Medium format cameras were a very popular format some years ago with manufacturers like Hasselblad and were the choice of pro studio and wedding photographers alike. Now, as compact cameras seem to be making way for the Micro 4/3rds camera, Pentax has bucked the trend and launched its medium format 645Z and Sony looks like it’s hot on its heels with a variant of its own. The 6×4.5cm format in film days was always the preferred format for magazines with 6x7cm a close second.
I spent a couple of years shooting all my press photography on Pentax 6×7 film cameras, shooting on 120 and 220 BW film. They were slow to use, heavy, bulky cameras, with lenses to match. The new digital Pentax is a world apart from its predecessor and looks really exciting for both film and video use.
While on cameras, it looks like Canon, after a five year wait, may provide prototypes of the long awaited 7D Mark II to some photographers at this year’s World Cup with an official launch at the Photokina photography show in Germany in September. But if you are in the market for a capable compact have a look at the Panasonic DMC-TZ60.
Disappointing weather this week drew my attention to an announcement by Nikon regarding their new fluorine lens coating. When working in the rain, droplets of water on the front of the lens are really frustrating. Potentially this new coating turns the front element into a hyperphobic surface making assignments in bad weather conditions more manageable.
Wearable cameras for stills and video have recently been written about in the media as police were issued with devices clipped to their jackets. A company called NewViewWear is currently running a crowd funding campaign to mass produce placing cameras into T-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies, a good idea or not, I think not. Indiscriminate filming and photography will just fill existing systems with un-editable useless data.
Storage of video and photographs is always a problem, there never seems to be enough. Another crowd funding idea on Kickstarter looks like it will easily meet its funding target in the next few days. Called MBLOK it is a wireless memory solution with up to 256GB of storage in a tiny profile. So if you are on holiday, away from the office or on a shoot this is an interesting 128bit encrypted, 300 hour battery life device, see http://kck.st/1kiO9mY ?for more.
If you would rather get more photographs on to your existing storage take a look at http://www.jpegmini.com. The software has been around for a while and it offers pretty good jpeg compression, so your pictures will take up less storage space but remain good quality. There is also a free app download.
For those who followed my advice and bought the subscription model of Adobe Creative Cloud you may be interested to hear that there is an update which, among other improvements, allows you to download previous versions of Adobe’s design tools. The ‘next evolution of Creative Cloud’ is also due to be announced ?at a keynote speech on June 18.
Inclement weather may not inspire you to go out and take some photographs so make use of any spare time, rummage through old photographs, negatives/transparencies and get some scanned to add to your modern digital archive, remembering to scan at as high a resolution as is useable on your system. This will give you the best quality image to work with.
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