Sirui For The Not Quite So Serious - Part Two

Okay. You have your new mirror-less system camera, you have a card and a battery and have read the instruction book.

You have booked a trip to the Landscape Coast during the sunset season. You are all set to make fabulous postcard views and insightful artistic statements...and you only need one more thing.
You need a tripod.

Trust us. The Landscape Coast will supply all the ocean and sunset you can handle but if you are trying to capture it by balancing the camera on the bonnet of the tour company's 4WD you will be disappointed with the results.

Sirui to the rescue with an extremely lightweight travel tripod plus ball head combination, The T 024X and C10X come as a package deal inside a nylon travel bag. It is ideal for you as a mirror-less user whether you are walking out to the coast or out to the airplane...in both cases weight is a factor and at .8 Kg this choice is a blessing. All thanks to a lightweight yoke casting and carbon fibre legs.

It will hold up to 6 Kg of camera and lens so it is unlikely that you can exceed the spec there. It will come up to 139 cm. so you can deal with your camera out on the rocks with some comfort and confidence. It is weather-resistant so when you are caught by the spray or rain you are not in too much trouble.

The head has an Arca Swiss-fitting quick release and plate - you are not going to have to fumble about in the dark trying to attach the camera. The usual bells and whistles - weight hook at the bottom, reversible column, macro column, and leg spread ( ...for when you graduate to lying in the mud taking pictures of mushrooms...don't laugh...it is coming...)

The leg locks are the screw type and go to a slim line to fit in that carry bag. The whole thing folds back 180º on itself to become smaller. You can easily fit it into your suitcase for longer trips.


Safety note: That red button on the side of the ball head is a saving feature. If the Arca Swiss-size jaws are loosened, it prevents the quick release plate and your camera from lurching sideways onto the ground.

Tripod tip from the experienced. Put three bits of cardboard - or better three bits of carpet tile - into your pocket when you head out into the bush or down to the beach. Put these down as pads under the legs and they won't disappear into soft sand or moss. Much more stability.

Second tripod tip. Wrap one of the CF legs with a strip of reflective tape so that you can see the little beggar in the twilight and don't stumble over it.

Pentax K-1 In The Deep Dark Woods...

Night time. Deep in the dark woods. Dank, dripping foliage. No moon. No stars. No lights from a lonely farmhouse. No car lights. No camping torch. A black stygian abyss, devoid of comfort. And what is the Pentax K-1 photographer doing?

Changing lenses. Easily.

Thank you Mr. Ricoh or Mr. Pentax for finally doing what needed to be done a long time ago - putting working lights on a camera. This is a blessing for all the people who have been out in the wet bush darkness or down the back of a theatre trying to change lenses or find the controls on a camera by the light reflected off a black cat.

The Pentax K-1 assist lights let you find the cable release socket, the lens release button - and the dot on the mount to align things to, and the memory card slot. You can feel the switch to turn the camera on and then the menu can light up and you are away.

It sounds corny and simplistic and crude, but it really is important in dark situations to be able to do the basic things that make a DSLR system work. And you can't change lenses while holding a torch with one hand, and two lenses and the body with the other - not and keep the inside of the blessed thing clean.

As Bob Lichfield pointed out at his talk on Thursday, the Pentax K-1 also has a feature called Astral Tracker. In combination with the GPS system built into the camera it allows the machine to recognise stars and where it is when it sees them and then use that information to allow the pixel shift mechanism to cope with the movement of this stats when the camera is set firmly on a tripod. It sounded both complex and simple as he described waving the camera around out in the dark but the result certainly showed resolution and artistry.

The other blessing for the nocturnal is the increased sensitivity of the sensor/ processing engine combination for this new camera. The computer engine is the new Prime IV and it will coax a sensitivity of 204,800 ISO out of the camera. For all practical purposes this means you can take a picture anywhere in the man-made dark and most places in Natural dark. It would make the glow-worm caves in new Zealand into a disco palace.

Focusing at this low light levels has also been taken care of as the camera will go to -3 EV with effective auto focus.

Final note: When you get to the other end of the illumination scale and you're out in the icky sunshine and you can't see the screen for light, there is a quick solution, Pentax have put a dedicated switch on the outside of the body to let you adjust the LCD screen brightness. Good thinking - if it was just a menu item you couldn't see the menu to adjust the screen because of the light.

The Biggest Astrofestra In The World

Gracie Fields would have been proud...

I note from the up-and-coming-counter at work that there is to be an Astrofest Astrophotography contest and exhibition in 2016. It's a Western Australian event that will take place at Curtin University ( WA Institute of Technology ) on the 12th of March 2016. Camera Electronic, Shoot Photography Workshops, WPM Group, and Pendoley Enviromental are sponsors.

There are a number of divisions and presentations possible - the little flyer that was on the counter mentions star trails, night-scapes,solar system objects, or deep space images. They say that astro-photos, time lapse videos, and related digital imaging such as 360º virtual reality is welcome. As they are opening the entry to any astronomer or photographer, amateur or professional, who is a resident or visitor to WA...with no age restriction, I guess you could say it is a pretty darned inclusive brief.

An omission, however. No mention of macro shots of stars. Odd, that.

Well, you have until the 5:00PM on the 29th of January, 2016 to get your entries in and the best way will be to pick up an entry form from our front counter and read the technical details that they want for the images. I note they prefer jpeg format between 2 to 5 Mb per file and they set a time limit for the time lapse video of 2 minutes.There are more specifications on the form so make sure you read them carefully. Note that there is a limit of 7 entries per person.

You can use an email to do it, post in DVDs or thumb drives, or use Dropbox to send big files. Of course there are conventions about naming the files and you'll need to make sure they know which files are yours.

Award Categories include:

1. Best Astrophoto Award
2. Best Timelapse Video Award
3. Best New Talent Award
4. People's Choice Award

So far I can 't discover what the prizes and awards are going to be but there is going to be an exhibition of the entries and some of the winners may be published and feature in other presentations. It's all in the entry form.

Their website for this entry is:   www.icrar.org/astrophoto2016

At least your subjects cannot complain that you are making them stay still for too long.

Creative

I used to think that the two most frightening words in the English language were singer-songwriter . They warned of long hours of despair and depression, generally emanating from Toronto or Seattle. We lived pretty near half-way between these two sinks and so we got our left-wing political rants and tortured love songs in stereo. I used to welcome the blizzards out on the prairies because they cut off communication.

Times have changed. We no longer have to fear singer-songwriters - we have to fear creatives. Video creatives, textile creatives, image creatives, and I can accurately report...history creatives. Yes. Create history. Stalin did, so can you. Pull up a keyboard and sit down.

For the purposes of this blog - selling lens cloths and tripods and macro lenses - we generally consider the video and image creatives. Some are professional creatives - they make images for pay and keep some of the money.The more successful ones keep more of the money and the real stars keep all of it, and they get it before they make the images. Sometimes in the dark I reflect that Jesse James was quite creative too, but I keep it to myself.

The amateur creatives create images with no pay. No, I'm wrong...THEY pay. The return for the money they spend and the time they use is a sense of enjoyment. And a sense of competiton. And blind unreasoning anger and jealousy...I've judged at camera clubs before and I've heard the sotto voce chorus from out there in the audience...

The artist creatives don't get paid. They don't get praised. They don't get listened to. They don't get published. They just create and stack their images in the electronic corner and carry right on doing it again. You can get 5 terabyte electronic corners these days for surprisingly small prices.

I cannot say which box is best. If you are locked into any of them and know it you will naturally become depressed...and start to write songs and sing them on the CBC. Please let me urge you to avoid this, if only for all our sakes...if you are locked into business try to do something for just you - not the client. If you are just a hobbyist, find a customer who will pay for something you do - even if it is just for getting you to go away. If you are purely an artist, try to get one of your pictures into a gallery, and not by sneaking it in under your coat and Blu-tak-ing it in the loo.

You will benefit and your skills will grow. And we can all get back to the blizzard.

Uncle Dick

Great Deals From Shoot!

Hop to the phone and get yourself a bargain!

Jonathan Cousins from Shoot Photography Workshops has some specials for the coming Valentine's day - 20% off all photo courses if you book between now and the 14th. What could be more romantic!

As well, there is a 2 for 1 offer for the following courses:

Tonight's 1st Photojournalism course...11th of February

Astrophotography on the 15/16 February

Off Camera Flash Techniques on the 23rd of February

Please give Jonathan a buzz on 9228 8232 or 0419 956 878 and book in for a bargain.

Note: Planets and stars will be provided for the astrophotography course but only at night...