News – Page 9 – Landscapegear

Jan 20, 2017

Levelling The Playing Field – A Review of the SIRUI LE-60 Levelling Base by Emil von Maltitz

by Emil von Maltitz

In the past panoramic images could be quite tricky to get right. The software that was available tended to be rudimentary at best, and the hardware expensive and difficult to use. For the past few years though professional quality panoramic images have been very easy to create. Adobe’s Lightroom even has a fairly robust ‘merge to panorama’ feature included (although this is just a simplified version of Photoshop CC’s ‘merge to panorama). It really does mean that creating large format stitched panoramics is as simple pressing a button.

Dec 07, 2016

New Gitzo Ball Heads

by Hougaard Malan

It is amazing how some manufacturers can get one product so right, yet another product so wrong; until late 2016, Gitzo was one of those manufacturers. Their tripod legs are loved by countless photographers worldwide for long lasting quality, easy operation and excellent performance. Despite the success of their legs, they somehow failed to make a decent tripod head, because they refused to conform to the global design standard. If you look at their older range of tripod heads, you’ll see that most of it is just plain weird. While it did work, it was unnecessarily bulky. It is with very good reason that until now, we only sold Kirk and SIRUI tripod heads.

Jun 10, 2016

The L-Bracket: Simplistic Genius by Hougaard Malan

by Hougaard Malan

If you pay it some thought, would you say that there are more portrait orientation or landscape orientation images used in all the media forms across the world? All film media (movies & television) is shot and viewed in landscape orientation and the cameras are thus designed to be used that way, which makes sense. Stills cameras are also designed for use in landscape orientation even though most photographers very often shoot in portrait mode, which doesn’t make quite as much sense. The only exception to this is pro-body cameras that have an ergonomically designed bottom virtually identical to the right-hand-side of the camera, featuring a second exposure dial and set of shutter, focus and custom-function buttons. This allows the photographer to conveniently shoot in portrait mode – simply rotate the camera 90 degrees and (almost) everything still feels and functions the same.

Nov 25, 2015

SIRUI W-2204 Review by Mark Dumbleton

by Hougaard Malan

During the course of 2015, I have been seeing and hearing more and more people going on about the tripod systems made by a new Chinese brand called SIRUI. While this brand has been around for close to a decade, it was only recently introduced to South Africa by SunshineCo. and thus most South Africans aren’t familiar with it. I was very excited when the brand manager for SIRUI South Africa, Willem Foster, recently asked if I wanted test out some new equipment for them. I happily obliged, as I love trying out new gear and I was intrigued to see what SIRUI was all about. I was given a tripod and a gimbal head, namely the SIRUI PH-20 Carbon Fibre gimbal tripod head and the SIRUI W-2204 Carbon Fibre waterproof tripod. I had a trip planned to the bush to shoot some wildlife when Willem had asked me, and I thought it was a perfect time to try out this new gear.

Nov 11, 2015

SIRUI PH-20 Review by Mark Dumbleton

by Hougaard Malan

During the course of 2015, I have been seeing and hearing more and more people going on about the tripod systems made by a new Chinese brand called SIRUI. While this brand has been around for close to a decade, it was only recently introduced to South Africa by SunshineCo. and thus most South Africans aren’t familiar with it. I was thus excited when the brand manager for SIRUI South Africa, Willem Foster, recently asked if I wanted test out some new equipment for them. I happily obliged, as I love trying out new gear and I was intrigued to see what SIRUI was all about.