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Innovative space-saving from Giotto's with its Silk Road tripods


It seems obvious when you think about it: if you mould the centre column of a tripod so that the legs curve into it, rather than making it round, meaning that the legs clash, you save a heap of space. So why has no one done it until now with Giotto's' Silk Road YTL series of tripods?

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Giotto's is replacing its MTL range of tripods with the YTL series, all of which feature a Y-shaped centre column that saves 30% space on MTL versions when the tripod is collapsed. It doesn't, however, compromise on load-bearing capacity or stability.

The Silk Road series will comprise 12 models and a range of features. These include 5kg, 8kg, and 10kg capacities; options for two-way centre columns or three-way centre columns meant for very low-level shooting; three-section or four-section legs; a bubble spirit level on two-way centre column models; and a swappable thread making Silk Road models compatible with any Giotto's head or standard thread heads from other manufacturers.

I'm also quite taken by the idea of Quick Easy Leg Lock, or QEL, (I can't think why!) as well graduated leg markings to allow for speedy adjustments to your set up.

Silk Road tripods will be available in aluminium or carbon fibre, starting at around £100 for aluminium models and £220 for carbon fibre versions. They'll be online and in-store from mid-January.

If you're wondering about the name, Silk Road, it's after the trading routes that snaked across Asia and the Middle East, into Europe and North Africa. It wasn't just silk, spices, and goods that were exchanged, but knowledge and ideas, too.

Lensbaby goes mirror-less


Lensbaby Composer Pro

If mirror-less camera owners were a bit peeved that it was dSLR users who were getting all the fun with Lensbaby lenses, they need feel hard done-by no longer. Lensbaby Composer Pro lenses are now available with a heap of mirror-less camera-compatible mounts. From Lumix G-series cameras to Olympus PENs, via Sony NEX and Samsung NX, they can all enjoy some tasty tilt-shift-tasticness.

The Composer Pro ships with the 50mm Double Glass Optic installed; it creates a sweet spot that's in sharp focus, and you get to decide where by playing around with the tilting and swivelling lens body. However, the Composer Pro is compatible with all of the optics in the Lensbaby Optics Swap System, including the Edge 80, the Sweet 35, and the Fisheye, so opportunities abound for getting creative with your images.

If you're wondering about the aperture on a Lensbaby lens, the Double Glass Optic has a maximum aperture of f/2.0. By removing and inserting different sized aperture disks, you can change to f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6, f/8.0. f/11, f/16, and f/22.

Time to go buy one? They're retailing around $300 and are available from authorised Lensbaby retailers and their own online store.

Canon hits Hollywood

C300 with 85mm

The swanky invitations went out, the speculation was speculated on, the announcements have now been made, and the champagne has been quaffed. What, then, is the fall-out on Canon revealing that it’s launching itself headlong into a professional cinematograhy system? There’s the C300 interchangeable lens digital cinema camera, a slew of lenses, and the forthcoming full-frame dSLR that slots into the movies system, that will, eventually, aim to give serious amateur filmmakers a serious movie-making camera.

C300

The C300 comes in two versions, both with a newly developed Super 35mm equivalent 8.29 megapixel CMOS sensor. Version one is the EOS C300 with an EF lens mount; it’ll take any of Canon’s current range of EF lenses that are used on its dSLR cameras. Version two is the EOS C300 PL; that one’s compatible with industry-standard PL lenses. The question that arises here: why not develop something with dual compatibility?

The big disappointment with the C300, though, is that is only captures 1080p. And that disappointment was compounded by Red’s Scarlet revelation, which will capture 4k. Still, the C300 is relatively small and comes with Canon Log Gamma. That allows for flat image quality with subdued contrast and sharpness, and a whole heap of flexibility when comes to post-production editing and processing.

In Philip Bloom’s opinion, the C300 will be great for broadcast use, but at $20,000 – or thereabouts, as prices haven’t been confirmed – it’s too expensive. Especially with the Red Scarlet coming in sub $10,000. But, what’s important is how it handles and the images it produces. We’ll just have to wait and see about that.

Cinema EOS dSLR

This camera doesn’t have a name, a potential price, or a vague release date yet. It’s a concept, albeit one that has a physical form, as the pictures of it prove. But it’s a damned exciting concept. A 35mm full frame image sensor that can shoot Motion-JPEG encoded 4K video at 24fps. (Although when it records in 4K it will drop to an APS-H crop.)

This is perhaps more what people would have been expecting from Canon – a stills camera that’s entirely serious about video – that offers a stepping stone between dSLR shooting and the C300. It’ll be very exciting to see what it produces.

All those lovely lenses

Seven, yes 7, new lenses were announced alongside the cameras yesterday: four zooms (two EF and two PL) and three fixed-focal lengths all on the EF mount.

There are the wide-angle CN-E14.5–60mm T2.6 L S (for EF mounts) and CN-E14.5–60mm T2.6 L SP (for PL mounts) and the telephoto CN-E30–300mm T2.95–3.7 L S (for EF mounts) and CN-E30–300mm T2.95–3.7 L SP (for PL mounts). They all support 4K resolution and are compatible with industry-standard Super 35 mm-equivalent cameras as well as APS-C cameras. But, they won’t work with 35mm full-frame or APS-H sensors.

As for the prime lenses, there are the CN-E24mm T1.5 L F, the CN-E50mm T1.3 L F, and the CN-E85mm T1.3 L F. They all deliver 4K performance, and all three are compatible with industry-standard Super 35 mm-equivalent cameras, 35 mm full-frame, APS-H, and APS-C sensor sizes.

That’s a wrap

So yesterday gave us a camera that a few people are suggesting is over-priced, a teaser for a camera that really could be something, and seven lenses. What it definitely suggests is that Canon is entirely serious about making movies. This is just the start, after all.

Focussion, one year on

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Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun? Well, I’ve certainly been having fun and I can’t quite believe that it has been very nearly a year since we took a peek at the community over at Focussion. It’s a photo-sharing site that actively encourages giving feedback to other members: you’re given an initial stash of tokens and every image that you upload costs you tokens. You can only replenish your token supply by dishing out feedback.

A year on, I was wondering how things were going for them, so I caught up with Aljan, one of the co-founders.

‘We’ve grown a whole heap in our first year,’ says Aljan ‘and we’ve added several new features to Focussion, too.’

A key feature that they’ve implemented is giving extra tokens to a member when her or his feedback is marked as helpful. Obviously that goes some way to ensuring that feedback is more than just ‘Great shot!’ (And I’ll admit that I’m rather pleased about this because it was something that I recommended when I jumped in last year.)

In a bit of a FaceBook-esque move, you no longer rate photos, but ‘like’ them instead.

The front page still shows the most recently uploaded images, but over on the sidebar you now get to see most liked images and most helpful members in addition to most recently commented-on images.

Realising that their members wanted to talk to eachother outside of photo critique, the team created some forums, too. So now there’s chatter about gear, techniques, and what’s happening on the site.

As for what’s happening on site, they’ve a few plans up their sleeves: ‘We’re going to launch a photo contest soon, as well as enable members of uplaod sets or series of images. And we’re working on allowing photos to be displayed across the width of the page, too.’

It’s great to see that people have embraced Focussion and it isn’t just another photo-sharing site that’s slipped by the wayside. If you’ve not checked it out yet, and you’re looking for some feedback on your work, wander over and have a look.