray...and that is a pun...because the LED panels can run even cooler than strobe lights while maintaining a daylight balance. The nice thing about many LED panels and large single LED lights is that they are also operable upon battery power - the ubiquitous rechargeable lithium-ion batteries can be banked up to provide full constant lighting in the field.

Camera Electronic has always had some examples of these lights - whether they are Profoto, Elinchrom,  Jin-Bei, Metz, Lume-Cube or LEDGO, there is a variety to suit most purses and light outputs, from full studio high-intensity mono blocks shooting through dedicated soft boxes to tiny banks of LEDS that attach to cell phones.

It's cooler weather now - time to come in and experiment. Video students especially welcome.
www.cameraelectronic.com.au

Getting Drunk And Using A Gary Fong Lightsphere

Okay. You're reading this. That headline got you. I knew it would. Read on and see what the connection is.

Note: if you are going to be all awkward about the drunk bit, substitute barley water and improving tracts if you wish - the Gary Fong advice still applies.

The Gary Fong Lightsphere is a device that has undergone a number of development changes. Early versions were made in two grades; clear and cloudy - and you had to pick the exact model to fit your speed light. Our shop had to stock about eight of them to service all customers. It was a beeping night- mare to get the right diffuser to the right customer.

Things have changed. Gary saw the light ( ! ) and got his factory mates to make a universal diffuser that not only fit all comers but was made in flexible plastic to fold down upon itself. It could be used for a whole new range of speed lights.

The basic idea of the Lightsphere is to fire the blast of flash light vertically into a roughly spherical translucent ball and let it spill out and make optical friends from there. If the flash was connected to a camera via some sort of TTL coupling, the light that spilled out of the front of the accessory illuminated the subject while the stuff that went out in an annular pattern and up to the ceiling  was weakened but still contributed to the look of the image. You got a softened effect on the main subject and adequate illumination of their surroundings. All in one shot with one flash on or near the camera. A real boon to event photographers who did not have the luxury of complex light set-ups.

Weddings. Dances. Concerts. Environmental portraits that have to be done with minimal preparation. Not perfect but better than straight blast-flash. Absolutely better than no-flash and f:1.4 and hope that it looks like art...

It is the equivalent of being drunk and still competent. You might not be able to operate a nuclear power station or do brain surgery but you can still turn on the lights or put on a band-aid.

And sometimes that is exactly what the situation requires. Gary Fong. Making people look good the easy way.

Turn Off The TTL And Turn On The Light

Nearly all the flashes I own are TTL except for the ones that are not. And fortunately the ones that are can be switched back to manual control.

This may puzzle the newcomer to the sport - after all the Nikon, Pentax, Canon, Olympus, Fujifilm, Sony, and Leica people all make a great deal of telling us that their various flashes are TTL - indeed in most cases this mode is the default one when you switch the speed light on. There are lots of occasions upon which it is exactly the right thing to do and many people can rely upon it to give them what they want.

One of the joys, in fact, of demonstrating a modern Nikon or Canon flash to a first-time flash buyer is to put an SB700 or 430EXII onto their camera, glance at it to see that it is set to Auto or Program, TTL and AF, and then just point the thing at them and rip off half a dozen portraits right there. The TTL balances whatever the shop lights are doing and nearly everyone looks good. Done right, it is a sure seller.

But.

Have a look at this picture taken at York on Sunday. I was in Brigg's York Motor Museum while the rest of the townspeople and tourists were out watching belly dancers and eating ice cream cones. No interfering crowds and plenty of time for experimentation. The car was a small Austin parked in front of a picture window with greenery outside.

It is nowhere near as good as the heading image - yet this darker view is taken with the flash on TTL and supposedly working in harmony with the camera. What I think it is doing is quenching itself too early based upon the backflash from the cowling of the Austin and thus not getting enough illumination out to the mid ground.

The heading picture was taken with the same shutter speed - this is dictated by the top synch speed of 1/180 sec on the Fuji X-T10 and whatever the outdoor illumination is going to yield for an f stop...and then the flash set to either full or half-power manual dump. The Fujifilm EF-42 is easy to control for this sort of selection - the Nikon SB 700 as well.

The top one is the picture I want. There are many of these sorts of situations - half-illumination with reflection - where the TTL mechanism does what the designers have told it to do but not what you would like it to do. Here's another pair - this time a Maybach-engined GP racer.

The top picture is the TTL version and the bottom the manual flash version. Note the plastic chain bears the same exposure in each but the manual setting has allowed more oomph to get further back.

Thanks to the York Motor Museum for the pictures and a fun afternoon's visit - rendered all the more enjoyable for being available on a senior's card discount.

Let There Be Licht - Metz And Your Mobile Phone

I do not own a smart phone. Mine is a rather stupid one - it can summon the police or a pizza, but cannot take pictures of them as they arrive. I do not repine - I have mirror-less cameras for that. I have a album of 8 x 10's of Neapolitan pepperoni surprise.

For those of you who do have the photophones and who insist on videoing themselves and others, there is a useful accessory just now on the market.

The Metz LED - 72 smart is an add-on LED array with 51 of the little glowing nubbins mounted on a metal mount. It plugs into the socket on your mobile phone and draws power from its own internal Li-ion battery.

It has several power settings starting at a full 72 Lux rating and then going down to a blinking mode. More than enough light to video with the phone or to light up a Subbuteo tabletop football game. The battery will go for some four hours on a full charge - and you charge it from a USB port on your computer in about 165 minutes.

Those of you who will be artists with this light will be artists and those of you who will be party pests with it will be party pests - the equipment does not make the person. But at least you will be brightly illuminated.

Hot Colour On Saturday and Sunday - Go To The Show

This coming weekend one of the major hot rod shows in Western Australia will be taking place at the Claremont Showgrounds - probably in the Silver Jubilee Pavilion. There will be show cars, hot rods, custom cars, low riders, drag cars, drifters, and the occasional cute little stock car. Plus rock and roll shows, hamburgers, beer, auto parts dealers, custom paint pinstripers and no end of accessory, publication, and clothing sellers.

The common feature of all the exhibits will be colour and pizazz. It will be a perfect opportunity for Perth photographers to make spectacular car pictures undercover...and as there will be a considerable number of cars outside the venue, there will be open-air shots as well.

I'll be there with the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and a big Metz flash and a Manfrotto monopod. There's plenty of light in the pavilion and the X-Pro1 goes up to a high ISO but I like having the monopod there to poke people with. It's a hobby.

Heading picture: Melbourne. 50's Chevrolet ever-so-slightly modified. You have to look closely to tell...

Too Much Monkey Bidness...The Focus Issue

Did goe to a belly dance show on Monday and was greatley amused - as I always am. The dancers moved like women possessed...mind you at one stage they took 0ne of them away for non-payment of debt. She was a woman re-possessed.*

They move fast, belly dancers - mostly. The tribal ones who follow their leader are very stately in their movements and are easy to capture - the rest are like shooting down kamikazes. Using a camera that has an electronic viewfinder for this sort  of shot is problematical - there is a tiny time lag between what is happening and what the finder displays to the eye.

It is a very small time lag, and the makers of the cameras are doing their best to reduce that lag even further. There is also a small time lag in any auto-focus camera while it does the distance measurement by various means and then focuses the lens. Unfortunately these delays can add up and prevent the shutter from going off before the dancer crashes into the front line of seats and bursts into flame.

In an effort to reduce this with the Fujifilm X-system I have selected a camera with a direct optical finder - the X-Pro1 - to eliminate the perception lag. ( Note that the X-pro1 also has a switchable EVF that you can use for precise focusing when time is not critical.)
I experimented with the focus settings and found that the S setting introduced too long a delay as the camera settled into a perfect focus. The C setting sometimes did not get to a point of focus before the shutter went off - and sometimes seemed to pick up the backdrop as the point of focus rather than the dancer.

The M setting was most useful. A little pre-dance experimenting with the centre point of the stage meant that there was a starting point and every time a dancer passed it flailing I could fire instantly.

More experimentation is needed to see just how high the X-Pro1 will synch electronic flash. Conventional wisdom says 1/125 for sure but I suspect I can stretch it up to 1/250 before trouble ensues. The Fujifilm X-100 camera would synch at 1/1000 but I needed a different focal length for this stage.

The too much monkey bidness  ( thank you Chuck Berry...) refers to the OS setting on the 18-135 mm lens vs the camera on a monopod vs a shutter speed of 1/30 to gather some of the stage lighting vs a Metz flash firing off the ceiling. Eventually the interconnected calculations and estimations for all this overwhelm the brain and I long for an iPhone...

But it is all good in the end. One day I will get the exact rig working perfectly. Then all I have to fear is a costume malfunction.

Uncle Dick

* Here all week. Try the veal.

The Second Part Of The Down Shot Saga

Okay. We've resolved never to crawl up a ladder ever again. But the perspective of the down shot still intrigues us.

At a car show, you can get some pretty good perspective shots from the front or back quarter of he vehicle. Also from dead on front and back. You can sometimes get useful interior shots - if the owner has left the side window down. There are even secret techniques to get good interior shots when the window is up...but those will be revealed on hrhoa.wordpress.com.

Unfortunately the quarter shots of cars taken with standard or moderate wide angle lenses can compress the look of the cars and deny their real beauty. If you don't believe me, go try taking a front quarter shot of a Lightburn Zeta or a Trabant. Not exactly front cover of WHEELS, is it? You just don't see how sleek and powerful they really are...

The new/old trick I noted from some of the 1950's hot rod magazines was the oblique high angle shot. The staff photographers were doing it to highlight the custom paint jobs on some of the American cars of the time and they needed to show a long body. I suspect that either they parked the cars near the edge of their building and climbed onto the roof - or put up a tall builder's ladder and balanced on top of that. The reproduced photos might be faded now - and some of the hairstyles on the models seem ridiculous - but the cars look fabulous.

Wind forward to Whiteman Park yesterday and the Vintage Car Show. Normally the Fujifilm X100 and the Metz flash do a good quarter shot. A good side shot if there is space between the vehicles. All dependent upon the crowds...

This time I added the idea of the high angle oblique. No chance for a ladder - thank goodness - but I could take along a Manfrotto monopod with a Manfrotto 234 monopod tilt head. I set the camera to 2 second self timer and hauled it up. The aiming of the camera was a little hit and mis - maybe three shots for one that was perfect. But look at the difference in makes with the Austin Healy sports car.

Further experiments will follow at other car shows - the Fujifilm X-E2 has a wifi capability that is coupled to an app allowing the camera to be sighted and fired from a iPad or an iPhone. It might work...

The Upshot Of The Down Shot

That was a down shot. The sort of thing that you do when you don't know that you can't do it.

Wooden 4 x 5 field camera bolted to a rafter in the studio ceiling. Just enough space between the the back of the camera and the ceiling to insert the double dark holder.
A builder's ladder to get up to the camera for cocking the lens and inserting the double dark and then pulling the dark slide.

Focus? Lie on the floor with the camera just above my nose and focus on the rafter - I mean, focus works in both ways - once it is set for the rafter it'll be set for the floor.

Red paper backdrop covered in thin red velvet. You have no idea how much white lint a red velvet can pick up until you are sitting there with a roll of sticky tape picking up the bits.

Lights, camera, action. Model in place, drapes in place, football in place - ladder in place, double dark in place, cock the shutter, pull the slide, stretch the air release tube way out to he side and squeeze the bulb. The ladder back in place, put in the dark slide, flip over the holder, cock the shutter and repeat the whole thing.

8 more times. I never want to see that piece of red velvet ever again...

All of which to introduce the idea of the down shot - the direct vertical view that you might get from an airplane or rafter. If you are an award-winning aerial photographer like Tony Hewitt this sort of thing is old hat, but if you are newer to the idea it can be a wonderful revelation. Google Earth on a smaller scale, if you will.

It can certainly give an entirely new perspective to your photography - and in the next blog post I'll show what happens with a high-angle oblique shot.

Note: No models or football were harmed in the shoot, but it was a close-run thing a couple of times. Careful with ladders - gravity works all the time.

Uncle Dick

The Big Blue Blanket - A Day At the Races

Did goe to the drag races yesterday and was greatley entertained. The event was far too busy and far too many colourful cars were seen to be reported here - if you wish to see what transpired you must go to:

hrhoa.wordpress.com

The blog is " Here All Week" and there will be a stream of posts regarding the races and car show emanating from it during the coming weeks. The blog you're reading right now is the work one that sells cameras so we must keep on topic...

Big Blue Blanket. Look it up in the history of WWII and see what it meant. In my case it is the perpetually surprising sky here in Western Australia - the clear blue bowl that overbears us all.

I don't see it, though it is there all round. I go out on a bright day - to the car races, say - and set my Fujifilm X-pro1 to Auto White balance...or to the daylight icon...or to 5500º Kelvin. I shoot away with the old Metz 45 flash to fill in the shadows. I bring the images back on the SD card and bang them into the computer and am confronted with - the Big Blue Blanket.

Every surface that has been illuminated by the sky - and it is all around - and is at all reflective - and remember these are hot rods with chrome parts - is blue. Sometimes it is light blue, sometimes it is bright blue. I fail to see it when I am shooting because my mind filters it out, but the camera's sensor is a faithful observer.

The answer to removing the blue is complex - I can trick the camera by lying to it that I am really in overcast or shade. There will be some artificial colours elsewhere in the jpegs, though. I can take the whole thing in RAW and fiddle the white balance later in Lightroom, Aperture, or Silkypix. I can hire a zeppelin painted 18% grey to hover over the cars as I photograph them to hide the sky.

This is difficult, as the zeppelin is not always available - this week it is off bombing Lowestoft.

Easiest idea so far has proved to be shooting the hot rods in Melbourne. They only have blue skies for a very small amount of time and frequently this is at night...

The next time I go to the Kwinana Motorplex on one of these bright blue infinite days, I shall try the effect of a circular polariser. Logic tells me that it will do something but quite what remains to be seen.

Uncle Dick

Yes, It Works - The Fujifilm Square

Yes, it works.

The experiment mooted in yesterday's post - shooting a jpeg with a square format but leaving the Fujifilm X-pro1 to record a full RAW file as a 3:2 image is a success.

The camera sees a square, shows me a square in the electronic viewfinder, but preserves the whole thing for later dissection through the RAW converter of Silkypix DS6.  I can choose a square image or any other aspect I need when converting. If there is a line of dancers I have still captured them all.

Now individual dancers will have enough space around them to be projected on a square screen. It is almost like the days of the dear old 500 C/M and the 80mm Planar lens. Except I get to see what I've got at the start of the job without using the instant film packs.

Win.

Going To The Square To Get Some Air - With Hasselblad and Fujifilm

I take pictures of belly dancers. It is a humble job but someone has to do it...I keep telling people...

Not surprisingly, dancers move around a lot - possibly to get away from the music. I, on the other hand, am fixed in place by the audience and have to stand there and endure it. Fortunately years of firing heavy rifles and cannon have reduced much of my hearing.

The visuals, however, are wonderful. Colourful is an inadequate word in the world of belly dance and Bollywood costuming. I have learned not to set the saturation of the jpegs on high as the cameras start emitting smoke. If the show is illuminated with a Fujifilm, Nikon, or Metz flash the colour return can be so intense as to require me to de-saturate it in the final image...and desaturation for me goes against my very nature.

This year's WAMED dance show at the South Perth Civic Centre will give me a larger foyer to play with and I can project my exhibition pictures with the wife's digital projector and this MacBook Pro. I've even got the old slide projector screen that so terrified audiences in the 1960's. So all is good.

Good-ish. Sort of good. Good-lite. I have the same problem that existed in the 35mm slide days - the format of the slide did not match the format of the square screen - Horizontal images left a white border top and bottom on screen and vertical images moved these blank spaces right and left.

When I projected 6 x 6 Hasselblad slides on the screen all was well - it looked perfect. Of course Hasselblad slides had the advantage of perfect lenses, too. Well, lenses aside, the 3:2 ration format of most of my 35mm and digital output is not going to do the same thing when they are projected.

I decided to dodge sideways. I've digitised a lot of the Hasselblad negs of the 1990's so they can come out square. I've started to search the image files of the last ten years to find the ones that can also be re-presented as squares. And I have discovered that - for this purpose - I have framed too tightly with the rectangular cameras.

I shall perform an experiment when taking the WAMED dance show images this year - oh, I'll be still balanced on a Pelican case in the middle of the crowd with the Fujifilm X-Pro1 camera and Metz flash supported on a Manfrotto monopod for four hours. I'll still hear the music...but I'll deliberately switch on Raw + Normal for the recording and 1:1 for the format ratio. If I'm correct the full 3:2 image should flood into the RAW file but the viewfinder and jpeg image should be going at 1:1. I'll keep single dancers in the square sights while settling the central green cross on the mid dancer in a line and the whole lot should be there in the RAW if I need it to spread across a 9:16 widescreen TV.

Well, that's the theory. I'll test it out in the next few days and report back. Who said digital photography isn't rocket science? Goddard? Von Braun?

The Leaf Shutter And The GT 40 - Look Into The Lens

Those of you who operate the Hasselblad 500-series cameras can go to coffee. As can the users of Fujifilm X-10, X-20, X-30, X-100 series, Canonets, Bessamatics, and Crown Graphics. The rest of you stick around.

The reason they have gone is they know what the leaf shutter can do in bright sunlight. And you can stop laughing  - yes, I know they can stick open or go slow but if you have them serviced regularly by Ernest you won't have that problem. What I mean is they can synch with flash at high speed.

Ah, you say, I have this setting on my super flash that says high-speed synch and there is a setting in the menu that says hyper-super flash and if I download an app and send a command to Cheyenne Mountain I can get mine to synch at 1/250 of a second...good for you - at least you recognise that you need to do something - but leaf shutters do it so simply.

The shot you see was taken in bright Sunday sun on a community oval. The ISO was 200, the aperture was f:11, and the camera - a Fujifilm X-100 - could be left to its own devices to deal with the exposure of the background. The fill flash was an old Metz Cl-1 that could be set onto one of the automatic settings and left to IT's own devices. All I had to do was stroll around and point the thing at the Cobra cars.

Never mind thinking or apps or the superhyper whatever. If I wanted the background darker, I dialled the compensation dial on the X-100 to - 1 or -2. If I wanted the car brighter I dialled the Metz to one click higher. I never did have to go to a full power dump - even in full sun.

Those of you who want art can do otherwise - modifying the light or tilting the horizon or draping dead fish on the cars just as you please. I am delighted with the sort of fast clear illustration that a Fujifilm leaf shutter  camera produces. And when there are subjects that are exotic, colourful, and available like the GT40 Ford I get exactly what  want.

Note - when you are taking race car pictures you have to squat down a lot. Three formula ones and a sports car equals a half hour at the gym.

Long And Low At the Hot Rod Show - with Fuji and Nikon and Metz

The great experiment conducted over the six months regarding a camera for hot rod photography has yielded results. The Fuji/Nikon/Metz lash-up does pretty near everything that the Nikon/Nikon/ Stroboframe outfit did, and it does it easily enough that an old guy can carry it round in the sun all day.

If I am prepared to carry a second Nikon SB 700 on a little Manfrotto stand I can get great illustration of the front grille and the side panel of even the long cars. Of course, if you are dealing with something white like the '59 Impala you can get a lot more value out of those flashes.

How does this help you? If you are going to go out and climb Bluff Knoll with a camera kit bouncing in your backpack, consider whether you want that camera kit to weigh 3.5 Kg or 1 Kg. It's your back going up and it's your back coming down, and it's your back sitting in the chiropractor's waiting room...And those of you who have spent a fortnight on Ibruprofen and Voltaren can back me up...

Also consider whether you need to go to a shoot with 5 lenses. I used to do just this in the dear dead Hasselblad wedding days. Everything in the HB box including the 250mm tele lens in case the bride escaped and I needed to shoot her before she got over the horizon...My assistant, Igor, used to hump the bag and the tripod and the extra flashes and the film and the bag of rocks...( I never actually told him about the bag of rocks...) and never complained. Fainted occasionally, but never complained.

Eventually I discovered that I was using two lenses for the whole wedding. An 80mm and a 50mm, and the 50 only came out of the massive case for 5 exposures. I eventually rationalised the whole thing by leaving out half of the glass and most of the fancy little accessories. It freed up a lot of space in the case...for more rocks.

That is history - the Hasselblad outfit is long retired and recently sold, and the new owners can risk their vertebrae at their leisure. Weddings still need extra gear for back-up safety, but this can be hauled in a roller bag. Lithium AA cells power all three flashes and these are light weight. Igor looks healthier, and after-shoot processing is so much faster.

I still pack a bag of rocks but these are only in case the bride proves sluggish. And I never throw rocks at hot rod shows. Some things are sacred, you know...

Moral of this tale: Buy right, pack light, allow for wind direction when throwing rocks.

The Sacred Texts

Every religion has sacred texts - some are wrapped carefully in scrolls and put into velvet cases - some are bound into heavy books. Some are carved into the stone walls of temples. In our game they are either printed into little paper books or supplied on a CD.

Instruction manuals. Love 'em or hate 'em, you are eventually going to have to fish out the one that came with your camera or flash and read it...in many cases you will do this after the equipment has stopped working and emitted a puff of blue smoke.

Had you gone into the thing prior to this momentous event, you might have discovered how to avoid it. Most modern equipment will not self-destruct - you actually have to perform a series of incorrect things to blow it up. Of course if you are using a computer this does not apply - computers will wilfully throw themselves off the electronic cliff like expensive lemmings. They mutate when they are left to their own devices. And you can be sure that in a few months NO devices will work with them.

The dedicated reader of instruction manuals will discover that there are different levels of communication skill amongst the companies. I can genuinely praise Nikon and Fuji for their manuals, and Pentax are not far behind. The paper books you get with new cameras are plodding affairs  - not a lot of plot development and no dirty pictures to look at - but if you read them you will get all the facts you need to run the cameras. Sometimes the camera designers have been drinking at lunchtime but at least their sins are accurately reported in the books.

Not so with the instruction manuals of the Metz flash company. Their products are excellent - I have a handful of their flashes that have soldiered on for nearly 40 years and they still pump out the light. But the instruction manuals have been written by someone who was in command of the German army - possibly at Stalingrad. They are incomprehensibly complex for the pre-digital era, and worse once the shift to digital began. The only thing that saves Metz is the fact that the flashes can largely be left to work by themselves while you get on with it.

We've all laughed at Japlish and Chinglish advertisements and instruction books at one time or the other. Of course none of us write in Japanese or Mandarin to have our own mistakes seen. And the people in Japan or China would probably be more polite about it. Fortunately the writers of their technical pamphlets seem to be amenable to criticism as I have seen marked improvement in brochures from one year to he next. Mistakes now are nothing more than typos and have nothing of the howling humour of the 60's.

Will it get better? I hope so, as worldwide communication becomes more direct. For myself, I took as much instruction as I needed and learned a new skill from seeing Gary Fong show his light diffusers on video clips. But I still would like to have a book to carry in my camera bag if the equipment is complex. If only to provide tinder when I set the thing on fire...

Open Wide...

In 2007, having peered down cake-holes for nigh on 40 years on a professional basis ( as opposed to doing it for a hobby...) I sold the old dental chair and retired. It was time to get rid of it - it had had three changes of stained upholstery and the armrests were deeply finger-marked.

 During the 4 decades I attended hundreds of lectures illustrated with thousands of  intra and extra oral photographs. Three of them were good. The rest were masterpieces of illustrative skill but all you could see was teeth. It was like looking at the front grilles of Buicks, but at least the Buicks flossed...Thus my general advice to anyone wanting to take dental pictures is - don't.

If you insist on it, however, the best way I know is to use a digital SLR or mirrorless camera. I used to advise people to use ring-flash units for the illumination but that has stopped with the advent of the white LED light. Nowadays you can get a decent ring-shaped LED set that runs on AAA batteries or a mains adapter and mount it on the front of nearly any decent camera. If you then set the ISO of the camera to 400-800 ( or higher if it is a modern camera ) you can put the mode to "A" and set an aperture of f:8 to f:16. If you put your lens on manual and at the shortest focusing distance you can generally make a rather decent extra-oral shot. An excess of decency.

If you need a closer shot or one that goes far back in the arch, the true macro lens may be necessary. Costly, but close-focussing, and it lets you stand back a bit from the customer as you work... Some of the customers have breath that makes this a relief.

If you need to have more light - really - you can use the ring flash systems. Nikon, Sigma, Canon, and Metz make them. They are in various sizes and degrees of sophistication, and some of them are automatic enough to work most of the time. But there is an almighty pop as they go off that might spook the patient. Plus they generally are more complex so you end up with a system that your staff might not find as easy to use. If you consistently get overexposure or out of focus results it is advisable to beat the nurse with a stick.

What you do with the results is different than the old days. The Carousel slide tray full of VMK preps is long gone. Slide shows on Powerpoint and Show Off can be integrated with text, sound, and music. There is no way to describe the experience of a professional presentation on gingival recession when it is accompanied by John Cage.

Please note that the above notes also apply to dermatology illustration, but with knobs on. Pulsating multi-coloured knobs...

Batter Up - Increasing Your Hits

Those of you who have been following my other blog - Here All Week at  hrhoa.wordpress.com will have read of my efforts to lighten the load when I go out and shoot motor car shows. I mentioned it here as well, when I ran afoul of Western Australia's harsh mid-day sunshine.

Well, a little thinking and a determination to keep my pocket money for beer, books, and toy cars has paid off. I rustled through the Hazel Leaf Studio cassette de junque and found a metal Metz 45 flash bar, a Stroboframe 300-405 locking accessory shoe, and a Nikon SB 700 flash. The Nikon goes on remote SU-4 and manual setting, and the Fuji X10 on the Metz bar fires it off - even in the strongest direct sunlight. Powerful fill flash results, and as the Fuji synchs at all speeds. you can leave it on M and play all up and  down the keyboard.

Children - TTL flash is wonderful for weddings, kids in the park, and infantry assaults when you really have no time to think out your settings. But you never learn to light with TTL. Go manual and shoot and look and think and shoot again.

So is it lighter than an equivalent DSLR rig? Yes, by a factor of several tonnes. Does it do the job? For web publication, brilliantly well. It is the answer for the Automotive Jimmy Olsen who wants to fly but doesn't want to have to do it in the bomb bay of a B-36.

Note to photos: the local team lost woefully at the baseball last night but the Fuji was a winner. Also, note the sticker on the back of the '60 Lincoln. I didn't know whether to be delighted or appalled...

The Best Tool For The Job

The best tool for the job - is frequently a debated point. One practitioner points to one item, another holds up something different, and the argument is on. If the job is a technical one the rest of the populace stands baffled.

Suppose you are a dentist who wants to take pictures of teeth and jaws - or a skin specialist who wants to illustrate surface lesions for lectures or books. Or a mechanical engineer who wants to show tiny little parts and mechanisms. You reach for a digital camera with a good close-focus setting and try your luck.

If you have the light just right, and the white balance just right, and the auto focus on and you don't shake too much, you might succeed. Equally you might be too much in the shade, or too blue, or too wobbly.

Rethink. Get yourself a decent DSLR or mirror-less camera. C, N, P, S, or O come to mind...clap on a decent macro lens that will allow you to stand back about a foot from your subject. Put the Metz Mecablitz 15 MS-1 digital macro flash onto the lens, set the flash to take orders from the camera and go for your life.

Note: experienced clinical and macro workers do not try to use the auto-focus on the lens. They set the thing to manual and lean into the subject until they see it in focus.

The Metz people have been making flash units for decades - I have my original Mecablitz 45-CT1 from 1975 and it is still producing saleable pictures - and I've added three more of them from garage sales...Suffice it to say that Metz is the standard of the small flash industry when it comes to reliability.

The 15 MS-1digital fastens to the front of the lens with threaded rings - rather like some of the filter systems these days. There is a quick-release for the flash if you need to do something else with the camera straight away. Metz also supply a funny little clip - rather like a hair clip - that you can see in the main illustration. It is used when your DSLR has a pop-up flash.

The idea of the 15 MS-1 digital is that it can take TTL synchronising information from your DSLR in the same way that remote flashes do. The clip goes over the pop-up flash to prevent visible light flooding the subject while the IR information that instructs the flash goes out the side.

In addition, there is a standard PC socket at the side of the flash to take firing instruction from cameras that do not have a commander flash.

The two tubes mounted either side of the lens are movable - they can toe-in to illuminate subjects at very short range. There is an integral diffuser that you can rotate into position to reduce the intensity of the light.

The GN for this unit is 15 in the metric system - 49 for the imperial. More than enough for intra-oral and full-face shots. It runs on AAA batteries and will poot out 140 to 200 shots at full power.

In short, Doctor, the 15 MS-1 and the C,N,P,S, and O will be OK at TTL for IO and FF.

But that is just my initial diagnosis...

All Someone Else's Yesterdays...

Did goe to the Photographic Markets yesterday and was greatley amused.

As a stroller, not a seller, I was able to observe many things that have heretofore escaped notice. And a number of these observations have set in train essayable thought:

1. There is only so much valuable old material in any one area of the world, whether that material be Leica cameras or Vermeer paintings or old Soviet warheads. Eventually it will all have been sold to the Chinese, or the Dutch, or the Poles. Then the supply will dry up. After that the articles on offer will be Ansco 127 flash cameras, lithographs of Wave Rock in a plastic frame, and Holgas. Who will we find to buy these?

2. Just as there is no Eldorado, Tall Dark Man, or Shangri La, there is no secret stash of mint-condition Leica cameras and lenses that will be offered by a bereaved family eager to sell them for pennies.

3. " You can still get film for it" may be a true statement and may form the basis for a sales offer, but it should be accompanied by the other statements:

    " You can get the film from China by writing to them in their native language and paying 18 x the normal freight charges for it to arrive."

    " The film will have been made in 1975 as traffic-recording film and will be re-sized and cut to new
dimensions."

    " No-one in the metro area will touch it for processing. The metro area extends from Rottnest to the Great Barrier Reef..."

    " The film is made in a re-activated factory by re-activated workers. It is like watching a zombie video but each packet costs the price of a steak dinner."

4. If you wish to buy a secondhand tripod, remember that the quick-release plate will be missing and no-one will have another to replace it. Resign yourself to carving a new one from mahogany. It might be wise to purchase an old piano for the wood.

5. The cakes, biscuits, and coffee are really very good. Bugger the cameras - drift down the back of the hall and have breakfast.

6. Yes, that is the person you saw in the shop. No, that is not shop stock.

7. Load thee not the aged software into thy computer lest the viruses contained therein render thy equipment dead. Hope not for a magic grail that will make all thy images winners, for Lo, if the judges thought they were rubbish when they could see them clearly, they are not likely to change their minds when they are obscured by crude filters.

8. Buy a Bolex. Do not hope to run it any time soon, or ever, but buy it for the sheer art of its construction. Make whatever excuse that you need to at home, but have at least one on your shelf to cheer your heart.

9. " Buy a no-name studio flash system in a cardboard box? Pick it up and plug it in? Hold the head in the hand while you fondle the aged wiring and then fire it off? Why, sure! Go right ahead. I'll just be over here behind this solid wood door. "

10. How much for the two books? A dollar? Thank you, I'll take them. ( Sound of scurrying and chortling - in both directions. A successful sale. )

Uncle Dick