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› archive for November, 2008

Our Second Photo Contest

Photo Contest: Autumn

Just a reminder to everyone: tomorrow night is the last night for submissions to our second photo contest, and your chance to win a FREE 16 x 20″ print of your shot. We’ve had a lot of good submissions so far, ranging from everything to point-and-shoot Panasonic digital cameras through larger Nikon digital SLR cameras. So, no matter what you shoot, get out there tonight, or look through your hard drive, and find us a shot that you think captures the theme of “Autumn.”

More details can be found here. I’ll accept any submissions I find waiting in my email box when I get back in Monday morning at 9AM EST.



Getting Us Ready

Expo 2008

Hey everyone, I’m here at the desk with a special Saturday installment of my Out of Focus blog. We survived Black Friday and the dangers of Thanksgiving dinners (beware the food comas, I tell ya). And, we’re not done yet. Coming up this week we’re having our annual Fall Expo, where you’ll find continued specials as well as several extraordinary new ones. I know, I’ve been looking over the ads here. Plus, for those of you in the Indianapolis area, you can come in next week and get your hands on a lot of the hottest items in photography this year, including the best Canon lenses, the new constant aperture Nikon lenses, the blue, red, and black G1 Panasonic digital cameras, Sony camcorders, Profoto professional studio lighting, Bogen Manfrotto tripods, Gitzo camera tripods, and way more than I even have space to plug here.

I’ve got a busy plate of homepage ads sitting here, so be sure you check back every day this next week because our homepage will feature different highlighted products and specials each day.



Nikon D3X

The rumours were getting hot and heavy, but this isn’t what I call a rumour. Nikon has made the official announcement of the Nikon D3X.

It boasts FX-format and a 24.5-megapixel (6048 x 4032) CMOS sensor.

No word on new Nikon lenses though.

We are maintaining a list for this new Nikon digital camera.  Email us at info@robertsimaging.com with D3X in the subject and your contact info in the body.



Canon 5D Mark II

Yes, the rumours are correct.  The new Canon Digital SLR  camera, the EOS 5D Mk II, has begun shipping to dealers.  Here at Roberts we are going to move through our list as best we can.  Please be patient in that quantities are small and demand is high. Keep in mind that there is also a rebate program on Canon lenses and two other Canon digital slr cameras.  Roberts also stocks the complete line of Canon digital camera accessories.



Computer: Fire my Canon

Wired has this. It’s from Rob Galbraith’s site. And, darn it, we’re not going to miss out on talking about it, either. It seems there’ll be some software coming out next month that’ll let you Windows shooters using Canon’s software for tethered shooting to work it by imitating Star Trek captains. No, really. It uses WIndows voice recognition system built-into Windows, and then it uses that to operate the Canon software. The catch? You have to preface all commands with “Computer.” I mean, check out the video:


One of the people here in the office asked us why this’d be useful. Well, other than the ‘awesome’ factor of telling your camera what to do in the most literal way to date, how about the following:

You’re in your studio, your professional studio lighting glaring away like an artifical sun (assuming artificial suns have modeling lamps, that is). Your EOS is on your camera tripod (perhaps one of those Bogen Manfrotto tripods). You’ve got it pointed where you need it, but you’re not sure where you want your lights pointed and your model is getting impatient. Then, in a burse of inspiration, you run your video out to a TV so you can monitor shots in real time and you run over to your lights. You move one and shout for the computer to fire, which it does. You check. Too dark. You tell it to change your aperture and fire again. Perfect. Instant feedback with hands-free operation? Put me down for that.



Roberts Raw Footage: 5D Mk II

Alright, I’ve been sitting on this all week while we got our I’s dotted and T’s crossed and now here it is: our Roberts Raw Footage installment about the 5D Mk II. That’s right, we’ve got hands-on footage of the hottest new Canon digital SLR camera’s video mode being shown off. I think at this point there’s nothing else I need to tell you all about this piece of equipment, so I’ll leave it to the video. Embedded below, on our Podcasts page too (though we had to drop the resolution a bit for this one as the original encoding weighed in at 17 MB and took forever to load).

Note: This was shot on a limited time schedule at the end of a very good and busy Canon Day demo, so our presenters didn’t have time for a rehearsal take and everything is on-the-fly. Also, Amanda is a very soft-spoken girl so after our initial introduction you may find it worthwhile to turn the sound up a bit.

We’re still running our list on this. Not on it? Call us at 1-800-726-5544.



Black Friday Deals!

The unofficial kickoff to the holiday selling season is coming up this Friday.  We have some really cool stuff in our Thursday Thanksgiving ad.  Check it out in the Indianapolis Star this week.  We have a very popular digital camera brand in an 8 MP, 3x optical zoom, 3 inch screen, for under $99!  Need a GPS unit?  We have a killer deal on those too.  Digital camera accessories will be on special.  Need SD memory cards or CF cards?  We will have them at the lowest prices that I have ever seen.  8GB cards will be under $39, and they will be a big name brand.  So check out the Roberts Imaging add this week.  The deals are here!  Come in and see us on Friday!



Metz 58 AF-1

Metz 58 AF-1Being an Olympus shooter, I can say that perhaps the biggest advantage to more common systems like Canon and Nikon is the availability of third-party accessories. So, when someone does make a good third party product available for my system, I’m inclined to pay attention.

This is the Metz 58 AF-1. You can get these in various flavors, including Canon flashes, Nikon flashes, and (as the opening of this article would suggest) Olympus/Panasonic. This flash is designed to replace the top-end models (when it was released these were the SB-800, 580EX II, and the FL-50 [Now the FL-50r]). It packs a true GN of 58, zoom head up to 105mm, a secondary reflector for fill flash, bounce, swivel, and wireless control. And, my favorite easily overlooked feature, lowlight AF assist using a projected red light (which is totally preferable to my camera’s “strobing” pop-up flash, a poor excuse at best for dedicated AF-assist beams).

I think I’ll pick one up for my bag. Why? Because I believe in buying good equipment, and that doesn’t always mean making sure the brand on my accessories matches that on my camera. But, maybe that’s just me.



Panasonic 45-200

Panasonic 45-200I finally had time to check out the first technical review of the Panasonic 45-200mm, the first telephoto to match the new G1 Panasonic digital cameras. A lot of the camera world is watching, because this is the first telephoto zoom for the new Micro Four Thirds system, a system which seems positioned to render the ultra-zoom market somewhat obsolete if it succeeds.

Unlike Nikon lenses or Canon lenses, the Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds have a crop factor of 2x, which makes this first offering effectively a 90-400mm lens, which isn’t too shabby for something measuring all of 4 inches long.

The review so far indicates that it’s a solid if not spectacular lens, but it’s a kit lens coming in at around 350 bucks, so I think that’s perfectly acceptable. And, for people looking for a pocketable telephoto zoom, this is the biggest step forward yet.

Looks like we should be getting stock on some soon.



Fun Fact

AF360FGZSo, just because I work in a specialized camera store doesn’t mean there’s not always something new for me to learn about cameras. I’ve talked in the past about Nikon flashes and Canon flashes, but today’s post is about the flashes from that kind of dark horse company called “Pentax”.

Neat Fact I Just Learned Today: The newer Pentax flashes, like the AF360FGZ and AF540FGZ, can strobe the flash continuously for a second to provide a modeling light so you can check the light and shadows. I’m sure that’s gotta be rough on batteries, but still a very useful feature, especially for someone just starting out in flash lighting (where much of the work is trial and error).




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