Cameracraft magazine – Taking your practical photography further
Leading UK veterinary charity, PDSA, has launched its search to discover the UK’s most photogenic pet. If your pet has star quality and is always posing for the camera, then why not enter their photograph into the PDSA pets’ gallery competition? Continue reading »
If you use Sigma lenses on your Alpha, you can join the Sigma User Club UK and enter their prize competitions (anyone can join, worldwide, but you must be in the UK to enter the competitions as the prizes are given by the UK distribution company).
Alan Hess is the author of a new field guide to using the Sony Alpha 700, published by Wileys, with 281 pages and the usual contents covering basic photographic techniques as well as the camera’s operation.
The cost of the guide is 16 Euros by mail order from Research & Markets of Dublin website; the title is ‘Sony Alpha DSLR A700 Digital Field Guide‘.
The parallel development of Carl Zeiss lenses for Sony (AF lenses in the Alpha mount) and independent manual focus lenses for other makes continues. The latest CZ design is a revision of the classic 18mm Distagon last seen in the Contax system, optimised for colour balance and reflection supression with digital SLRs.
Nikon is holding a launch today (June 30th) in London, and presumably worldwide. Richard Kilpatrick is attending for Icon Publications Ltd. As at 1.30am Monday, no press release has been received from Nikon, so we can assume an embargo will be in place but news may be released around 10.30am Monday 30th (GMT).
The launch is expected to reveal a low-cost 12 megapixel ‘full frame D300’ based on the sensor used in the D3, with a D100-type body like the D300. It may also preview the D3X, a full frame 24.x megapixel D3-type body using the new Sony high resolution full frame sensor.
We had early information that Sony would launch new products in June, which now has one day to go. The 58 flashgun may have been the only launch for June. A possible clue to imminent roll-outs may be that new Sony point of sale cabinets have space for products which the dealers don’t yet have! The 24-105mm f/4 G SSM has already been leaked but we can expect two more key lenses in the wide angle and medium tele zoom ranges. Rumours of a June 30th launch may apply to the Nikon conferences, not Sony.
My bet is that the first we may actually see of some new items for sale will be in the window of Foto Gregor, Cologne, around September 23rd. We shall be at photokina from the press day on September 22nd – watch this space!
– David
Sony has announced the September introduction of the most powerful flash yet for the Alpha system, the Sony HVL-F58AM which incorporates a brand new body design allowing optimum bounce flash illumination regardless of how you hold the camera.
Increases in pixel count are often dismissed because to ‘double’ the resolution of a 6 megapixel sensor you would need 24 megapixels. Indeed, to double it linearly you would – but the human eye judges density of detail on an area basis.
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Following announcements that Sony has developed a backlight technique to enable extremely low noise exposures, we receive this press release which may or may not be related – a Sony CCD astrophotography camera capable of one-hour exposures and programmed sequences. Resolution seems a bit basic though.
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Here’s a question which came in to my email just now:
“Could I process a RAW file in Photoshop to achieve a similar effect as if I had used a Polaroid lens filter?
Or would I be better just using the Polaroid filter?”
The answer is that you can never imitate the effect of polarizing light (which changes the way reflective surfaces look, and deepens or lightens the sky blue according to the zone of the sky relative to the sun’s position. But you can use Adobe Camera Raw (CS3 versions) to deepen skies you never thought could be rescued.
The introduction of a £399 (street price, RRP £449) DSLR with 14.2 megapixels – with or without a useful type of Live View – should have been applauded by reviewers. It’s the single most important point about the camera. No other DSLR approaches this image size and resolution at such a low price. Continue reading »