Have you been following the Vivian Maier story, what are your thoughts on her images?

Microkosmos-It`s another world, which can be seen under our feet. We can discover a world of small monsters. Each fly, bee and spider is a perfect predator or a warring victim in this empire. It`s always a big surprise for me to find out how many species, forms and colors exist in this kingdom. I see the things around me a bit differently after each visit in this micro-world. I try to look at them in their own way. It`s very funny

Oo.. by Ondrej Pakan

Double decker by Ondrej Pakan

Dew by Ondrej Pakan

vacuum cleaner by Ondrej Pakan

Big nouse by Ondrej Pakan

Red by Ondrej Pakan

Untitled by Ondrej Pakan

monster by Ondrej Pakan

Hello ! by Ondrej Pakan

Dew by Ondrej Pakan

Amazing aren’t they. If you want to see more work from Ondrej, please visit his 500px profile.

If you’re not familiar with what “Grey Market’ is, it’s getting the product you want cheaper than you can get it locally by buying through a local website that ship it from overseas. In Australia’s case most of our Grey Market purchases are shipped out of Hong Kong. Up until now I had only thought that these Grey Market products where the domain of online retailers. It isn’t illegal to buy Grey Market however you’ll probably run into warranty issues and you won’t be helping your local camera store that is always there to help you out when your stuck. If you want a complete technical definition of “Grey Market” check out Wikipedia.

As the story goes the customer was looking for the best price for a Nikon 5200 with an 18-55mm kit lens. He wanted to buy local to support local business so after calling around, the customer found a store in the city willing to sell it for $850. All seemed good till the customer got home.

However, when I got home, I found out it was a grey import.

The reasons that led me to believe this was a grey import was:
1) When I got home, I opened up the box and found that the charger was not an Australian one, and that they had provided a white Qantas Australian Adaptor in the box.
2) There was no warranty card in the box
3) When I turned on the camera, the language was set to Chinese by default.
4) I contacted Nikon Australia on the 05/06/2013, and they advised me that the serial number I gave for this camera was not Australian Stock.

I think this is terrible, I understand that most stores would not sell Grey market, and as far as I know they could find themselves in trouble with the local importers/distributors of the gear, in this case Nikon Australia. As mentioned above I’ve always thought that Grey Market gear was found online not in local stores. I had a quick look at it seems that I could have picked up a Grey Market kit the same as what the above customer bought for about $100 less than what was paid.

Does this mean I have to ask when I purchase my next camera “Is this Grey Market?”. Anyway I thought I would just post this as a warning for you all, no matter where you are in the world, it might be worth asking the question. If your going to buy local you may as well get the right product.

I want to point out that this is only localised event that has happened in one store (that I know of). I know for a fact that where I get my gear from “Camera Electronic“, they don’t sell Grey Market gear, and I’m sure that many of the other stores around don’t. However up until now I never even thought that a local store would be selling Grey Market gear. How many times have they done it? Have you bought local and found out it was Grey Market?

If you want to read the whole story and the store in question click here.

The all-new smart sharpen which is designed to sharpen an image, and minimise noise and haloing, a new intelligent up sampling  feature to enlarge low-res images, Camera Raw 8 now edits as a filter which can be applied to any layer inside Photoshop and something that is very interesting. Camera Shake Reduction which allows you to save shots that are perhaps a little blurry due to camera shake.

There are a few other new features but there were probably the main ones that would apply to the RAW readership.

I now have  a problem. I have Photoshop CS6 which I got about 8 months or so a go, how will I determine when it’s time to update. The name change is there and the new features sound pretty good so it’s almost like CC could be considered as CS7. Oh dear.

What is your update schedule like?

In case you haven’t guessed this is not some plastic thing, Hoodman have gone all out with a metal body construction. It’s still light weight but it can take a beating so unless you lose it or something faster than USB 3.0 comes out the RAW Steel card reader should last you some time.

I recently just bought a new laptop for all these workshops we’ve been running and it has USB 3.0. Now I can tell you USB 3.0 is fast much faster than USB 2.0 and the Hoodman RAW Steel is USB 3.0 compatible and backwards compatible with USB 2.0. Running through USB 3.0 the Hoodman RAW Steel reader transfers at a rate of 5gbps. Just imagine how quickly you can download your 32gb CF card now.

The all important slots

It seems we are in an age where companies try to put more and more features on a device to make it better value. Hoodman didn’t go this way, you get 2 slots. One for CF cards and the other for SD cards. The CF slot has a little door which keeps the dust and other things out. It’s nice that the fit on both slots is tight enough that you don’t have to worry about your cards falling out. Once they are in there they aren’t going to lose connection even if you do accidentally push it off your desk and you don’t realise that it’s just hanging there. I was testing it

Pros and Cons

When writing a review I usually look for something that is wrong with the item but since the Hoodman is so simple it really is hard. I suppose my only concern would be that the door on the CF card slot would break first but I doubt that would really make that much of a difference. Sometimes the cards can be a little difficult to get into the slots but then again that really isn’t a Con as I would rather a secure fit that I know won’t have any connection issues etc..

Apart from the super fast download speeds one of my favorite features is the fact that you can disconnect the cable. I have a problem with devices that have cables that can’t detach, I always seem to break them, at least this way I can separate the two and pack the cable away neatly.

Final Thoughts.

In short get a Hoodman USB 3.0 RAW Steel UDMA Reader I’ve had card readers in the past but this one has found a permanent place in my bag, because I know it will work, I know it’s fast and I know it can handle whatever get’s thrown at it.

If your interested in getting a Hoodman USB 3.0 RAW Steel UDMA Reader, I picked mine up from Camera Electronic.

If your into Fashion photography, and magazine editorials I can highly recommend you follow Valerio on Behance.

Are you a timelapse photographer? We love timelapse here, so share your work, we’d love to share some more awesomeness!

It’s not a major update the only added feature for the E-M5 and new PEN’s is the suppor for the new VF-4 view finder. Some PEN cameras also got a fix: “Stability of touch panel operation during playback was removed”.

Click here to download the updates.

Source(s): RAW Daily, 43rumours

This is just a very small selection of Jay’s work. Head to his Google+ profile to see the rest.

All Photos Copyright Jay Patel

The Sleeping Beauty by Jose Barbosa

A drop of red by Jose Barbosa

Country life by Jose Barbosa

Wounded by Jose Barbosa

Flow by Jose Barbosa

the 'Biatriz' by Jose Barbosa

A basket on a pond by Jose Barbosa

Do you want to see more, check out Jose Barbosa on 500px.