An extra few millimetres goes a long way!!

A standard 18-55mm kit lens, for most photography opportunities will cope more than adequately. However, sometimes a few extra millimetres could make a world of difference to your photographs, especially on cropped (APS-C) sensored cameras. That panoramic vista, a little extra width on your environmental portrait or reaching the top of that building for a more dramatic composition.

If travelling, you also need to ensure that not only you take a small and lightweight lens, not only do you need to cover all the focal lengths you wil need to maximise picture opportunity. Canon’s 10-22mm EF-S lens is just such a lens, it has been designed and optimised for crop frame sensors and it is ultrawide-angle.  Tests on this optic have shown it to be a solid performer, punching above its weight optically, with low levels of aberration and distortion. It has Canon’s renowned USM focusing system, for fast, near-silent auto focus (AF), and is well put together too.

This is one of the most popular Canon lenses for hire at LensLocker, and with costs starting at just £24 for three days, why not treat yourself and give it a try? They also have a range of Sigma and Nikon lenses, flashes, tripods, memory cards and other photographic equipment for rent.

ps: The advert below and a version of this article appeared in the October edition of Photography Monthly magazine – check it out – it looks good!

If you would like to read about what lenslocker can offer you please look at our about us page.

Our Sigma lenses - Nikon fit

The Sigma camera lenses below are the ones we currently have in stock for Nikon camera bodies.

About Sigma:

OS = Optically Stabilised

DG lenses will work on full frames sensors and cropped sensors, and DC lenses only work fully on cropped sesnors.

You can mount a DC lenses on to a full frame camera, however, you will get black around the edges of your pictures because the image circle is only designed to fill a cropped sensor.

Sigma DC Lenses:

10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC
18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS

Sigma DG Lenses:

12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG 

24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG (another great lens and a rival for it's Nikon counter part. In a recent review in one of the camera magazines this scored as high is the Nikon version.)

50mm f/1.4 EX DG

50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS

70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro

120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG (this is a big optic and the lens filter is 105mm!! With it's wide aperture it is great with a Sigma 2x teleconverter (extender) making this lens a 240-600mm beastie)

We like to keep our stock fresh and new and we therefore sell on our older lenses, if you would like to be kept informed of what we are selling on please drop us an email on buylenses@lenslocker.co.uk, you may be able to grab yourself a bargain.

We also stock Nikon and Canon lenses, look at our lens pages for further details. We are constantly updating our equipment (either increasing volumes or broadening our range) so check back regularly. If you are unable to find what you were looking for please let us know as we may be able to get it in given enough notice.

LensLocker Lens Hire London, we also rent out cameras and other photography equipment. Though based in London we can deliver right across the UK.

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.

Lenslocker and the Bristol Balloon Fiesta 2012

The 2012 Bristol Balloon Fiesta took place 9-12th in the beautiful August sunshine. The 34th year of the balloon Fiesta didn't disappoint with an estimated 500,000 visitors over the four days (300,000 attending on the Saturday alone!).  Visitors were treated to amazing balloon ascents (193 balloons ascended on the Friday), parachute displays and a sky dive, the RAF Falcons, the Blades and of course the famous Night Glow.

We were really proud to be one of the sponsors of this year's event and it was lovely to be able to host our competition winner, Allan Kendall and his wife Kirsty on the Saturday and Sunday and give them the opportunity to experience the event, test out some of our Canon cameras and equipment that we usually hire out and enjoy an overnight stay in a Bristol Hotel.

The overall 2012 sponsor for the event was Jones Lang LaSalle, they were lucky enough to be 'pulled out of the hat' at the 100 Club Gala Dinner back in June of this year.  We had everything crossed that we would get chosen and were very excited at the thought of having a hot air balloon with our logo on that could be seen from across the Ashton Court site....it wasn't to be this year but maybe next....!

The event kicked off for us with the Business Breakfast networking event at 6am Friday morning debating how sport and business can work together, the followed the mass balloon ascent into the early morning August sunshine.  There were over 190 balloons that took to the skies over the course of Friday and they provided a fantastic photo opportunities for everyone attending.

Saturday, despite glorious sunshine, proved to be a little blustery for the full mass ascent. As a 100 club member we were privileged to be able to walk through and get photos of the balloons as they were inflated. A small number of balloons did manage to take off at 6am and the pictures on this page capture the colour, shapes and the process of getting these fabulous balloons inflated and into the sky.

The rest of our weekend followed a very similar pattern and it really was a wonderful experience to be able to support this great event, enjoy a weekend of beautiful sunshine, meet some of our customers as well as some of the other sponsors and enjoy just a little bit of relaxation time ourselves!

We are already looking forward to adding our name to the sponsor list for 2013.

Jo,  LensLocker Director. DSLR Camera Hire and Camera Lens Hire UK. We stock Sigma, Canon and Nikon lenses.

Photographing New York

Earlier this year I got the opportunity to visit Montreal after I was invited to my cousins wedding. This seemed like a great opportunity to try and add some shots to my portfolio and I quickly set about planning what I could fit into my trip to get the most out of my time.

After doing some research I decided that I just couldn’t miss the chance to explore some of the USA while I was that side of the Atlantic and the draw was most definitely New York and the opportunity to explore the Big Apple.

With my flights to JFK booked and car hire organized to coincide with the last day of my stay (car parking in Manhattan is as much as the hire car!) I began planning what I would do with my time.  Travelling on my own meant I had the freedom to decide on my own itinerary and so I decided to spend 4 days in NY, drive up to Boston for the 4^th July celebrations and then drive on up to Montreal in time for the wedding (I must admit I was a bit nervous about the amount of time crossing the America/Canada border would take but it proved to be a very quiet day, I was the only car going across at Midday)!

First stop New York City!  I’ve never been to New York before so wanted to see as much of the city as possible and take a stack of photos. After consulting the guidebooks I decided to speak to a friend who had visited the city a number of times, she threw a few ideas on the table and I took lots of notes with a view to doing some further research when I got home.  However, it appeared my friend was as excited about my trip as me and the next day I got an email containing a NYC Photography Challenge!  Not one for being told what to do I was a bit skeptical at first but her challenge turned out to be exactly what I needed to make best use of my time whilst I was there. The task itself also helped me choose the gear I would need to have with me on the trip  :-).  This normally takes ages….!!

My photography challenge consisted of the following:

• A picture of Manhattan from Brooklyn
• A picture of the Brooklyn Bridge
• Photography from inside the public library
• Grand central station
• Times square
• The empire state building
• The Guggenheim museums grand staircase
• A view of Manhattan from the Empire State Building
• A view of Central Park from the Empire State Building
• A picture of a taxi
• A reference to the London Olympics
• An arty shot (my choice)
• 
  

I had great fun rising to this challenge, finding the shot that captured what was asked of me, adding my own individual spin and I will be forever grateful to my friend for setting me the task!

In the second part of this blog I will include all of the pictures and provide some information my recommended route around the city (on foot).

What really struck me was how great am idea this challenge was, and how good it would be to be able to share this with other like-minded photographers.  To try to kick the concept off I’ve set up a heading within the Darkroom (our blog site, just off our main hire site),  where you can share your challenges, set your own or why not ask to be challenged if you’re off on a City break!  Just add your challenges, requests, tips or hints to the bottom of the blog and we’ll share them with others!

LensLocker is an online company and that provides Nikon, Sigma and Canon Lenses hire, we also stock other photographic gear for rent. We deliver our products UK wide.

Our Sigma Lenses - Canon fit

The Sigma camera lenses below are the ones we currently have in stock for Canon camera bodies.

About Sigma:

OS = Optically Stabilised

DG lenses will work on full frames sensors and cropped sensors, and DC lenses only work fully on cropped sesnors.

You can mount a DC lenses on to a full frame camera, however, you will get black around the edges of your pictures because the image circle is only designed to fill a cropped sensor.

Sigma EX DC Lenses

10-22mm f/3.5 EX DC

18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 DC OS

Sigma EX DG Lenses

12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG

24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG

50mm f/1.4 EX DG

50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS

50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 DG

70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG (cheaper than the Canon equivalent, this is a fantastic lens so don't be put off)

70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro

120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG 

120-400 f/4.5-5.6 DG OS (if the Canon 100-400 is not available this would be my next best choice)

We like to keep our stock fresh and new and we therefore sell on our older lenses, if you would like to be kept informed of what we are selling on please drop us an email on buylenses@lenslocker.co.uk, you may be able to grab yourself some second hand camera lenses at a bargain price.

We also stock Canon and Nikon lenses, look at our lens pages for further details. We are constantly updating our list of lenses so check back regularly. If you are unable to find what you were looking for please let us know as we may be able to get it in given enough notice.

LensLocker Lens Hire London, we also rent out cameras and other photography equipment. Though based in London we can deliver right across the UK.

File Compression

Many years ago, when I was the cheapest and most inexperienced programmer in a small software house I was given a little boring job. I had to type in a program, written in a book, into a computer. The program was for file compression (LZW). The program was to be used to shrink the size of scanned documents. These were big images and they needed to be small. They needed to be small for two reasons. Firstly they needed to take up less room when stored and the also written and read from storage quickly. Strangely enough compressing and uncompressing a file is much faster than writing or reading an uncompressed file to/from a disk. The same is still true today. Most of the little gadgets in your pocket and also in your home compress and uncompress files for exactly the same reasons.

Compression works by breaking the image down to small chunks with the assumption that there will be many chunks that are identical. That chunk will be stored once and then all the places on the image where the same chunk would be, are stored too. The compressed file would simply be an instruction of how to recreate (uncompress) to a file that was an exact copy of the original. We call this ZIPPING/UNZIPPING.　 If the original file was "uncomplicated" then the compressed file would be very much smaller than the original.

We can make these files more useful by attaching information to file. For example which camera was used and the date that the photograph was taken etc... The most common type of this file is called Lossless TIFF. A Lossless TIFF file can be uncompressed to recreate a exact copy of the original saved image.

If you reduce the detail in an image, for example, the number of colours and resolution of the image then you can easily end up with a file which will compress to a much smaller size. However, you'll never be able to recreate the detail of the original file.

The most common type of this type of file is the JPG. The clever part of making a JPG is to reduce the detail without it being noticeable. This is why its the most popular image file format for the internet.

As photographers we like to use Camera RAW so we don't loose any of the detail within the picture. The problem with this is that as cameras develop and sensors get bigger we not only have to think about the size of our memory card but the amount of storage we need on our PC's! I am currently putting together a blog on storage to take this thread on a step further.

For camera rental and camera lens hire uk choose lenslocker. We are based in London and ship our products country wide. We stock Nikon, Sigma and Canon Lenses amongst other photographic equipment.

We have another blog (Cafetographyhttp://www.cafetography.co.uk) within our website, if you have a spare 5 minutes check it out.