Hot Lights A Go Go

What is the appeal of the hot light? What? How can anybody love a lighting system that makes a studio hotter in January? That needs specially-ventilated light shapers to work. That makes the metal snoots so hot they smell like the grille at Alfred's Kitchen? What is the deal with hot lights?

Well it is June and the weather is getting colder, and if you are in a studio right now the constant light can be a bit of comfort. It is not as good as a reverse-cycle Fujitsu set to 27º but it goes a little way to heating the place. And the metal snoot? Well, you can heat that to welding temperature with the modelling light of at the average mono block anyway - learn to direct the head of the light by using the handle at the back instead of grabbing the light modifier at the front.

The real deal with the hot/constant light is that you can see what you get. If you are training students to see what their lighting is actually doing, or if you yourself find the leap of faith between a modelling light and the end result is a little too far to make, then the constant light is the answer. It pours out through whatever modifier you choose exactly as it is. You change your ISO and white balance to match the output - about 3200º to 4000º Kelvin - and your camera is happy.

There is the fact that other sources of illumination will also make themselves felt in the final exposure...much more so than with the fast impulse and brightness level of the electronic flash...and you may have to take them into account. Hot lights work best in a darkened studio.

But here is the delightful kicker - continuous lighting is perfect for videos. If you choose a set of lights that have no noise associated with them, you can film and record sound at the same time with no interference. Even with the lights that do have some sound - they may have a slight buzz from the internal transformers or whirr from cooling fans - it is generally kept down to such a low level that professional microphones can be positioned to ignore it.

Constant light sources can be large halogen lamps, incandescent lamps, fluorescent tubes, large LED panels, and banks of smaller LED lights. In some cases the housings are fitted with dimmers or rheostats that allow you to vary the brightness of the light without changing the basic white balance. Or there are arrangements in the multiple panels to turn on and off different portions of the bank.

Note that I may have inadvertently led you astray...and that is a pun...because the LED panels can run even cooler than strobe lights while maintaining a daylight balance. The nice thing about many LED panels and large single LED lights is that they are also operable upon battery power - the ubiquitous rechargeable lithium-ion batteries can be banked up to provide full constant lighting in the field.

Camera Electronic has always had some examples of these lights - whether they are Profoto, Elinchrom,  Jin-Bei, Metz, Lume-Cube or LEDGO, there is a variety to suit most purses and light outputs, from full studio high-intensity mono blocks shooting through dedicated soft boxes to tiny banks of LEDS that attach to cell phones.

It's cooler weather now - time to come in and experiment. Video students especially welcome.
www.cameraelectronic.com.au

Film 101 - Or How To Read The Fridge Before You Raid The Fridge

Some of our new clients are students and come to us with sheets of instructions from their schools - list of things to buy for their course. This is undoubtedly helpful to them as long as the writers of the lists are up-to-date in the trade and not given to impish humour. I would be quite the wrong person to write these as I would be sending the poor little students out looking for wooden plate cameras and Polachrome 35mm film...

When they come to see us the film requirements are pretty basic - 35mm rolls of either 125 ISO or 400 ISO black and white film seems to start off. Later they progress to colour via various means, but initially it is simple stuff.

But even here they can stumble on the variety of B&W films. Herewith some small clarifications:

a. 35mm film is sometimes marked as "135 film". It's a traditional thing and really the film is quite the same.

b. You can get B&W film from Ilford, Kodak, Fujifilm, and Rollei. The two first are most common. If someone sends you out for Ansco or Perutz or Gevaert they are practicing on you. Treat them with withering scorn.

c. Ilford Delta and standard Ilford are both B&W films but they are made differently. The Delta will give a finer grain but sometimes needs a different developer or developing time than the standard FP4 or HP5.

d. Ditto for Kodak T-Max and the older Kodak Tri-X. T-Max has finer grain than Tri-X. Careful with the boxes as Kodak has made these look somewhat alike.

e. We keep 'em cold because we keep 'em for months. You'll be using them up fast so you needn't refrigerate them.

Now for the colour section remember that your instructors will send you out for either colour negative film or colour transparency film.

a. Any Kodak or Fujifilm colour film name that ends with "chrome" is transparency film.
This can include Velvia, Ektachrome, Provia, or others.

b. Any film box that lists E-6, or AP44, or CR-56 processing contains colour transparency film.

c. American film is color film and Australian film is colour film. Semantics and national pride - the film is the same.

d. Ektar, Fujicolor NPH or NPC, Portra 160 or Porta 400 are colour negative films.

e. Any box that lists C-41 contains colour negative film.

The good news is that they all work and if you get your exposure right they work well. We used them for decades before the advent of digital and some of us still use them for specific jobs.

Your quota of good shots is three per 36-exposure cassette and one of these will be worth keeping. By the end of your course you may be able to recognise it.

Good Laud - We List the Canon AIPP Annual Awards

The annual event that Canon and the AIPP conduct to examine and display the work of Australian photographers has just been concluded. There are a number of divisions in which they consider photography can be divided and there are awards for the leading Australian practitioners - and one for an international person. It's a big ist, but the people who make it are the best for this year - take it as a good hint to look up their work and see why they have received the plaudits of their peers.

If you're in the market to hire anyone for photography...well this is also a pretty good shopping list of people - but remember that you're looking at the Paris end of Collins Street...

So, to the list. Please note that the Canon company's name is linked to the AIPP in each case.

1. Canon/AIPP Australian Photographer of the year - James Simmons
2. Canon/AIPP Creative Photographer of the year - Kirsten Graham
3. Canon/AIPP Wedding Photographer of the year - James Simmons
4. Canon/AIPP Family Photographer of the year - Kelly Brown
5. Canon/AIPP Portrait Photographer of the year - Peter Rossi
6. Canon/AIPP Illustrative Photographer of the year - Keren Dobia
7. Canon/AIPP Birth Photographer of the year - Victoria Berekmeri
8. Canon/AIPP Documentary Photographer of the year - Anthony McKee
9. Canon/AIPP Science, Environment, Nature Photographer of the year - Joshua Holko
10. Canon/AIPP Landscape Photographer of the year - Ricardo Da Cunha
11. Canon/AIPP Travel Photographer of the year - Nick Rains
12. Canon/AIPP Sports Photographer of the year - Matt Palmer
13. Canon/AIPP Commercial Photographer of the year - Aran Anderson
14. Canon/AIPP Fashion Photographer of the year - Peter Coulson
15. Canon/AIPP Advertising Photographer of the year - Matthew Everingham
16. Canon/AIPP International Photographer of the year - Luke Edmonson
17. Canon/AIPP Photography Book of the year - Peter Eastway
18. Canon/AIPP Album Photographer of the year - Nadine Saacks
19. Canon/AIPP Australian Tertiary Institute of the year - Photography Studies College
20. Canon/AIPP Emerging photographer of he year - Adam Williams
21. Canon/AIPP Student Photographer of the year - Jacqui Hogan
22. Canon/AIPP Highest Scoring Print - Kelly Gerdes

Thats a powerful lot of awardin'...

I noted the category of Birth Photographer and wish to accord Victoria an especial degree of respect. Never mind all the other camera businesses - she is the one in this list that is concerned with the essential part of life - and it is a tough time for everyone in the place. If she can cope with new babies, new mothers, new fathers, and old theatre sisters and get the top spot for Australia she is the star at the top of the tree as far as I am concerned. Yay!

And congratulations and an increase of business to all the other winners.

Play A Game Of Checkrs With Datacolor

I love my colour reference board. I use it in my studio when I am trying to get an exact reproduction of the colours of  model cars. Then I distort the heck out of them with Photoshop Elements, but that is beside the point - I start out clean and clear.

Mine's an old model made by a respected old manufacturer. It was made while Elvis was alive but is still going strong - as it gets stored carefully in the dark between uses*. It cost me a surprising amount of money back then and I am glad it is still going strong - I like to get value for money.

Well, if you would like to get better value than that right now in a colour/B&W reference card may we suggest the Datacolor Spyder Checkr 24. It is made in a lot sturdier material than my old one and in a more convenient size - 5 x 7. You can haul it in any camera bag for a quick ref shot in every new situation.

There is also a downloadable SpyderCheckr camera calibration software and support materials note on the sleeve that protects the panel. Not sure what they expect you to do but all I have ever done is look carefully at the results on the Polaroid/print/screen image and then take appropriate measures. Call it chromatic blundering into the furniture, if you will, but so far it has worked.

$ 65 means you CAN afford this.

* If they had stored Elvis in the dark between uses he might still be going strong too.

We Love Photography - We Hate Cockroaches

You can be forgiven for wondering at the conjunction in the title - our shop slogan with crawling insects. Leaving aside speculation about the characters of the sales staff, I can explain.

Someone in the shop asked me how I got good results for belly dance photographs and images of model cars. I think they wanted me to tell them a secret of a special lens or a special light - an item they could buy to improve their own pictures. I was delighted to tell them the secret, but it did not involve selling a piece of equipment - it involved selling an idea. And the price was cheap.

The real way to get good images of anything - cars, cockroaches, brides, or belly dancers - is to either love or hate the basic subject. You can choose for yourself which emotion you fancy, and you can freely switch between them as you like - provided you really do care one way or the other.

If you don't - either through general lack of interest in any topic or burnout from long exposure to it - any pictures you make will show this. And the people seeing those pictures will perceive that disinterest. That's a powerful clue for them to let them know how they should react to your work, and they will comply readily. If you don't care, they won't either, and you have wasted everybody's time.

I think this is a pretty good explanation for a number of photographic books and monographs that I have seen in bookstores in Melbourne over the years. The old Printed Image bookstore in Prahran had shelves of them - the NGV bookstores at the main gallery or their Federation Square branch are also pretty good ...errr...dump bins. Okay, not every picture book is Cowboy Kate but some of the depths of banality that are plumbed by small publishers...

Not talking about vanity photo books or self-publishing here - the things that we make of our holiday snaps or our hobbies. These actually have some substance - the audience may be limited to a family, club, or individual, but the book is often intense and treasured. At least the thick ones can be used to swat cockroaches with.

Heading image: Thanx to Jane and Henri

Students! - No More Naked Lenses!

I know you are a struggling student and I know you have no money and I know you are trying to make great art with your Canon DSLR...and I have a great idea for you.

Stop looking at the internet and the camera magazines and the secondhand cabinet. Count over your pennies, give up drinking at the student tavern for a week, and come in and get yourself a Canon 50mm F 1.8 EF lens and the proper accessories for it.

The proper accessories are a UV filter to protect the front of the lens from the fingers of your fellow students and a lens hood to protect your images from light flare. It is okay to have flair in your images, but not flare...

The 50 is about the most accurate small lens you will ever find for your little Canon - and remember that it is a red-dot lens and can go onto your Canon 1Dx when you become an international iconic superstar. It has great bokeh and can also make the background blurry, depending on which school you go to. It does good portraits so try to make friends with the good-looking students. It also does good art copy, so you can add the artists to your list.

It is light and fast. If you are trekking in the mountains with your Canon DSLR, or just fleeing from the authorities through dense bush, you'll appreciate not having to carry extra weight.

Best of all, the whole box and dice that you see on the heading image is only $ 169.45 complete with a year's warranty. No, you can't have a discount - that is cheap as chips as it is. You can get your normal 10% discount on ink, paper, film and chemistry.

Note to the non-student: the 50mm lenses of any manufacturer are generally the bargains of their respective ranges. They are, by now, probably the most developed of the glass, and can be the most accurate lenses in any lineup. YOU need one too.

Do A Friend A Favour - Promaster 2500 PK

If you are a regular reader*of this blog, it is unlikely that you will need this product. But you most likely are a source of inspiration and advice about photography for many other people. Nieces, nephews, sons and daughters, workmates etc. - they all depend upon you to steer them right when it comes to image making.

They are fortunate in that you are a real person, rather than just an electronic name on a screen. They can get rumours and rants all day in the photography forums and come away as confused as when they started. Much of what they read will be nonsense pushed at them anonymously - with no way to check up on it. In many cases, you - the real photo enthusiast or professional - are the Snopes for them - you can sort out fact from fiction.

So - you've got a student who needs a 35mm SLR to start a Uni or TAFE course. You can send them to the photo markets in Leederville to pick up what they might find - or to Cash Converters to pick up what others have found...Or you can send them in to us to poke disconsolately at the secondhand shelf in the window...

Or you can tell them about the Promaster 2500 PK. They are brand new and carry a full year's warranty. They are a standard-issue copy of what probably started as a Minolta design but has taken on some aspects of the old film Pentax cameras. It certainly has a Pentax K mount, thought I am willing to bet the f:1.7 lens is closer to a Rokkor than a Takumar.

No matter - the camera is well-built, has an accurate TTL meter, and the full complement of late-model manual features. Perfect to learn the trade on.

And there is - wonder of wonders - a retro 1980's fitted leatherette case included in the kit.

This is one of the best things a student can use, save mature judgement, and that generally doesn't arrive until they are about 30 and sorry for it. In any case, do your little friend a favour and send them into us to get one of these for their course.

Uncle Dick

* Not regular? All Bran.

Two Chances Only For A Unique Studio Softbox

Starting a studio? Going to try video for the first time? Need a softbox for your speed light?

All good questions that a new studio enthusiast or student might ask themselves - and there are two good answers sitting out on the floor in the CL sale right now - you'll have to be fast because there are ONLY two.

The first is a speed ring that has an integral 1/2" studio stand mount attached to it and a cold-shoe mount for standard portable speed lights at the back. Not a flimsy outfit - this is meant as a demo and display unit and really will last for a century. The speed ring is colour-coded for the CL softboxes, of which we have many and they are all on 50% off sale.

The second is the same speed ring but with a solid mount and an Edison-screw socket mounted ready to take a standard light bulb - or a stronger photo light if you can find one. It would be perfect as a soft fill for video as it will be silent.

Two only - come and get 'em.

A Little Gem - With Promaster

Every year about this time the student trees come awake. All around campuses here in Perth the little student buds pop out and start to swell, as they get ready to absorb the wisdom of their teachers.

To do this, for many years the students were told to go out and buy a 35mm film SLR. This was seen as the common instrument of the art and was likely to have enough of the complexities associated with it to occupy them while the autumn came on. The difficulty of it was the fact that at the time that institutions were demanding this sort of camera, the manufacturers were abandoning it for the digital SLR.

We had a steady trade in 2008-2009 for secondhand Pentax K-1000 bodies and 50mm lenses - and were hard pressed to find enough secondhand ones to supply. It was no better if you looked for Canon or Nikon- the long run of these cameras had finally come to an end and the students were scrabbling for the equipment they needed.

I am not certain if this year will see the same requirements - I suspect that the teaching institutions must eventually change their lists to some extent to accommodate the new reality of digital photography. If they come this year at least we have a new item to offer them.

The Promaster people have commissioned a standard 35mm SLR called the 2500PK Super. Thats a Pentax K mount there, an inbuilt TTL meter, 1-1/2000 shutter, and a PC socket as well as the hot shoe. A pretty good looking 50mm f:1.7 lens and double exposure over-ride for when you get to the arty stage. Vertical shutter with 1/125 synch. In short, just what the student needs - and brand new in the bargain.

$ 349, and it should work for decades. in-store now. By the time the students are starting to bloom, there should be quite a few of these out there in use.

Final thought - after the students have budded, bloomed, fruited, and been picked, where do they throw the dried husks?

Uncle Dick