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Leica opens flagship store, Gallery and Academie in London

by fotovolo · Jan 15, 2019

If you’ve despaired of ever getting your hands on a real life Leica, now’s your chance. Leica UK has just opened a new, larger store on Duke Street in London’s Mayfair district.

The new store opens on February 4th 2019 and is designed to be the UK’s premier destination for Leica fans. It’s not aimed just at well-heeled cognoscenti, though, but also photography amateurs, enthusiasts and professionals of all types.

It will be home to the UK’s first Leica Gallery and the Leica Akademie photography training centre, which offers a selection of workshops for all skill levels. You don’t even need to own a Leica since cameras are provided.

The courses include 1-hour ‘bitesize’ workshops for beginners and enthusiasts learning the basics to longer events spread over several days and hosted by Leica photographers and ambassadors. It will also be possible to arrange bespoke one-to-one sessions.

To celebrate the opening of the new store, the Leica Akademie will be offering free workshops to the public from the 12th to the 24th of February, with the chance to try out selected camera systems for those interested in a particular model.

Leica is very keen to promote the art of photography, and while the prices of Leica cameras and what sometimes looks like an old-fashioned approach can put off many photographers, the company does offer an important and effective antidote to today’s low-attention-span photography-for-likes approach.

Jason Heward, Leica UK Managing Director, says, “For more than a century Leica has been inspiring creativity and helping people to become photographers. Our stores are destinations where we can connect on a deep experiential level through our galleries and our Akademie. You will come to the store to see great photography, or attend a workshop to discover how to take beautiful images. This is what Leica does and has always done. Leica is photography”.

Available: From Feb 4th 2019
Akademie price: Varies – complementary workshops from Feb 12th to 24th
More information: Complimentary Akademie Workshops – for the New Leica Store Mayfair

Epson launches FastFoto FF-680W high-speed photo scanner

by fotovolo · Jan 14, 2019

The FF-680W is designed to automated print and document scanning via its auto feeder, saving time with manual photo positioning and scanning up to 30 photos in 30 seconds (based on 30 10x15cm photos scanned at 300dpi in landscape orientation).

It can also scan regular documents like letters, reports, school certificates, kids’ drawings, magazine articles and so on at up to 45dpi (A4 originals scanned vertically at 300dpi). Epson’s software includes OCR (optical character recognition) that can turn documents into editable Word or Excel files, or searchable PDFs.

Epson’s new scanner is clearly designed for high-speed automated scanning of large numbers of originals. It could be handy for archiving a large number of old photos, for example, though it’s not equipped to handle negatives or transparencies, only prints. Cleverly, it can detect photos with handwritten notes on the back, say, and carry out a double-sided scan so that these are captured too. Delicate items can be inserted in a supplied carrier sheet for more careful handling in slow-scan mode.

The FF-680W is Wi-Fi enabled and comes with software which can automatically enhance your photos or lets you adjust cropping, rotation, brightness, contrast and colour manually. Epson’s FastFoto software can share images via email or automatically upload them to cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive.

The automated feeder and fast scanning engine make the FF-680W sound ideal for bulk archiving and digitising, but this does make it pretty expensive compared to everyday flatbed scanners and multi-function devices, so it’s a pretty specialised tool.

Available: from January 2018
Price: £549.99/€599.99
More information: Epson website

Manfrotto launches Befree GT carbon tripod specifically for the Sony a7 and a9

by fotovolo · Sep 30, 2018

Manfrotto has announced a special Sony-specific version of its “top performing” Before GT carbon travel tripod.

How can you have a tripod specific to a single brand (you ask)? It’s all in the custom-made version of the Manfrotto 200PL-PRO camera plate, apparently.

This is the plate that screws to the bottom of the camera and then clips into the tripod head. The new plate is specifically designed for the Sony a7 and a9 to offer maximum grip, performance and stability at all shooting angles. Like the one in our picture, for example.

That’s not the only Sony customisation. There’s also an “exclusive” tube graphic to match the Sony design and colour scheme.

This is actually the second Sony branded product from Manfrotto, following a collaboration first announced in September 2017.

So if you’ve got a Sony a7 or a9, you want to flaunt it and you think the specially designed plate might be worth a shot (these are cameras you DO NOT want to slip and slide), you can take a closer look via the link below.

We’re told the Befree GT carbon’s legs are brand new for rmaximum lightness and sturdiness, and the tripod has a maximum payload of 10kg.

Available: now
Price: £399.95 (UK)
More information: https://www.manfrotto.co.uk/befree-gt-carbon-fibre-designed-for-cameras-from-sony

Manfrotto Lumimuse 8 with Bluetooth review

by fotovolo · Apr 13, 2018

Verdict: 5 stars ★★★★★

You can get the same amount of light – and more – for a lot less money, but the Lumimuse 8 scores on build quality, its size/output ratio, convenient USB recharging and accessory filters. The Bluetooth control is surprisingly useful, too. (Sorry, but that natty little stand is separate.)

£105 is a lot to pay for a small LED light that clips on to your camera’s hotshoe, but then there’s a lot more to this kind of light than meets the eye, and there’s a lot more to the Lumimuse 8 in particular.

First, the basic specs. This is an 8-LED light with a power output of 550 lux at 1m. To put that in context, it’s not going to be much help out of doors in regular daylight, and it’s only going to come into its own after dark or indoors. In these situations, though, it provides a surprising amount of light for its size. You could use it as a sole light source in near-darkness or for supplementary light for window-lit portraits or still lifes, for example.

What can it do

The key here is not to think of the Lumimuse solely as a camera-mounted light. You can use it for that, but the light will always be flat and harsh, just as if you were using on-camera flash.

Instead, you should experiment by moving the light off-camera to control the direction of the light on your subject, light the background instead or even bounce the light off a reflective surface for a softer kind of illumination.

You need to keep in mind that there’s not a whole lot of power for these kinds of experiments. You press a button on the side of the Lumimuse to cycle through four different brightness settings, but even though the brightest looks pretty intense to the naked eye, it’s a long way short of the kind of power you get from even a modest flashgun.

This means you’ll need to bump up the ISO setting and probably use wider than usual lens apertures to get reasonable handheld shutter speeds. However, if you use a tripod the exposure times won’t matter and you can experiment a lot more freely without compromising the image quality.

This makes the Lumimuse very effective for still life shots, for example, or even for adding some targeted lighting in outdoor night shots. Its great advantage is that its continuous lighting. What you see is what you get, and you can use the camera’s own meter to gauge the exposure.

Included accessories

Your experiments can take on a new dimension when you use the three filters supplied in the box. Each filter has two small lugs for clipping them into the supplied filter holder, which attaches to the Lumimuse with a quick and simple snap fit. The filters and holder come in a separate circular box small enough to fit in a shirt pocket.

These filters include a diffuser to help soften the light (it does, a little, but not really by enough to notice) and two warming filters to help you match the colour of the lighting to ambient artificial lighting, for example, or to give portraits a warmer look.

In fact you can get further Multicolour, Portrait and Classic filter kits for £16.95 each, and each one contains 8 different filters that attach in the same way. Is this going a bit too far? Perhaps – but if you get bitten by the portable lighting bug it might be worth it.

Don’t forget that the Lumimuse can be used for video too. You wouldn’t use it for corporate shoots or commercial videography, but it’s perfect supplementary lighting for bloggers, vloggers and Instagram influencers.

Included in the box is a small square accessory shoe. You slide this into the base of the Lumimuse and you can then attach it to a camera hotshot or, via a tripod socket in the base, straight on to a tripod. This is where it gets interesting. You could attach it to one of Manfrotto’s now PIXI table-top tripods, for example, or to the brilliant MP3-D02 pocket camera stand, with its dinky little fold-out feet – both are sold separately.

Also available separately is a small ball head, which slots into the base of the Lumimuse where the shoe adaptor goes. The ball head doesn’t come in the box, even though it appears in some of Manfrotto’s product shots (tut tut). This is handy where you want to change the angle of the light but you’re not using a tripod with its own ball head.

So why Bluetooth?

So far so good – but surely the Bluetooth control is overkill? Actually, no – in fact it’s rather useful! You won’t need it if you’re shooting with the Lumimuse within arm’s reach, but if you start placing it in different parts of the scene to light specific areas, it really is useful to be able to adjust the intensity without having to keep going to over to the light. Manfrotto’s free Lumimuse app is super-simple to use, and once it’s been paired with the light it will automatically recognise it whenever it’s switched on and within range. In fact, the app can control separate Lumimuse lights too, adjusting the intensity for each independently. Oh, and there’s one more thing – while the button on the side of the Lumimuse offers just four different light levels, the app lets you set the intensity steplessly between 1 and 100%.

There are just two more things worth mentioning about the Lumimuse 8. The first is that its metal bodied construction feels in a completely different class to the cheap plastic alternatives flooding the market. The second is that it uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery rather than removable AAs. This will power it for around an hour between charges, and you can recharge it via a USB cable from your computer, laptop, mains adaptor or portable power bank. This is just so much better than relying on regular AA batteries.

Manfrotto Lumimuse 8 with Bluetooth verdict

The Lumimuse 8 isn’t cheap, but it’s beautifully made, pumps out a surprising amount of light for its size, and is powered by a convenient, reliable and easily recharged lithium-ion battery. You can have a lot of fun swapping out different-coloured filters, and the tripod adaptor makes it easy to try out much more experimental off-camera lighting. And with the Bluetooth control and the potential for adding more lights, this isn’t just a portable light, it’s part of a clever little lighting system.

Anything that gets you experimenting with light and photographic techniques has got to be a good thing, and for that alone the Lumimuse 8 deserves some serious consideration.

Rating: ★★★★★
Price: £104.95
Find out more: Manfrotto website

Fujifilm instax SHARE SP-3 printer review

by fotovolo · Apr 9, 2018

Verdict: Four stars ★★★★

The purchase price and running costs get in the way of giving the instax SP-3 a five-star rating, but as a concept it’s beyond price. It lets you print, keep and share life’s key moments in a way that a Facebook post, an Instagram or a regular photo print delivered five days after the event just never will. Its tiny square prints are expensive and priceless, all at the same time.

You might be wondering why on earth anyone would want to pay almost £1/$1 for an instant print measuring just 62 x 62mm, when you can get much bigger, better, cheaper prints by uploading them to an online photo lab or by printing them out on a desktop printer.

It boils down to two things: immediacy and uniqueness. If you’re at a social event with your friends or family, what could be better then an a small, printed memory they can take away, there and then, as a memento of the experience?

The Fujifilm install SP-3 isn’t trying to offer technical quality, value or any other kind alternative to a regular photo printer. It’s there to produce an instant print, quickly and simply, for the pleasure and memories of the people who were there at the time.

It’s easy to forget just how important these simple momentos can be. So often it’s the tiny faded print in the bottom of a shoebox that brings back our memories, not the glossy, polished photo enlargement. And giving your friends or guests one of these little square prints to take away can mean so much more than messaging a bunch of smartphone images or posting pictures on social media. It’s a permanent physical momento rather than one of an endless stream of fleeting social posts swallowed up in our daily digital deluge.

This is why instant cameras are making a comeback. The difference with the instax SHARE S-3, though, is that you can get the instant print without wrestling with an instant camera. Via the Fujifilm instax app, you can print straight from your smartphone’s camera roll. Or, if you have a recent Fujifilm camera, you can print straight from that too.

How it works

The instax SP-3 printer is a free-standing vertical plastic box with its own rechargeable battery that sets up a Wi-Fi network you can access with your smartphone. This part is a little bit of a faff, admittedly, since you do have to manually select the network on your smartphone each time you power up the printer. It only takes a few moments, though, and from then you can keep printing for as long as the printer stays on – or until you run out of paper.

This comes in packs of ten, typically costing £9 or $12 for a pack of ten sheets. Yes, that makes each print pretty expensive, but this is for special occasions, not everyday penny-pinching.

The sheets are light-sensivite, but they come in a light-proof pack that slots simply into the printer. Once it’s in and the lid closed, though, the printer spits out the film pack’s protective sheet and you can’t open it up again until all the prints are used, because if you do you’ll spoil any unexposed prints remaining.

Printing from the app takes just a few moments, and once the print is ejected from a slot in the top of the printer, you can then have some fun watching the image slowly emerge from the initially white surface.

It’s no more complicated printing straight from a Fujifilm camera. We tried it with an X-T20, and once we’d entered the printer’s model number and the four-digit password, the camera recognised the printer’s wireless network and printed without a hitch.

There’s really nothing else to know. On the top of the printer, just above the output slot, is a row of ten small white LED lamps that tell you how many prints you have remaining. Next to this is a battery status lamp that glows green, amber or red to indicate the battery charge level – you recharge the battery in situ, via a USB cable.

Print quality

Our prints came out a little softer and warmer than they looked on the screen of a smartphone, with a little less detail in the highlights. Honestly, though, that’s not an issue. This isn’t about colour fidelity and accuracy, it’s about preserving moments with the unique look of an instant print. And these are at least a half-decent size, rather than the tiny prints of regular instax mini cameras and film.

If you want, you can experiment with the app’s small selection of image filters and adjustments, but we liked the look of the prints just as they came out.

If anything, the image imperfections are what give the instax medium its charm. These don’t look like clinically correct modern digital prints, but like something older and more timeless. Even the format is beguiling – a classic square composition with an elegant, glossy white border and space below for writing a note or a message to your future self.

Fujifilm instax SP-3 verdict

It’s almost impossible to offer any practical arguments in favour of the instax SP-3. It’s expensive to buy, fearsomely expensive to run and produces tiny prints which can’t even approach the quality of a regular lab photo print.

But its appeal is emotional, not practical. It provides an instant, permanent record of fleeting life moments that might otherwise be consigned forever and unseen to your smartphone’s memory. Photographs are meant to be looked at and treasured, not stockpiled in their thousands and glanced at in less time than it takes to swipe a screen.

The purchase cost, running cost and print size make it difficult to give the instax SP-3 a five-star review, but as a tool for properly enjoying your key life moments rather than just stockpiling them, it’s priceless.

Rating: Four stars ★★★★
Price: £165/$185, film 10-pack £9/$12
More information: Fujifilm website