Roberts Raw!

› archive for May, 2009

Memory’s cheap, kid

I have a steal for you – for $149.97 (plus shipping) you get a Hitachi Microdrive equipped with a cyclopean 2 gigabytes of storage. That’s a basement price $.074 a megabyte.

Shudder.

I’m not kidding about having Microdrives lurking in our warehouse (I think I’ll start referring to them as the Great Old Ones), gathering dust (or inspiring early twentieth century horror). My E-410 will take a Microdrive, but even my chimp-heavy shooting habits beg for better than 2mb/sec transfer rate. And how could I excuse that, what with our steal price of $39.97 for 4gb Ducati CF cards and persistent rebates on Sandisk extreme III and IV cards. And we’ve just added a new family of what I think I’ll have to call candy SDHC cards from easystore (no caps, really).

The easystore SDHC line consists of 2, 4, and 8gb cards for 6.97, 9.97, and 19.97 respectively. That makes for a wallet-busting $.0035 a megabyte on the 2 and $.0025 a megabyte on the 4 and 8 gigabyte units. Ouch.

I understand that they’re rated as SDA2.0 class 2 devices. I figure that means unless you’re the proud owner of a D5000, D90, or Rebel T1i and keen on using that video function or you really like continuous drive -these cards are A-OK for throwing in the bag as a back-up. Or at your 75 year old grandmother who owns an AE-1 and a Kodak Easyshare so old it’s got pictures of your last two ex-girlfriends on it…not that I know anyone like that.



Mother’s Day Lens Promo?

So, not sure what marketing guru decided your average mom (please, don’t misunderstand me, I know there are quite a few of you mothers who are photographers, this isn’t about you but rather odd marketing choices) wants a Tamron 18-270mm for Mother’s Day (my mom would personally and resoundly smack me if I got her a 15x ultra zoom for Mother’s Day). Whoever it was, though, and misguided as the decision seems, it’s a boon to every photographer, mother or not, because the aforemention 15x zoom is currently $50 less. Through next Tuesday, I think. Odd day to end a promo, that.

Anyway, we have it in stock, in flavors for Nikon lenses and Canon lenses. And, it’s something I’ve talked about the usefulness of before. It’s really win-win here, people.



Leica Follow-Up

Jody was on the ball and got the last post approved before I got my edit submitted, so this didn’t go up as I expected. So, to add more class, style, and attractive diminutive French women to the blog, here’ s the Chanel ad I talked about in the last post. As much as I love good, chunky DSLRs, I don’t think anything other than that distinctive Leica would’ve fit in with the very wonderful feel they pull off here:



Raw Footage: Leica Comes A-Expo-in’

Starting to run out of these quick interviews, finally. This one is with Matt, the nice gentleman who reps Leica for us. This was the first time I’d held one of their M8s (which I noticed Audrey Tautou toting in Chanel No 5′s new TV spot. Class act, all around.) Sucker’s a brick. A big, black, brass brick. It also made me nervous as heck to hold, but then again I still think dropping 900 bucks on a lens is a chunk of change. Lenses are beauties, though.

OK, enough jabber, on to the video:



Tweet Us Out

So, in case the blog, the vlog, the Facebook group, the MySpace, and the Flickr (not to mention the Flickr discussion group we run), weren’t all enough to prove Roberts commitment to being out there and mingling, we now have a Twitter. As a matter of fact, as soon as Jody presses the approval button this post, you should see a happy little tweet pop-up on our Twitter letting you know this shiny new post has been, er, posted. Progress, I tell you.

Also, check out the Twitter feed to the right. We’re trying to find the Twitters for as many of our vendors as we can, and we’ll be posting the latest 20 tweets from the lot of them over there. Just one more way to try and keep you up-to-date and the everything that is everything.

Hey! Vendors! Notice that we can post your tweets, but you need to hit me up with your official Twitter account first! We’ll also follow you, so it’s totally worth it.



Raw Footage: Spring Expo cont, Canon 10-22mm

OK, given that we have the new Canon rebates, and Canon Days is this weekend, it seems to finally be the right time to post this quickie from Expo 2009. Amanda’s back once more and this time she’s talking about Canon’s 10-22mm, an ultra-wide angle (UWA) beastie covering about 16mm-35mm for you Rebel and xxD users. And hey! It’s one of the lenses with Instant Savings, so add one to your kit and keep $50 in your grubby little pockets. Go ahead, save money, we don’t mind.



Mother’s Day Sony Kit

We have a special Sony digital camera kit available for Mother’s Day.  And it’s pink, for the ladies.  It is the Sony DSC-S980 pink kit with a very cool pink carry case and pink camera body.  It also comes with a 2GB memory stick MSMT2G.  12.1MP sensor, 2.7″ LCD screen, 4x optical zoom.  Pretty cool little pakage that Mom will love.  Don’t forget about Mom!



Canon Instant Rebates, Save, um, Instantly

Save $500 on the EF 200mm 2/2L IS USM

Save $500 on the EF 200mm f/2L IS USM

I just finished getting all the Canon Instant Savngs on lenses and flashes put into effect on the website. So, all you Canonistas out there can now trot over there and buy fancy-schmancy L glasses in stunning white (trimmed with black, a look that reminds me of… well, me) for now lower prices.

As with any savings program, the amount you save varies from a little to enough to buy a second body (well, just about. I mean, you can save $500 bucks on that 200mm over there.) And, the rebates seem to cover all the flashes (including macros) and a wide selection of lenses in most categories, kit and L quality alike. So, a bit of something for everyone itching to upgrade.

See the full list here.



Size matters? / Daddy’s got a brand-new bag.

I should preface by saying that I love our used department. Given that they’re also the lighting department. And bags. They handle a lot downstairs and I like to chat with them when I’m making my way back from our warehouse.

They are also some mad-hat haters. I for one am pretty thrilled that my e-410 can, with an adapter, mount a manual focus 50 1.8 from the OM system or Nikon or EOS and have an equivalent 100mm 1.8. Mr. Proctor quipped that he could achieve the same result by cropping his images by 50%. My retort was that my cropped sensor still has all its pixels…and he shot back with the higher pixel density = more noise argument. I weakened, fell back on “control your lighting” and was trampled under the powerful tag-team assault of from Rich’s “I like shooting at ISO 3200 and having it look like 1600″ and Scott’s “why don’t you just draw a picture” jab at my fumbling “I’ll fix it in post!”

My Shooting-Fu is yet weak in its reliance on fixing things like white balance, exposure recovery, and cropping in post, and I must yet tremble before the masters who complete mathy-like equations involving focal length, aperture, apples, oranges, and jalapenos while panning their manual focus lenses without even thinking about it. I am currently more concerned about composition and the more squishy notion of a photograph’s “feel” than being technically perfect right from the camera (because, you know, there’s no on-board firmware making decisions about color balance, contrast, etc).

So have fun with the below:

Where my new Crumpler bags were hellishly in need of some white balancing I went back and used the handy one-touch WB function and shot it again. Mostly to keep playing with the new gallery function Mr. Martin has implemented in the blog.

See you Thursday, folks.




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