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...

Being An Upright Photographer

Last year I had a chance to see an exhibition of photographs prints that had been taken in and around the City of Perth. We might not necessarily think of our town as an exotic place for photos...but the vision of the photographers was acute enough to find dozens of unique and memorable sights. Some of these were historical but a complete mystery to me - I'm glad there were captions.

One point of amazement was how many of Perth's buildings are built with walls that slope inwards from the bottom. I think that the designers must have been trained on Mayan ziggurats...or maybe they just ran out of materials as they went higher and had to make the buildings narrower.

Of course, it may have been to counteract the forces of nature, as I noted in about 20% of the entries that the horizon sloped down from right to left or vice versa. Perhaps the buildings were only reacting to the shifting gravity. Amazing how well the ocean stayed on some prints, when it should have dripped off to the side...

Well, snide comments aside, it did point out the basic optical fact that when you point your camera up or down get in all of the top or bottom of a building, the structure will seem to taper away from you. Your eye sees it as well, but when your brain processes the information it lies to you and tells you the building walls are straight up and down, because it knows they probably are. The camera is a much more literal observer.

Pro shooters have known for years that they need to keep the camera level get the building walls vertical. Even if it is just the back of the camera, it has to be straight up and down to avoid distortion of the image. This means that the person taking the picture has to be far enough away or use a wide enough angle on the lens to get the part of the building they want on the sensor...and in some cases it means that they have to half-way up a building nearby their target to satisfy all the criteria.

Old timers like me who used view and field cameras with rising and falling fronts and lenses with a large coverage could sometimes fiddle this to perfection from ground level . Modern digital shooters with tilt/shift lenses (Nikon, Canon, Samyang) can also do it.

If pressed to it we can also go into many of the digital editing programs like Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and pick a portion of the filters that will correct this distortion. It is amazing to see how far a bad situation can be recovered, though not getting that far away from the correct shooting makes the repair a lot easier.

At this point I will admit that there are any number of photographs that have wildly converging verticals and have benefited from the look - they have been made with a deliberate use of the forced perspective to make an artistic statement. It is only the ones that have tried to be realistic and failed that we address with the special lenses or programs.

As for the tilting horizon? Well, Cullmann, Manfrotto, and Promaster all make extremely neat little bubble levels that will allow you yo shoot with the camera level to the horizon. Lots of camera s have artificial horizon indicators built into the EVF or LCD display. If you use them they work.

If your image passes through a computer between your camera and the printer...then take the time to correct that horizon in the editing program. Even if you have to measure the screen with a wooden school ruler you can still make your vision conform to the way gravity actually works.

Bending Over Sideways To Please The Client - Tilt/Shift Part One

This is not a column about business relationships. It is about optics. If you want the other sort you'll have to go to Dale Carnegie or The Better Business Bureau.

Three manufacturers that I know of currently make tilt/shift lenses that can be used on digital cameras; Nikon, Canon and Samyang/Rokinon. There have been others in the past but my researches don't turn them up readily now. The one in use in the studio today is the Samyang 24mm f:3.5 version with the Nikon mount. Of course you can get it with a Canon mont as well...

Cynics may be forgiven for looking at the design and screwing up their faces, but I'm not here to judge whether or not Samyang unbolted another maker's design and reverse engineered it. Nor any I going to make the obvious comment about the use of high-grade plastics to replicate someone else's metal part. Take it from someone who used it that it is well-built and works as it should.

You don't get AF with these lenses, nor do you want it. You get MF and ADJF...Adjustable Focus.

 And you get to adjust it in ways that are at once artistic and practical.

The subjects that people cover in the studio can sometimes be challenging in that they are longer than the depth of field of a lens will cover. Stop down as much as you like, you still can't get everything in focus -and clients demand everything in focus. If you need to use a wider aperture for artistic effect, you are in even a worse fix.

Here is where the tilt mechanism of these lenses comes in. They are the way to produce the Scheimpflug effect - the phenomenon that occurs when you rotate the lens and the sensor to intersect the plane of the subject. Sounds complex, turns out to be surprisingly visible in the viewfinder, and nails the focus along the length of the subject - in this case a 1:24 Chevrolet Fleetline. Even at a modest aperture, it's in focus.

All in focus from headlight to rear bumper.

Away from the plane that you select, it goes out of focus faster...so if you want to create a fuzzy effect that is where you do it. Again useful in the studio to diffuse the backdrop and smooth it out. The clients want to see the products, not the brick wall behind them.

Note that the focusing you do with this lens is with the broad front ring. It's well damped, and does not creep. The lens is a pleasure to use.

As always, available now in-store or on-line.

Left Or Right To See The Sights - Tilt/Shift part Two

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In the first column that looked at the Samyang 24mm f:3.5 tilt/shift lens we turned the little plastic knob that shot the lens structure off the central optical axis in an arc. If we waggled it left or fight we could induce the Scheimpflug effect ( I'll wait here while you Google it. Come back after you're done...) and we got sharp focus along a lot longer area of a studio subject.

Today we take the lens out and leave it looking straight ahead... but we make it shift from side to side like a nervous kid to see what it does.

Here is our street shot in the afternoon*. Camera on a tripod, artificial level indicator turned on in the LCD, horizon about mid way.

Here is the shot with the lens racked to the left.

Here is the shot with the lens racked to the right. The camera position remains exactly the same.

And here is the result of the two images emerged in Photomerge - the Photoshop feature inside their editing programs. Not a glorious scenic prospect, but an easy way to get about a 2.8:1 panorama picture. You've got to help the program by giving it clean stuff to work with and you still have to remember your horizon and your light levels, but once you get the two good shots the computer can assemble them with minimal distortion.

I'm afraid our suburb is deficient in sky scrapers, thank goodness, and I could not do the classic architectural shot of the Empire State Building to show you how this sort of lens renders tall buildings with correct perpendiculars - but take it from me that it does. You would still benefit from being halfway or so up the side of a building opposite the one you are targeting and back far enough to give the lens full play in upper extension, but the effect is both magical and professional.

* Fujifilm X-Pro1 with the film simulation set to Provia mode.

New Glass In From Korea - Samyang Supplies Arive

Those of us who get our " In The Loupe" newsletter will have seen an article on the Samyang lenses. these are the Korean-made DSLR and mirror-less lenses that combine high quality with low price.

Well, fresh supplies have arrived and we can offer both still camera and video camera optics. Look at these:

f:1.4 24mm for Nikon and Canon
f:2.8 14mm for Nikon and Canon
f:3.5 7.5mm for Micro Four Thirds
f:3.5 24mm tilt/shift for Nikon and Canon
T3.1 14mm for Nikon and Canon
T1.5 24mm for Nikon and Canon
T1.5 35mm for Nikon and Canon
T1.5 50mm for Nikon and Canon
T1.5 85mm for Nikon

Those of you who are videographers will recognise the T designation for some of the lenses - the diaphragm mechanisms have no detents and can move around smoothly.

If you are prepared to focus manually and set your own apertures, these lenses are a brilliant solution for high resolution at a bargain price. Bring a camera body and try them here.

Fresh Outta The Box

As a retail shop assistant I am a connoisseur of boxes. I analyse the packaging of all the goods that are presented here in the shop. I applaud some and curse others. I struggle to open some of them with a fire axe and then struggle to close them again with a wool press. I am searching for the designers of some of them, and I know where the fire axe is...

All the above to introduce some of the smartest packaging on some of the best value products in the place - the Samyang lenses.

Look at that package - smart, printed well with a usable picture on the outside and the entire specs of the lens on the end-piece. And inside the lens cradled well, but not buried like King Tut in the pyramids. You can get it out and in without strong language.

The lenses themselves are designed well, produced well, and are startlingly economical. You'll always have to do your own focussing as these are all MF and apertures but the optics are really excellent. I see we have Canon-mount, Nikon-mount, Micro 4/3-mount, and a video mount varieties in today. There is even a tilt shift lens for architecture and studio work at  price that should clean the major manufacturer's clocks for them.

Delightful addition to the inventory, and a pleasure to sell.