Mr. Jorrocks' Lecture

Surtees' famous grocer - Mr Jorrocks - delivered lectures to the Handley Cross Hunt on occasions. He was fueled by brandy and water and a love of fox-hunting, and however you may feel about either brandy or foxes, he did have a good bit of advice for young photographers.

These may be likened to the young sportsmen that Mr. Jorrocks was addressing - novices who might find themselves lost when approaching either sport or art. It is not likely that the new photographer will be pitched head over heels into a ditch or be roared off the field by and irate M.F.H. but one thing Jorrocks said is gold.

" Make sure you can ride one horse before you keep two."

Too often new photographers who have just learned to find the shutter button get a few images in hand or on-screen, and then read a week's worth of internet reviews and rumours - and charge in wanting to exchange the humble kit lens for the fanciest glass the manufacturers make. If their purse is strong enough to do it they charge out again expecting to produce eternal masterpieces at every street corner. Horses can produce things at street corners but it generally ain't considered to be eternal masterpieces...

The kit lens is a kit lens for a reason - it is a good estimation by the manufacturer of a standard lens for the camera for standard operation - by a standard photographer. The trick for the novice is to keep on working with that lens until they can come up to that standard - the results will be very good indeed.

If you do not have a kit lens...get one. I suggest an 18-55 or a 35 prime for the APSC sensor people and a 50 prime for the full-frame users. Use it for all it, and you, are worth. Do not underestimate the resolving power or the colour rendition and do not be put off by the snobbery of those who might consider themselves more advanced. Keep your eyes open and don't over-ride the hounds.

My New Lens Doesn't Focus...

" Here! What is all this! I bought a new lens three weeks ago and it don't focus proper! My brass is as good as anybody's and I paid to have perfect focus! "

Stepped up from the kit lens, eh? Decided to get the fancy glass that all the internet forums rave about? Maybe you've ditched the old DSLR that you had for 5 years and bought the top of the range new one that has the quintuple processor and in-built beer engine. And you've gone out to take pictures at the soccer with the new fast lens under the lights and about half of them are slightly out of focus?

It's a conspiracy! It's an outrage! It's all the fault of George Bush! Of course it is. George Bush and the makers of the lens and the scientists over the years that have formulated the laws of optics. All in cahoots.

The rotters have fixed it so that f:8 has more depth of field at a focal length of 55 mm than at a focal length of 300mm. Then they have sneaked in the optical law that says that f:8 has more depth of field than f:1.2 anyway, no matter what the focal length. And they have arranged for soccer games to be held under lights rather than out in bright sunlight...forcing you to use those wider-open lenses....Appalling.

Worse - the manufacturers have put more resolution into the new sensors and screens so you can see when it is out of focus - never had that problem peering into the old 1-inch screen. It is almost as if they are taunting us.

Well, there is only one thing to do. Fight back. Go all old-school on them. Raise the ISO until you start to get coloured sparkles, then back it off a touch. Use your telephoto lens to focus manually on the grass where the action is going to be. Leave the lens focussed manually right there. Set the aperture at f:8. Set the shutter speed at 1/250 of a second if there is enough light to do it. Or 1/125 if not. When the players run over the grass bit that is in focus press the shutter button.

That'll teach 'em.

Permission To Have Fun, Sir? - - With Ilford

You can sit there at the computer only so long HDR'ing a picture of a beach before you start to slump sideways. Likewise processing cubic yards of bridal parties or school balls. Eventually you are forced to turn the laptop off with a brick and go looking for a drink.

This sort of ennui is not new - film photographers used to develop it ( geddit...) after about 6 hours in the gloom of a darkroom trying to get the ghost gum in the paddock on one corner of the print to match tone with the dead galah on the other corner. It was a relief to have someone stumble into the darkroom and ruin all the work. You could vent your rage and burst into tears and it was all someone else's fault.

I am not sure if the wet-plate or daguerreotype workers were bored - they generally were on the leading edge of the art and one step ahead of either poisoning or blowing themselves up. Maybe Fox Talbot got sick of waiting for the leaves to appear on the paper...

Well, we have the answer to the blah's. Get yourself an Ilford Pinhole kit. Comprises a well-built plastic frame with a "bellows" that is rigid out the front, a laser-drilled pinhole, a number of sheets of paper and film, and a calculator for the exposure.

I'll correct that -it is a calcu-later as most of the exposures you will be doing involve sitting patiently for seconds, if not minutes. Take a book and a big orange drink.

You'll need to source 4 x 5 double dark slides to slip into the back - or you could use a roll film holder if you wanted to be a spoil-sport. The three boxes of film and paper are Delta 100 in 4 x 5, Harman Positive paper, and Ilford Multigrade in 4 x 5. This means you can do paper negatives, direct positives, and regular negatives, and all you'll need to develop them is a 4 x 5 tank, or a simple set of trays in a darkroom. The chemistry will be plain old Ilford B/W stuff - no need for exotics or poisons.

The frame has an integral bubble level for landscapes and two 1/4" 20 sockets on the sides to let you do landscape or portrait. As the exposure times are so long, portraiture may be problematical, but remember it has been done before and it can be done again. You will have fun trying and the results have a soft focus charm of their own.

I particularly recommend that you Google up Photo Secession and " The Onion Field" to see how lovely it can all look.

Caught In The Web - Who Owns What?

I knew a man once in a gun club who drove an old, expensive motor car. As he derived his income largely from diving into the public charity purse, I was amazed that he would sacrifice so much of this for that old car. His excuse was that the car "owed" him too much money to abandon. In the time that I was acquainted the overage and overstressed nature of the car increased this debt to him alarmingly.

He did not own the car. It owned him. He had mentally lashed his wrists to the steering wheel and no matter how many people told him it was foolish, he did not see this.

Go look into your studio, or your camera bag. Is there something there that " owes " you money? Are you keeping it until it apologises to you and pays up? Put your ear down close to the piece of old equipment and demand your money. What do you hear?

If something is occupying space that could better be used for some other purpose - if something demands constant attention and maintenance but is never returning the price of the maintenance - if something is long passé and you truly are never going to make use of it again...then retention of it is not just pointless, but actually harmful.

Consider my own case - because I am just as great a fool as my erstwhile companion at the gun club. I have a full-house Hasselblad 500-series outfit - two bodies, four lenses, bellows, prisms, accessories and flashes - that used to be the mainstay of my wedding shoots. Times has changed - I shoot Nikon digital now and do more for less expense and in a great deal more comfort. But I still retain the Hasselblad outfit against the day when digital backs for it will come down to $ 45.83 in price. Not that I need it even then, but it " owes" me soooo much. I seem to have got older without getting smarter...

The Linhof monorail system I own is another case in point, though I do think there are a few uses yet for it in my studio. I try the historic photo bit every now and then, and monochrome sheet film is easy to develop. I also suspect that the tilt/shift capability of the system is still a good idea for tabletops.

So what is lurking in your outfit that you should abandon? Sell it, if you can - there are markets and ebay and Gumtree and such if we cannot help you. Be prepared to put something up on a shelf and admit to yourself that it is just a keepsake, but for heaven's sake don't put the entire 1967 Flapoflex system with bellows, stereo slide. and duplicating stand in your camera room where a useful hard drive or scanner could be. Worship not the god of old aluminium and fogged glass.

Uncle Dick

I Need A Battery...

Yes, indeed you do - unless you are going to take all your pictures with a Leica M2 or a Hasselblad 500C/M you are going to need some sort of battery - either for a light meter or a motor drive or a digital camera. Nit-pickers may be able to point out that there has been some sort of photo apparatus that ran from a hand-generator or burning olive oil, but they are welcome to the sort of images it might have  produced - along with the nits...

There are two very boring pack-shots attached to this post - similar packets, similar colours. Observe, Watson, and think about what you see.

The first picture shows a number of different sizes and shapes of battery - from flat button cells to large torch cells. Each one of these has a place in some photo gear - from flash triggers to cameras to speed lights. The cylindrical lithium cells are needed for many of the quite-decent late model film cameras from major manufacturers. They are real powerhouses in this application - keeping their capacity even if they are not drawn upon for months.

If you are going away on a trip with your vintage gear, why not grab an extra one - you won't be able to find it on a Greek island or up the coast of Alaska, so be prepared.

The second picture is the one that's needs the detective mind. All those boxes look the same. Look at the labels. Three different camera camera manufacturer's names appear on a Promaster battery box - and there are 10 different models of battery listed. These are "aftermarket" batteries - produced to fit in with the appropriate manufacturer's battery code and to power the cameras in the same way.

They generally cost less than the batteries marked with the camera manufacturer's name - I do not believe that they are inferior products. Indeed, the editorial Fuji X-10 is powered alternately by Fuji-marked and aftermarket brand batteries and the pictures look the same - the run life of the aftermarket battery is just as good.

That might seem to be a funny thing to say from a shop that sells the branded battery at a higher price and derives a profit from that, but it is true. Please note that the Promaster batteries come in resealable plastic boxes so they can rattle around the inside of a camera bag safely.

I think that any photographer who is serious about their field work needs to take at least one charged spare with them, and travellers would be wise to take two spares as well as the one in the camera. Wedding shooters carry three spares plus three cards of lithium AA cells.

The business of chargers is another topic. You get one in every camera kit, and if you are a traveller you are expected to lose it in a hotel room somewhere on your journey, so perhaps it would be wise to take a spare universal charger as well.

A Day With My Scaley Mates

Did goe to the Reptile Expo yesterdaye and was greatley entertained.

It was held at Bogan Central - otherwise known as the Cannington Agricultural Hall. The reason for the nickname is instantly evident, but so many fun things happen at this venue - the toy car expo next weekend and the collector's fairs, etc. - that the occasional flannel shirt and uggs is a small price to pay for the pleasures. Even if you are the one wearing them...

So - yesterday was reptiles, and it was a typical Perth experience - and eye-opener as to just how many people are interested in a subject, how sophisticated their knowledge is, and how much trade and commerce there is out there to support it. It is the same with quilt sewing, hot rods, iron ore mining, and Lithuanian ferret racing - give them a day out and there are a million people there.

We took a stand of goodies that might interest a reptilian - DGK grey cards, Adobe image programs, Datacolor Spyder - and a some magic Nikon cameras and a coupla Cullmann products.

Well, the 10:00 lecture from me on wildlife photography was attended by me. And after ten minutes even I left. Everyone was having too much fun with the rest of the snakes to want to listen. In the event, they did come and ask sensible questions at the stand.

They ran a photographic competition that was won by three suitable shooters - first and second prize were a father and son team and son beat father. I should advise him to guard his prize - a Cullmann 525 tripod and big carrying bag - well as there was a predatory gleam in Dad's eye...reptiles do that to you.

One thing was impressive - everyone from the pure enthusiast all the way up to the two wandering officers from the Conservation Department had the interests of the animals at heart - none of the reptiles were ill-housed or ill-treated. Some of the pythons seemed to be exercising a wicked sense of humour when they were allowed to climb over pretty girls. The frogs looked nonplussed and none of them elected to turn back into princesses no matter who kissed them. The bobtail goanna in the terrarium next to our table was prosperous - his keeper obviously knew exactly the right diet for him.

The day was a success - next Sunday is toy cars and I am looking out my tracky daks and Jackie Howe shirt in preparation. I wonder if I have time to grow a mullet before then...

Good News For Earlier Customers - Hoodman

I mentioned the new Hoodman Custom Finder and loupe for the DSLRs recently. It used the new 3.2 Loupes for Canon cameras.

Good news - they have also sent us their new Custom Finder Base Plate kit for $ 219 - and it has an adapter frame that lets you mount the older Hoodman 3.0 loupe with the new convenient frame. The 3.0 loupes are obviously not as wide a coverage as the 3.2, but if the 3.0 was the correct fit your older DSLR screen this frame will hold it in place very elegantly.

Will it go onto a smaller point and shoot? Next experiment, Dr. Watson...

A New Canon Lens With A New Feature - In-Built

The Canon rumours have finally ground through the Canon mincer and we are to see the actual new product. Quite when remains problematical, but we will be told. Betting is end of May but remember what happens to people who depend on betting...

The lens is the new Canon EF 200- 400mm f:4L IS USM Extender 1.4x. It will replace the current 100-400 zoom lens. There are cosmetic differences to be seen in the illustration of the new lens - a deeper tripod foot for one and a circular zoom motion. There is a bulge on the left hand side of the lens just in front of the mount. Therein lies the real secret of the lens.

The bulge conceals an in-built 1.4x tele-extender element. If needed, it can be rotated into the light path, extending the focal length range to 280 to 560mm. It does cost one stop of light but remember that the subsequent downshift of the shutter speed can be adequately compensated for with the new IS mechanism in the lesn. You won't notice any inconvenience and you'll have a lot longer reach for animal shots.

They have reduced the weight of the lens through use of magnesium castings.

The convenience of this innovation will be at once evident to those people who have been faced in the past with demounting the old 100-400 and trying to prevent ingress of dust and moisture - not the thing does not have to be broken in the field and most of this dust will never get a chance to get in there.

This will be the lens for Africa and Alaska. And if they can get enough lions and rhinoceroses to emigrate to Anchorage, you can do it all in one trip...

Many Thanks

A cheerful thank-you to the phone caller who explained what synch cords are. I have been puzzling about what those things are since 1965. By Golly, you learn something every day...

Apparently these cord things go from a radio trigger to a flash gun. I am amazed, because I normally use lycopodium power spread out in a tray and ignited with a flintlock mechanism to provide the studio flashes. The idea of hooking up one of Mr. Marconi's wireless sets to this seems revolutionary.

Quite how the Packard shutter on the studio Calotype camera operates the transmitting key of the Marconi machine is still unclear. I daresay the young man will explain it when he comes in later in the day.

I hope he remembers to shout into my ear trumpet...

Sit Up And Beg - With Cullmann

Couldn't resist that one, folks. It is Friday and I am sitting in the editorial office avoiding manual labour...

The Cullmann Cruiser is one of the items reminiscent of their early products. Cullmann always did have some sort of a shoulder stock for use in the 8mm film days. People would attach their Bolex or Bell and Howell cameras and then press back into their shoulders like a rifle shooter as they filmed.
The combination of the stock plus the muscular tension as the camera was pressed back against the forehead or circum-orbital bone  meant that the resulting footage was very much steadier.

Same thing these days with DSLR's and video - indeed for any DSPR shooting in landscape orientation. You can gain a full shutter speed down with this.

The fun bit of the Cruiser is that the shoulder pad folds into the stock and then two auxiliary legs fold out to make a table-top tripod. One more clever Cullmann product.