Bow Chicka Wow

This piece of sexy equipment from Camera Electronic needs an eighties soundtrack and purple satin sheets. Okay, we got the sheets, but you'll have to add the music in your heads.

It's a flash bracket. A very flash bracket. Perhaps the most high-tech OOT flash bracket that you will ever see in your life. It is a tribute to high-grade aluminium, the wonders of CAD CAM, and a childhood studying H.R. Giger machines. It is not steam punk but it may be Techno punk...If The Terminator took wedding photos he'd use this flash bracket.

There are two reasons for this design:

1. Event photographers need to balance their flash above the axis of the lens on both portrait and landscape orientation to allow the flash shadow to fall behind the subject.

2. They could.

The mechanisms that on other flash brackets might be simple hinges or 1/4" bolt holes are here developed into artistic delights. Look at the stainless steel keeper that secures the interchangeable camera plate to the main casting. They did not need to do that with such complexity or precision but they did. Likewise the indexing bolt that stops the motion of the vertical piece in the tow basic positions - it is reminiscent of the recoil mechanism of a 1.1" multiple antiaircraft gun on a pre-war USN treaty cruiser. You gonna get that from anyone else? No.

The main casting and the adjusting trigger are also suggestive of the aircraft cranes on the same cruisers - leading me to suspect that the designers may have pilfered the plans from the Bureau of Ships. - or the plans to the Brice-Partington submarine for that matter. I shall institute discrete enquiries within the Admiralty.

I am a little taken aback by the name engraved on the side of the casting - is this a blatant attempt to market it in Australia? Will it pop up in the Canadian market as The Beavershot? Or in the German shops as Der Adler? Are there enough wedding shooters in South Africa to sell it as The Giraffe?

Well, no matter - buy this now and you'll never buy another - because you'll never need another - it is built with more precision than your motor car. And you will never be confronted with some amateur at the wedding using a better one. Image is, after all, something that you can trade on.

Now isn't that a Happy Ending...

Pre-Packed Picture Power In Little Parcels - Toshiba Batteries

So many things in our lives are taken for granted - clean water, electricity, and rhinestone poodle collars for instance - that we rarely look into where we are to get them from when we are not in our normal environment. The wise amongst us make provision for a steady supply - even when the shops are shut.

We'll leave you to seek your own sources of water and rhinestones but direct you to the thought that you really ought to get yourself some portable electricity that you can store safely in your camera bag.

You might argue that you only need AA batteries for flash guns and portable LED light blocks. Not so - more and more radio triggers are being designed to use standard AA's rather than button cells. There are still cameras that use AA cells for system power. And they can be called on the juice up any number of digital devices by means of simple converters and battery chargers - there are a number of these devices available right now.

At this juncture we can chime in with some advice from Ernest - there are some rechargeable AA's on the market that sound like a good idea for flash guns but don't prove to be. If you want to ask him for the details next time you see him by all means go ahead - he makes a good argument for decent alkaline AA's.

Well - here they are. We've been selling the Toshiba AA's in 40-battery boxes as well as 2-battery packs for as long as I can remember in CE. They are the go-to battery for sales demonstrations of speed lights and it is no wonder that when I started using the Nikon and the Fujifilm guns I should load up with them. My experience with them has been good - as opposed to the results from AA's purchased in supermarkets around the state.

Not all batteries are the same and not all are good - Ernest again and his dramatic demonstration of bending no-name batteries double with his fingers. Even some of the nationally-known brands from Coles, Woolies, and IGA can be sad little cells and poop out well before a reasonable number of shots.

Speaking of which, my experience with the Toshiba AA's in Nikon SB700 and Fujifilm EF-42 speed lights has been that they will put out about 220-240 flashes before becoming exhausted. This is good to know if you are going to budget for an event that requires a lot of flash and need to know when to change batteries so as not to be caught flash-less at the wrong time.

The other good thing about Toshiba is I have yet to see a Toshiba leak into a flash gun - even if it is unused for months.

Buy a box. You'll use them up eventually and the assurance that you always have power is invaluable.

Off Camera Flash And the Event Photographer

I have never quite decided what an event photographer is. Or what an event photographer does.

An infantry assault over open ground in the face of machine guns is an event - likewise a wedding is an event, similar to the infantry assault, but with the officers up at the front...and generally at a wedding the machine gun fields of fire overlap more...

So what does an event photographer need - besides nerve, a camera, and a hip flask? Well they either need a long lens to stay out of the way or a short lens and a flash to get in amongst it. Those of you given to fits of horror at the thought of flash may be excused - you are artists and we make allowance for you. The rest of you need to see what is actually going on.

Nearly every serious camera has some form of hot-shoe connection on it. This can be the place to put your flash if you want the light to blast straight forward. Good for police mug shots but a bit limiting for some other subjects. That hot-shoe connection is a useful place, however, to base a wireless control for your flash - and then you are as free as the air to place it anywhere that helps.

Hahnel, Promaster, Yongnuo, Pocket Wizard, and a dozen other small manufacturers make wireless flash triggers that do the job. The expensive versions have TTL connection between the flash and the camera while the economical models just send a "fire now" signal to the flash gun and you have to do all the power setting on the flash yourself.

This is not onerous on some flashes - you can lock Nikon, Fujifilm, or Canon flashes into "manual" mode and then use the button or dial control on the flash to go from 1/1 power down to 1/64 power. You get a quick feedback from the LCD screen and soon recognise how much power you need.

The greatest joy of this unleashed approach is that you can operate a light camera with one hand and then hold the flash in peculiar and particular positions to punch light into the scene. You can even abandon it to point in out of reach - as long as you can prop up the rig.
No-end of scenes benefit from fill flash - in some cases even to the extent that the fill becomes the dominant light.

If you free yourself from the top of the camera you can light anything!

The Video At The Cinema - Abraham Joffe And Canon

Look out your diary, Canon shooters. Turn forward to the 17th of this month - it is a Wednesday.

Abraham Joffe, Canon Australia, and Camera Electroinic are cooperating to present a day-long workshop dedicated to the Canon DSLR as a video making system. It will be held at the Cinema Paradiso on James Street in Northbridge. Starting time is 10:00 AM and it will finish at 4:30 PM.

What's going to happen? Mr Joffe will be showing his work, Canon will be showing their equipment, There will be a group project of interviews and footage around the local area, and a review and analysis at the end of the day. And lunch in the middle of the day. Yay!

Mr. Joffe knows his business - he has filmed all over Australia, in East Timor, Antarctica, and Africa. He is a brave man - he does videography for weddings and is highly sought-after for his skill - so much so that Canon have recently honoured him with a title of Canon Master.

Further enquiries: Please call 1300 790 230
or email workshops@cameraelectronic.com.au
230 Stirling Street, Perth WA 6000
You can also register and pay here

Part One Of Part Two - James And The Weddings

James Simmons does weddings. He does them very well. Canon and the AIPP thought so in 2014 when they awarded him their Wedding Photographer and Photographer of the Year prizes.*

He showed the crowd a little of what he does on Wednesday night at the Oxford Hotel in Leederville. Not only some of the visual results projected up on the screen, but some of the ways in which he goes about the business - and I don't mean f stops and shutter speeds and where to put the light stand. Note: tough crowd - lots of mean old geezers like this correspondent ready to drink the Oxford ale and eat the finger food. Hooray for the Oxford.

James does something that is worth considering - he makes his photography of a wedding good for the bride and groom. Good. Not just affordable, or well produced, or long lasting...actually good. Good on the day and good for later.

Of course, in real terms, all you need for a wedding are 5 sober people. Bride, groom, registered celebrant, and two adult witnesses. You could do the thing in the bleakest of circumstances and have it be legal. The thing that James can do is make it beautiful - no mean feat.

He showed us what happens when he settles the couple and gets them to react to themselves rather than to the camera. He has a gift of addressing them on a human rather than photographic level and then letting the machinery and the lighting illustrate this. Of course, the Pentax 645Z is a good instrument for this as it can cope with broad ranges of light. The large sensor size means that there is an immense amount of information available to the photographer for later manipulation. Of course we all want to say that we do it all in-camera and never spend any time in the darkroom pushing sliders and swearing...but we know that there is a certain amount of bad language involved in any art.

That care for the comfort and the calm of the couple means that they can cope better with the day. And they'll look better in the images ( Less slider pushing...).

No wonder that he got the Canon/AIPP award. Actually, if you go to his website, there is a list of his awards that goes down for 17 cm of screen space. All you have to do, though, is look at the pictures...they are really lovely.

Part Two Of Part One - The Pentax 645Z Night

No, it's part one of part two. We changed the file numbers and the thing jumped...

C.R.Kennedy and Camera Electronic wanted to show and tell about the Pentax 645Z camera and its lenses so they called a meeting of the not-bored-at-all at the Oxford Hotel in Leederville on Wednesday last to discuss maters.

Star of the meeting - and chief speaker - was James Simmons. You'll remember he is the Canon/AIPP Wedding Photographer Of the Year and Canon/AIPP Photographer Of the Year for 2014. He uses the Pentax 645Z for wedding and fine art work. His topic for the evening was the 645Z at the wedding and for fine art work so he did indeed know whereof he spoke.

Well, it works. And to prove that it does he made it work right there in front of the room of people. He had his girlfriend pose in the midst of the photographers and got them to illuminate her with the LED lights on their mobile phones. Then he crawled up onto a ladder and made the shot with the 645Z - the great light capturing ability of medium format and the immense dynamic range of the camera made it all magic.

That business of dynamic range is sometimes forgotten in the welter of other specifications that people amass for their favourite cameras. They will obsess about megapixels or ISO or frame capture rates and forget that the cameras all need to see a very wide dynamic range to come anywhere close to the capability of our eyes. james showed a beach shot that went from black nothing to perfection with just a push of a slider - and the camera provided the detail and range to do it.

The ergonomics of the camera are also something that people do not think about when all they see is a net page or other people's opinions. Anyone who has handled a Pentax 645D or 645Z will recognise that there is far better handleability here than other medium format digital cameras. It is not small - nor could it be  - but it is balanced perfectly. James also pointed out the wonderful green button on the back. When he has been working with the camera in dim conditions or with it set up for some arcane ISO or shutter/aperture combination and his wedding work instantly draws him into a different light situation, a quick push of the wonderful green button resets the camera and takes a pretty good light assessment instantly - you are ready to run and gun.

More on James and the weddings on Part One Of Part Two...note that he was not making a phone call on the 645Z in that photo. Coverage in Leederville is spotty...

No Flash Permitted

Every photographer's had that awkward moment when someone comes up to you just before you start a job and announces that there will be no flash. This is no problem if you are going to shoot a car show in the Swan Valley at midday - see previous blog post  - because you WILL have light. But bob down the road to St. Grubby's church in the park and get told that you'll have no flash and windows the size of postage stamps...and here comes the the bride...

The  church problem was solved by having the bride's mother savage the vicar, but one cannot always enjoy oneself like this - sometimes we have to suck it up and put away the flash.

Case in point was a dance show this weekend - the big school theatre where it was held had stage lighting, but it was way up in the rafters. Some additional towers were put on the stage - but again these were modest output. The lighting equation would have been pretty well unsolvable had I been using regular sorts of films or regular sorts of digital camera. Dancers move fast and you can't do long exposures.

Fortunately I found out last show that the Fujifilm X-E2 could go to 3200 ISO without coughing - and this time it went to 6400 with acceptable shadows -and a DR of 400%.
As well, the Auto white balance nailed the mixed stage lighting very well - as soon as it went through Aperture 3 or Lightroom all the jpeg files fell in place.

I noted that this does not seem to be the case with other images posted from audience members - they have been forced into some pretty grim colour. Presumably the results are from smaller compact cameras or older digitals that don't quite have the newer circuitry or capabilities.

I reflected at the time that Nikon pro users would have been as well or better served in the same circumstance - the low-light capabilities of the D3, 3s, 4, Df, and D750 are justly lauded. 'Course they would have been hauling heavier iron than I was and that does make a difference if you're holding it for 3 hours or are lazy...

So the conclusion is, get Fujifilm, or Nikon, or plead for permission to use flash. Or bring the bride's mother...

Fongarein, Fongarehere, Fongaregood

All Hail The Mighty Fong!

This universal diffuser claps onto the font of any speed light flash to diffuse the light and fill it into the shadows of your picture.

No more Panda Eyes on your bridal portraits and no more couples caught like rabbits in the headlights at parties. Soft fill in that goes out to the edges of an interior - but doesn't burn out the main subject.

The new universal velcro strap secures it to any flash - I know because I just got up from the laptop right now to try it on a new Nissin i40 - and you have a far better fill than could be obtained with the little box diffusers.

We've got a stack of them in store right now.

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.