Stephen Scourfield And The Value Of A Dollar

Bless him. He knows, you know.

At the launch night for the Canon EOS 80D camera held last week, Stephen Scourfield made the candid admission that he knows how much pressing a shutter button costs - or rather how much it used to cost  - $ 1.00.

This was in the days of film and we were paying for the colour transparency or negative film. No matter how you rigged it - you shelled out a buck a shot every time you pressed the release. And this was the time when that same dollar bought you a glass of beer. You had to have a pretty compelling reason to press that shutter button with that sort of equation...

It went up, of course, as the price of film, chemicals, labour, and equipment climbed. It went up astronomically when you changed the size of the film that recorded the image...rather like it does when you go from the very small format sensors these days to the largest ones made...fight it out amongst yourselves whether this is good, necessary, affordable, or whatever.

Back to Stephen. He said that he tries to get what he needs with the minimal amount of shooting. In that, he is guided by the remembrance of the old costs, and by the realisation that time spent shooting and reshooting will also be compounded later by additional time spent examining and re-examining all the files. I'll bet he has had jobs where he has overshot and then cursed himself for it.

Mind you, you can under-shoot as well. I have done this when I had blind and misplaced confidence in the focusing ability of a digital camera and took the quick image on the LCD screen at the back for gospel. Possibly it was, but as I did not examine it carefully enough, I took home a card full of out-of-focus images. Done once, this never has to be done again - if you can remember the shame of it.

Shooting always costs. It costs equipment, electricity, travel, petrol, time, lunch money spent in horrible hamburger joints, tyre wear, clothing wear, and brain wear. If models are involved it uses them up and they demand money for it. Studio space always costs, even if you own the studio. Especially if you own the studio - council rates officers can be the local government equivalent of the James Gang.

IT. ALL. COSTS.

So...the moral? If you are Stephen, you shoot with Canon cameras, you shoot with Canon lenses. You shoot the appropriate body for the job. You shoot the best one you can afford. You shoot well - you look at the light, you look at the subject, you look at the story and how a picture will help tell it. You don't hose down the landscape with mindless blasting away. You shoot things that will print and then you do the work of sorting them out...rather than letting them languish for someone else to choose.

Note for customers: You can short circuit some of the difficult decisions by trying out the new Canon EOS 80D when it comes into the shop. With the 18-135 lens on it you are nearly all the way to the images you want, even before you fire the thing off. You can order it on-line as well.

Canon 80d with 18-55 or 18-135 available for pre-order via our website.

River's A Pretty Picture

The superzoom lens helps to make Freshwater Bay look even more beautiful. 
Picture: Steve Scourfield

"In many ways, the day fits the camera and the Swan River itself. 

For it begins in the crisp, early-morning light and high-contrast sunshine coming in flat angles at Peppermint Grove. The river is wide and estuarine here and the Leica V-Lux 2 with the camera’s superzoom lens gives it the equivalent to  25mm and catches the wide expanse of it.

Late in the afternoon, I am further up in the narrower reaches of the Swan River, feeling like I am right in the barrel of the other end of the camera’s built-in 24x zoom — the equivalent to 600mm. 

The same spot with the lens zoomed at 600mm.

The lens is, of course, the most-talked-about feature of the Leica V-Lux 2 and the reason it is particularly good for travellers. It can do pretty much anything —  and do it well. 

With 14.1 megapixels and a CMOS sensor, it is a camera that most people will take on their trips, and come back with good photographs. It’s light, easy to use. It has automatic, program, aperture and shutter speed priority settings and scene modes that include the rather self-explanatory  soft skin, panorama assist, beach and snow — and, unusually, food, party, baby, pet and others. 

Following the Swan River for the day gives it a good workout and, while it could use a better sensor,  the camera proves a versatile do-anything friend. 

I particularly like the tilting screen — it folds out  and in many directions, and I find this useful in markets and other places where a photographer wants  to be less obvious. 

For the more technically serious, it shoots both RAW and JPEG and full 1080p  AVCHD video recording. It shoots 11 frames a second continuous at full resolution with a maximum shutter speed 1/2000 second.

And that brings me to the subject of price. 

I borrowed the Leica from Camera Electronic, in Stirling Street, Perth. It sells it for $899 — a price that can’t be matched on the  internet and considerably less than Leica’s RRP of $1049. 

Saul Frank, who with brother Howard runs  the shop their father Ronald started 40 years ago, says: “There’s old-fashioned service, of course, and people want to  see and touch certain items.” 

But shop retailers have to compete on price, too, and the brothers go to great efforts in working with suppliers to match internet pricing. Or, in this case, to beat it. 

The Leica, of  course, bears more than a passing resemblance to the Panasonic DMC-FZ100 but comes with a two-year warranty, Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements 8. And, of course, the Leica badge. 

Details: Camera Electronic is at 230 Stirling Street, Perth. Visit cameraelectronic.com.au or call 9328 4405."

Camera Electronic would like to thank Steve for his travel section write up. You can see more informative articles from Steve at The West via their website http://www.thewest.com.au/travel