New class of camera

June has seen the announcement of a new class of camera - the medium-format mirrorless model. Fittingly, Hasselblad have been the first in the field with it. It will have a new range of lenses and a new set of tasks to do. The owners may find themselves taking it further away from the environment that the other Hasselblad digital cameras normally occupy.

Mind you, sometimes the current Hasselblad digital cameras are flying through the air or swimming under the water, so that must count as venturesome. And then there were the Hasselblad film cameras that NASA used to take moon pictures...close up... and that was a fair ways outside the studio...

But how about back inside the studio? The slim line of the bodywork on the new camera is more than just a convenient shape - it is suggestive of the sort of thing that may come. And I am thinking specifically of the size and shape of a dedicated studio camera with view camera movements.

Hasselblad may not have this on their minds at all. But it is not to say others don't - readers with an interest in the studio camera will remember that Fujifilm made a series of 6 x 8 studio cameras in the last of the film era that incorporated bellows and rise, fall, and tilt movements. All this while making room for a reflex mirror. I can attest to them being a very well-built device - I was tempted in the old Melbourne Camera Exchange days to invest in a kit, and I do regret not trying one out in the studio.

Ah. well, that was film and this is digital....and by the looks of the bodywork on the new Hasselblad it is slim enough to contemplate being part of a back standard in a view system. With an integral sensor and LCD on either side of the body, and provision for movement of a lesson the front standard, we have a digital version of that 6 x 8.

I wonder if this can have exercised the design minds at Fujifilm? Rumour has it that they will also make a medium format mirror-less digital in the future. Would they see the professional illustration market as a viable niche to enter? I can only hope.

See the Hasselblad X1D on the Camera Electronic site here

Tiny Studio - Little Lensing With Cullmann, Pentax, And The newsagent

Most of us in the trade have seen the Pentax Q7 camera - but sometimes we have failed to see it in it's true light. It is a tiny little studio camera - for tiny little studios.

Like most cameras, it has a number of white balance points - so you can adapt it to any sort of constant light source. Unlike many really tiny cameras, it has a standard hot shoe connector on top - so you can trigger studio strobes through a PC cord or a radio trigger.

It has controls that can be accessed easily from the outside - and a logical arrangement of them. It takes the standard SD cards. It has a an adequate battery.

And it is bright yellow. An important feature - this is a camera that cheers you up. You can ignore some of the funny features like the dial on the front that give you four colour looks. Unless you love one of them.

As the sensor is small, the interchangeable lenses of the system can have a short focal length for their angular coverage. Result? Great depth of field. Print to A4 and you'll be delighted with the results. Remember this camera has RAW so you might even opt to go bigger.

Now combining this clever little camera with a Cullman Copter tripod - or any of the Cullmann tabletop kits - means you have the core of a great tiny studio. Add a set of three lights from ( Gasp!) IKEA  - the ones on gooseneck stands - and go to your local newsagent for several big sheets of drawing board. Get white, black and grey.

Find yourself a table, some books to prop the backboard sheet up with, and light up! You have a great start to a tabletop business. Those terrific little Pentax binoculars are taken with the Q7 Pentax.

The reason this post concentrates on the small is because of a conversation with another photographer on the weekend who admired my full-size studio but bemoaned the fact that his housing agents wouldn't let him have the same sort of structure in his flat. Well, if your studio folds up into a suitcase you can snap your fingers at the agents - art can succeed in spite of space.

It Never Happened - But We Were Absolutely Prepared Anyway

As the owner of a perfectly good set of digital cameras and lenses ( Fujifilm, as it happens.)
it might seem foolish of me to complain of what might have been in other times. Let's face it, when the photography world rolled round from silvered plates to glass sheets to flexible films to little weeny electric sensors there were a lot of things that could have happened, but didn't.

The two I mourn were the film cassette-shaped digital converter that was promised and the cheap 4" x 5" digital sensor.

The first came out as a mock-up and set of promises at an America photo and electronics show and got into the American photo press at the time. Apparently it was going to allow us to make digital cameras out of our 35mm film cameras. It sank without a trace and none of the lifeboats have yet washed up on shore. Our senior technician has assured me it would never have worked but that is little comfort - I WANTED it to work.

The promise of a cheap digital sensor for the 4" x 5" studio camera was also mooted at the time. We were told that things were set to become cheaper all the time in an exponential curve and that oriental manufacturers would ride in with a $ 25 sensor back for the Linhof and we would get 5000 megabyte files for free...Yeah, that happened big time. Let me show you the unicorn  pictures I took with the free plastic prototype that came in the Wheaties packet...

It is no different in the car world. That automatic plastic road that had the jet car with the bubble top in which I was scheduled to zoom to work while playing cards seems to have been mysteriously delayed - I do manage with a Suzuki Swift on Berwick Street and I pass my time dodging cyclists and wandering pedestrians.

I think the debt of gratitude that I owe to the advertisers of future marvels is starting to accumulate interest...