Photography News Issue 39

Photography News | Issue 39 | absolutephoto.com

53 Accessories test

£ 170

SRB Elite Filter Holder £34.95

Samsung SmartCamPT £139

10 NanGuang CNR-480C LED ringlight £170 Everyone loves Christmas lights, and here’s another to enjoy over the festive season, whether it’s as a gift or used to light up a beautiful portrait. The NanGuang CNR-480C LED ringlight is designed to produce a soft, diffused, well-balanced lighting making it ideal for a wide range of subjects, including macro, product photography, but perhaps most of all, flattering portraits and video close ups. The softness of the light from the CNR-480C removes shadows and its design, with 480 LEDs, means you need only one light to do it, rather than a more complicated set up andmore to carry around. It has a fully controllable and stepless colour temperature (3200-5600K) and brightness via dimmer dials, and also comes with a clip-on diffuser evenmore softening. With a wide aperture at its middle, the 560x455 ringlight head can be mounted on a stand, allowing you to shoot through the middle, and there’s also a smartphone clamp in the kit for selfies, along with a mains cable and make up mirror. kenro.co.uk

BenQ PV270Monitor £897

RotatrimLimited Edition Trimmer £276

Planning your use of filters next year (or know someone who should be)? Then SRB Photographic has just launched the brand-new Elite Filter Holder, which accommodates P size (85mm) filters. Attached via the correct Elite adaptor ring for your lens (free for PN readers when you buy the holder, until 31 December with the code ELITEPHOTO31), the mechanism has been engineered for easy mounting and removal. The holder rotates freely, allowing you to slot in grad filters and position them with ease, and can take up to two filters at a time. And to make using multiple filter types easier, the holder also accepts threaded Elite Filters; these screw into the centre thread of the holder, eliminating any light seeping, so you can use models like the Elite ND1000 filter without a gasket and combine its long-exposure effects with ND grads. The threaded system also allows for a rotating mechanism at either end of the holder, so the polariser can be rotated without moving the rest of the holder. srb-photographic.co.uk on expanding

Fancy a camera with a difference this Christmas? Then take a look at the Samsung SmartCam PT, an advanced, affordable security camera with a range of uses. The SmartCam PT records highly detailed 1080p HD video and has a wide dynamic range to provide better quality in challenging conditions. The camera can also shoot in complete darkness thanks to its infrared LED and it will turn to track movement following anything that passes through its view. As well as monitoring your home (and keeping an eye on the Christmas presents under the tree), you can use it to shoot visiting wildlife in the garden on nights with good weather. And with real-time event notification you can also send alerts to your smartphone or tablet in the event that the camera is triggered (via the free SmartCam App). A live video feed can also be view on your mobile devices, and if you want to argue over rights to the mince pies, there’s two-way communication via a mic and speaker. samsungsmartcam.com

Editing is such an important part of modern photography that if you have an old, worn out or inaccurate screen, you won’t be able to tell if you’re making the right colour and contrast adjustments or not. So why not invest in a first-class monitor to enjoy this Christmas, and benefit from new resolution throughout the New Year. The BenQ PV270 is designed to meet the demanding requirements of photography professionals and offers uncompromising colour performance along with powerful calibration tools to get the job done. At 27in size and with a 2560x1440 QHD resolution, the screen offers bags of crisp detail to display your shots and plenty of desktop real estate for your palettes, so you won’t run out of room when editing. For uniform brightness the PV270 meticulously fine-tunes hundreds of sub-regions on the entire screen for an authentic and consistent viewing experience, while the backlight sensor provides consistency over the lifetime of the display. gb.colorconfidence.com

If you make prints at home, you’ll be well aware of the need for a good quality trimmer, helping you produce bespoke sizes and formats, and to mark tits 50th anniversary, Rotratrim has produced the Limited Edition Professional 24. Only 200 have been made, using the finest quality materials and precision engineered components, meticulously hand assembled by Rotatrim’s skilled technicians creating a precise, reliable lifelong trimmer. As well as the usual Professional 24 specs (cuts up to 610mm (24in) A2 landscape papers; cut capacity of 3mm thickness; twin guide rails to deliver a smooth gliding action; metal end frames and head; and solid laminate gridded baseboard with aluminium side rule), the limited edition trimmer has an Sheffield D2 tool steel flat blade engraved with ‘Rotatrim 50’, an ultra durable Sheffield D2 tool steel cutting wheel, stainless steel twin guide rails, fine crosshair paper size guides and 2mm extra thick protective baseboard edging. rotatrim.com