Motorcycle Mike On His Souped Up Bike

Well, not really - but that was the title of a track by Dave "Diddle" Day in 1957 and the chance to use it may never come again...

Wednesday night at Camera Electronic and we saw what happens when a hot rod guy gets a hot rod camera - in this case Stefan Gosatti and the new Nikon D5. It was a perfect combination.
Stefan was given a chance to try out this brand-new top-of-the-line sports and action camera by Nikon - their high-speed flagship - on the road and on the football field. It was a quick trial but he was just the man who could give an accurate report.

Stefan has used Nikon professional cameras for years with fashion, sports, automotive and product illustration. The bran-new Nikon D5 is the latest evocation of their big full frame DSLR and he got a chance to wring a lot of it out. Not all - by his own admission, there were a lot of new features he did not have time to fully explore...but with the items that pertain to his professional specialties, he was able to go to town.

The prints you see in the small snapshots are from that camera - they are mere reportage representations of what are large, excellent images. Sharp, fast, and with very good colour and dynamic range. And at ISO points that are normally accessed only with oxygen and a nose bleed. While he shot his fast lady on the bike at ISO 6400, the device will go to over 3 million ISO! It's nearly impossible to think of a situation that would not be possible with that sort of camera sensor.

Of course it is never only the sensor - it is the new processor as well.

This also accounts for the rapidity with which the AF system works and the sophisticated nature of the tracking that allows the user to select what he wants to follow and then delivers sharp focus on that in spite of movement and visual interruptions.

It is also the reason that the screen on the new camera can be made to be so convenient for the photographer when it comes time to examine a sequence of shots. The high-speed nature of the shutter and associated buffer and writing circuits mean that a lot of images are going to be stored rapidly - and the photographer needs to be able to access these equally rapidly. Stefan demonstrated a scrolling bar on the LCD screen that runs rapidly through the files, allows you to stop as soon as you see a good one and then zooms, widens and searches throughout the image with the same sort of finger gestures that control smart phones.

The cameras are equipped with twin card slots - and these can be ordered with either two CF card slots or two XQD slots. Readers will be aware that the XQD cards are faster than the CF cards by a fair margin, but are more costly. Of course, a lot of people will have lots of CF cards already, so these can be utilised straight away. Camera Electronic can supply CF-ready D5 cameras right now - either in sales or rental form. XQD can be ordered but may take a little while to arrive. People who get one type and change their mind about it can have the camera converted here in Australia to the other sort for a fee.

Speaking of two different items - apparently the D5 will also produce 2 different forms of JPEG files as well as the NEF file type.

Well, they are not cheap. You can see the price on our on-line store or ring up the staff and discuss it. Think in terms of about $ 8900. If you are in the business of doing the sort of photography that these cameras do, that money is a business investment. If you are dabbling but have that sort of figure available to play with you can be assured that you will have an instrument that cannot be bettered for high-speed action photography. You'll need to put good Nikon lenses out the front and they will also cost money.

PS; No motorcyclists were injured and no laws were broken in the making of the pictures, but apparently half the dress blew off. Makes your afternoon photographing Canal Rocks sorta slow, doesn't it?

For all orders on the Nikon D5 please call in or follow the links on-line.

Canon Is Out To Launch - Part One

Plan of Attack Number One:

Northbridge Hotel, 210 Lake Street North Perth.

Thursday the 25th of February, 2016

6:00 PM

Rendezvous with representatives of Canon Australia, Camera Electronic, and Andrew Ritchie.

See launch of new Canon EOS 1DX Mk II camera. Hear Andrew discuss his work and experience with this new equipment. Watch videos. Take notes and price lists.

Eat and drink. Be merry.

Discuss pre-order price with Camera Electronic staff. Loosen wallet. Open it and blow cobwebs off credit card. Put down deposit on new camera. Chortle inwardly.

Go home and plan out new profitable shooting at weddings, sports, fashion, studio, and events. Make sure lenses are cleaned and ready to go. Get extra invoice forms ready for new clients. Stand in front of mirror and practise sneering at other shooters who do not have the new camera. Chortle openly...

Yes, Folks, it is new model time at Canon Australia and the new Canon EOS 1 DX Mk II debuts next Wednesday at the Northbridge. This is the seriously fast and professional new Canon camera that is at the top end of the action and sports list. This is the one the pro agencies require of you. Now that there is a new one, they will soon specify it. Beat them to the punch - order one now and pay a deposit for the best price.

You know who you are and you know why you need this camera...bless you. Come on down and watch the presentation and get a feeling for the gear.

Note RSVP to CE so that they have the refreshments ready....

A Lot Faster Than I Can Write - The Question Of Me Vs The Card

Things these days get faster and faster ( except the lines at Coles and Woolies out near my house...) and the cards we sell for memory are no exception.

Currently in stock I see speeds from 25 MB/second up to 280MB/second - of course there are different capacities in the cards and not all types of card are in all speeds, but there is a fair spread of specification - one would think enough to suit all needs.

I have been advised by one of the company writers for the camera system I use to get the fastest possible card - his reasoning is that it allows me to access all the arcane features of the camera. I expect he is right, but up until now the thing has not been an issue.

Studio shooting is slow. An hour to set a scene is lightning work. Some set-ups are the entire morning and a complete day is not unknown. It was a day that had coffee, pastries, cocktails, and language - but was ultimately successful. In the end the speed of the card was irrelevant. Actually the cocktail was faster.

The computer is the next choke-point for information. Mine is an older iMac and I suspect that it, and the reader in use, restrict the flow to about 35 MB/second anyway. If the card in use is able to discharge at a considerably faster speed, I don't know it. Downloading for he number of images I take is not an onerous process anyway.

But.

You might have considerably different needs. You might shoot at high speed and have to send your data down into your devices and out to the world in split seconds. You might shoot 500 images of one subject before you get it right and are unable to bring yourself to discard 499 of them before you store it away...I've seen people like that on those intervention television shows...They are the ones with rooms full of hard drives and laundry baskets full of single socks...

So don't do as I do; use old, cheap cards and only shoot 50 shots per day...come in and buy some of the super-speed types with far greater capacity. They are good value and reliable. And if you upgrade your computer you will be able to go faster anyway.