Unscrewing It All Up In The Dark

Did goe to the BP service station at Baldivis South Saturday even and was greatley amused.
It was the site of an unofficial organised impromptu motor car show. A meeting of minds at the McDonalds. A pouring of passion at the petrol pumps. Sort of a cross between Saturday Night Fever and American Graffiti, but nobody looked like Harrison Ford  or John Travolta. There were a couple of contenders, mind, but they were both mature women so I was respectful.

Well, the cars were wonderful and if you want to see more go to hrhoa.wordpress.com but the interesting thing proved to be the way the post-sundown twilight made the cars easier to photograph, and the artefacts that started appearing as soon as the sun was completely gone. Both observations will serve me well in the future.

Note these two pictures of '57 Chevys. Top one is the first taken, and the bottom is the second.

Note the flare and light spots of the first one. That's a clean B+W UV filter on the lens - I keep them on as a matter of course for protection. The second shot has the filter screwed off. Both are tripod jobs. You can decide for yourselves which has most atmosphere, but for me, I think I may be leaving the filter off in still air in the future.

Note as well - every bit of gear for this sort of shooting is right off the shop floor. No special bits - visit the shop or go onto our on-line store to look at Fujifilm cameras, B+W filters, flashes, and Cullmann tripods. Special recommendation for mirror-less - the Cullmann 622T.

The Big Unwrapping - New Pentax Full-Frame Lens

You've all probably seen one of those YouTube videos that show an enthusiast opening something. And I don't mean an Egyptologist chiseling open a pyramid - I'm talking about  a camera fan unboxing his latest purchase...live, online, with the Ride Of The Valkyries playing in the background and the sound of helicopters. I love the smell of bubble wrap in the morning...

Well, I tried my hand at it in the Little Studio. The new HD Pentax-D FA 24-70mm f:2.8 ED SDM WR lenses have arrived on the goods -inwards desk at Camera Electronic and I snaffled one for illustration. It was strangely exciting - particularly seeing as how I don't own a Pentax camera.

Oh this one is Pentax alright - the mount is absolutely classic AF Pentax. And the style of the barrel and the knurling are also Pentax. The entire shape is a refinement of what the company has been doing for decades - and is a clear advance in organised design.

It's heavy, but not as heavy as some of its competitors. It is designed for the new full frame Pentax body when it arrives but can be used cheerfully on the current small-frame Pentaxes. You'll note it carries extensive multi coating and the orange band on the mount is a weather seal.

F 2.8 in a 24-70 lens is no surprise for photographers who use other brands of camera. It is one of the classic go-to choices for both small and full frame and can be used in low light situations. The increasing advance of ISO speeds in modern cameras together with the improvements in AF systems mean that this now extends into really low light work. The fact that it is not a bigger front element must be a comfort for the available light workers who don't want to haul an arm-breaker of a lens.

The barrel seems very well built - and as you can see it does not extend too far with the zoom. There's a barrel lock in case you are worried about it creeping out but it wouldn't creep far anyway.

I expect the Pentaxians...or is that Ricohvians these days...will be queuing up for this one soon when the big body arrives. It might be worth while putting your name down for one or starting a lay-by in anticipation. Also available through the on-line store.

Note: You do get to find some odd things if you look carefully at the packaging these days. We appear to have a love letter from Ricoh...or they might be stalking us.

The HD Pentax-D FA 24-70mm f:2.8 ED SDM is available for order in store and on our website.

Defeating the Glass With Light

Look at that title - normally photographers are trying to do just the opposite - use glass to tame light. But there are times when you need to go at it the other way around.

We've all been to museums, shops, and galleries where interesting things are displayed under glass. It is under there to prevent you from getting your grubby hands on it and degrading it - or to create a sense of wonder and desire on your part. The awkward part comes when you want to take a picture of it.

Sometimes the people selling or displaying the things won't let you do it - for fear of breaking some law or giving away some advantage. Sometimes it is to allow them to sell their own pictures of the objects in their own bookshop - this is a classic ploy for some museums. No good you taking your own pics when there are postcards to be sold!

Even if you are allowed to shoot photos, you frequently fall foul of the way the goods are displayed:

1. The items may be behind tinted glass.

2. The glass surface may be dirty - filthy dirty in some cases.

3. There may be dodgy lighting in the display case. Dodgy in positioning and intensity and definitely dodgy in white balance. Some lights do not have a colour temperature - they have a colour fever.

4. Strong lighting outside the display case may reflect on the glass surface and obscure the contents.

Oddly enough, this is exactly the situation that pertains to outside displays at one of my favourite events - the car show. If a car owner chooses to wind up the window and it is dim inside while bright outside you cannot get a good picture of the interior of the car.
This happened so often that I evolved a way to deal with it that can be applied equally to the museum or shop.

First - if you are not allowed to use flash you can't do this. Likewise if your camera can never come off of an "automatic" sort of setting, you are stuck. But if you are not so restricted, here's what you do:

1. Put the ISO up to 400-800.

2. Put the camera in Manual mode.

3. Set the shutter speed to 1/125 or 1/180.

4. Set the aperture to something between f:4 and f:11. You'll be experimenting with the first couple of shots and can dial yourself into the correct exposure after you see the results.

5. Set the flash to manual as well and try your first shot at 1/2 power.

What you are doing is making your camera's sensor blind to the ambient light but sensitive to the powerful blast of light from the flash. If you are careful to keep the camera and flash pointed at an angle away from where the light hits the glass, it'll go though to the subject and not come back as a reflected blast onto the camera. The depth of field being shallow at close ranges means your camera won't effectively see the surface of the glass - it will see through it.

You may also have to take your camera off AF to do this as it may insist upon focusing on the surface of the glass - and you want to select the subject yourself.

Fussy readers will please excuse the slight over-exposure on the grey Leica camera but note how much better it is than the ambient-light shot at seeing past the obstructions.

The car interior is also through a full side glass window.

When You Don't Know The Right Thing To Do...

You are also in the happy position of not knowing the wrong thing to do. Provided you are not engaged in defusing sea mines you may have some leeway in experimentation. A lot of photography is like this.

Case in point: in the dear days of dinosaurs, Elvis, and Plus X film, 125 ASA was the giddy limit for sensitivity in photo emulsions - at least in the sort of films that they sold in the local drugstore and that I could afford. I was new to the sport and dutifully exposed the Plus X at exactly this meter setting ( and took a careful meter reading for each and every exposure - even when neither the light nor the subject ever changed...). I was rewarded with a set of ever-so-slightly underexposed negatives. Had I known to do it, I should have rated the stuff at 80 ASA and got more silver for my money.

Then again when I underexposed the Kodachrome II slides of the period I was a little disappointed with the dark colour but now that I can scan and subject them to PSE, I am more than happy to have the highlights.

This last weekend saw me running out with a new lens and camera and a new sense of adventure occasioned by retirement. I drank a beer in a country pub at 11:00 AM and spent the afternoon in a car museum. While I shot a number of the exhibits with the Fujifilm EF42 flash providing fill, I also threw caution to the winds and racked the Fujifilm X-T10 up to 3200 ISO and let 'er rip. I can report that the jpegs are imminently satisfactory and the freedom to just point and shoot is awesome.

Of course you all knew this before I did, and in the case of some of the bigger DSLR's you have been turning the ISO dial up to nosebleed numbers for years - but this is the handy dandy mirror-less game for me and I am starting to get excited. I suspect that if more people were to come into the shop and look at the Fujifilm X-series and some of the new lenses that have wide apertures, they would join the brigade.

Note: Heading image is the museum hall - this following one is of a new Morgan three-wheeler. The graphics are execrable but the vehicle is a delight.

News Just In - New Canon 35mm Lens Coming

Is it me or are lenses getting bigger?

News came through to us today of a new Canon lens that is due soon - a 35mm f1.4L II USM L series designed for professional photographers. Apparently it incorporates a new lens technology.

The news report states that it is concerned with the blue spectrum - there is a an organic optical material that refracts blue light - the new technology is going to significantly reduce chromatic aberration and produce sharper images.

35mm focal length on a full-frame camera is slightly wide, but not so much so as to generate a sense of distortion in group pictures and landscapes. The lens will have 9 blades in the aperture mechanism and will thus produce circular highlights in the background.

But...it's big. 72mm filter size - 105.5 mm long and 80.4 mm in diameter. 760 grammes. Lots of elements - 14 - in 11 groups. 28cm close focus distance. Ultrasonic motor mechanism.

We'll keep you posted about when you can come in and try it out.

In The Dark With Fujifilm

Did goe to a Fujifilm presentation laste night and was greatley amused. Also baffled* but still appreciative.

The affair was a disquisition by Flemming and Charlene about their work with the Fujifilm X-series cameras and lenses. They pursue disparate visions of night club life and music presentations around the world. I believe a number of their shots were taken in Denmark ( the country, not the town...) and Singapore ( the country, and the town...).

Light seemed to be the theme of the shots - light as spread out over rock performers and night clubs. The shots were taken in se cases in RAW form and in some in jpeg. The consistent factor was the amazing ability of the Fujifilm X system to catch something out of sheer darkness.

Armed with my trusty Fujifilm X-10 I tried my luck in Shoot Photography's main lecture hall - the only light coming in was the back scatter from the projector screen and the kitchen light bulb. The ISO was cranked way up - this is perfectly in order as Flemming mentioned that they red-line their X-Pro1 and T-T1 cameras as a matter of course.

Apologies to all who might have wanted to cringe into the crowd in the darkness - the Fujinon f:2 lens on the X-1-0 and the EXR program caught some interesting files. I promise not to use any of the pictures for blackmail.

The Fujifilm X series all have provision for silent running. The focus-assist lamp stays off and the shutter noise is eliminated. You can also turn off the LCD screen so yo really are in stealth mode. Indeed, as the shooter you have to keep an eye on the thing because you don't really know that you have taken anything. The focussing can be problematical but guesstimation and the Af-C mode seem to nail it pretty well.

The evening gave the visitors an opportunity to avail themselves of reduced pricing on may Fujifilm items - and there were free filters and spare batteries going out with the deals.

Did I not have 4 Fujifilm cameras and 4 X lenses already I would have been sorely tempted to spend money.

* Baffled. Why go to night clubs when you could go deaf on a rifle range in more comfort?

The Darkened Theatre - A Viewfinder Debate Between OVF And EVF

At the risk of opening the valve on the geek tank and being inundated with internet expertise, I'll raise a question that presented itself recently.

 It was in a darkened theatre with some pretty exciting lighting on the stage. The occasion was a dance show and the organisers requested no flash photography.  Being restricted to the maximum aperture on my mirrorless-camera lenses wasn't too bad as I had a close view of the stage. The f:1.8 and f:2.8 lenses let in enough light with a high ISO.

The real problem came with framing the image - the camera body was a Fujifilm X-E2 . It has a very bright and detailed electronic view finder that seems to see deeper into the gloom than I can. Fine to use but one's eye becomes used to the bright image and then when you take it off to change setting on the camera or lens in the dark...you can't see zip...the dark adaptation has entirely gone.

Using the LCD screen would have been wrong as the glow of it would have disturbed other patrons.

In the end, I resorted to peering over the top of the X-E2's hot shoe, pointing in the general direction, and hoping for the best. It all worked out, but left the impression that it should have been done differently.

Perhaps the optical view finder of the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 would be a better answer - sure, it has illuminated frame lines within the OVF but these are bound to be less overpowering than the full bright EVF screen. And there is always the EVF on call with a touch of a lever.

I suspect that the X-Pro 1 might be the best professional answer - sort of a bright horse for a dark race...

Hafla With Fujifilm - High ISO Wins The Day

I tried my first hafla with the new Fujifilm X-E2 camera system this last weekend, and learned many valuable things.

Haflas are dance shows organised by Middle Eastern and Bollywood groups to showcase their dancers. The music is loud, the costumes are wildly coloured, and the dancers are enthusiastic. Unfortunately in the past they have sometimes been constrained to perform in pretty dull venues - you can only make so much of a harem scene in a CWA hall...

This last weekend saw the stage of the Waldorf School in North Lake used...and that made all the difference. It is a professional-class stage with a good lighting setup and desk. Productions look good.

To avoid washing out the stage while the audience was watching, the organisers asked me to work without flash. I had done this before with mixed success - when  I used to put the ISO up past 800 on the old system the multicoloured electrical noise started to become bad. Well, I set my Fujifilm X-E2 gingerly to 1600 ISO and hoped for the best.

I was delighted to see that the colour was good and no noise was appearing - even given the fact that I had set a +1 sharpness on the jpegs. But the dancers were moving so fast that even with the 550-200 lens set to full aperture there was blur. So I risked setting it to 3200 ISO...

Better action stopping - still no noise. I could happily shoot from the aisles with the camera and lens on a Manfrotto monopod and not disturb anyone. Amazing how well 165 dB of drums and flutes hides the sound of a digital shutter...

Upon reading Rico Pfirstinger's book on the X -E1 I suspect I might have been able to boost that ISO to 6400 with even better results! I am looking forward to the Christmas hafla to find out.

Boost that ISO with Fujifilm X - with confidence.

Whiteout or Wipeout?

I often wonder what other people did about white balance when they used film in their cameras. I know some people who shot in studios bought odd emulsions that were biased to tungsten lights - and they had to be careful to get the particular film for their lights, or vice versa.

Others sat there with colour temperature meters and measured what was coming out of the lights, or in trough the window, then did a page and a half of mathematics, and then shuffled through the accessories box to see if there are some filters for the lens or some gels for the lights or a big sheet of cellophane for the window. And then shot it with fingers crossed.

Nowadays we have the wonderful facility of the white balance control on the camera. Generally accessed through the menu, it allows a vast range of presets for daylight, flash, tungsten light, and a number of other atmospheric conditions. Frequently there is an "Auto" setting and if you have a good camera a custom setting that lets you measure what is out there and act accordingly.

Have a look at the "Auto" setting on my little studio camera. Not coping very well at all in the first instance, but spot-on in the second. What did I do that made the difference?I used an expodisc, that's what.

The Expodisc is a light integrator that gathers colour from many angles and presents it to the measuring program in the camera as a pure blank - and then you ask the camera computer to regard this as the standard to which you wish to work. It works - see the second view of the studio desk.

I can see this as the ideal solution for the wedding photographer who gets caught in a church with off-white walls and off-colour windows. The light inside one of these edifices may be conducive to holiness, but I'll guarantee when you see it later on your computer screen as a raw image you won't be reciting blessings...not if you have to sit there and manually re-balance an entire shoot.

Simply slip the appropriate size Expodisc on the front of the lens you'll be working with and take a WB shot in the same light as that falling on the bride. Your camera will do the rest and your post processing will be ever so much simpler.

Even in studio flash circumstances, the output from your strobes might be 5500º Kelvin which matches your camera preset, or it might be different, depending upon the age of the tubes. The Expodisc can set you exactly onto studio white.

They are available now in our shop in various sizes from 62mm on up. Highly recommended.