New Leica Cabinet Installed In Murray Street - Revolutionary Unique Design

Which is a blatant lie. It's a Leica Boutique cabinet - it looks the same as the Leica Boutique cabinet in the Stirling Street store. Which looks the same as the Leica Boutique cabinets in Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, and probably every other major city in the world. Black MDF cabinet, red interior, red dot on top.

Leica are smart people - and I am not talking just about the cameras and lenses and binoculars...they are smart with their branding. They realised early on that they had a name that was worth putting on a banner and were careful to cut the banner the same size for everywhere and put it on the same pole. As a business strategy it is akin to a national government deciding on a flag and making sure that it is seen everywhere. It re-enforces loyalty, and in this case it re-enforces the sort of loyalty that the customers actually want to pay for.

Brilliant.

Of course, each manufacturer has a characteristic colour combination, and you'll see that used in advertising and signage. The more adventurous ones have a bright colour that attracts the eye so that people snap to their displays in the shops. These days, they can repeat the hue on their packaging so that every discarded box becomes a free billboard. If they are bold they can make a logo physically bigger on the packaging or...gasp...on the product itself.

It can backfire...think back to the Minolta logo when it got all arty in the 1990's and people were hard pressed to figure out what it actually was...and that also meant that they were confused as to who Minolta were*. You can surrender to the blandishments of the design department a little too early.

It can be too conservative - harking back to the design styles of the film eras can be dangerous too. There is a major maker that has several logos in operation right now dealing with different divisions of their overall company that could look at this aspect - some of the brand presentation looks decidedly 1970's. It might be argued that the division of business that they are dealing with also harks back to the 1970's so the buyers of the goods would not be influenced by a modern logo. Perhaps this is the case, but I am glad to see that they have adopted a far more stylish nameplate for their newer cameras and lenses.

But they did not choose a bright colour combination. It will remain to be seen if their presentation can grab the casual shopper's eye.

Well, back to the Leica Boutique. The Murray Street shop walls are now complete and the stock that you see in there will be designed to appeal to the high-end buyer. I noted that the titanium M kit was there this week. Pick one up on the way home from the office...And there are no end of lenses that will be making an appearance.

One particularly attractive bit was on the island display - and you need not spend the annual budget of Brazil to buy it. If you are a Leica shooter treat yourself to an oversize shutter release button in one of a number of styles. They screw into the shutter button as it currently exists and make for smooth and comfortable shooting. I use one on a camera when I am doing waist-level shots at car show. I press it with my thumb and the shots are rock-steady.

* To be fair, a lot of people couldn't stop themselves from calling it " Minololta ".

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

Tilting The Screen

Older members of the readership will remember the 1980 movie " Flash Gordon " with the fight between Flash and the hawk men on a tilting tabletop. It was a pivotal point in my life...pun intended... as it was the first concrete illustration of the university education system I had ever seen. I still have Flash backs...

Well, university aside, the tilting tabletop is the best way to understand the new LCD screen mechanism on the Pentax K-1.

We've seen LCD screens in various forms since the inception of digital photography and they have gotten bigger, brighter, more detailed, and more useful all along. A few years ago they started to move - makers attached them to panels that swung out to the side of the camera. Then the panels were made to swivel at the same time and eventually they got to the point where they could go from being turned into the body of the camera to pointing straight forward.

Not content with this, other makers made the screens tilt - up, down, and eventually right forward again. It was all very good, but it really was only a help when the care was held in the landscape orientation - if you went to portrait position you still had to peer sideways and wonder.

An aside. Old Hasselblad and Rollei photographers like me can peer sideways like owls. We had to do it with the waist level finders on the old film cameras and we've developed the knack. Still makes us look silly, though.

Okay. Pentax have taken a leaf from the makers of some monitor screens and attached the LCD assembly to the back of the new K-1 camera with four struts. This means it can go in far more positions for viewing without being stuck out of the side of the camera on a flimsy plastic swivel. You can sight through it in portrait mode without twisting your neck off. No small advantage in candid photography and an absolute godsend in tripod work in a studio. Note: once it goes to the end of he swivel arms it tilts up even further.

I get the feeling that Pentax designers are human beings who take their own pictures in real life with their own design of cameras. And they pay attention to how their own hands work and how they feel. Let us all applaud them with our hands.

Then let us dive this hands into our pockets and fish up a wallet. This camera is in the shop right now - come play with it or order it on-line.

Fully Equipped Olympus Pen F - Lock And Load!

A few posts back I said the Olympus Pen F was going to succeed for a number of reasons  - and alluded to the styling of the camera. Here's a closer breakdown of what that means in ergonomic terms.

The camera pictured is in Camera Electronic now - the illustration pictures were taken on the shelves and don't show all the care that a studio shot might...but the enthusiasts who see the camera in the shop will still get to experience the design. Some people will be immediately attracted to it without really being able to tell why. Here's a few clues:

1. Your hand has to go somewhere and do something. This is the extra hand grip of the Pen F - taken from two angles. Finally enough heft to suit the grip of the average westerner without pinching their fingernails or giving them cramp. The back-of-camera thumb rest is also big enough to provide the opposition to this hand rest - you won't need an ancillary thumb rest. Note for panorama shooters - the tripod socket hole is in about the same position as the sensor, which is a great geometric help.

2. SLR film shooters expected to be able to check the depth of field at the working aperture by stopping down the lens with a preview button or lever. This was either on the camera or on the lens - but it was up the front - not down the back or in a menu. The Olympus Pen F has a DOF preview button at the front right body panel - exactly where we have come to expect it. It will get used more that way.

3. If you are going to have a DOF button on the right, don't confuse the right hand with a lens release button on the right as well - put it on the left. Also make it stand out visually and look good. Here is Olympus' answer - extend the chrome land of the lens mount out to the right and put a large button in it.

4. Have you ever picked up a dozen different digital cameras and tried to figure out where the designer has put the on/off button? And failed in about 40% of the cases? This is something that confronts sales staff every time a new model comes in. Leaving aside the novelty of the camera that turns itself on when you twist the zoom ring, most of the others either have a finger switch under the shutter button or a separate button somewhere o the top of the casing ...in amongst a forest of video, function, compensation, and pickled herring dispenser buttons. Hold your breath and press something and hope for the best...

Olympus are smart. For years their OM cameras have turned on with a lever on the left hand side - initially associated with a film rewind crank. No more film, no more rewinding, and the only cranks are the ones who operate the cameras...but Olympus have seized upon that portion of the top plate to put a positive knurled knob with an on/off switch that really does let you see that it is on or off. If it pays visual homage to a knurled film rewind knob, so much the better.

5. If you remember the screw-mount Leicas you are as old as this writer. Congratulations. You also remember Sabrina and cheap Australian brandy. But come back to the SM Leica. The slow-speed dial was frequently put onto the right front panel of the body where it could influence the escapement train for the shutter. Same on Leotaxes and Niccas.

Well, Olympus have decided to echo this memory by putting one of the colour control centres on this same position. You'll have to modify the number of commands that this dial can generate by flicking over the toggle switch under the top mode dial, but it will be worth it as you can fiddle with the tone curves no end. The fact that you can do it without pressing into a back menu is likely to encourage you to do it far more often. Keep fiddling - eventually you will stop being Nero and come closer to being Paganini.

6. 4 C spots on the mode dial. 4 Custom channels, accessible from outside with a thumb and forefinger. No button pushing. Again, you are far more likely to make use of a facility if the operation is facile.

7. Big rubber-covered eyepiece at the northwest corner of the map. Can-shaped design to the housing...more for effect than operation, I suspect, but it does echo a lot of older professional equipment. A visual echo calls as much as a vocal one, and buyers have eyes as well as ears.

These cameras, in silver as well as black, are ins tock right now. Please look at our on-line store for pricing and please come in and heft one if you can. They are set to become a modern classic.

Pen F: Currently on display and available in store with limited amounts

The Two-Tone Car Problem For Camera Designers

Two-tone cars were 1950's in North America and 1960's in mainland Australia. Any decade now they will become popular in Tasmania, and the Dulux store in Hobart is stocking up big on Brunswick Green and Oxford Cream.

The paint schemes in the 50's changed as years went by. Where pink/charcoal grey sold well one year, turquoise/white scored big the next. The trick to clearing all the older models was to have just enough of them before the new schemes were presented and the public ran over to buy them. Designers and marketing teams conducted massive research campaigns in an effort to predict just what would appeal to the masses - one bad colour combo in the fall and you had thousands of dollars slumped on the lot next spring - and then had cars that went out at bucket prices as a result.

Japanese camera manufacturers are in the same boat today - they need to accurately predict what will cause the buyers to foam at the wallet and they need to nail it a couple of years in advance. If the big makers sometimes seem to be running a footrace with each other design-wise, it is probably because they have invested millions on market research and ninja spies. Even then, they can get it " not -necessarily-to-their-advantage " ...to quote a famous son of heaven. Sometimes they get it wrong big time and frankly, Scarlett, the public doesn't give a damn.

Smart firms pay attention to their fans and their wannabe fans. Fujifilm apparently does, and monitors the rumour site that hovers round their brand name. Let us hope that the others do so as well, so that they can give the rest of the trade good gear to sell. We can all benefit from the cautionary tale of the three-toned schemes that Packard tried on their 50's vehicles.

Packard? Did they make cars? Wasn't that Petri? I know they made dishes...