Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2019 i Camera

ARGUABLY THE STUDIO flash company that’s best adapted to the changing lighting requirements of photographers, Profoto has launched another new portable system which sits between the A1 and B1X/B2. The Profoto B10 has been primarily designed to be small, but it still delivers a handy 250 joules of flash power (that’s around five times more than the typical speedlight) and weighs just 1.5 kilograms, including its rechargeable lithium battery pack and light stand adapter. The battery is good for around 400 full-power flashes, but this can be extended further if using a lower output, and here the B10 offers a ten-stop adjustment range. It can also function as a continuous light source with a brightness of up to 2500 lumens and a running duration of 75 minutes. Furthermore, the colour…

WE TEND NOT to report on software updates as it can make for dry reading, but Phase One’s Capture One Pro RAW image processor is rapidly becoming a standard for working photographers and enthusiastic amateurs. The big deal with Capture One is that you can still buy it as a package rather than being committed to ongoing subscription fees and local distributor, Specular, has introduced a loyalty scheme for repeat customers every time a new version of Capture One Pro is released. This has financial advantages, but purchasing the software locally means there’s a telephone number users can call if they run into any problems, and a convenient option if they want to book either in-person or over-the-phone training. A full licence for the new Capture One Pro 12 costs…

A PROPERLY CALIBRATED monitor is a key element of a digital workflow, but they can be a bit beyond the budget of non-working photographers. Not any more, as BenQ has launched a new 24-inch monitor that’s priced at just under $700. BenQ’s SW240 features a 1920x1200 pixels resolution IPS colour-accurate display which delivers both 99 percent of the Adobe RGB colour space and 10-bit colour depth. It utilises a 14-bit 3D LUT to achieve Delta E values of two or better, and also supports hardware calibration with BenQ’s calibration software – Palette Master Elements. The SW240’s new inbuilt OSD hotkey (‘Colour Mode HotKey’) allows for the switching of colour modes on the fly, along with the ‘One-Press’ quick-release button on the rear of the panel which is a key component…

THE SMART NEW TED’S WORLD OF IMAGING CAMERA STORE IN THE HEART OF SYDNEY’S CBD IS DESIGNED TO MAKE SHOPPING A MORE ENJOYABLE AND REWARDING EXPERIENCE. “This is the biggest investment ever made in one store by an Australian photo retailer. We’re going to deliver an entirely new way of experiencing photography.” Representing a significant investment in ‘bricks-and-mortar’ retailing, Ted’s Cameras has opened a world’s first concept store in Sydney. The Ted’s World Of Imaging store occupies 800 square metres of floor space and combines a contemporarily styled retail area with an exhibition gallery, workshop and events space (which will be available for hire), a photography studio (also available for hire), professional printing services and an education centre. Ted’s believes its new store will set a benchmark as the complete…

The Picture Originally photographed for the surfing magazine White Horses and a series of articles called ‘A Few Of My Favourite Things’ (an idea, incidentally, we’ve now adopted in sister publication ProPhoto), Pam Burridge – who was the first woman in Australia to become a full-time professional surfer – is pictured with a collection of her favourite possessions, including an old caravan, a ladder, several surfboards, a crocheted rug (modelled by her husband, Mark), one of her hens, and the vintage dress she’s wearing. The Photographer After a long career as a corporate and advertising photographer, Bruce Usher now works as a freelancer primarily concentrating on editorial assignments for a wide variety of magazines as well as shooting for annual reports and brochures. He is also a regular contributor to…

It is said often enough that you really haven’t got a photograph until a print has been made. With this in mind, photo enthusiasts may be keen to follow through, but are often rightly deterred by a number of concerns. Is an A3+ format printer going to be big enough? What will it cost? Are the inks really so expensive? And can the prints last at least a generation or two? Canon’s PIXMA iP8760 offers a solution. It’s best described as pretty basic with no ‘bells and whistles’ yet it does a creditable job. It’s currently discounted to less than $300 (RRP is $329), it’s not too expensive to run and it uses dye-based inks that produce prints which should last more than 100 years in dark storage. But this…

DIGITAL SLR CAMERAS BUYER’S CHECK LIST JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 THIS CHECKLIST is designed to allow direct comparisons between different camera models, here listed in price order within each brand. The published prices are mostly supplied by the distributors as recommended retail prices (RRPs). However, some distributors are no longer supplying RRPs to the media so it has become necessary to determine an ‘estimated street price’ derived from the range of prices for a model published by retailers. Where this has been necessary, the letter ‘E’ appears at the start of the entry. A dot appearing in a column indicates that the feature is available on the camera model listed. Where a specification or product detail hasn’t yet been published or confirmed, the letters TBA (to be announced) or TBC (to be…

THE LATEST VERSION of the M10 digital rangefinder camera is described by Leica as having a “digital heart, analog soul”. The analog elements of the M10-D are all external, starting with replacing the monitor screen with a large dial for setting exposure compensation. This control also serves as the camera’s power switch. More interesting is the provision of a swing-out thumbrest which looks very much like a film advance lever. Otherwise, the M10-D has just a smattering of external controls – dials for setting the shutter speeds and ISO values, an input wheel and a couple of function buttons. However, the M10-D also has built-in WiFi, enabling image review to be performed via a paired smartphone or tablet running the new Leica FOTOS app. This also allows for remote control…

YOU HAVE UNTIL 8 February to get your entries into the 2019 Zeiss Photography Award, which is run by the World Photography Organisation and, of course, Zeiss. Now in its fourth year, the Zeiss Photography Award is an international photography competition which aims to challenge photographers to submit bodies of work addressing a selected theme. This year the themes is “Seeing Beyond – The Unexpected” and the submissions will be judged by photography experts Simon Frederick (artist, photographer, director and broadcaster, UK), Shoair Mavlian (director of Photoworks, UK) and Dagmar Seeland (picture editor at Stern magazine, Germany). “The Unexpected” challenges entrants to submit a series of five to ten images which look past the everyday and address something unforeseen or surprising – whether this is through the landscape and the…

CANON AUSTRALIA RECENTLY RAN A PROMOTION ENCOURAGING PHOTOGRAPHERS TO THINK BEYOND THE POPULAR DESTINATIONS FOR OVERSEAS TRAVEL, HIGHLIGHTING SOME MORE EXOTIC DESTINATIONS WHICH ALL PROVIDE GREAT PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES. We can all be a fairly predictable lot. When it comes to overseas travel, Australians have some firm favourites – Bali, Fiji, Italy, the UK and Hawaii are all hugely popular destinations. But it’s a big wide world out there and there’s a lot more to see… especially if you want to come home with more interesting collections of travel photos. Canon Australia has been running a promotion to encourage photographers to roam further afield, and has been giving away a total of 30 trips to ten such exotic locations – namely Canada, Egypt and Jordan, Iceland, India, Japan, Lapland, Madagascar, Morocco,…

One day the story will be told about how two of the most significant new camera launches came to happen within a mere fortnight of each other. This is incredible for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that the development time would be at least three years – maybe a bit longer – and yet Canon and Nikon reached the finish line at exactly the same time. It’s hard to believe that one was waiting for the other to show its hand, given there’s still kudos attached to being first (as, indeed, Nikon has found). And, besides, nobody waits to make a big announcement these days; the imperative is to get products into the hands of eager consumers as soon as possible. Plus there’s all the…

The very first camera was actually a whole room which meant it was a bit too big to carry around! Early experiments with how light could be controlled to create an image of a subject began during the Renaissance period in Italy. Leonardo da Vinci observed how light, entering a darkened room through a tiny hole in the wall, formed an inverted image, on the opposite wall, of the scene outside. In Italian, dark room is camera obscura… from which we get the word ‘camera’. The idea of using a convex element to improve the clarity and sharpness of the image in a camera obscura soon followed (described by Italian physicist Giovanni Battista della Porta in 1558) and, by the 17th century, portable cameras obscura were in use by artists.…

The classic rangefinder (RF) design has its origins in the first Leica 35mm camera, but the term ‘rangefinder’ actually refers to a method of manually focusing the lenses. The first rangefinders were actually separate devices which fitted to the top of a camera, but by the early 1930s the rangefinders were incorporated into the camera body and directly coupled to the lens. The rangefinder projects a double image into the viewfinder and the lens is focused by bringing the two images together. Also projected into the viewfinder is a brightline frame which allows for more accurate framing, and modern designs automatically adjust this frame as the lens is focused closer in order to correct for parallax error. Being a non-reflex design, rangefinder cameras became popular because they were comparatively compact…

It was hard not to fall in love with Fujifilm’s X-T2. The size was right – leveraging the benefits here of an ‘APS-C’ size sensor – the styling was classical, but immensely functional, and it was a powerhouse on the inside. It’s quite possible that if you’d bought an X-T2 – even back in 2016 after it was launched – you’d be pretty confident it was going to serve you well for quite some time.This notion would have been reinforced when the X-H1 camera along… nice, but too big and, to be honest, too much camera for my needs. Happy. So… er, now there’s the X-T3. Look, on the outside, it’s still pretty much an X-T2 with just a few small design tweaks to enhance the ergonomics, including re-locating the…

Things are hotting up in the Sony FE mount world and not just because more third-party lens makers are joining the club, but also because Sony itself is fast-tracking a program of new lenses, including more high-end ‘G Master’ models. And it’s going to get hotter now that Sony finally has some competition in the full-35mm mirrorless space, although it has a very substantial head start on Canon and Nikon which you can be sure it’s determined to maintain (starting with the promise of 12 more FE lenses within the next year or so). In terms of lens choice, it’s going to remain the best served full-35mm mirrorless system for a good while yet. Tamron has sensibly kicked off its FE mount program with a 28-75mm standard zoom which immediately…

These print times set by the iP8760 are based on the duration of print head activity and a USB connection. With smaller prints the difference between the ‘Standard’ and ‘High’ quality settings may only be apparent by resorting to a magnifying glass. This immediately suggests that personal preferences will play a part when print speeds and extra ink consumption are considered. For exhibition purposes where larger prints are required, the ‘High’ quality setting delivers noticeably better resolution and colour saturation. Depending on the paper type selected, if the default of ‘Level Three’ against ‘High’ can be moved to the higher resolution of ‘Level Two’ then all the better. The only paper type to allow the finest level of ‘Level One’ to be established is Canon’s Platinum Pro. As pricey as…

AFTER A FEW comparatively slow years, it looks like things might now be starting to pick up in camera sales. For starters, there’s all the interesting stuff happening with new cameras, especially in full-35mm format mirrorless models, but elsewhere as well. With Canon and Nikon now on board (at last!), the cork is out of the bottle and a lot of D-SLR users – especially those ready to replace ageing bodies – will be convinced to make the switch to mirrorless. I suspect quite a few of you may also be convinced to move to the bigger sensor – there are some good arguments for doing so – and invest a little more in your next new camera. We started out with smaller sensors in consumer cameras because it made…

SPECIAL EDITION LEICAS are flowing thick and fast at the moment, with the latest being a ‘stealthy’ version of the Q fixed-lens camera, similar to the treatment given to the recent M10-P. Like the M10-P, the new Leica Q-P goes without the famous red dot logo on its front and instead carries the classic original ‘Leica’ script on its top panel. It has a matte black finish and acquires a shutter release which replicates those of the Leica M and CL cameras. On the inside, however, the Q-P is unchanged from the standard model, with the key features being a 26.3 megapixels CMOS sensor, 3.68 megadots LCOS-type EVF and a fixed Summilux 28mm f1.7 ASPH wide-angle lens. The Leica Q-P is available from the Leica Stores in Sydney and Melbourne…

HERE’S A BIT of fun. Drone-maker DJI has applied some of its flying camera stabilisation technology to a ground-based product, creating what’s claimed to be the world’s smallest three-axis stabilised camera. The DJI Osmo Pocket is just ten centimetres tall and can take both still images and 4K video footage with its three-axis mechanical gimbal smoothing out all the bumps. A 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor delivers 12 megapixels photographs and 4K video can be recorded at up to 60 fps with a bit rate of 100 Mbps. The Osmo Pocket also has built-in dual microphones and employs advanced noise-canceling algorithms to ensure high-quality soundtracks. There’s a built-in 2.5 cm touch screen monitor which provides live view as well as the ability to toggle through the unit’s various shooting modes, adjust settings,…

MELBOURNE IS THE location of Leica’s second branded store in Australia, with the 220 square-metres facility also housing this country’s first Leica Gallery. Located in the St Collins Lane shopping complex in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, the new store is Leica’s 78th globally while the gallery space is one of 22 around the world, including in Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, Vienna, Milan and Singapore. The Melbourne store and gallery was officially opened by the chairman of Leica Camera AG, Dr Andreas Kaufmann, who was making his first visit to Australia. Dr Kaufmann is the man largely responsible for the camera maker’s current renaissance. Speaking at the opening, Dr Kaufmann commented, “It’s an exciting time for Leica – we’ve recently unveiled our new Leitz-Park complex in Wetzlar, Germany, which is…

The basic principle of the single lens reflex (SLR) camera dates back to well before the advent of photography. The idea of using a mirror to project an image from a lens on to a flat surface was employed in the camera obscura of the 17th century. In an SLR camera, a mirror is located behind the lens and angled at 45 degrees to direct the image up to a viewfinder. This arrangement allows you to see exactly what the lens is ‘seeing’. When you take a picture, the mirror is flipped up to allow the light from the subject to pass through to the film (or sensor in a digital SLR). When the exposure finishes, the mirror drops back to the viewing position. Obviously when the mirror is up,…

With the demise of the traditional compact camera at the hands of the smartphone, the emphasis in fixed lens digital cameras has moved to either higher-end models or those with ‘superzoom’ lenses. Being small is no longer the main prerequisite, and both types offer feature sets similar to those available on mirrorless cameras or D-SLRs with the superzoom models very similar in styling to a mid-sized D-SLR (except they now all have electronic viewfinders rather than optical types). Superzoom lenses span wide-angle to supertelephoto in the one complex optical design and the exceptionally long focal lengths are achieved by adopting smaller-size sensors (so a magnification factor comes into play). The current king of the superzoom cameras, Nikon’s Coolpix P1000, has a lens with a focal range equivalent to 24-3000mm because…

The iP8760 comes up against the Epson Expression XP-15000 (reviewed in the November/December 2018 issue) and here is a case of a basic apparatus versus one with more features. In many respects, the iP8760 takes the “half” description… it’s about half the initial outlay, half the running costs and half the ink ratings. The handy features of a LCD screen, motorised output tray and dual paper feeders on the Epson XP-15000 are welcome, but when it comes to the fundamentals – print making – it performs very much the same in terms of image quality. In the A3+ photo printer category the iP8760 ought to be classified as entry-level yet, surprisingly, there is an even cheaper printer that takes this prize and it’s the Canon PIXMA iX6860 priced at just…

WINNER Wow! It’s all going on in this very dramatic image by Steven Genesin which, we can assure you, was created entirely in-camera. He used the clever Live Composite function in the Olympus OM-D E-M10 to successfully capture both the massive lightning strike and the lights of Adelaide’s Brighton Jetty as a storm approached. The lens used was the M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f1.8 fast wide-angle prime. HIGHLY COMMENDED Great use of the vertical format emphasises the shapes of these sand dunes in Nambia with the lone tree creating a great sense of scale. This image was taken by Lex Rudd using a Nikon D7200 D-SLR fitted with a Sigma 18-250mm zoom (set at 155mm). COMMENDED The leading lines take you right into the middle of this exhibition (which, incidentally, is…