Cameracraft magazine – Taking your practical photography further

Author: David Kilpatrick

  • The Alpha 900 arrives

    TODAY Sony’s Alpha 900 was unveiled to European journalists at a press conference held in the Caledonian Hilton Hotel, in the very heart of historic Edinburgh shadowed by the Castle and looking out over the west end of Princes Street gardens. The price for the body only will be £2,100 inc VAT from Sony Style Europe and the camera will be delivered in October – SonyStyle begin taking orders on September 10th.

    Sony chose the anniversary of the Battle of Flodden Field (September 9th, 1513) for the launch conference and the anniversary of the last battle fought between England and Scotland as two nations (Pinkie Cleugh, near Edinburgh, September 10th 1547) for their field trip… the English press were made most welcome!

    Duncan McEwan, Scottish regional organiser for the Photoworld Club and a regular contributor to the magazine, played a key role in the launch as one of the European beta testers who has been using the camera over the summer period.

    Duncan has used the A900 with the 24-70mm and 70-200mm SSM only, and tells me that his main interest was to see whether it did what he wanted – not to compare it with the A100, A700 or any other camera!

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  • Tamron 10-24mm ƒ3.5-4.5 announced

    TAMRON has announced that its new 10-24mm lens will be an ƒ3.5-4.5 design – not an ƒ2.8 as some rumours had it – and will hit the shops in Nikon and Canon mounts first, on September 20th.

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  • Historic photos go on to Flickr

    The National Media Museum in Bradford has become the first UK institution to make sections of the internationally renowned National Photography Collection available to millions worldwide through online photo management and sharing application Flickr™. (more…)

  • Canon EOS 50D faces up to Live View

    Canon has today officially announced the 15.5 megapixel APS-C EOS 50D. This is a 1.6X factor sensor, packing a density well in excess of the Alpha 350 – if Sony was to make an Alpha with the same pixel density it would be 17.5 megapixels, and a full framer would be 38.5 megapixels.

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  • Alpha 900 – finder and frames

    It’s not going to be long before we see the Alpha 900, and some cameras are known to be out there on trial in the hands of Sony staff and pre-release testers. I am not one, so rest assured, this is not a leak! What can you expect from the Alpha 900’s full-frame prism finder?

    (Note: this post was written in early August – it is now 100% certain that the finder is 100%, and at 0.74X magnification will be – as had been hinted – the largest of all current DSLR finders in apparent visual terms except the EOS 1Ds Mk III which is 0.76X. Comparisons: EOS 5D 0.68X, Nikon D3 0.70X)    .

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  • Photokina – a look back, and forward

    At the end of September 2006, I set off for a quick visit to photokina in Cologne, having parted company with Icon’s am-pro magazine ƒ2 and not really needing to report on the whole show in detail. Here’s the report I wrote then, with photos, and some thoughts for the 2008 show. (more…)

  • Alpha 900 launch

    There seems to be a lot of speculation about the Alpha 900 or Pro, and uncertainty about the timing of introduction. The August 14th date is not the 900, it’s two Cybershot models. The Alpha 900 will, as far as we are aware, be shown to the press on September 9th/10th worldwide.

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  • Slim Cyber-shot lifestyle models launched

    Well, it looks as if the 14th August UK press conference for exciting digital camera news may not be about the Alpha 900 after all – Sony has just officially announced that some colourful little Cyber-shot models with ISO 3200 capability will be unveiled there, and no mention of the A900. Roll on September 9th!

    Here’s Sony’s release on the new Cyber-shots – I apologise for leaving the hyperbolic advertising style adjectives (unusable editorially, and just a waste of words) in place:

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  • New ‘micro 4/3rds’ system unveiled

    Received this morning from Olympus PR:

    Tokyo, 5 August 2008 – Olympus Imaging Corporation (Olympus Imaging) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic) today announced joint development of technologies and devices for the “Micro Four Thirds System standard”.
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  • Repairing an image by cloning from another

    MANY photographers habitually use layers from everything. I don’t! In fact, I try to minimise my time spent on post-processing shots for stock library sale, and work very quickly. If it needs complex setup or demands working using layers to be able to go back and change things, I’ve probably already wasted too much time. Here’s an example of an Alpha 700 shot created from two slightly different versions, and how it was done.

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