An extremely bitter taste

We had our first 'negative' experience since launching LensLocker recently when not one, but a couple of our orders had not been returned! Of course we've had a couple of occasions where parcels have turned up late, nevertheless in these instances a quick call to the customer has confirmed that the lens or camera has been posted and the delay has been the fault of the courier.

Not this time around.....despite all our efforts we've been unable to reach the customers either by telephone, email or letter, and we have now accepted that we are highly unlikely to retrieve our photography kit.

We have spent a few days feeling hopeful (maybe they are going to turn up!), frustrated, disappointed, angry and after that very angry! I'm now feeling resigned to the fact that such a thing happens and hopeful that the police, that are now involved, will be able to help us resolve this situation.

While the whole experience leaves an extremely bitter taste the single thing that we are absolutely sure of is that we have to learn from this experience. What are we able to do to minimise the risk without deterring customers from using our services? What can we offer in regards to delivery and collection which provides added assurance that our kit will be returned? What further checks can we do in advance to try and flag potential areas of risk? These are all things that have now climbed very quickly to the very top of my 'to do' list!

Regardless of this slight setback we continue to love our business and dealing and interacting with our customers. We are continuing to grow and we're building our range of equipment and our stock levels. We take great pride in the service that we provide and we are getting great customer feedback. We're launching new and exciting offers, we're keeping our website fresh with new banners and designs and we're working together with our developers to guarantee we're getting the most out of our stock and our website.

And the best bit of news this week....we hit number 2 for certain keywords on the search engines - not bad for a company which isn't even 6 months old! Now we need to continue to working hard to remain there and we intend to work as hard as possible to do just that!

lenslocker specialises in lens hire uk wide ( we stock Canon lenses but also stock Sigma and Nikon lenses) and camera hire, we are based in London so if you live in and around the area you can come and pick up or drop off.

Silver halide crystals

Many years ago I was given a guided tour around a photographic film company and they gave me a generalised view of the process.

In the very old days there were many ways to make photographs. The method that won was a black and white process based on Silver halide crystals. These crystals have lots of silver on them. They aren't black initially but they're ready to change to metallic silver (which strangely is black).

When light hits the crystal a tiny bit of silver gets changed to silver metal. The rest of the crystal remains unchanged until processed. When the film (or paper) is processed the first chemical uses the little bit of silver as a seed to change the rest of crystal to silver. The second stage of processing dissolves the unchanged silver halide crystals.

So how do you get colour? You cover each silver halide crystal with two layers. One to make the crystal sensitive to a particular colour of light and another layer to make the desired colour when the crystal is processed. The metallic silver and the unchanged silver halide are both dissolved leaving only the colour. Choose the colours for the layers to make the film either positive or negative.

Now it’s nearly all digital so all of the above is old hat! For those of you that are still pre-digital you are keeping the camera film industry alive. As soon as we stop buying film manufacturers will stop making it and our old film cameras will soon become a distant memory.

For those of you not yet sure about the 'digital age' of photography or who want to experience what it can provide before you move across why not hire a camera or lens to try it out.  LensLocker have a wide range of the most up to date digital photography equipment for hire so why not give it a go? 

We stock Sigma, Nikon and Canon lenses, soon we will be extending our range to include Zeiss.

Nikon V1 review

Nikon's V1 is marketed as a quality bridge camera, and it pretty much lives up to expectations. It has the characteristic solid feel that sets even entry level Nikons above their immediate competitors; The body is a compact chunk of kit which has a satisfying weight to it. The lenses which come with the kit likewise have the build quality you expect of Nikon and fit quickly and tightly to the body.

As an SLR user I deliberately tried to get stuck into the V1 without using the instructions, to see how easy the transition was. Assuming you're happy to let the camera go full auto, you're on safe ground here. Point and shoot is very easy, and the results will beat any compact camera you care to name. If you're looking to go semi manual however, you might find that aperture and shutter priority are a tad more difficult to find than on your average DSLR. A quick shifty at the manual should sort that out.

One of the V1's selling points is the frame rate for stills. This is pretty impressive, rating at 60 fps flat out. The disadvantage here is that the shutter seems a little slow to fire off the first frame when you compare it to the speed once it's going. Of course as this is a bridge camera you have to remember there isn't actually a shutter anyway, which means once the camera is firing you don't get to see what you're taking as the processor is busy getting images into the SD card, not throwing them up on the viewscreen for you. If you're shooting sports you'll find this makes it difficult to track your subject.

Notwithstanding these slight issues, one you get down to viewing your images you'll be impressed with the quality. You can shoot in jpeg, raw or both and the camera responds well in low light giving crisp night time shots as well as having a nice depth of field for daytime shots. 

One major issue I did have with the camera was the ability to carry it around like a compact. This is entirely possible but if you are going to be taking zoom shots and wide shots you’d be wanting to switch the lenses a lot. This is swift and easy but for me, it led to getting fed up with putting the kit into separate bags and therefore I kept the camera bare in my pocket.  As a consequence I somehow managed to select ‘format’ on the memory card. It felt a bit too easy to accidentally select this rather final option and therefore I have to throw it in as a negative for the camera.

In summary, a very good bridge camera, excellent picture quality and high frame rate leading to some lovely shots, but the menus are a tad easy to select by accident.

www.lenslocker.co.uk uk Canon, Sigma, and Nikon camera and lens hire.