If you own a camera, live in America, and take pictures of more than your friends and family smiling in front of tourist spots, you’re probably already aware of a lingering environment of hostility towards professional photography gear in public in our post-9-11 society. And, while there have been many useful guides to what your rights still are, none have been from an organization with the history and clout of the ACLU. Until now, anyway. So, stop wasting time here when you could be hitting the link below and reading over their write-up. Print out a copy. Keep it in your camera bag. And take to heart the parts where they remind you to be polite, nothing makes photographer’s look worse in the eyes of nervous law enforcement than behaving like entitled, belligerent sacks. Know your rights, stick to them, but do it with manners, composure, and respect. It’ll keep you out of a great deal of trouble, usually.
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PMA 2011 axed, rescheduled parallel to 2012 CES
Citing the advantages of working along with CES, PMAI has rescheduled their event in conjunction with the 2012 CES. DP broke the news to me, and you can follow our source links to the PMAI website.
New Start-up Site Helps Find Stolen Cameras
Are you a photographer? We figure it’s safe to assume if you’re reading this blog you are, or at least want to be. And if you’re a photographer, you probably at least have an idle fear of your camera getting lost or stolen. And it’s because of that fact that you should check out this new site, Stolen Camera Finder.
This site, the result of some awesome work by a guy named Matt Burns, has a pretty simple driving idea. Every digital camera made has a serial number, and it sticks that number in the EXIF of every picture it takes. What the site does is upload one of your pictures, find the serial number, then checks its database to see where pictures with that serial are posted. Right now it mostly checks Flickr, but there’s also a Chrome extension that’ll sit in the background and scrape EXIF from pages as you browse to help boost the database. If you’ve misplaced your camera, you can use that database to see if pictures from it are being posted anywhere and go from there. Neat, right?
I think so, anyway. I’ve already installed the Chrome extension here at the office so I can do my part to helping out, and I’ll be installing it at home tonight.
To try the site (keep in mind it’s brand new, it’ll take a while and your support for the database to become extensive), go here:
http://www.stolencamerafinder.com/
To skip straight to installing the extension, go here:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hfhlngbcdalpjiejaenfchpcajdmpeom?hl=en-US
A Problem of Warranty
So, there’s been a frankly disturbing trend we’ve been noticing lately, and that’s that people seem to be assuming that we, the end-dealer, are responsible for covering limited manufacturer warranties. Which really just isn’t the case. Don’t get us wrong, we’re really concerned about making sure you get something that works. Roberts has its own two week return policy to protect you. If it’s dead on arrival or just not what you wanted, we’ve got you covered for the first two weeks. Under certain circumstances, we can extend that.
But, what happens three months later when something goes wrong? Well, your manufacturer warranty kicks in. Almost everything you buy from Roberts is backed by the people who made it. The catch is, they’re the ones backing it. We’d love to help you more, but, if something goes wrong with your stuff, it’s the manufacturer who’s covering it, not Roberts. And so long as you’re within warranty, they’ll gladly fix initial defects in your device. They’d love to, it’s not their intention to have sent you a faulty product. But, it’s gotta be them that does it, our hands are tied. We’ll gladly help you find out who you need to contact, or where you need to send a product. We’ll even help with warranty disputes sometimes. What we can’t do, after the initial two weeks, is be the warranty provider.
So, we’d like to offer some advice about protecting your purchase:
- Keep your receipt. Whether for us or the manufacturer, this is important. Increasingly often, the warranty cards aren’t needed. Your receipt is your warranty, respect it as such.
- Don’t fill out any paperwork or warranty cards for the first 14 days. We can only take products back if they’re in the condition you got them in, if you’ve filled out the paperwork, you might be stuck having to go through the manufacturer from the get-go.
- Take your equipment out and test it. Maybe you won’t need to use it for another month, but by then it’ll be too late for us to help. Take it out, check it over, look for missing accessories and bits. Fire a few shots. Run a few tests. You’d be surprised how many return problems result from people just waiting too long to check what they’ve received out.
- After the Roberts 14 day purchase protection, check your warranty cards. Some manufacturers require that you register your product within a certain period, or at all. Some will offer you free warranty extensions if you register. This is important to know, so, once our protection period ends, please make sure to check what the manufacturer wants from you. If you need our help, it will always be easier to get you help on a product that’s properly registered with the manufacturer and which has all the paperwork. Please keep track of that.
If you follow those 4 steps, it should be easy to make sure your purchase is protected. And it’ll help us get the service you need. Which is what we all want.
Indianapolis Museum Of Art Updates Shooting Policies
Per their blog, the Indianapolis Museum of Art will be enforcing its new shooting policy starting Tuesday March 1st. What’s changed? If you’re shooting for your personal use (including Flickr and Facebook, but not commercial stuff like making money), not much. There’ll be some pieces you can’t photograph, but they’ll be clearly marked. If you’re a commercial photographer, however, you’ll now need a permit for all IMA locations, no exceptions. Partly this is to reduce business and schedule conflicts as people fight over shooting there, partly it’s to help with copyrights. Among other things, they remind you that famous Robert Indiana “LOVE” sculpture out front is art, and under copyright at that. They have to pay to include it in images, and by the law so do you. Also, they don’t want you climbing about on it, which should be more common sense than should need a policy, but given every tourist photo I’ve ever seen of it, apparently not.
For all you commercial (wedding, portrait, etc) shooters, their fee schedule appears to be quite reasonable, and $50 will cover you for a day, or you can buy a year’s pass for all of $250.
For more information on the policies and how to get a permit, see the links below.
Sigma to mount up Micro Four Thirds and E-Mount
Following on the news that Sony’s released the specifications for their 18mm flange back E Mount (which we so failed to blog about yesterday), Sigma announces that they’ve taken up the mantle (mountle?) and will support the format. They’ll also be generating lenses for the growing Micro Four Thirds market.
I’m not terribly surprised, they’re one of the few manufacturers that produced lenses for my own dear Olympus Four Thirds mount (I’m still working up the gumption to pick up their 35mm f/1.4), and with big O’s abandonment of consumer-level D-SLRs, it’s no wonder they’re willing to produce for this newer, and growing, piece of the market.
Sony T Series Cybershots, 16 megapixels and Zeiss lenses
Sony’s also introducing three new T series Cybershots. The DSC-T110, DSC-TX10, and DSC-TX100V.
The T110 will probably weigh in as the least expensive as it seems to offer the most modest feature set of the T line-up. That isn’t to say it won’t be a powerful, feature-packed device that we’ll take a gander at after the break.
The Cybershot DSC-WX Heavyweights bring you 3D and like-3D images
The next two W Series from Sony’s 2011 Cybershot line-up are the DSC-WX10 and DSC-WX9. While they both sport a 16.2MP Back-Illuminated “Exmor R” CMOS sensor and the BIONZ image processor, they differ in a few areas which we’ll talk about after the break.
Point and Shoots galore – Sony DSC-W series increases by 6 cameras
I’m sure you’re already aware that there are like, a million new compact digital cameras being announced right now. Point and Shoots, we call them. I wonder why. Doors, we call doors, not ‘toe finders’ or ‘space openers and closers’ but what the hell.
Sony’s spilled forth with six new W series cameras from the budget conscious W510 to the Vario-Tessar equipped Wx9. They all start between 24 and 26mm wide, and zoom to 100 or 125mm with the exception of the WX10, which zooms to 168mm.
The four pieces which are going to sit along the more budget conscious line are the DSC-W510, DSC-W530, DSC-W560, and DSC-W570. We’ll break those four down after the break.
Area Photographer Reviews PocketWizard TT1, TT5 for Nikon
Area photographer, Roller Derby / WFTDA aficionado, and Roberts customer, Mark Lebryk has blogged his hands-on experience with the PocketWizard TT1 and TT5 sync units for Nikon flashes. Mosey on over there to check out his impressions.
Please note that we’ve been waiting about 2 years for these bad-boys, and that we won’t have ‘em until we have ‘em, and that pre-ordering them on our website gets your name put in line – it doesn’t guarantee you a product. Once we have them in stock in quantities to satisfy out back-orders, we’ll put them up for sale online.
In the mean-time, check out Mark’s write-up and think about what you wanna use these TT1 and TT5 units for.
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