Innholdsfortegnelse for V73 Issue 4 i Pro Photo

As you can read in this issue’s news section, yet another famous photographic brand has bitten the dust. Bowens, the British maker of studio flash – indeed, the pioneer of the flash monobloc – has ceased operations after nearly 95 years in business. Bowens can be added to a list of digital-era casualties that includes Konica, Minolta, Bronica, Contax, Rollei, Yashica and, to all intents and purposes, Mamiya. Of course, the originals of Agfa, Kodak and Polaroid are also gone, even if the branding is still being used. The digital technologies have wrought wholesale change on pretty well every sphere of the photographic industry, and are much more far-reaching than those who originally pursued the idea of “filmless photography” could ever envisage. Change is on-going and, in recent times, it’s…

Current to 27 August: Exhibition. Bill Henson. Recent photographs selected by the photographer, including portraits, nudes and landscapes. Part of the NGV Festival Of Photography. At NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, Victoria 3000. Gallery hours are 10.00am to 5.00pm daily. Admission is free. For more information telephone (03) 8620 2222 or visit www.ngv.vic.gov.au Current to 10 September: The fifth Portrait(s) Photography Festival. Ten portrait photography exhibitions staged in the open air around the centre of the French town of Vichy. For more information visit www.ville-vichy.fr/expositions/ festival-portrait Current to 8 October: Exhibition. Wildlife Photographer Of The Year. One hundred images from the finalists and winners in the 2016 edition of the world’s biggest wildlife photography competition. At the Australian National Maritime Museum, 2 Murray Street, Darling Harbour, Sydney, NSW…

It’s perhaps less of a surprise, but no less sad, that the UKbased studio flash company, Bowens International Ltd, has closed its doors after 94 years of operations. In truth, Bowens had been struggling for a while, given it was mainly competing in a sector now dominated by the Chinese brands (i.e. affordably priced flash monoblocs), but also because it lacked the resources to do anything innovative with its products, unlike, for example, Profoto. Bowens is essentially blaming what it describes as the “considerably less expensive products by Chinese manufacturers” for its demise, but the reality is that Bowens’s own products haven’t been competitive in terms of either price or performance for quite a while. Numerous minor makeovers of aging designs were never going to cut the mustard, especially in…

After a record crop of entries for the 2017 competition, the 2018 Pink Lady ® Food Photographer Of The Year awards are now open for entries. There are some new categories and new judges, including Ferran Adria, iconic chef of the oft-voted world’s best restaurant, El Bulli in Spain. The Pink Lady Food Photographer Of The Year awards have had an illustrious and evolving panel since its first year. The range of skills and expertise is extensive, from great photographers, creative directors, food retailers using the finest photography, photography gallery owners and chefs. Past judges have included Antonio Carluccio, Martin Parr, Yotam Ottolenghi, Chris Beetles, Jay Rayner and Donna Hay. This year, for the first time, David Loftus – best known for his photography for Jamie Oliver – will be…

Independent lens maker Tamron has been pretty busy recently and continues with its ‘Generation 2’ upgrade program for its key models. The latest G2 model is the SP 24-70mm f2.8 Di VC USD (which complements the recently announced SP 70-200mm f2.8 G2) for Canon or Nikon full-35mm format D-SLRs. The new 24-70mm f2.8 has a sealed barrel construction to prevent the intrusion of dust or moisture, along with a fluorine coating on the exposed surface of the front element to help repel grease and water. On the inside, the 17-elements optical construction includes two ‘XR’ types (Extra Refractive Index), three ‘LD’ types (Low Dispersion), three glass-moulded aspherical types and one hybrid aspherical element. Together, these special elements correct for chromatic aberrations (both axial and transverse), spherical aberrations and distortion while…

It would be the best 100th birthday present Nikon could give itself… a shiny new mirrorless camera system based on either an ‘APS-C’ or full-35mm sensor. Whether it’s launched this year remains to be seen, but Nikon has confirmed that it is indeed developing a new mirrorless camera system based on bigger sensors than have been used in the 1 Nikon products so far. Apart from confirming the project’s existence, there are precious few details, including the sensor format. Reports published in overseas media simply quote a Nikon spokesperson as stating that the new mirrorless system will “…build upon Nikon’s strengths, and offer the performance prospective customers expect, including the ultimate optics performance, image-processing technologies, strength and durability, and operation”. Given Sony’s current targeting of Nikon users with its full-35mm…

Making great RAW conversions is an essential digital photography skill to master. It acts as a kind of bridge between taking a picture and carrying out more involved enhancements and, because the controls on offer in a package like Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom are so comprehensive, it’s often really the only step you need to take in turning your pictures into winners. RAW is an unprocessed file format that outputs the image directly from the camera’s sensor. All cameras shoot RAW files to begin with, but most lower-end models like compacts and smartphones then apply in-camera processing to ‘fix’ variables like colour, contrast and sharpening in order to deliver a JPEG. While this may be quick and convenient, these variables are the fundamental building blocks that determine how the…

Video-makers will represent a significant proportion of the fourth-generation EOS 5D’s buyers so it’s equipped accordingly, starting with 4K recording in the more pro-orientated Cinema 4K resolution of 4096x2160 pixels. It’s a direct 1:1 crop from the middle of the sensor so there’s no scaling involved (so no artefacts), but there is a focal length magnification factor of just over 1.6x. For the record, Canon’s ‘APS-C’ format EF-S lenses can’t be used on this body. C4K video is recorded at either 25 fps (PAL) or 24 fps with Motion JPEG compression – at a heady bit rate of 500 Mbps – which is easier to handle in post-production, but means very big files and the need for speed as far as the memory card is concerned. UHS-I U3 (Speed Class…

British company Lee Filters has launched a new range of high-quality neutral density filters. Two years in development, the ProGlass IRND filters were originally designed for cinematography and, claims Lee, have already been acknowledged as “the best neutral-density filters on the market”. For still photographers, the ProGlass IRND filters are now available in Lee’s Seven5, 100mm and SW150 systems. Advances in coating technology mean that the filters – which are manufactured from 2.0 mm thick optically-flat glass – are available in strengths of two (0.6ND), three (0.9ND), four (1.2ND) and six (1.8ND) stops, plus in ultra-long ten (3ND) and 15-stop (4.5ND) versions. All the filters in the range are designed to be free of colour casts and with accurate stop values to ensure consistency in all shooting conditions and allow…

In a move that’s shocked the photography industry, the owners of Lexar have closed down the brand, which is now up for sale. Micron Technology has ceased all production of Lexar branded memory cards, readers and USB drives. Micron says that “…the decision was made as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to focus on its increasing opportunities in higher value markets and channels”. In other words, Lexar wasn’t making the profits Micron was expecting. Just whether anybody steps up to buy the Lexar business remains to be seen, but it was quite a significant player in the memory card market along with SanDisk, Kingston and Sony. Lexar’s range was extensive and encompassed the CFast, CompactFlash, XQD, SD and microSD formats in a wide selection of storage capacities and data…

There’s nothing like a dip into the archives to reveal just how much things have changed in the imaging industry, especially over the last couple of decades. In the late 1970s colour film had finally been accepted and the makers of 35mm SLR cameras were trying to break into the commercial photography market. Here’s a selection of what was on the pages of this magazine 40 years ago when it was called Professional Photography In Australia. This is a snapshot of the July/ August 1977 issue. COVER PHOTOGRAPH / Clive Kane, Sydney TEST REPORTS / Polaroid Type 808 Polacolor 2 8x10-inch instant print film PEOPLE AND PLACES / Peter Walton (Melbourne) / Adrian Daniel, medical photographer (Melbourne) THE ISSUES / Hypo 77 convention at Surfers Paradise…

2017 AIPP VIC Epson Professional Photography Awards Lisa Saad is the 2017 AIPP VIC Epson Professional Photographer Of The Year. Lisa also won this prestigious award in 2016. Based in Melbourne, Lisa has been a professional photographer for nearly 30 years and is accomplished in a variety of fields, including advertising, architecture, food, corporate and lifestyle. So far in her career, she has won more than 200 awards for her work and she was the most awarded photographer in this Victorian Professional Photographer Of The Year Awards, including achieving the highest scoring print (99 points out of a possible 100). The awards are run annually in every state by the Australian Institute Of Professional Photography (AIPP) – the country’s largest photographic membership body – and are sponsored by Epson Australia.…