Murray Street Colour

I plan to make it a habit to call in at our Murray Street Store - corner of Queen Street - at least once each week. I've learned not to warn the staff exactly when in case they turn off the lights and hide behind the sofa - my relatives do this a lot.

This week's visit revealed lots of new things; an old industrial turntable in the laneway out the back, the new coffee machine works a treat, and there is now some colour in the store. The new cabinets are  in and are attracting some pretty bright entries:

a. Leica. Well, Leica is pretty much chrome and black, as you might expect from their history. They do shoot off into bright binoculars occasionally but these are the exception.

But you can always count on Leica for red. The design team that evolved the store displays all over the world were brilliant in translating the red Leica dot that we had become used to seeing into a brand reminder. They adopted that same shade of red and repeated it in the cabinet shelves and linings to draw your eye to the display.

You just can not not see it. You might not be able to afford it...but you know it is there waiting in case your fortunes improve.

Note to the well-heeled: January is a good time to come in and get a couple of dozen cartons of Leica SL cameras for summer parties. Guests appreciate something to do between courses of luncheon and taking pictures is always popular.

b. Olympus. Okay, I defy you to be glum looking at these colourful Olympus binoculars. They are not the largest sizes that Olympus make - it is a firm that can supply quite a variety of optics in various grades - but these small binocs are perfect for pocket or purse.

The colour is the icing on the cake.

c. Fujifilm XP camera. The shape is dictated by the need to make this camera water and shock proof but the colour is just pure art.

Well, no...

On second thought it may also be function. This is an underwater camera and the effect of depth is to make objects look dark blue. The orange may be to counteract this tendency and to make it show up better under the sea. Fujifilm also make a yellow version - this would intensify the effect.

Whatever, it is a camera that can accompany you nearly everywhere and with that bright shell you will be able to find it in you pocket or purse...or glove compartment...easily.

In any case, come into the new store as soon as you can and look for more colour. It's a very nice place to be.

Red And Black - Stendhal's Tripod

Go On. Look it up. Better yet...read it.

This tripod from Manfrotto - one of  the BeFree series - addresses four complaints I have had about other firm's work in the past. In addition to a great deal of Italian style, I am delighted that:

1. The tripod has colour. All too many of them are black and dull, and apart from the aesthetics of that, they are a camouflaged menace in a darkened studio, or out in open air after dark. A black tripod has three black legs splayed out there just waiting to trip up the unwary or hard of seeing.

2. The leg angle adjustment can be made with one hand, and is not hard to understand. I've owned tripods that concealed their angle adjustments in under the leg itself and then invited you to insert your fingers in there....Then they snapped shut like a nutcracker! These red ( thank you, Manfrotto ) levers have three possies - closed, tall leg, or short leg, and that is it.

3. When it folds back together on itself for travel, the three legs have somewhere to go close to the quick release holder. Many other tripods adopt the folder leg but when they come home to roost there is no room for it.

4.The smaller knobs are actually shaped bars that define which way to turn them to loosen or tighten the screw. This is again a blessing in a darkened studio or paddock.

See the Manfrotto range on the Camera Electronic website here

The Effect Of Colour

We all know the theories of colour as it is used in flat art work - warm colours advance, cool colours recede. Purple indicates distance in landscapes. Pink is reserved for Mme. Pompadour and Jayne Mansfield. Yellow is the colour of insanity, etc. etc. Whole semesters at Art School are given up to trying to define terms like "Puce" or "Taupe".

For that matter, some of the best brains in the country are kidnapped each year and chained to desks in advertising agencies where they are compelled to invent new names for spray paint colours. "Boogalicious Burgundy" and "Semipalatinsk Sludge " were two that won awards.

Colour is used to sell cameras...even when the absence of it is the only thing on offer. First it was generations of photographers who saved all their pennies for colour slide film...and watched the colour slide right off it as time went on - and then it was digital shooters who paid extraordinary amounts of money to buy cameras that could only shoot in black and white. I'll bet a few of them have since spent their evenings hand colouring in the files from the black and white camera...

The Fujifilm company has had a distinct advantage with their penetration of the instant-camera market; most of their offerings have been budget targeted and have been moulded in various plastics. They have been able to incorporate colours right into the basic body. Colour experimentation is certainly possible - thus our two star cameras today:

The Pink Surprise. Those of you who have seen Peppa Pig on television cartoons may well be struck by the resemblance of the camera to her. The Japanese makers might find this an awkward comparison, but Japan loves animé and kid's cartoon characters anyway so they won't mind selling cameras on this basis.

The Grape. This is one of the richest colours in the Fujifilm Instax range. It suggests luxury and imperial splendour, inasfar as a plastic camera can be either imperial or splendid. It has all the basic Instax features of 10-pack film loading, automatic exposure, adjustable focusing, and in-built flash. It pumps out colourful and sharp little hand-sized instant prints. And you can be darn sure that you are the only person in the firing line at the international press conference for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton with a deep purple camera.

See the Instax Mini 8 in store at 230 Stirling St or online.

One Owner - Never Raced Or Rolled ...

I wouldn't be selling it except I'm going overseas...

Well, before you rush me with offers I have to confess that this pristine Rolls Royce does not belong to me. It is in the possession of a chap named Bill. He let me photograph it at Cannington but made me promise not to touch the paintwork in case I left any fingerprints on it.

I can respect that, as I have seen some terrible things done to vintage cars in Melbourne when the Australia Day crowds start fingering the Fords and smearing the Simcas. I would not have the nerve to exhibit a veteran or vintage car in the RACV show in the park because I have seen how invasive the spectators can be.

Well, back to my car shoot for Bill. I scoped out the car the day before the shoot and took some preliminary shots in monochrome - just the on-camera flash tube that pops up over the lens on the Fujifilm X-T10. I selected the 27mm F:2.8 lens as the most convenient one for this sort of work - I am going to look at the new 23mm f:2 WR when it arrives.

Good shots. Good record shots, but somewhat flat - even for monochrome. So on the shoot day I opted for the Fujifilm EF-42 lens with the new Mag Mode mushroom dome diffuser in front of it. The real secret of getting modelling, light and shadow, was the use of a TTL cord from camera to flash.

I was able to see the car in the tilting LCD screen at a convenient angle, and then use the flash in the other hand to rise up above the scene  and let light fall naturally. The roof of the building housing the car was a long way up and would not have been a good bounce reflector so I opted for the hand-held light.

A two handed shoot is not much fun if you have a long lens on the camera - the moment of force generated by the 18-135mm f:3.5-5.6 WR is such that you can hardly hold the camera body steady as you work. But anything that is physically smaller, from the 60mm macro on downward to the 27mm is a breeze. You can also make use of the camera strap braced agains the back of your neck for even more steadiness.

I would also particularly recommend that users of the Fujifilm X system look into the film simulation settings in the menu and seek out the PRO Neg Hi setting, if you have it. I can get it on three of my cameras and I must say it looks as though it is finally the way that I see colour. I still like Classic Chrome for the retro look, but PRO Neg Hi cuts it for nearly everything else.

The Frame Up Job

At the risk of sounding like a Me-Too blogger, I wish to draw attention to a course being run by the Shoot Workshops next door. It is a workshop on Picture Framing and will be run by Aaron McPolin on Sunday, the 4th of September - not that far into the future.

The workshop costs $139, but this is the sort of thing that just does not come along every day. In fact, I would be prepared to say that in Perth this does not come along ANY day. It is the chance of a lifetime for some of us.

We all make files. We all make images. Some of us make pictures. Few of us make pictures that hang on walls. And damned few of us make pictures that deserve to hang on the walls.

Part of this is the files, part of it is the images. After that a great deal of it is the aesthetic that either supports or condemns the image. Here is where Aaron may be able to offer the insight to help us improve our pictures.

The blurb for the workshop speaks of colour theory, printing for longevity, placement, glazing, and matting. Also lighting, placement, exhibition design, and pricing. Even if you are not trying for " Family Of Man " and would settle for the relatives spread out over the lounge room wall in reasonable order, this workshop is going to help.

I freely admit to not being an artist, and have had this firmly attested to by Perth Artists on Facebook, but I think that this sort of thing will help me to improve my taste and present my work better. I have an ambition to be rejected by a better class of gallery than Facebook, and this may help.

Studio 281
281 Guildford Road, Maylands
Sunday, 4th of September
10AM - 4PM

Contact Shannon at Shoot Photography Workshops to make a booking:

T. 08 9228 8232
E. shannon@shootworkshops.com.au
W. www.shootworkshops.com.au

Split Personalities?

I take a little amusement in looking at the packaging of photographic goods...when working on the sales floor that amusement could evaporate quickly while trying to prise some cameras out of their maker's packaging in front of the customers. Crowbars and bad language never seems to set the right tone.

Fujifilm have never been guilty of bad packing, but they do have a strange dichotomy when it comes to their choice of colour. Their  X-series digital cameras produce some of the nicest out-of-camera jpeg results in the industry...yet they are sent out in some of the drabbest boxes.

I am not suggesting that they are bad boxes - just sober looking. I do admire them for putting big letters and numbers on the outside to indicate what is inside - a boon in the darkness of the warehouse. But why so serious, Batman?

Now contrast this with the packaging for the Instax range of goods. Every colour under the rainbow, cheerful to see and cheerful to use. And Fujifilm were very, very clever at the Photo Live Expo 2016 - they made sure that there was a very colourful demonstrator to work with the Instax section.

I do not wish to detract from the efforts of Frank, Justin, or Warwick, but none of them measured up to the eye-appeal of the Instax girl.

Note in this photo of three of them that they are not posing for me - they are posing for Gary Schwidden in the background.

Gary is using one of the new Theta S cameras to take a 360º image of the display hall and the Fujifilm stand from the top of a tripod. He has complete control of it from his iPad. I can't wait to see what the results from this and from some of the other footage he shot during the day will look like - he was able to cover most of the action all day - a busy time.

" Go Out And Go Mad "

That's a famous phrase from a former CE employee - uttered when the deal had been done and the customer was going out of the shop with the precious new camera held gingerly in both hands. It was an injunction to go have fun - to explore - to shoot a thousand shots and discover what the equipment was capable of.

Occasionally you would discover that the equipment could go mad by itself.

Case in point is the adventure at the Hyde Park Community fair on Labour Day. I attended and had a good time. I scored an old-fashioned* lemonade from the Girl Guides,  avoided the attention of the worst of the political pressure groups, and photographed the veteran and vintage cars.

Hyde Park is a full-sun and dappled shade venue and you need a fill flash and your tongue stuck in the corner of your mouth sometimes to get acceptable exposure. In some cases you get science and in some you get art. In the case of the FIAT sports car I seem to have gotten a little of both, mixed with madness.

The car is a simple red colour - well it would be, being an Italian sports car. I mean, let's be realistic about these hings. And an Italian motoring enthusiast restored it and displayed it. Red.

There it is front and back, and the rather simple interior as well. Sweet little thing. Good lines  and a tiny little motor. I always try to give my car blog readers a look at the engine bay as well as the outside.

But look at what the Fujifilm X-T10 does when there is massive overexposure of red. The camera was operating on Programmed mode at the time and there was a spritz of .5 flash from the EF42...but look at what has become of the external red paint colour. Yellow!

My theory is the sensor just spat the dummy with the over exposure. I am not sure if it would do the same with any other colour, but that will be the subject of a separate series of experiments. I'd call it funky but I'm afraid of inadvertent typographical errors...

* I was a bit disappointed that they used the phrase "Old-Fashioned" as it suggested something with whisky. It turned out to be lemonade...

To check out the Fujifilm X-T10, flash and lenses feel free to come in store and have a play. Or order several on line. They come in silver and black.

Turn The Saturation Up To 11

Impelled by a sense of curiosity, I grabbed a half a dozen or so sample magazines that had been dumped on the lunch table at Camera Electronic and took them home. There were two free sample DVDs included with them so I got to play them as well.

It is a delicate matter for one writer to write about the writings of another writer. It can take on the flavour of undiscriminating fandom...or bitchy jealousy. I tried to look at the mags with an open eye.

It was an eye that watered. Not because of bad journalism or ugly photography - indeed most of the images printed in these magazines were really well done.The main problem was the overpowering intensity of the colour. The saturation, vibrancy, and detail were slid  way over to the right...and that was just in the advertisements. The actual editorial stuff was vibrating sideways off the page. It's hard to do that with a shot of a shingle beach in Yorkshire, but they managed to do it...

Okay. This is in contrast to the Australian Would-Be Professional Photographers Magazine Printed In Singapore. The AWBPPMPIS, as it is known in the trade, has an editorial policy - indeed it has an automatic program - that desaturates every image shown. This is to give an extra sense of drama, professionalism, and retro hip, and to save on the more expensive printing inks. These can be kept in reserve for the advertisements. It's a necessary economy these days. Fortunately web-based publication can still give full rein to the entire sRGB spectrum and the advertisers count on you having the screen set to laser-intensity anyway.

I did enjoy the DVDs - they were bright, simple, and gave a useful bit of information in each section. The fact that the information was aimed at the dumb end of the market is neither here nor there - that is my neighbourhood. Besides, even if you found that they were telling you something that you should have known but didn't, the fact that you could view it unbeknownst to your professional rivals means that you never need to admit to ignorance. Like voting in a federal election - as you are all alone there in the cardboard booth no-one need to know that that you endorse the local wacko party candidate.

Are they as good as the dear old publications of the analog era? Are they, as British magazines, as good as their American or Australia rivals? Yes and no. If they seem heavy on trick photography and computer manipulation, take comfort that you can emulate what they do with the images without the need for plumbing or organic solvent developers. You might fall prey to the occasional blue screen but you won't break out in eczema while doing it.

But they are a signpost to another thought about photographic knowledge - and we'll explore that in the next post.

Going To All The Trouble - With Premier

Now here's a funny one. All you digital photographers out there pay attention because we are going to talk about chemistry. For you.

You thought you got away from it when you purchased your digital camera, didn't you? You figured you could throw away the developing tank and the thermometer and never have to worry about printing again. And then you got tired of just seeing the pictures on the back of the camera and started putting them onto the computer. And then you bought a printer...

Well, we'll gloss over the months you spent trying to get the print to look like the computer screen but you finally popped for a calibrator and a printer profile and paper that was properly made. And then someone told you that you could print on canvas...

Now it is several months and a credit card debt later and you are contemplating your first successful canvas print. Canal Rocks or the ghost gum in the paddock or the skyline from South Perth foreshore has never looked better - even in the 92,000 other evocations from other shooters. Time to make sure that your image remains pristine.

It will encounter UV rays from the sun, chemical attack from the cooking vapours, and mechanical abrasion from all the people who scratch it to see if it is real. ( Take heart - they are the same people who tap the noses of artillery shells to see if anything will happen and with a bit of luck they may do that before they scratch your canvas...). You need to protect your art.

Enter Premier Eco Print Shield. Available in gloss, semigloss, and matte. It forms an acrylic coating over the ink on the canvas and stops any of the detrimental things getting through. You can brush it or spray it on, depending on the volume of work that you are doing. It stretches with the canvas and will not crack. It will not yellow. You can get small tins or big buckets from Camera Electronic. It is the only time you can call us a bucket shop...

You've gone to all the trouble and finally succeeded. Keep that success clean and fresh and you can always take pride in it.

Holga Cameras Zoom In Collector Value...Corner The Market Now...

The announcement a few days ago of the demise of the Holga camera and the stopping of production in China comes as somewhat of a shock for dedicated toy-camera fans.

These roll-film cameras were apparently introduced as a cheap consumer camera for the Chinese in 1981. They shot 120 film but gave the user the choice of film gates for 6 x 6 or 6 x 4.5 images. They were simple, with rudimentary focusing lenses, limited shutter speeds and apertures and a host of quirks.

Some of those quirks included leaking light to the edges of the film and vignetting every shot dramatically. Later models introduced a small electronic flash to the cameras and built-in filter effects. Accessories included some push on lenses and filters. There were a number of colours made. One of the most useful features of the humble Holga was the 1/4" tripod socket at the bottom plate of the camera that took a standard tripod screw. When all else failed, and it frequently did, you could clamp down the Holga and open it up on Bulb and let nature take its course. Or coarse, as the case may be.

The Chinese factory says there are no more products to sell and the moulds for the camera have been thrown away. Perhaps. Chinese moulds are strange creatures and have been known to hide and migrate. But take them at their word and if you want to get one of the last of the Holgas in Perth come down to Camera Electronic and choose your colour.

There's plenty of 120 film in the fridge so you won't lack for operating material - and you might as well go out there and do whatever you can think of. You can't buy a motor-driven version of the camera but you can make Brrrrrm Brrrrrm noises as you shoot it and that's nearly as good.

Holgas were fun and predictably unpredictable and no-one ever took them seriously except the most flippant of photographers. They have been the featured equipment for a few fine-art exhibitions...and not a few custodial-sentence art exhibitions.They never suffered from oil on the sensors or degrading anti-alias filters.

PS: For those of you who have questioned whether this signals the demise of film photography the answer is no.

Good Colour Bad Colour Ugly Colour

The days of putting our films in to the chemist and hoping for some decent prints in a fortnight are long past. We now put our memory cards into the card reader and hope for some decent images in 5 seconds. The time occupied by gnawing anticipation is reduced greatly but we have also lost the consolation of being able to buy a bag of barley sugar sweets even if everything is blurry.

Same with colour. We once got what we were given and liked it. Sometimes we got what we deserved. The cost of colour slide film or colour printing in the film era was considerable - and we did not waste our shots. But what came back was tied to the temperature and purity of the baths in the processor and that could be a mixed bag - and sometimes the technicians loading the machines got it horribly wrong. Ask me about the wedding that vanished...

Nowadays we can get our colour RAW and cook it for ourselves. We can take precautions to prevent all but the direst disaster. Most of our weddings and some of our brides survive. Of course we may be wrong with the colour - that is still a subjective matter for most shoots. We are aided by the mechanisms in modern cameras and can make use of Datacolor colour charts of various types. We can calibrate our monitors and printers and viewing lights and everything. We can desaturate everything and talk up the art of it...fancy footwork can save a bad situation. Try to show the prints in a dark restaurant after a few drinks...

In the end, we need to remember that we are not making real objects - we are making flat images of real objects. We can get 66% of the way to realism but that third dimension kills it. If we are not making a stab at realistic representation we can even throw the 66% away - as long as we can please the viewer.

 Remember that sometimes we can't  - Vincent van Gogh made a dynamite starry, starry night but nobody wanted to buy it then.

The Future Of Darkroom Work

Seven years ago when I came to work in Camera Electronic I did not think I would be able to write that header now. The front of the shop still had a few film cameras and there was a rime of old enlargers around the top of the cabinets, but I could see that little was new nor was it likely to stay. I dedicated myself to learning the new digital age.

I miscalculated. As I type this blog post ( admittedly on a digital computer...) I can see shelves with darkroom chemicals, darkroom printing paper, developing tanks and kits, negative files, and a refrigerator full of fresh film. And every day people come in the front door, take away some of these goods, and pay us for them.

Darkroom work would appear to be going on.

We have supplied some new enlargers to schools that are admittedly basic overseas things that need a fair bit of adaptation for use in Australia - but all the rest of the stuff is perfectly usable. Australian dark is as good as US or UK dark - all you do is block up the windows and door and grope around.

Do the new users of old technology get what they expect from the experience? I hope they do - though I am not sure if they think they are going to find a Holy Grail in the wash water. They may, or may not - I do know that if they do not use enough of it they will eventually lose all their images to fading - I have found out my sins of omission with old negatives.

I cannot say whether the colour darkroom will come back - I suspect not. The technology that made it work was getting better and easier in the 80's and 90's and I lucked onto the last of the easy amateur gear and chemistry. Even than it was poisonous, irritating, and messy. Of course this also describes Christmas lunch with the rellies, but we will gloss over that. Colour printing - good printing - has advanced beyond belief with the advent of the digital inkjet printer and I do not think we gain anything by going back and sticking our fingers in the blix.

So - here's to the continuation of tradition in supply and usage. You cannot poison yourself dead or spend yourself broke on black and white darkroom work and an occasionally you will produce a masterpiece. 

The Difference Between A Self Portrait And A Selfie

The difference between a self-portrait and a selfie can be far more than the equipment that is used for the image - and far more than the location or occasion. It can be the difference between a portrayal and a betrayal.

We are beset or blessed by social media - Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, Blatt, Squeal, Overshare, and Timewastr. We all need photos of ourselves to put on the top or the bottom of the page - or, in the case of one of my FB friends...everywhere including the water tank at the top of the hill. We take selfies for this purpose. The traditional selfie for Japanese tourists is in front of a western monument smiling and making "V" signs with their fingers. The traditional selfie for belly dancers is making duck faces in front of the bathroom mirror. These are accepted as fun things.

The selfies with dead animals are not accepted. Hunt and shoot if you will, and frame your portrait with the dead whatever for your den wall, but be careful that you do not advertise it further. The contumely can be never ending.

The self-portrait is altogether a more serious thing. The photographer has the task of representing themselves to people who will really look at the thing - actual contemplation rather than a quick flick through the FB news feed. The self-photographer would do well to imagine their image printed to a large size and set for viewing in a public gallery - and then to provide an image that rewards that scrutiny. They may chose to reveal or conceal, but they must do it well.

Well - the man in the image seen at the top of this blog post did just that - he thought about himself; his interests, his personality, his external appearance. He considered which colours would look well on him, and would look well framing him. He considered the lighting. As he had the equipment to light a portrait, he used it correctly - he analysed the best angle for main face lighting and put in enough ancillary illumination to support this.

The result is...he looks good. Damned good. He can send this as a small image or frame it as a large one and know that it is a good ambassador for him. He can make a business card for himself with this self-porttrait and people will look at that card more than once. A successful self-porttrait.

PS: I pinched this Gold winner from last night's Mandurah Camera Club competition as well - I thought it a delightful image.

Uncle Dick

Car Show Sunday - Father's Day Coming Up - Photo Opportunity

Okay. This Sunday the 6th of September is Father's Day. If you are a father you have certain privileges granted, one of which is to go out to the Hot Rod Show in Fremantle.

It's held at St. Patrick's school grounds between 10:00 and 4:00 and the entry fee for spectators is quite modrate. there is food and drink and cars and sales stalls and a lot of car enthusiasts to talk to. There will be hot rods and custom cars, so you need to take your camera.

A zoom lens is useful, but make it at the wide end of the range - the cars are sometimes parked close together. I'm going to take a 35mm, 18mm and 14mm prime for my Fujifilm X-E2 and set my camera to take a medium 3:2 jpeg and a RAW file. Just for the fun of it I am going to set the X-E2 jpeg film simulation to Classic Chrome ( which is K----chrome but no-one is allowed to say it...) and then see if I would like to do that to the RAW files later in the computer. If the medium jpegs look good and I commit no serious exposure errors I will just use them for my blogging and dump the RAWs. Don't reel back in horror - Fujifilm jpegs are fabulously good just as they are. Get your shot right and it is RIGHT.

Take a flash as well, or at least remember that you have a pop-up flash on your camera. There are a lot of things that look better if you pop some light in there. If it s a cloudy day you'll have saturated colour anyway but if it has sunny patches you might need a fill-flash.

Please don't paw the cars or have your children standing on the running boards. It's not done at car shows and may get you yelled at - and we don't want angry at a Fathers Day event.

Be prepared for some bright paint jobs - rodders and custom car people are not bound by the same commercial tedium that afflicts the current new-car designer - they can think in Technicolour  and theatrical stripes. They have given themselves permission to have fun, and you can join in on Sunday.

I'll be there - come over and buy me a coffee and talk nonsense.

Uncle Dick

Heading Photo: The yellow coupe. Nothing you can buy new at a car agency today will make you feel as good as this...

Black Or Silver? Where's The Wear?

A recent short video by the Fujifilm company that we saw at the Fujifilm Photowalk Day showed the process of manufacturing their new X-T10 camera. Along with the pictures of the Japanese workers assembling the bodies wearing gloveless rubber fingers - quite a sight - we saw them applying the various coats of paint on the upper body shell of the camera - and THAT was quite a sight.

Quite a process, too, and it also gave food for thought. In some respects it has caused me to question my previous opinions about camera finish.

I remember the days of Leica chrome silver M2 and M3 bodies. Real matt chrome on brass stampings - work long enough with it and you wore through to the underside and saw brass. You were the proud or horrified, depending upon your job. Ditto with the black painted bodies of the period - and the brassing was even more evident.*

Then came the plastic upper casing - Pentax went from chromed brass in their consumer-quality cameras to some form of painted plastic. Good paint, mind - it looked like chrome - but it wore to black or grey. The black cameras from the same firm just looked like black plastic, but when they scuffed you couldn't tell it.

Well, now the Fujifilm X-T1 and X-T10 have come on the scene. The upper and lower casings are metal - and meticulously machined metal at that, Quite a lot of computer and hand work is done before the basic casting becomes the casing. And then begins the saga of the electroplating and spraying. Acid baths, undercoats, multiple paint spray layers and top layers - the end result being either a graphite or silver finish. And the intriguing thought that as we wear these by constant handling , and push on through the layers of finish, we are going to eventually arrive - not at yellow brass - but at silver magnesium. It may be hard to tell with the X-T10 when you actually have gone down to the base. Finally - a finish that will wear as good as it works.

This might mean that finally there is a best choice for finish - and it won't be black. You can fight it out round the back of the camera club all you like about what looks more " professional " in camera colour. Hardly anyone who actually earns money with their cameras gives a damn. They might draw the line at cameras that have mouse ears or Coca-Cola logos but aside from that all they want is to know that the wretched thing works.

*Ask us about the Correspondent's Leica - the Lenny Kravitz one...

Take Me To Your Leader - Rotolux Lands

There is something vaguely alien about the Rotolux RL NEO cine light - particularly when it is mounted on a Cullmann suction mount. You expect it to shuffle along and shoot x-rays out from its eyes...

Well, you can also mount it on your DSLR and video camera or on top of a standard tripod. There's a 1/4" socket on two sides of the circle.

The light is LEDs in two separate circuits - driven from 6 AA cells or an ancillary A?C adapter. The two circuits are to supply two different colours of LED - and there is a mixer panel on the back  to blend the white and the amber. A readout lets you know the exact colour temperature that you are pumping out.

In addition, one of the controls also allows a true-fade of both colour sets - you can accurately supply illumination or fill in any environment. You can also add a set of round filters for further CT adjustment - they are included in the pack.

Note that the light supplied will be a round catchlight for the eyes - good for natural results.

We come in peace...

Red is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart - Panasonic

No reason for this post, except...

Look at the glorious colour of the body on this Panasonic TZ70.

No need to be dull when you photograph bright subjects.

Alice In Wonderland - The Epson Printers Spin On

I have come to terms with printing my digital photos. Where I used to lock myself into a dim room and slop buckets of acidic bleach around in a tank, I now sit in a dim room and poke away at a computer keyboard. The atmosphere is better and there is no clean-up at the end of the evening.

The price is better too - colour chemistry wasn't cheap and paper could be of variable quality. Agfa in their last year of production had coating-line disasters that we only saw when we tried to process the stuff -and sometimes the disaster continued for an entire box of paper.

Well, the new inkjets make this a thing of the past. If you have a monitor that is anywhere near calibrated...and normal inkjet paper...and a simple program like Photoshop Elements, your printing process can be as simple as opening the image file, press 'control' and 'P' and then press 'enter' two more times. Out scoots a postcard print in 30 seconds and you are done.

This is an extreme example of simplicity, based upon the Epson printer managing the colours of an sRGB file, but it does act as a beacon for those mired in the complexities of colour management and conflicting internet computer advice. My Epson R3000 has been superseded in their range by their Surecolor SC-P600...and I think that they have chosen s silly sort of naming structure for this that will be hard for people to remember...but the simple set-up and operation will certainly continue.

The ink management for the new Epson will be a little more straightforward than with my R-3000. Mine asks me for multiple permissions before it will change from gloss to matte black inks or vice versa - the new Surecolor will assess the situation  and change automatically when needed. Not a big thing, but nice to have.

Anyone who has prints made regularly by commercial houses will benefit from looking into the Epson printers. The example of the single postcard print is extreme - most times we print either a run of postcards or a variety of enlargements. The postcard prices from big department store processing can be low but in some cases I suspect that is commensurate with the quality that is turned out. When you print for yourself, you can print it just the way you want it.

Heading picture: Chelsea Bunz and a real rabbit.

Which Colour Space Should You Use?

Here's a question to fill those long lonely nights at the camera club as you sit around the flames of the  blazing digital projector and reminisce about cocking a shutter.

Which digital colour space do you need? The old days ( Elvis, dinosaurs, 50¢ hot dogs...) were easy because you got the colour space the manufacturer handed you and were darned grateful for it. If you loaded Kodachrome you got Hollywood colour and paid a premium - if you shot Afga you got European art colour and watched it turn magenta - and if you purchased Ferrania you wondered where the strange smell was coming from.

Now we are generally given the choice of Adobe RGB or sRGB in our camera menu. The first for printing, the second for computer display, is the general tenor of the advice. Follow it if you like, but we earnestly suggest you investigate other alternatives:

1. FinalYEARstudentRGB

This is a colour space that is so dark and grungy that it feels like reading Kafka on a wet night in Pittsburg. The white portion of the spectrum never gets above the luminance level of a boarding house sheet at the end of the month.

2. CAMeraclubRGB

On the other end of the scale is this colour space that constantly bangs the saturation meter needle off the stops like a machine gun. You wondered why the digital projector started smoking? This is the reason. It comes pre-loaded with a sharpening algorithm that actually hurts the eyes to see.

3. Ilford CIBA RGB

This was first announced in the 1956 British Workingman's Socialist Camera Society Annual and will be ready for final release in about 4 months. From Pentonville.

4. FlapoRGB

Distinctive to the Flapoflex range of cameras, this colour space will not work with anything else. If you offend the clerk who sells it to you, it will not work at all. Mind your tongue.

5. soBRG

The sort of colour space that does everything backwards just to spite you. Slide the controls at your peril.

6. WellnessRGB

As a complete contrast, this is a kind and gentle colour space that lends itself to pastels, soft flowers and fluffy kittens. Actually it has no contrast at all - everything looks as if it was shot through waxed paper. A soothing choice if you can stay awake.

7. The New Colour Space

This is the setting that appears on your camera menu a month after you have set up all the criteria and just started to get used to it. It appears overnight with no indication of what it does - the David Carradine of computer programs. If you select it, it will disappear from the menu again.

There, that was easy. Now we can get on to calibrating your memory card for the northern or southern hemisphere. Complete instructions in the next blog post.

Repainting The Shirley - Or Why You Need A Spyder Checkr 24

We're very lucky down here at 230 Stirling Street - someone built us a test target across the street years ago and we have been using it to compare and contrast cameras, lenses, and filters ever since.

It has a broad face of different coloured panels and thin lines placed both in the center and at the margins - you can determine resolution, distortion, and chromatic aberration easily. It is front-lit in the morning and back-lit in the afternoon.

Sometimes there are human figures displayed to enable you to check portrait bokeh - and occasionally a drunk starts kicking in the phone box in front of it so you can practise your street photography skills as well...

Well, we are going to have to recalibrate it - as you can see the painters are in and there may be changes to the reflectance and chroma of the surfaces. This may take some time, and in the interim we may have to resort to that Datacolor Spyder Checkr 24 targets to do the same thing.

Actually, the Checker 24 is a good thing to take everywhere you go when you shoot. Pop it into the lighting that you are going to use and snap a shot at the start of your photography. Then when you are done, snap another. At home, when you are looking at the files you can tell whether the lighting changed and whether you are going to have to make changes to the balance of the files somewhere in the middle.

The Checkr 24 is small enough that you can dump it into any camera bag - if it saves having a client howl that you did not get the red right, it is a lifesaver.

PS: Aren't the portable cherry-pickers a great idea for painters? I want one of the ones on crawler tracks and I don't even like to do painting!