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posts by Nick

About Nick

Nicholas completed a BA in Classical Latin at Ball State in December 2006. He came to Roberts at the end of October 2008 and hasn't looked back.


Canon’s brand new L zooms -EF 8-15 f/4L and EF 70-300 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM

All new from Canon comes the EF 70-300 f/4-5.6L IS USM, jumping right to the four-stop IS compensation tech and a minimally described
function that prevents erroneous operation when the lens is mounted on a tripod or monopod
-so I’m curious about whether it’s an “ON/OFF” switch or some hyper-intelligent artificial life-form that subsists in the flourite lens elements or the Flourine coating. We’ll see what our technical rep Brian Matsumoto says. It’s also got the dust and water resistant design of the other lenses we’ve discussed today.
The other new lens is an 8-15mm Fisheye Zoom. That’s delightful – a six inch close focusing distance, as fast an aperture as you’d expect from a fisheye, and 180 degree diagonal angle of view for APS-C and Full Frame formats. The EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM also features
a new fluorine anti-smear coating is applied to the front and rear elements to make lens cleaning easier than ever.
Which should bring some reassurance to the folks accustomed to putting protector filters on their lenses.
Check Canon’s press release at the source link for more deets about availability and Estimated Selling Price.


Canon’s refresh of four lenses, beyond amazement.

The Refresh line up is as follows:
The EF 1.4X Extender and the EF 2x Extender which are supposed to offer faster autofocus and  improved autofocus precision. There’s also talk of “an anomalous dispersion lens element for reduced chromatic aberration” -whether this is new from the Series II teleconverters, I’m not certain. They’ve also got this high-falutin new flourine anti-smear coating -somehow repelling both oil and water for cleaning with a dry cloth -and this coating is applied to all six new lenses. They also kept the weather sealing.
The refreshed EF 300 2.8 IS II USM has been beaten and starved to 82.9 ounces for decreased reliance on mono and tripods. It’s also been given adamantium bones… read more


Canon Announces Everything

So’s I walk in this morning to eager to stick a bunch of used gear into a light tent to keep fleshing out our Used presence online when I’m waylaid by the Grober. He says to me, he says, ”Canon announced everything today, I need you on the blog.”
Here I am, your faithful servant.
So what’s Canon releasing? A smorgasboard of L glass and an EOS 60D.


Epson Mail-In Rebates for your R1400 or R1900

Kicking off a new practice here at Roberts -we’ll be posting info about Mail In Rebates here on Roberts Raw! I’m now the Web Lackey overseeing the uploading of the rebate documents, so if you’ve got questions, comments, concerns -you can drop me a line at nhenry@robertsimaging.com.

Right, serving up a pair of Mail In Rebates from Epson – Get $80 back on an Epson Stylus 1400 Ink Jet purchased from us between July 4th and October 2nd 2010. Epson Stylus R1900 Ink Jet printers garner a $150 rebate. Now the money comes back in the form of a check from Epson, and it could take 8 weeks -but this is pretty standard Mail In Rebate behavior.

Give us a ring at 1-800-726-5544 to speak with a sales associate about the full details or visit our rebate center.



Canon and Epson Rebate Synergy!

Yeah, that title has me a little freaked out too.

If you’re looking to buy an Epson Stylus R1900 or an Epson Stylus R2880 and a current Canon D-SLR* you can get $450 back from Epson -so long as you purchase them together between August 1st, 2010 and August 31st, 2010.

For full terms and conditions, give us a ring at 1-800-726-5544 or check out the .pdf on in our Rebate Center.

*EOS 50 D, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 7D, EOS Rebel T1i, EOS Rebel T2i, EOS Rebel XSi, EOS Rebel XS



Shoot to Win: Lime Rock Park’s First Motorsports Photography Workshop

You like it fast, don’t you? Fast and dirty. Motorsports, baby. Horsepower, metal, poly-carbonates, dirt, hydrocarbons, speed. Like me, you know how to set your aperture in relation to shutter speed, pick an upper max for auto-ISO, and try not to screw up the composition.

Lucky you, Roberts is proud to co-sponsor a workshop at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut with an option for one day or two days attendance where you’ll get to work with the best Motorsports photogs in the business and have access to some extra Nikon gear. Hit the jump for the full press release. read more



Panasonic FX700 with 24mm f/2.2 Leica optic announced

24mm equivalent f/2.2!

The wide-angle, bright aperture 14.1MP beauty from Panasonic.

If the DMC-LX5 will stretch your budget or your patience, fear not: Panasonic has the DMC-FX700 to bridge the gap between the LX5 and all other cameras running engines not named for Attic love deities.
The FX700 will run the Venus engine FHD,

separating chromatic noise from luminance noise and applying the optimal noise reduction to each

which probably means it’s better at calculus than I ever will be. Or want to be. It also means that it should process image areas dynamically based on the detection of faces and the background. Wowie. In addition to that they’ve put a Leica DC-Vario Summicron 4.3mm-21.5mm f/2.2 lens in it. Sounds a little short until you consider it’s equivalent in 35mm format – 24-120mm. Sounds better and better.

It’ll support SDXC format, so kudos for Panasonic looking to the future there. It’s also sporting a 3.0″ TFT touch screen LCD with 230,000 dots. Holy 14.1MP, Batman, the FX700 is gonna be cool.



Panasonic announces Lumix Ts10, Nick wants to drop it onto frozen things


Waterproof to 10 feet, shockproof to 5 feet

Here for your all-weather-pleasure

I dig waterproof cameras that can survive falling five feet onto ice. It is, forgive me, cool. Lucky then, that along with announcing the LX5 (omg squee? anyone?) Panasonic announced the TS10 -offering the weather proofing of the TS2 with fewer video options, slightly more telephoto lens (35-140eqiv instead of the TS2′s 28-128equiv) and a much lower price tag.



Roberts Offering IR Conversion, excellent pricing.

Want to take photos like this? We offer IR Conversion services...

Roberts is proud to offer IR conversion for point and shoot, APS-C, and full frame digital cameras. Why-fore would you want to convert your camera to the IR spectrum? Here’s a list (because I like lists):

  • You want more dramatic black and white photos
  • You want the Wood Effect
  • You want to capture dreamy, fantastical colored landscapes
  • You work in Law Enforcement / Forensics
  • You’re involved in certain types of scientific research
  • You have a specific assignment requiring the use of IR

Obviously the desire for ethereal coloring is the best reason for dropping a few bills on the conversion, now there are two types of conversion -

1.) 715nm: Suitable for B&W and low saturation color images. Camera will be sensitive to wavelengths higher than 715nm.

2.) 665nm: Suitable for both B&W and Color. Primarily used for color due to higher color saturation (vs. 715nm). B&W images can be produced in post processing. See a chart with the differences after the jump.

You get to pick one because, well, the fine folks at Precision Camera are going to remove with surgical precision your camera’s IR filter and feed it to the crows. Ok, I don’t know about the birds, but they’re taking that thing off and replacing it with one of the correct sensitivity.

read more