Tony and Helmut shooting Nadine
Greetings Folks,
I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! I believe the tradition is that there usually is not a newsletter during the summer months. However, I thought there is enough interesting stuff going on that it warrants a quick newsletter. Here goes...
-Jeff
The upcoming August 1st meeting will be held at Julie and Tino Meisser's home West of Calgary. The plan is to meet, socialize, have a BBQ and take some photos. So please bring your gear (a macro lens is recommended), $10 to help cover the cost of food, any alcoholic beverages you might like, and yourselves. I imagine directions will be made available at some later time.
The July outing was held at the MacDougall center in Downtown Calgary. We gathered around 7pm, accompanied by one very patient model (Vanessa), and a very patient make-up artist (Nadine) who we coerced into modeling for us. Scott gave some quick tips on outdoor portrait lighting and the rest of the evening was spent shooting our two models.
For those of us who don't shoot a lot of portraits, the evening was a great time to experiment with different lighting. For myself, my primary subjects are my young children who are constantly moving; it was great actually having time to focus without the subjects running away on me :)
Tony brought along an Alien Bees ring flash to try out. Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of him with it in action. The ring flash was impressive but it was the large toolbox full of batteries and an inverter that blew me away.
Tony and Helmut shooting Nadine
The gang playing with Gary's pocket wizards and those nifty tiny soft boxes
Gary metering Nadine and Vanessa
| Date | Theme |
|---|---|
| Sept 5, 2007 | Flower(s) |
| Oct 3, 2007 | Smoke |
| Nov 7, 2007 | Glass |
| Dec 5, 2007 | Statue |
| Jan 2, 2008 | Red |
| Feb 6, 2008 | Tools |
| Mar 5, 2008 | Back Alley |
| Apr 2, 2008 | Graffiti |
| May 7, 2008 | Paper |
| Jun 4, 2008 | Different point of view on a common subject |
| Position | Name |
|---|---|
| President | Harry Mah |
| Past President | José Guillén |
| Treasurer | Norm Capper |
| Monthly Program Director | Marcelo Pinheiro |
| External Program Director | Scott Winter |
| Secretary | Jack Blair |
| Newsletter & Webmaster | Jeff Clement |
Contact information for the current executive can be found here.
Neil Koven (neil at neilkoven dot com) has a number of items up for sale right now:
Tony Field passed on the following sites with some fantastic digitally altered images here and here. He also passed on two links for Dirk Vermeirre's suburb people portraits here and here.
Marcelo Pinheiro passed on a link to editorial photographer Dayna Smith's website.
Finally Jack Dyck submitted entries on Kenko's new light meters, and some rumours of new lenses for the Sony Alpha.
Kenko Light Meters
When Konica-Minolta left the photography business, there were several product lines that were dropped - or perhaps sold, or something else. Recall that Minolta's DSLR line of cameras went through some interesting gyrations to become Sony's Alpha family. Another notable body that seemed to die was Minolta's very popular line of light meters, used by countless pro and amateur photographers. What happened to their meter family?
In the last month, it became apparent that Japanese photography equipment manufacturer Kenko is now producing a line of light meters that look almost identical to the last models produced by Minolta - same button layout and labels, just a bit of a refresh to the plastic moldings - with, of course, a different badge!
Kenko's homepage is in Japanese, it's here: http://www.kenko-tokina.co.jp/
Their American importer has English web pages for the new meters.
Kenko KFM-1100 Auto Digi Meter (cf Minolta Auto Meter VF) http://www.thkphoto.com/news/news-pr-kfm-1100-0407.html
Kenko KFM-2100 Professional Light Meter (cf Minolta Flash Meter VIF) http://www.thkphoto.com/news/news-pr-kfm-2100-0407.html
Kenko KCM-3100 Color Meter (cf Minolta Color Meter IIIF) http://www.thkphoto.com/news/news-pr-kfm-3100-0407.html
Sony Alpha DSLR and Lens Launch Rumours
Photoclub Alpha, "The Minolta Club of Great Britain" has some "dirt" and a preview photo of a new Sony Alpha DSLR here: http://photoclubalpha.com/2007/07/05/new-alpha-and-lens-range-launch-imminen t/
Scuttlebutt has it that it will have fancy features like in-grip touch-sensors to wake up the camera, a nice vertical battery grip, and more.
But what really caught my eye was talk of a full-frame sensor camera, perhaps another year down the road! Today, only Canon builds these, and they aren't priced for the mainstream. Maybe Sony will provide some price competition in the full-frame sensor area!
Thank you to everyone who submitted content for the newsletter. Hope you all enjoy the rest of your summer!