Twickenham in pictures

Twickenham in pictures was put together to mark the start of the 2013 Twickenham festival. Over a couple of weekends in May and June we walked around the neighbourhood and captured our favourite places and put them into this little animation, we hope you enjoy.

Lenslocker is an online Photographic Equipment, Camera and Lens Hire company, at the moment we're specialise in Canon and Nikon cameras and Sigma, Canon and Nikon lenses, our plan is to extend the range of lenses over the course of 2013. Lenslocker also has a range of photographic accessories to rent including filters, memory cards, tripods and speedlight flashes.

Canon teleconverters and compatible lenses

Compatible Canon lenses with Canon's

 1.4x and 2x teleconverters

Date : 27th August 2012 by Martin Barnes

Canon teleconverters are designed for photojournalists, sports and wildlife photographers who want to shoot distant subjects without having to carry additional heavy lenses.

Teleconverters are only compatible with specific L series lenses, the following charts provide the details of that compatibility.

Canons 2x MKIII teleconverter is compatible with the following Canon lenses:

Canons 1.4x MKIII teleconverter is compatible with the following Canon L series lenses:

Additional information:

With a teleconverter attached the Image Stabilisation on a lens may not work with the following cameras: EOS 650, 620, 630/600, RT, 700, 750, 850, EOS-1, A2/A2E, 10s, Rebel/Rebel S, Rebel II/Rebel SII, 550D

When a teleconverter is fitted the f-stop (also known as the aperture) will be reduced. The f-stop indicates the size of the opening on a detachable lens. the larger the f-stop the smaller the lens opening.

LensLocker camera rental and lens hire UK.

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.

Deciphering Lens Categories. Lenslocker Camera Hire and Lens Hire.

At lenslocker Camera and Lens Hire we know that having the right camera lenses can really help to improve your photography and give you a real sense of creative control over what you are trying to achieve.  However, choosing the right lens can be a complicated task especially when terminology and categorisation of lenses between manufacturers isn’t always consistent.

As a photographic accessories and DSLR camera lens hire company we get many people asking for advice about what type of lens they should hire for a particular job and we endeavor to provide them with consistent and practical advice to help them make the right decision.

To remove the mystery and help reduce confusion we adopt a relatively simple approach to the categorization of lenses and we focus on focal length.  The focal length of a lens determines its angle of view and therefore how much the subject will be magnified for a given photographic position.  Wide-angle lenses have short focal lengths (e.g. 10-20mm) while telephoto lenses have longer focal lengths (e.g. 70-200mm).

The following table provides an overview of lens categorization according to their focal length and an idea of what you might use that lens for.  Please note that the focal lengths listed are just rough ranges and actual uses may vary considerably as people will use a lens that feels comfortable for them and it doesn’t always fit into what is outlined below.

Lens focal length	Category	Photography style
< 21mm	Ultra Wide Angle	Architecture & Landscape
21-35mm	Wide Angle	Landscape
35-70mm	Normal	Landscape, Weddings & Documentary
70-130mm	Medium Telephoto	Portraiture
>130mm	Telephoto	Sports & Wildlife

Of course there are always other factors to consider when choosing the right lens including cost, size, weight and lens speed but hopefully the information above will help reduce the confusion over what type of lens you might need.

If you’re still unsure about what will work best for you, why not try out a lens before you invest in it, this will ensure that it is really is right for you.  Visit our lens page http://www.lenslocker.co.uk where we have a wide range of Canon, Sigma and Nikon lenses for hire. We also provide camera hire.

Hire lenses and Cameras, we also stock other photographic equipment