review
Review: Lowepro Classified Sling 180 AW
Well a couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to get my hands on the fairly recent release of a lowepro Classified Sling 180AW rucksack. I say lucky because I actually won a competition to get hold of it. I was in the market for a new bag so it’s been a most fortunate turn of events. I’ve had it for a few weeks now though so thought I’d share my thoughts on it.
This is pretty much my first Lowepro bag. Well that’s not true It’s my first lowepro bag big enough to put a DSLR in. I have a small pouch designed for a compact which I sometimes just use to carry a film camera or a flash. I’d also like to make it clear I am in no way affiliated to loweproUK who I won the bag from. This review is my honest opinion.
First impressions were very good. The build quality is top notch, rugged fabric on the outside and soft finishes with plenty of padding on the inside to protect your gear. Each buckle and strap is well made and stitched and the zips have nice leather pull tags on them.
Sizing the bag up for the first time I really didn’t think it was much bigger than my current crumpler rucksack but I was wrong. It really is quite the tardis. On the outside it looks reasonably small and it holds quite a slim profile which is nice as I don’t find it’s bashing on walls and people when I’m walking through the sometimes busy streets of Weymouth. On the inside though it holds an almost ridiculous amount of kit! The main compartment happily holds my D80 and 3 lenses (1 attached to body) and my sb600. That doesn’t sound like much but I still have room for approx another 2-3 lenses! which is fairly impressive for a small bag which is the right size for carry-on luggage.
Above the main compartment is a long pocket which runs the length of the lid. This quite happily stores a bunch of gels, two sets of AA batteries and a spare camera battery. It also has several specific slots for memory cards which are really handy and so easily accessible. There is also another pocket at the top of the bag which happily fits a mobile phone, wallet, notepad, pens, business cards etc. The front of the bag has a netbook pocket. It’s certainly big enough for that but I currently don’t have one to fill it. Instead I use it for a compact film camera, six rolls of film, a magazine, 500gb hard drive, leads, ipod, keys, filters, snoots and anything else I happen to find lying about. Yes it really is quite a big pocket!! and YES I really am impressed by this bag….but whats more impressive than both the size and build of this bag though is the design. › Continue reading
CameraFile: SuperSampler (AS3.0)
SuperSampler (in blue rubber finish, phwoar...)
Camera Model: SuperSampler (AS3.0)
Manufacturer: lomography.com
Format: 35mm film
Type: Multi-Lens Compact (No Focus)
Price: £47.85 (from official Lomography Shop) / £25 (from Amazon marketplace seller)
Reasons to Buy: A truly unique multi-lens camera, with four panoramic 20mm plastic lenses arranged in a row which (when the shutter is pressed) fire in sequence capturing four concurrent images on a single 35mm frame over a period of 2 seconds (one every 0.5 seconds), or 0.2 seconds (one every 0.05 seconds, in high speed mode). The results are instantly recognisable and incredibly cool.
It doesn’t use batteries, just pull the ripcord before each shot and let the wonders of clockwork (or whatever secret black art it is that provides the SuperSampling power) do its magic!
There are a minimum number of controls on the camera. Aside from the ripcord and the shutter release, there’s a switch to change between high speed and normal mode, another small switch to open the back panel in order to load/remove film. A film rewind button (which needs to be depressed while manually rewinding the film)… and that’s about it. There isn’t even a viewfinder to worry about (well, strictly speaking a small rubber rectangle is provided which slots onto the side of the camera and is supposed to be used as a ‘viewfinder’ – but I recommend you just leave this in the box. This is a fun camera which you should just randomly point at things, without worrying about composition!). › Continue reading
Lowepro Lycra Photo Gloves
Lowepro Lycra Photo Gloves
Over the years, what photographic accessory has been your best buy? What could you really not do without now that you have it? Now that we’re into the depths of an Arctic winter, mine is a pair of gloves. But not just any gloves: the Lowepro Lycra Photo Gloves. Designed specifically to stop photographers freezing off their little digits in the cold north wind. Not only do these beauties keep my hands warm (as gloves are supposed to do) but the little rubberised spots (or control dots as Lowepro call them) on the ‘downside’ ensure a firm equipment grip is maintained at all times, and because they’re not particularly thick they don’t get in the way when you’re rotating dials, pushing buttons or manually focusing on frosty blades of grass.
As gloves go, these aren’t the cheapest (around £12 to £20). But they’re the only thing fit for purpose that I’ve been able to find. Oh, and they’re also great for opening troublesome jars (thanks to Rebecca for pointing that out!).
Okay, so they might not be the most exciting photographic accessory – but they mean I can spend much more time out in the cold shooting lovely winter scenes before I have to run back to the car and sit on my hands. Unfortunately, there’s no matching Lowepro Photo Balaclava yet though… Next time: my choice of thermal photo underwear (only joking, you can look after your nether regions yourselves).
Marumi DRF14 Macro Ring Flash
Marumi DRF14 Ring Flash
I love taking macro shots, and long dreamed of buying a ring flash so that I could light them properly, but I could never really justify spending several hundred pounds for what is a fairly dedicated use. And then this Marumi piece of kit (in Canon and Nikon compatible forms) was released about six months ago, for under £100, and I decided to give it a whirl.
It takes the form of a flashgun shaped attachment which sits in the hotshoe of your camera, and has a wire leading to the ring flash itself. This is secured to the end of your lens using one of the adaptor rings – 55, 58, 62 and 67mm rings are provided which should cover most macro lenses (my Tamron SP AF 90mm macro, for example, has a 55mm filter size).
As you can probably guess from the model number, the guide number for the flash unit is 14m/46ft (at ISO 100), which is the equivalent of the Canon MR-14EX (but almost a quarter the price). The flash takes four AA batteries, and recycle time is around 4 seconds when batteries are fully charged (in my experience).
As you’d expect for the price, there are a couple of negatives to begin with: the build quality isn’t the best, the unit is entirely plastic and wouldn’t survive any kind of abuse or impact (and if you’ve knocked your tripod over as many times as I have, then that is a concern). Also, the adaptor rings have a habit of getting stuck on the end of the lens and are difficult to grip. In fact, I’ve given up trying to remove the one on my Tamron, it’s stuck solid! (Learn from my mistake, don’t tighten them all the way!)
So, it’s cheap, and it’s (supposedly) equal in power to the more expensive options out there – but how does it actually perform?
photo by P. Broome
Surprisingly well is the answer (check out the sample photos)! While you don’t quite get the complete ring effect (due to the flash bulb not being a full circle), the lighting is suitably all encompassing and non-directional, and the colour temperature produced is nice and neutral. I manage to get an average of about 120 shots from one charge of my Energizer 2000mAh AA batteries. Exposure control isn’t a problem, as you get full automatic TTL control of flash power (but not e-TTL), so you don’t have to worry about manual flash settings (just use the Flash Exposure compensation on your camera to tweak the amount of flash, if necessary).
I would question the quoted Guide range though, as when I tried using the flash for some portraits I found the maximum working distance (over which decent lighting control could be maintained) was probably closer to 5m than 14. But having said that, when shooting ring flash portraits you generally wouldn’t want to be further away than that anyway. (Thanks to John for pointing out that this shows that the flash is actually performing as promised, as I’d forgotten to divide the guide range by the aperture I was using! Gah…) › Continue reading
Lowepro Slingshot 200AW
Slingshot 200AW (after 2 years service)
This has to be one of the most popular day-shoot bags of the last year or so. I bought mine early in 2007, so I thought it would be a useful idea for me to communicate my thoughts on the bag after a couple of years usage.
When it comes to camera bags I like to have two different sizes at my disposal – a large one for extended trips (when I’m not sure what gear I’ll need – at the moment I’m using a Kata R-103 rucksack, more on that another time) and a smaller one for day trips. The Slingshot 200AW has served me well as the latter, since January 2007.
A lot was made of this bag’s versatility when it was first released and the ‘unclick/swivel’ action it takes to move the bag from your back to your side does indeed make it quicker to gain access to your camera. So, big tick for that feature (a feature that has now been copied by a number of other manufacturers incidentally). › Continue reading
Recent photos
- don't you love me baby, don't you love me wooooo-o-o-o #photowired #notdead #maybe #just #sleeping
- follow us on twitter