Exhibitions

If you’ve got some spare time over the next two weeks you should drop into King Street Gallery on William and take a look at Kate Geraghty’s exhibition Displaced Futures which is running until 1 May.

On the other side of town, Oculi has a ten-year retrospective at the Manly Art Gallery called Terra Australis Incognita, running through until 16 May. They have also published a very fine book to mark their first decade.

But wait, there’s more.

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For when nothing less will do

Here’s one from the rare equipment file. It’s the biggest* fully autofocus SLR lens ever built and probably the most expensive. I had the opportunity to give it a run a while back and I thought some of you might be interested in hearing about it.

First introduced in a manual focus variant for the 1984 LA Olympics and later updated to an EF model in 1993, Canon’s 1200mm f5.6L USM lens is a $120,000, 16.5kg technological masterpiece. It reportedly takes a year to grow fluorite crystals of a scale necessary to build its grand elements, and it’s completely hand-built, resulting in lead-times of about eighteen months on orders.

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When a picture seems too good to be true

Like a lot of things in life ethical journalism only gets public attention for its absence. The high standards of the majority of practitioners would possibly shock a lot of people because — again — like a lot of things in life more of the bad gets reported than the good, and this tends to overstate the existence of the problem.

When Reuters moved pictures on Friday of volcanic ash from the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland and the consequent disruptions to air travellers that this caused world-wide, one picture stood out from all of the others — so much so it was the clear choice for our coverage in the Herald. Well, we wanted it to be but something about it didn’t seem quite right.

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Canon – where’s the GPS, where’s the WiFi?

Now that the dust has settled I am happy to say the 1D Mark IV is Canon redeeming itself for its misdemeanours in the Mark III. They knew their professional business depended on getting it right, and I think they have.

There’s no doubt the Mark III autofocus was a catastrophe for many of Canon’s customers and its marketing department alike. Others complained about colour fidelity, and some unlucky souls experienced both ailments. While not everyone received these tainted units, enough did for it to seriously affect the company’s professional business. As misfortune would have it, arrival of the Mark III coincided with the release of an excellent camera by Nikon which brought that company back from the brink of professional irrelevance (if you cast your mind back five years you’ll remember Nikon weren’t even in the ballpark in professional terms and photographers were deserting them in droves). Now though, Nikon is without question back in the game in a big way, with thanks in part to Canon.

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Photo-phobia and its unintended consequences

Pardon my focus on the Brits of late but they’ve been dealing with a couple of issues that we shouldn’t underestimate the possibility of facing here one day. The Orphan Works legislation may have only just been defeated, but an equally great threat might be just over the horizon.

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The good news is you still own your photographs

The UK Parliament has just rushed through its Digital Economy Bill which contained that contentious Orphan Works legislation you may remember, but the good news is campaigning British photographers have achieved a major win for us all.

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iPad for photographers – a justifiable business tool or not?

The iPad sounds like it caters more for the photography audience than photographers themselves but I’ll speculate that it will be quite useful to us nonetheless. We know that it’s not going to be a primary computer any time soon, and it’s a consumer oriented device for sure, but priced at well under a grand I think it’s easy enough to justify, especially when you consider a few of these possibilities.

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Expect a lot from the 1Ds Mark IV

Compare these two cameras for a minute. The first one offers 21.1 megapixels at 5 frames per second, at up to 1600 ISO for $10,999. The other does 3.9 frames per second at the same file size, offers better low-light performance at up to 3200 ISO, and does full HD video too for only $3,999.

On the face of it, there’s little comparison, with one only slightly higher specced but at a much higher price point than the other. The cheaper is almost certainly a smarter buy for most. So from a commercial perspective it would seem perplexing then that they’re both Canon cameras and that Canon continues to allow the consumer 5D Mark II to undermine sales of the company’s flagship 1Ds Mark III.

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Orphan Works Bill is the copyright thief’s get out of jail free card

It appears increasingly likely that Britain will pass into law The Digital Economy Bill 2009-2010 which contains an “orphan works” provision similar to what the Americans faced last year.

Orphan works encompass photographs or other types of intellectual property where, for whatever reason, the original creator cannot be found. The Digital Economy Bill seeks to implement a mechanism whereby publications can go ahead and use them anyway without having received the necessary authority to do so from the copyright holder.

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Photography and the Parliament: the rules are an ass

Federal MP Peter Slipper was caught snoozing in the House of Representatives a couple of weeks ago. He was photographed by one of his colleagues on their Blackberry. Slipper, who insists he was just resting his eyes, complained to the Speaker who instigated the inevitable inquiry.

It was a bit unfortunate that this coincided with an address to Parliament by the visiting Indonesian head of state, but if I had to endure the sort of workload our MPs seem to I’d be pretty tired too, I guess.

When the picture was published in a Queensland newspaper a few days later, Slipper wasn’t a happy camper and he told the house he wanted the culprit found.

“I also imagine, Mr Speaker, that it makes it difficult for you to discipline members of the press gallery who might be inclined to breach the rules on photography,” Slipper said.

Whoever did it, they’re in good company because the rules controlling photography in the Federal Parliament are so restrictive they are breached almost as often as anything seriously newsworthy needs to be photographed in that place.

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