Yuri Acurs SteadyPod...

Yuri Acurs is often cited as the world's most successful micro stock photographer and is an avid supporter of the idea that you camera should be supported as much as possible whatever the circumstance. Hence his use of a monopod for almost all of his work.

In the above video he will give a very 'honest' opinion of what he uses and why. All the complaints you will hear above have been recently solved with his partnership with Custom Brackets to produce the ultimate studio and on-location camera monopod setup.

Its called the 'Yuri Acurs SteadyPod' and its a fusion of a very popular manfrotto monopod, suitably modified to fix its common faults and the Custom Brackets tilt head and bracket that can be rotated from landscape to portrait format with the flick of a wrist.

Well the club has managed to get its hands on one of these 'custom' monopods and I have to say that its a pleasure to use. The mix between the ability to adjust the height of the monopod itself with one hand and then the orientation of the camera with the other, is quick and effortless and allows you to keep focussed on your subject.

Another worthy addition to our equipment cupboard.

Über Bokeh Monster..

This lens has gained a bit of a cult status and is sort after by both still and video photographers. Its the Russian built Helios 40-2 m42 mount lens.

Originally designed to be used as an oscilloscope lens, I don't know who started to use it on a camera but what a discovery !

Its has an 85mm focal length with a minimum aperture of f1.5, yes, I'll say that again, f1.5 ! That makes it a really, really fast lens and the focal length is just perfect for portraits (for example). But really what is all the fuss about. Well, we arrive once again at something called 'bokeh', and the popular opinion is that this is one of the best. Bokeh really is a personal thing but this lens really does have some wonderful abilities.

Here are a couple of images to give you an idea, and what you will see is that depending on where the highlights are you will get one effect or another, from buttery smooth to crazy swirls.

You've probably guessed it already that the club has managed to get its hands on one of these fine lenses. However, lets get a few things straight, its manual focus, you have to set and 'activate' the aperture manually, and f1.5 means that depth of field can be measured millimetres at close distances, and it has an m42 mount which probably doesn't fit any of the camera's we own, and its heavy.

I know, I know, before you all start shouting at me for such a stupid purchase, we also have two converters for both Canon and Nikon mounts (now all the Nikonians can't start complaining theres no lens for them this year !). The Canon converter does have the advantage that the central focus point will flash when the lens is correctly focussed (neat no !?). The Nikon convertor doesn't have this (because I couldn't find this functionality anywhere), but it is specially built such that the lens can be focussed at infinity.

We are really lucky to have picked one up, and in such good condition, and personally I absolutely love it, I'm having a great time using it, you have to take your time and think a bit more, but the results are really worth the extra effort.

Canon's widest lens for Digital SLR's...

Having a APS-C sized sensor in your digital SLR always means your going to have difficulty finding a lens wide enough due to the crop factor. 

Enter the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 USM lens stage left. With the 1.6X factor of Canon camera's this gives an equivalent focal length of 16-35mm which is pretty wide by anyones standards.

Bear in mind though, that this is an EF-S lens and consequently will only fit on APS-C camera's made from 2003 onwards (the EF-S mount was actually introduced with the 300D). I don't think anyone in the club has such an old digital SLR, well with the exception of me :-(, so everyone else should be OK.

Why do I mention this... it's because the club now has one of these lens for all the Canon users to try out.

But what about image quality, well there are many reviews on the web and lens comes out favourably in all of them, and the image above gives you an idea of its abilities.

This lens is without a doubt a welcome edition to the equipment cabinet.

Canon's little known super telephoto...

Super Telephoto lenses start at 400mm, there heavy, there big, they require beefy tripods with specialised heads and there damn expensive right... errrrrrr... well not always.

Here you see the Canon 400mm f5.6L lens, this is the slowest (and cheapest) of the three 400mm's but it doesn't skimp on image quality, which after all is said and done is the most import aspect of any lens.

Its not so heavy and its slim profile allows for 'easy' handholding making it a firm favourite with many Bird Photographers, especially those that enjoy taking pictures of them in flight.

The club is now in posession of one of these lenses, which should give all the Canon users the opportunity to try out this wonderful piece of equipment.

Sun Bouncing....

Amongst some of the clubs recent purchase's was the Sunbounce MICRO-MINI PRO with flash bracket. This light, fast to assemble reflector, can be used with both available light and with flash to direct the light exactly to where you want.

The material for the reflector is white on one side and a mix between gold and silver
on the other (see image below), which produces a wonderfully warm light, like that found at the beginning and end of the day, without being too over the top.

I hope to get more of these products for the club in the future, especially the SUN-SWATTER and BOUNCE-PRO, which means you can effectively work in the midday sun and still produce wonderful images, something that's no very easy to do in Spain with its unforgivingly harsh midday light.

Also, take a look at the video above where Bert Stephini of Squeeze the Lime fame, gives us a more light hearted look at the MICRO-MINI's many uses.

What the heck is an Octa...!?!

I mentioned the other day that the club had purchased an octa, if you don't know what one is or what its capable of.... take a look at the following videos:

Report: the ESAC photo club Nikon D80

I had the pleasure to borrow the club's new Digital-SLR, a Nikon D80 over the holiday period. It was my first hands-on experience with a single-lens-reflex (SLR) camera. In principle anyone can start using it without any prior experience by selecting the AUTO mode (or one of the selectable scenes: portrait, macro, night, landscape). For me this worked pretty well in most circumstances. In fact, it became quickly evident that the basic quality of the images is already better than your average point-and-shoot compact.

Compared to a point-and-shoot the Nikon is quite heavy and I was forced to use a tripod in low light situations (which I would normally never have thought about! ;-p.



The focal ('zoom') range for the current lens (18-44mm) is not very large but it is quite sufficient for first use.

After a few hundred pictures (mostly taken in RAW format, which I now need to post-process. more on that experience later) I tried using the semi-manual functions (P,S.A on the program dial). This I found quite a challenge. To get a better feeling for aperture/shutter-speed combinations and the effect on e.g. you depth of field (blurring of background) you can use the depth-of-field preview button located on the front of the camera.