The Long Lens Inside - The Saga Of The Fujifilm Continues

If you read most of the photographic press that deals with interchangeable lenses for DSLR and mirror-less cameras you'll see much the same recommendations about choices. It's not conspiracy - it's sensible agreement. Being photographers we are free to be neither sensible nor agreeable - and sometimes it pays off big-time.

The books all talk about long lenses being the sensible choice for motor sports, surfing, field sports, wildlife, and aircraft photography. I've not gone in for a great deal of these subjects, but when I have the advice was good. You need long focal lengths to bring in lions and Tiger Moths - you also need bright light. Anything less is going to be a failure.

Oh yes? Well what if you get an assignment to take pictures at a Halloween dance show in Fremantle -at the Fly By Night hall on High street. That's a picture from the mezzanine balcony at the head of the column. Great place to prop up during a performance as you are in no-one's way, but a long way from the stage...Note: The establishing shot is a Fujifilm 18mm f:2.

Enter the Camera Electronic Rental Department and the 100-400mm Fujinon zoom lens - the big boy in their lineup. Widest aperture is f: 4.5-5.6 but it has a dynamite optical stabilization circuit inside and an extremely smooth focus. The support shoe and rotating ring are also super-professional.

I bolted the lens onto a Manfrotto 234 monopod tilting head and in turn supported that with my Manfrotto carbon fibre monopod. Sitting on a chair up there in the gods at the Fly meant that I was stable and the lens was too. I could even grip the monopod with my knees if I needed to busy my hands elsewhere and the whole assembly stayed upright. I love tripods in the studio but am starting to love the manfrotto monopod more when I am out an about - so much less hassle but still great stability.

Okay, it's dark in there, and the stage lights are good but still not the same as sunlight. ISO up to 6400 on a Fujifilm E-X2 is as high as you want to go, but fortunately it was high enough to work. Really fast dancers blurred, but slower ones came in well. And the transition from landscape to portrait orientation couldn't have been smoother - I just kept the lock knob turned off and rotated at will all night long.

The job was a lot of fun - Halloween brings out the theatre in people and if they are good actors, singers, and dancers to start with it is all that much better under stage lighting.

Note: If you've got a job that needs long coverage think about talking to the Camera Electronic Rental Department. They've got faster lenses for other systems as well, or if you would like to try the latest and best from Fujifilm, ask to see the X-T2 with this lens. You could even add a teleconverter to push it out to 600mm.

Performers, Nina, Richell, and Jenier. Thank you for a great night, ladies.

Sirui For The Club Person - Part Three

Far be it from this column to suggest that photographers go armed in public - that sort of behaviour gets you into trouble with the magistrates, and rightly so. Still, it can be a comfort when taking pictures at a family Christmas party or a wedding to carry a stout club with a metal end. You never can tell when the festivities will hot up and it is best to be prepared.

Sirui have released a dandy mace...I mean a very good photographic monopod...to help bring calm and steadiness back to your pictures. The P 326 is made in China where they understand this sort of thing and it is just the thing for most situations.

You'll see from the illustrations that it is made of carbon fibre - and in itself is not a heavy item. 400g. The thing will extend to 154 cm so you can get your camera up to eye level easily, and when folded down is a compact 38cm. The collar at the top is well-finished metal. Should be easy to wipe clean...

Use it whenever you need to steady the camera short of complete immobility - for that you still need a tripod. This is ideal for sports or theatre coverage. At a car show you can set the camera going on self timer and hoist it up above the crowd level for down shots.

The piece-of-carpet-tile or CD disc advice ( thank you, John ) we gave for landscape photographers applies equally with a monopod, plus if you are covering footy or a car race with a heavy rig, it prevents you screwing yourself into the ground. People who submit freelance pictures to publications will get screwed enough without having to pick their lenses out of the mud...

I see that there is also a light carabiner clip and plastic compass included with the monopod. If you are intending to use them to navigate your way through the desert or climb Bluff Knoll I would also suggest an EPIRB and a series of good excuses for when they find you. Send us a picture.

Mag Mod In The Theatre

We have been privileged to get the use of the Little Theatre stage while the company is resting - production of their next drama will be commencing in October. Their stage is being used for prop storage and construction at present so we could borrow it to illustrate the Mag Mod range of light shapers. Here are the ones we spoke about earlier in our weblog column:

a. The basic magnetic attachment strap - fitted here to a Fujifilm EF-42 flash. Keen spotters will see the folding stand under the flash - a promotional item from a firm that used to make photographic equipment...Kodak.

b. The gel holder - here with a cyan gel in place. Note that the soft dome also has a gel holder slot integrated in the base.

c. The basic 40º grid. Stack as many on as you fancy.

d. The flexible snoot - this is the position that produces the tiniest dot of light.

e. The soft dome. A bare-bulb look.

f. The white scoop. More light out the front as well as around the room.

The only disadvantage seen so far with these marvellous modifiers is their tendency to stick together like mating squid. Those magnets are super-powerful. In the plus side, the modifiers can be whacked onto a metal surface like the product table frame or the studio fridge and they stay there perfectly.

Fujifilm Week Day Three - The 16-55 f:2.8 Lens

The Fujifilm customer who has come in to get a small mirrorless camera may well find themselves looking at a general-purpose zoom lens to go with the X -series body. We think in these term: " I don't know what I will be taking, so I better get something that does everything...".

Fair enough, but everything is some cases is more everything than it is in others...I'll propose several scenarios:

1. You are a small person with small hands and you will be travelling. You want a zoom lens for townscapes and scenery. Most of what you do will be in the daylight.

Step up to door no. 1 and collect your Fujinon 18-55mm f: 2.8-4 lens. It will be as small a zoom as you can find, and perfect for the subjects you need. If it gets dark, turn on the flash. PS: There is an anti-shake mechanism in the lens.

2. You are medium sized person who will be going to Africa and Alaska. You want a zoom that can bring the animals visually close while you stay far away. ( The lions and bears would prefer this too...)

Step up to door no. 2 and receive your Fujinon 18-135 f:3.5-5.6 lens. It has an anti shake mechanism as well, and this is more useful to you at the long end.

3. You area sturdy sort with one of the larger Fujifilm X cameras. You need to do interior shots in churches, restaurants, and theatre. You need all the width you can get and all the light that they won't give you... you need to...

Step up to door no. 3 and try the Fujinon 16-55 f:2.8 lens.

Constant aperture, so that if you are zooming you do not get a drop in exposure - and your flash work can be consistent. f:2.8 so you have another stop of light feeding into the sensor and better focusing. 16mm so you get a wider interior shot - considerably wider than the 18mm - each additional millimetre in wide angle increases the angle of view more and more.

No anti shake on this one - you'll have to be steady. And it's going to be heavier than the others.  More glass, more weight. But it does have a hidden advantage - extra sealing in and behind the lens - that's the rubber gasket you see.

Is one lens more "pro" than another? No. The user may be, for what it is worth. They are extremely well-made optical tools - the photographer just needs to know how to use them.

New Nikon - Handy New Bit

Just in on the shelves - the battery grip for the new Nikon D500 camera - the APS-C flagship DSLR for Nikon Australia. It is designated MB-D17.

Why buy?

1. You get to put another battery in the system - the camera shoots more shots and cycles faster with the extra power available.

2. You get a grip on the camera when it is being held in the portrait ( vertical ) mode that does not involve canting your right wrist up and over the body as you shoot. The benefit when you are doing this over a long session - for instance with dancers or portraits - is considerable. The joint strain after a couple of hours without this grip would erase all the fun of the photography.

3. You can control the position of the camera in the Portrait mode much better as this gives the same body feel as the normal side grip. Rubber pads and all.

4. There is a repeat of the major function buttons and wheels on the grip - you can operate as per normal without having two revert to the side controls. Just keep shooting.

5. You look like a cool pro while using it. I know this would never influence the sensible readers of this column, but I assure you it influenced me when I cared about what I looked like.  The downside was people would ask me for advice on their cameras and I had to invent things to say...

6. The grip has a little special cast compartment in the top surface that stores the rubber cover on the bottom of the D500 base. You can save it for later if you take the grip off.

7.  It's genuine Nikon, with the full Nikon Australia warranty.

Call in and try, or phone in and buy or come on line to our online store and....well...buy.

Sigma In The Theatre

In the theatre and in the dark - that's where I see this new lens from Sigma. And believe me, here in Perth we have dark theatres. The operating theatres in the hospitals are all pretty well lit, but after that it all gets pretty dim...

Back to the lens - if you are in the position of recording a stage performance you are likely to be restricted by for things:

a. Permission. You need it  - you can't just lob out with the DSLR at the next performance of "Die Fledermaus" and stand up in the middle of Row B and start blazing away. They will grasp you by the collar and throw you into the street - a particularly awkward thing if the theatre is up a flight of stairs...

b. Position. You can't stand up in Row B because the people in rows C, D, and E will draw pistols on you. You'll be restricted to a position further aft or down the sides of the venue. If the performance is so poorly attended that you can indeed stand up in Row B with nothing but silence behind you, is it worth recording the stage? Decide that for yourself...

c. Silence. While this is primarily the province of the camera, we have still heard some other lenses that focus with the sound of a battleship turret traversing. No good. You need to be quiet and you need to have a lens that will be so too. This does not apply during performances of Arab dance music, rock bands, and Wagner. In these cases you are prohibited from firing off siege mortars but pretty much everything else is masked by the din from the stage.

d. Light. This is necessary to see what is happening on stage, but Perth stage designers and lighting technicians are frugal people - they only use as much as is necessary. If there are pretty girls or Disney characters on stage you might get some colour but if it is just Ibsen or Shaw these can be played pretty much in the dark and they pretty much are.*

Thus you need to gather all the light you can for photography - and you need a camera that will get the ISO numbers up into the nosebleed range as well. Fortunately these are becoming more common these days and Canon and Nikon buyers can get some pretty hot cameras right now. And hotter ones coming, too.

Still, it is nice to have a big aperture lens, and here is where the f:1.8 of this lens comes in. The 50mm to 100mm range is also just perfect for side and back-of-house shots. You may want to attach a tripod - there is a rotating tripod mount ring for this purpose and thankfully it has smooth click stops at the horizontal and vertical points.

You'll also appreciate the provision of a raised white index dot at the point of mounting - I would assume that the Canon-mount version of this lens would have a raised dot as well. It allows you to feel for the correct meeting position of camera and lens in the dark if you need to change things. Some lens makers omit this and it is a real curse trying to index things by feeling the back of a bayonet mount or diving down under seats to see by the light of a pocket torch.

Please note that other photographers might appreciate the fast nature of this lens - field sports shooters who work under lights - nature photographers who might be in the gloom of a forest or bush area - surveillance workers who need to see at dusk. All would benefit.

Please also note that the new designs and finishes of Sigma lenses are really top-notch. There is no reason to regard them as anything but truly professional optics - backed with a two-year warranty.

This new lens is available right now in store and from the on-line shop. I have to give it back but you don't...if you buy it.


* I'm not really complaining. It's restful there in the dark.

Big Eye Olympus and Tough New Olympus

Two new Olympus bits, as you'll see from some of our other electronic posts: A telephoto lens and a new underwater camera.

Here's the editorial take on them as gleaned from the press announcements:

a. The 300mm f4 ED IS PRO lens looks to be the flagship long optic of the Micro 4/3 system and logically will be so for a long time. Olympus themselves realise that this is a sports and wildlife lens a and have conducted their own surveys to find out the most popular subject. it turns out to be birds - the feathered variety.

At 600mm equivalent it's about all you could hope to hold - and even here you'll have to use all the magic bean power that Olympus put in their image stabilising system. They state it as 6-stops of stabilisation when used on an OM-D E-M1 or OM-D E-M5 Mkii body. The makers provide a tripod foot and also a sleek ring to replace it if you are going to hand hold the lens. Frankly, unless you are shaking it like a set of maracas the six stops should be more than enough steadiness for most people.

It's going to be pretty good lightweight solution for the bird botherers as compared to the larger DSLR systems.

b. Olympus have also continued their remarkable series of Tough underwater and rugged-duty cameras with the Tough TG 870. This has the sealed capabilities of it's older siblings but adds increased GPS , a 180º tilting selfie screen and a great many electronic additions. The ones I noted particularly set it up as a slightly bigger rival for the ubiquitous action camera. There is also a additive-shot mode called Live Composite Mode that means you can add the bright bits of night-time multiple exposures to get exciting shots. It is something that this camera shares with some of the bigger and fancier Olympus system cameras.

I was particularly taken with the press announcement from Olympus that mentioned the 300mm lens as also perfect for theatre shooting. A lot of people forget that when you are doing this class of work you are frequently bundled down the back of the venue or over to one side as you cannot be in the best viewing position for fear of blocking the paying customer's view. Long tele work in dim light needs some serious glass and also a serious high-ISO response from the camera body. This is the sort of shooting where the tripod and a good mount are a blessing.

Getting A Leg Up In The World

No-one needs a monopod - provided they are not using a camera with a long lens on it to take pictures in dim light or over a long period of time. Or if they are not standing in the rain at a soccer game with a long zoom, or perched on the edge of a cliff following surfers, or standing on a Pelican case taking pictures of belly dancers for four hours...they can dismiss this column with a wave of their fingers. The fingers that are not numb from holding up a giant lens for four hours...

The rest of us would do well to listen up. If we are doing any of those things, the monopod is a very good idea indeed. It puts the weight of equipment that you were foolish enough to think you needed onto the ground rather than onto your forearms. You can swivel for the surfer, ball, or dancer by simply twisting about and no funny ball head or AA gun mounts are needed. You can have one hand free to scratch your nose, search for a hanky, or answer the phone while the other one and the monopod keep the assembly balanced*.

You can lean over in a crowd and prod people off balance with one. A particularly rewarding activity if you screw the rubber foot back into the body of the monopod to expose the sharp metal tip.

It doesn't have to be massive to be useful. The Promaster 1100 monopod is a three-section leg with clip locks and a rubber foot that you can take nearly anywhere. It has a sstandard 1/4" screw on the top and a wrist strap. It has a lifetime guarantee.

You could pair it up with any mirror-less or medium-sized enthusiast's camera and carry the outfit all day in comfort. You could also pack the camera away and use the monopod to jab your way out of embarrassing situations. Hey, it's your photography...

Also comes with a free shoulder bag for when you are travelling and is being sold for 25% off right now.

* Keep the camera strap over your neck for when you forget and let go with BOTH hands.

The Stage Lights Are Calling - Or What's A Fella To Do?

Well, it's the old bump and grind this weekend. Three hours of colour, movement, and loud music. And I'm going to be out the front with a camera.

No, not the burlesque. That's not my beat - though I have seen some dynamite shows here in Perth and some very good publicity, event, and art shots taken by the photographers who specialise in this. I'll be at a hafla - a belly dancing show held at a suburban school.

The school isn't just your regular local primary - the Saturday venue is a pretty swish one that takes in private-school money. And spends it on their theatre facilities, I might add. The main performance space and seating is very professional - more so than many public venues. They have good lighting, good lighting control, and good sound - and a large enough stage to make a real production.

I'll set a fixed camera with radio wireless control to capture full-stage shots from the mezzanine ( They have a mezzanine! ) and roam the aisles and floor with a large-aperture Fujifilm lens on my X-Pr01. The high ISO capability and the big aperture should allow enough shutter speed to stop much of the motion.

But.

But the lighting plan can sometimes be highjacked by a temptation to use too much colour - if there are gels on a lot of the floods and spots they sometimes run a whole number under pools of red, yellow, and orange. Then blue in the background and green as a follow spot. Add to this the fact that the costuming can be very colourful to start with and it gets a little out of hand.

Don't get me wrong - Bollywood can never be too bright. Or too bouncy. Bollywood makes you feel happy no matter what. But some of the other dances need mood and it can be hard to make someone look sexy if she is lit up in Tiger Moth Training Yellow - complete with roundels...

I am hoping that they tone down the gels and concentrate on more of the white lighting. It's no good trying to get a custom WB when the business can change so fast between one minute to another - I might as well put it on Auto and go from there.

Shoot RAW or jpeg? Well, what the hell. Fujifilm jpegs are all I could ever want and the exposure will be right if I use spot metering on the individual figures - then the black stage does not influence the equation. The X-pro1 writing jpeg and RAW would be slower than the dance requires. It'll be jpegs. Lotsa jpegs.

After the first three big production numbers I go deaf anyway so why not.

Uncle Dick

Footlight Flashes - A Humble Suggestion

Footlights at the theatre contribute a lot to the lighting - see the recent posting re. the Mozart opera. Now you can do the same as the big guys in your own home studio.

Look at these humble AC flashes - they've been around for ages in the trade - I remember seeing advertisements for the in Fred Spira's day. They draw power from 240vAC and ca]n be fired from a standard PC cord or from their own internal slave cell.

There is a power-on light to show when you are connected and a ready-light to show when the charge is sufficient. They fire out at about a GN of 45.

Put them into outdoor floodlight sockets  ( See Mr. Bunnings for these. ) and they will synch along with your studio strobes for the authentic stage effect. Put tiny gels in under the plastic dome cover and you can make magic.

Also useful for el-cheapo copying stand and macro work and can be rigged up for an extremely basic studio portrait setup. You're only limited by your imagination and paying the Synergy bill.

The Green Cross Of Focusness - With Fujifilm

As photographers - workers with light - we do seem to spend a lot of time standing around in dark places...

It used to be in a cave full of chemical fumes, like latter day Greek soothsayers. Some of us still do stand around in smelly caves full of Greeks, but they are generally pubs in Northbridge. At least they sell retsina...

We also stand around in dim theatres trying to capture dancers and singers in their natural stage habitat. The people who use Nikon D3s cameras fitted with f:0.95 lenses and who crowd right up near the front have it easy - their equipment easily goes up to ISO 5 billion and they can do what they like with the shutter speed dial. The rest of us have to ride the edge of darkness or blaze like a hundred suns all night.

Ielected to do the later - an old Metz hammerhead light and a Quantum battery pack meant I stopped action, got bright colours, and excited the resentment of everyone else in the hall. The light was no problem during the time the shutter was open.

It was during the run-up to the explosion that the trouble occurs. Shooting from the back of the hall, a 55-20 lens was necessary for framing - but the stage was dim, as most Perth stages are, and the dancers moved rapidly, as most Perth dancers do, and the lens wouldn't lock on focus - it is only an f:3.5 maximum aperture.

Thrown back upon my resources, I resorted to reading the book...and found that the remedy recommended was the AF-C position. It continuously tracks at about where the action is and snaps into the focus position as you mash the button down. It isn't exactly right all the time, but I'm married so I'm used to being wrong. It was certainly a better chance for focus than either the MF or the AF-S in these hectic conditions.

The downside is it used up lots of power as it was trying to focus all the time. Lucky I took spare batteries - the cameras that use this form of focussing can do marvellously if you know the trick.

The Darkened Theatre - A Viewfinder Debate Between OVF And EVF

At the risk of opening the valve on the geek tank and being inundated with internet expertise, I'll raise a question that presented itself recently.

 It was in a darkened theatre with some pretty exciting lighting on the stage. The occasion was a dance show and the organisers requested no flash photography.  Being restricted to the maximum aperture on my mirrorless-camera lenses wasn't too bad as I had a close view of the stage. The f:1.8 and f:2.8 lenses let in enough light with a high ISO.

The real problem came with framing the image - the camera body was a Fujifilm X-E2 . It has a very bright and detailed electronic view finder that seems to see deeper into the gloom than I can. Fine to use but one's eye becomes used to the bright image and then when you take it off to change setting on the camera or lens in the dark...you can't see zip...the dark adaptation has entirely gone.

Using the LCD screen would have been wrong as the glow of it would have disturbed other patrons.

In the end, I resorted to peering over the top of the X-E2's hot shoe, pointing in the general direction, and hoping for the best. It all worked out, but left the impression that it should have been done differently.

Perhaps the optical view finder of the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 would be a better answer - sure, it has illuminated frame lines within the OVF but these are bound to be less overpowering than the full bright EVF screen. And there is always the EVF on call with a touch of a lever.

I suspect that the X-Pro 1 might be the best professional answer - sort of a bright horse for a dark race...

One Of These Lenses Is Not Like The Others

One of these lenses is not the same...with apologies to Big Bird...

Okay, see if you can figure it out. You'll need to be in a darkened theatre to discover the difference - come and buy all these three lenses from us and explore the mystery. I'll give you some clues.

1. It ain't the aperture. They are all about f:1.4 or f:1.5 so they work good in the dark.

2. It ain't the lens mount - these cameras can all be put to work on a Fujifilm X-E2 camera  - the Fuji mounts straight off and the Leica or Zeiss lenses can go on the the Fujifilm adapter.

3. It ain't the autofocus. The lenses can all be manually focussed with the Fujifilm X-E2 and the focus peaking and enlarged central image you get by pressing the control wheel make the things go into focus very precisely.

4. It ain't the lens performance. They ALL perform brilliantly. I can't see as good as they can.

5. It ain't the chrome on the Zeiss - you can get this same lens in black.

6. It ain't the focal length. They are all normal lenses as far as the APS-C sensor goes.

Okay? Give up?

It's the little raised blue plastic dot on the Zeiss and the little red plastic dot on the Leica. There is no raised dot on the Fujifilm - just a painted red stripe. It helps you orientate the lens for mounting...but not in a darkened theatre when you can't see it.
You fumble, turn to whatever light you can find, and finally pull out a pocket torch to see what you are doing.

Okay - time to rethink, Fujifilm. Put a raised dot or some other tactile aid for lens changing in the dark. When my lenses pass through their warranty period and can be legitimately attacked with a fire axe, I shall ask Ernest to attach some form of dot for me - so I am not fumbling in the dark.

I do that enough when it comes to politics and finances...

Hafla With Fujifilm - High ISO Wins The Day

I tried my first hafla with the new Fujifilm X-E2 camera system this last weekend, and learned many valuable things.

Haflas are dance shows organised by Middle Eastern and Bollywood groups to showcase their dancers. The music is loud, the costumes are wildly coloured, and the dancers are enthusiastic. Unfortunately in the past they have sometimes been constrained to perform in pretty dull venues - you can only make so much of a harem scene in a CWA hall...

This last weekend saw the stage of the Waldorf School in North Lake used...and that made all the difference. It is a professional-class stage with a good lighting setup and desk. Productions look good.

To avoid washing out the stage while the audience was watching, the organisers asked me to work without flash. I had done this before with mixed success - when  I used to put the ISO up past 800 on the old system the multicoloured electrical noise started to become bad. Well, I set my Fujifilm X-E2 gingerly to 1600 ISO and hoped for the best.

I was delighted to see that the colour was good and no noise was appearing - even given the fact that I had set a +1 sharpness on the jpegs. But the dancers were moving so fast that even with the 550-200 lens set to full aperture there was blur. So I risked setting it to 3200 ISO...

Better action stopping - still no noise. I could happily shoot from the aisles with the camera and lens on a Manfrotto monopod and not disturb anyone. Amazing how well 165 dB of drums and flutes hides the sound of a digital shutter...

Upon reading Rico Pfirstinger's book on the X -E1 I suspect I might have been able to boost that ISO to 6400 with even better results! I am looking forward to the Christmas hafla to find out.

Boost that ISO with Fujifilm X - with confidence.