Photography News 03

Buyers’ guide

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LencartaAtom180 £350

ManfrottoBefree travel tripod £159 The best tripod is the one you have with you and weighing in at 1.4kg and folding down to 40cm, the aluminium Befree, which comes with a smart carrying case, is ideal for the photographer on the move. Despite its small stature, at maximum extension including the centre column, it can give a camera height of 144cm with good stability. Lever locks secure the legs so set-up is fast and it’s the first tripod to have leg angle selectors – folded, splayed and standard positions can be set. The kit comes with a single locking lever ball head and this head accepts the standard rectangular Manfrotto 200PL metal quick release plate so getting extras if you need them is no problem. www.manfrotto.com Getting at your camera quickly can make the difference between a great shot and an OK picture, whether you’re shooting a sporting event, walking the streets looking for candids or photographing a wedding. The SpiderPro Camera Holster system offers an effective solution. It’s a belt system with a solidly-made holster that holds the camera, which is fitted with a plate that slides into the holster via a pin. The belt, holster and plate are substantially made and impressive. A nice design touch is an Allen key that is safely stashed on the plate. The system is good to use and does allow a very quick draw with the camera, especially if you don’t have the camera locked in place. For security’s sake, however, the camera and pin can be locked into place and released with a quick flick of a switch. Buy an extra holster (or the Dual kit £190) and you can work quickly with two cameras, and accessories are on offer to attach other items to your belt. It works well and is a good alternative to the ‘pap’ strap. www.spiderholster.com For shooting around town, a relatively small rucksack is exactly what you need and the Lowepro Transit 250AW is one of the best around. It’s big enough for a full-frame DSLR with a lens attached and two extra lenses can be stashed in the bottom compartment. When you want to change lenses, take advantage of the sling function and you have quick access to another lens without having to put the bag down or lift it over your head. There’s also a zipped compartment for a small tablet and even a facility to carry a tripod. Highly recommended. www.lowepro.com Shoot and transfer images wirelessly with this new high capacity SD card from Toshiba. It’s a Class 10 card that lets you create your own WLAN Access Point independent of existing networks, and it works at home and outdoors. This means you can use it to transfer images to your computer without removing the card from your camera, or transfer them to your smartphone or tablet for uploading while you’re out and about. You can view images in an Internet browser, or download the free app for iOS and Android. 8GB and 16GB sizes are also available. www.toshiba-memory.com If you haven’t got your Christmas cards sorted yet, check out Fotospeed’s additions to its Fotocards range. The pre- scored greetings cards are available in two new finishes, Matt Duo and Art Smooth Duo, and two sizes, A6 and i3 (21x7.4cm), plus they come complete with envelopes. These join the existing range of Bright White and Matt Ultra, both A5. For a 25-sheet pack of A6 Matt Duo the price is £11.99 while for the same size pack of Art Smooth Duo is £19.99. Once you have bought the cards, go to the Fotospeed website and download the free templates, then you’re ready to produce your own personalised greetings cards. www.fotospeed.com 6 7 8 9 10 SpiderProCameraHolster £110 LoweproTransit Sling 250AW £82 Toshiba 32GBFlashAir £60 FotospeedFotocards from£11.99

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If you enjoy strobism you’ll love this manual only, high- powered portable flashgun from Lencarta. The kit comes with a rechargeable lithium battery pack, but you can also buy the flashgun and the battery pack separately; with the appropriate lead the pack can be used to power speedlights from Canon, Nikon and Sony. According to our practical tests the flash has a GN of around 42 ISO 100/m at full power, which is plenty for most purposes, while its IGBT circuitry means you get flash durations as short as 1/10,000sec at minimum power without any colour shift. The system is also supported by a range of dedicated light-shaping modifiers. www.lencarta.com Westcott IceLight £399 Designed by Jerry Ghionis, one of the world’s leading social photographers, the Ice Light is a portable, dimmable, daylight-balanced LED continuous light source that is finding many fans among portrait and wedding photographers. The rechargeable lithium battery lasts 60 minutes at full power – or it will run off the mains if you have that option, and this will also charge the light. Check out the Ice Light website and you can see how creative people photographers are exploiting the potential of this accessory. It’s certainly ideal for producing daylight quality light when the natural stuff isn’t available, and what you see is what you get. www.theicelight.com Cokin has launched a range of screw-in filters that are the thinnest and lightest in the world. The UV is 3.3mm thick, the circular polariser 4.5mm and the variable density ND is 9.5mm. Their thinness will help avoid vignetting with ultra-wide lenses while their light weight will help maximum AF performance. All the filters are coated with Everclear 5 multi-layer coating which is water repellent, anti oil, anti dust, anti grime and scratch resistant. The UV and circular polariser are available in sizes from 37mm to 82mm with prices starting from £39.99 and £79.99 respectively. The variable ND starts from £154.99 with sizes from 52mm through to 82mm. www.intro2020.co.uk ElgatoThunderbolt 256GBDrive+ SSD £430 The problem with conventional hard drives is they have moving parts, which means a crash (temporary or permanent) is potentially just round the corner. Hence the move towards solid state drives (SSDs). SSDs, just like the storage cards in your camera, do not have any moving parts so you get much faster performance and much greater reliability. This rugged external drive (for Mac and Windows) has USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt interfaces and cables for both are supplied. Transfer speed is claimed up to 420MB/s. In our test, using the latest Mac Mini, we transferred 16GB of data in three minutes – both interfaces were about the same speed. This is a write speed of 89MB/s so some way off its claimed speed but still quick. A conventional portable hard drive with FireWire 800 took well over five minutes. Not cheap, but you can’t put a price on reliability. www.elgato.com Perfect for the photographer who wants to travel around equipped for every photographic opportunity, the Pro 600N will happily take two DSLRs, six to eight lenses, filters and a flashgun, plus a 17in laptop. Of course the only downside is it’s going to be heavy once fully packed, but at least you know your kit will be well protected and all in one place. The 400N and 500N are £130 and £140 respectively, and are smaller options if you don’t need the capacity of the Ranger Pro 600N. www.kenro.co.uk 2 3 4 5 CokinPUREHarmoniefilters from£39.99 BenroRanger Pro600Nbackpack £150

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Issue 3 | Photography News

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