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› archive for August, 2009

Roberts Raw Announces Special Guest Blogger: Carel Struycken

Carel Struycken

Carel Struycken

Roberts Raw, the blog division of Roberts Imaging, is proud to announce that renowned actor and photo-enthusiast Carel Strucken (MIB, Star Trek, The Addams Family) will be joining the Raw team as a guest blogger. Carel, who’s already a prominent name in the spherical panorama and gigapixel imaging world (see http://www.sphericalpanoramas.com), will from time-to-time contribute hands on product reviews, sample imagery, and more. Roberts is extremely pleased to be working with Mr. Struycken, and we feel that his experience in the highly disciplined and technical worlds of spherical panoramas and giga-pixel stitching will bring even more expertise and practical views to Roberts Raw.

To see the latest articles from the Raw team–and guest articles from Mr. Strucken–covering everything from breaking camera news, product announcements, hand-on reviews, and practical, friendly advice for photographers, check out Roberts Raw at http://blog.robertsimaging.com

Click here to read Carel’s hand-on review of the Olympus E-P1 “Digital Pen”


Sony Doesn’t Think Video is Ready on DSLRs Yet

Sony Alpha A850

Sony Alpha A850

Sony, whose compact camcorders always sift out near the top of the heap in all categories, raised a few eyebrows last week when their three new DSLR bodies all trotted out completely devoid of HD video recording.

HD Video recording, which in part has contributed the monumental success of the 5D Mark II, and of course is the major buzz surrounding Nikon’s new D300s.

But, Sony, who basically own the HD world as far as end-to-end experiences go, opted not to include HD in any of these offerings, despite the markets their competing in being clearly lead by HD enabled competitors.

So, luckily, after that strange bout of behavior, we get a statement from them about why:

“We recognize that HD video is driving customer interest, but without effective continuous auto focus and exposure control, we are concerned that current implementations of HD Video on DSLR cameras don’t provide a good customer experience. Capturing quality still images is a major driver for photo enthusiasts to buy DSLR cameras, and our A500, A550 and A850 DSLR cameras prioritize features (HDR, Exmor CMOS sensors, BIONZ processors, 5fps continuous shooting etc.) that ensure customers will achieve high-quality photos.”



The Voice of Raw Episode 6

A special interview with Bogen’s David Fisher regarding the Gitzo tripod line.

0:00 – Introductions
0:36 – About the Series
6:06 – About the Collections
9:19 – Ocean Traveler

 


Nikon D300s, Nikon D3000 In Stock. Get’Em Quick.

d300s-inkySo, of course— our new server is still down and we can’t actually update our homepage (how about that classy ad that expired most of a month ago? lemme tell ya…) and we get a truckoad of Nikon’s new boys: the D300s (body only) and the D3000 kits.

The D300s is of course the highlight here, being the very well-reviewed and stalwart D300 but with HD video plopped in and support for SD and CF at the same time.

The D3000 is the newest in the entry level line, presumably taking the D60′s spot in the line-up. It comes as a kit with the 18-55mm VR lens.

If you’ve been saving your nickels and dimes for either of these, your time is now. We have them here, available, and ready to ship. Get those orders in before we run out.



Photowalk = Success

_8267107Once again we photo-walked this week, and once again if you weren’t there you really missed out. DJ Jared was great to work with (and we thank him for giving us his time, if you were out there and had shots get them to me so we can share them with him in thanks). We had an Elinchrom Ranger pack and an A head with a softbox and some bounce reflectors, so we were able to shoot mixed strobe and ambient on location. We also had some of the new Lensbaby products out with us, showing off the Composer and the swappable optics system (which I hereby propose we call “swaptics”).

And, it was a good mash-up out there. Nick and I were shooting our trademark Olympus cams, Dawn brought her Nikon D40, one gent used Panasonic’s LX3 point-and-shoot, another the original 5D, and Tony showed up with a medium-format view camera. Film, people! Film! Craziness.

It was a lot of fun. There was shooting, strobing, and later, a motorcycle. Check out the pictures in the gallery below, and make sure to find your way out to next week’s walk so that you to can start padding your portfolio with awesome shots.

We run a Flickr group dedicated to showing off pics from the various photowalks, and you can find that over at http://www.flickr.com/groups/nick-and-dereks-walkabout/. You have to join, just so we can keep it strictly to photowalks and not get a lot of the vaguely tangentially-related chaffe that you get with Flickr groups, but don’t let that turn you off. We want to see what you got out there.

It’s like fishing stories, but for photographers.

“One time, I had this awesome shot. Stellar. Change your life. There was this chick–and she was hot–and there was this explosion and a cow tap dancing.”

“Wow, that’s amazing. Can I see it?”

“Ah, no. It got away. I forgot I had my camera set to ‘FAIL’ priority…”



Sony rends shroud, reveals a500 and a550 -live view, HDR, SDHC, alphabet soup!

Sony Alpha A550

Sony Alpha A550

Sony’s offerings, the a550 and a500 have a big, beautiful (and looks affordable) bowl of alphabet soup. Hur hur. The dish looks like this:

APS-C CMOS Exmor – 14.2 megapixels in the a550 and 12.3 in the a500 -both with an ISO up to 12800.
HDR – two images combined in less than ten seconds to produce HDR (and even counteract your coffee shaking hands)
CCD-Shift SteadyShot Inside – Keeping image stabilization corporeal (you know, in the body) for 2.5-3.5 stops
TFT Xtra Fine LCD – 921,600 dots that you can angle up, down, all 3 inches of it, on the back of your a550
TFT Clear Photo LCD – 230,400 dots with the same range of motion with as above, but this is on the a500
RAW+JPEG – YEAH!
NP-FM500H – 1650mAh for neigh on 1000 shots using the viewfinder.

Ok, it’s not Campbell’s, but there’s enough to play magnetic poetry. (Exmor Steady, Xtra Shot Fine).

In any case, Sony’s continued effort to layer features across price-points is promising. They’ve both got two sensors for live view through the viewfinder using phase detect AF and the usual, slower, method for what they dub Manual Focus Check Live View – as a Lensbaby user and being a fan of a fast manual focus prime (Derek’s OM 50mm 1.4), that’s a nice feature.

Call us up to get on the wait list early – 800-726-5544.



Sony Announces 28-75mm f2.8 and 30mm f2.8 Macro

alpha-30mm-macroKicking off a veritable slew of Sony announcements today we have two new lenses. The first is their consumer-grade, and it specs out as a 30mm macro with a maximum aperture of f2.8. It’s “SAM”, which means it has the ‘smooth action motor’. In real-people terms, it means it uses a built-in ring-type motor for faster and quiet auto-focus over the older SAL designated lenses. I’m pretty sure the “DT” designation on this means that it’s for crop-frame sensors (A100, A200, A230, A300, A330, A350, A380, A500, A550, A700).

alpha-28-75

The other, and arguably more exciting, lens is the new 28-75mm f2.8 constant full-frame lens, adding to their full-frame line-up (as well as the other item announced today that I’ll be covering). This lens is also a SAM, so there we go. Things are indicating it will be available in November, should you desire to pre-order one just give us a call at 1-800-726-5544 and you can be right up there on our waitlist.



Sony Announces A850 Full-Frame DSLR

Sony Alpha A850

Sony Alpha A850

Sony today announced it’s newest prosumer body, the A850. Sporting the same CMOS sensor as their other full-frame, the A900. So that’s a whopping 24.6 megapixels. It also sports the dual-bionz processors of its predecessor. It has no built-in flash, and I don’t see any movie mode here, and it drops from 5 frames per second down to 3, but those seem to be the major concessions to keep the price down.

Pricing is yet to come, but it should be the cheapest of all the available full-frame bodies. If you want to get on our waitlist, call us at 1-800-726-5544. The A900 was an impressive offering, and at the kinda price points we’re hearing for the A850 it’ll be a fabulous option for studio shooters, slow economy or not.

  • 24.6 Megapixel, full-frame CMOS sensor (same as the A900′s)
  • Support for all Minolta and Sony Alpha-mount lenses, with no focal length conversion ratio
  • Sensor-shift image stabilization
  • Dual Bionz image processors
  • Optical viewfinder has 98% coverage and 0.74X magnification (A900 has 100% coverage)
  • 3-inch LCD display with 921,600 pixels; camera does not support live view
  • AF system made up of 9 main and 10 assist points
    • Shutter speed range of 30 – 1/8000 sec, plus a bulb mode
    • ISO range of 100 – 6400 when fully expanded
  • Continuous shooting at 3 frames/second (compared to 5 fps on the A900)
  • Hot shoe and flash sync port; camera does not have a built-in flash
  • Dynamic range optimizer offers 5 steps of correction; user can also bracket for DRO
  • Preview feature quickly takes a photo and lets you see the effects of adjusting white balance, dynamic range, and exposure compensation
  • Dual memory card slots support CompactFlash and Memory Stick Duo media
  • Optional battery grip
  • HDMI output
  • Uses NP-FM500H li-ion battery; 880 shots per charge


All-Star Lenses: Canon’s 70-200mm f4L IS USM

all-stars-70-200-f4

We’ve decided (well, I’ve decided, anyway) the we don’t spend enough time here on Roberts Raw talking about the tried-and-true staples of the business. It’s always new-this and just-announced-that. Well, for a change of pace, I present the first in a series of Lens All-Stars!

To start, we want to highlight the Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS USM, the “affordable” counterpart to the 70-200mm f2.8 lenses. With a slower aperture, it’s able to keep a smaller size and weight and keep the cost down too, which makes it an attractive choice for many consumers looking to upgrade their Canon systems to the fabled realm of L where red rings rule over the vast plains of white with kindness and beneficence.

But that’s not what earns the 70-200 4 its spot on the list, not by itself anyway. What makes this lens an all-star is that in combination with it’s cost and smaller build, it is also one of the sharpest edge-to-edge zoom lenses for any system at any of its available focal lengths and apertures. At 135mm from f4-22 it performs as well as Canon’s 135mm L prime. This goes against the usual conventional wisdom that primes will always be far superior to zooms (an idea which is ever-more wrong these days, and one worth being heartily skeptical of when you hear people throw it around.)

And so, for it’s very reasonable price point, size, weight, and performance, we can safely call this lens an All-Star.



Photowalk with a plan?

So we’ve confirmed a model for tomorrow’s Photowalk, a local DJ -name of Jared. We’ll be working with balancing ambient light and one DC powered light. We’re going to try and get a handful of Pocket Wizard transmitters so we can take turns firing that puppy.

Derek and I are also going to work on giving modeling direction -it’s fortunate we’ve had such good-natured and good looking models so far because most of the time we manage to say things like ” um, that thing you just did, do that again! No, the other thing! Where your arm was …yeah, but look more like …Evolution in motion!….and have Infinite possibilities!” And _still_ they look good!

So come out, bring your hot-shoe equipped camera, and take some pictures of this dude:

Our model this week -DJ Jared

Our model this week -DJ Jared