Rigu's Blog

News from the UK's top camera strap specialist

Using the Fractal Filters Subtly for Portraits
The Fractal Filters can sometimes be seen as something of a sledgehammer of an effect. They’re a hefty piece of glass attached to something that looks like a knuckle-duster. They don’t exactly scream “subtle”, and yet, it’s pretty easy to use them in low-key and understated ways.

I had a photoshoot with Sammy in the Yorkshire Dales last week and took it as an opportunity to work on my skills with the Fractal Filters. I’ve used them on a number of shoots, but every situation and location is different, and it’s interesting to see how the prisms react to different kinds of lighting.

Fractal Filter used on the top edge of the photo to further blur the woodland and create a halo effect.

They can also be used to further blur the background and add a light haze, which I felt worked well in the black & white photo above, adding something of a dreamy, vintage look to the image.

To achieve the look I used the Penrose filter (the one that looks a bit like Pac-man) and just held it really close to the lens, being sure that Sammy was not obscured by any part of the filter. This image was on a 50mm lens at f1.8 on my Pentax K3II (APS-C, so FF people would need something around 75mm for the same focal length). Being at a wide aperture really helps to smooth out the effect caused by the filter and blend it in with the blurred background. The Fractals are generally intended to be used at wide apertures, but it would have been interesting to see how much higher I could have gone with the aperture to see what the cut-off would be when the filter was too obvious and distracting. I’d guess anything above f5.6 wouldn’t look good to my taste.

I bought those funky prism sunglasses last year (thank you cheap sellers on eBay!) with a view to using them in a Fractal shoot. I don’t think a woodland is an appropriate location, especially when it’s an overcast and damp day in the Yorkshire Dales. This look isn’t what I’d envisioned for the glasses, but this image does highlight how a Fractal Filter can pull different colours out of a scene and create some more intrigue by altering the background (technically the foreground, I suppose).

This one was shot with the big and chunky Pascal filter, which is one of the easiest to use at first, especially if you just stick to using the edge of it. Shooting through it is a whole other ball game and takes more time and effort, so it’s not something that I’d be doing on a shoot like this one where I’ve just met a model for the first time and having a smooth workflow (and enjoying myself) is more important to me than pushing my prism skills.
These two were both taken using the Julia filter. That’s the filter with a flat centre spot, which allows you to put the subject in the middle of the frame and have all the craziness going on outside of your main focal point.

This is the design where I find it hardest to create a subtle look, and images taken with it are likely to have the effect as the focus as much as your subject. That’s not a bad thing in some cases, but when you’re doing a simple portrait shoot out in a forest it can be an out of place look, and during this shoot I didn’t use the Julia filter much as it didn’t fit with the feel I was going for. I still like these images but in this case I don’t feel that the effect adds much, if anything, and that mostly comes down to my lack of experience with the Julia filter and that I was trying to shoehorn it into a situation that it wasn’t appropriate for.

Some of my favourite images by other photographers with the Julia filter have lots of colour and additional light sources behind the subject which can create something special. In the conditions I was in it’s harder to pull out anything that’s really special with this kind of backdrop and a lack of sunshine to provide some interesting refraction to add colour to the shots.

Rigu is the UK & Europe’s only distributor of the Fractal Filters, offering quick despatch and delivery, with no customs import hassles. They are listed on Amazon.co.uk, but they’re under the global shipping programme, so you would be waiting for them to come from the US, and you’d be paying more.

Compared to purchasing direct from the manufacturer you will save money (before and after factoring in customs import charges) as well as benefiting from much quicker delivery and UK customer support.
14/02/2020
Sightseer Lens Pouches from HoldFast available in the UK (and quiet tripod screws too)
If you’re looking for a really nice, high-end lens pouch you’d be surprised just how few options there are out there. I don’t just mean in the UK, I mean anywhere in the world.

I have generally tried to avoid stocking the bags and pouches from HoldFast Gear. This is because I don’t want Rigu to be a camera bag shop. There are already plenty of those, and it’s hard for a shop the size of mine to compete in any meaningful way, even when I do find interesting bags that no one else in Europe stocks.

However, Rigu is the UKs main HoldFast Gear distributor, and if people keep asking me for things, eventually it just makes sense to stock them. With the lens pouches above (medium-wide black, medium olive) I had ordered them as one-offs for people when placing my regular stock orders for the MoneyMakers and other accessories, but decided to make them a more permanent fixture in the shop to save people from having to wait up to a month to receive the item. They’re only being stocked in limited quantities at the moment, but if there is demand then I’ll up the stocks as necessary.

Similarly, a couple of people asked me if I could get them a pair of the new quiet accessory clips for their MoneyMaker (the part that attaches via your cameras tripod screw thread to the MoneyMaker slider), so I did, and got a few more in so that they could be a regular shop item.

Rigu is able to special order anything from HoldFast Gear if it isn’t currently in the shop. The lead time is generally around one month, but the price is also usually quite a lot lower than if you were to order direct from the US yourself, so there is a price vs. speed comparison that you need to consider before deciding what is right for you.
12/02/2020
B-Grade & Clearance Discounts for February
I have been going through the inventory and have added to the clearance section to make space for new stock. I’ve found that best way to entice people into a purchase is by slashing prices to a level that any other company would find unreasonable. If Rigu had an accounts department, they would have probably mutinied by now.

Many of these items are being sold at cost or below. Please bear in mind that the tracked delivery service that Rigu uses for “free” delivery costs around £4, so in some cases you’re only paying £1 for the item. That’s how good these deals are, how genuine I am about just wanting to make space in my stock room, and also how much I’d just like to see people using products that I think are good but just haven’t sold well for whatever reason.

This is something that I’m planning to do in the start of each month. Releases price cuts on clearance items in one large swathe rather than slowly across the month. There will times when a new b-grade item gets added on it’s own as I come across them in the stock room, so do keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter for those updates, as well as other interesting content like photo tutorials and articles.

EasyCover Lens Rim Protectors

There’s a couple of these left, for lenses with 52mm front threads, and 58mm threads. I can’t remember what they were originally, but they had previously been reduced to £7.99, and are now down to £4.99. They’re useful if you do quite a lot of action photography, or are just plain clumsy.

B-Grade Black Leather DSLR Strap

That’s meant to be a smooth leather camera strap, but as you can see there’s a bit of rippling to the black leather on this DSLR camera strap. That’s all that’s wrong with it. Still carries your comfortably and stylishly, it’s just not as it should be so I won’t let it go for anything like full price. This strap is usually £28.99, but this B-grade camera strap is just £14.99.

Large Skinny HoldFast Gear MoneyMaker (Tan Water Buffalo Leather)

I had to swap out some shoulder pads on a skinny MoneyMaker for a customer, which left me with a large Skinny Water Buffalo Tan Leather MoneyMaker without shoulder pads on it. Usually it’s a £249.99 item, but I’ve reduced this one to £149.99. To be honest, that’s far too low of a price, no one could reasonably think that the shoulder pads are worth £100, but I know they’re an important part of the harness so I’m overcompensating. Hopefully someone will buy it soon as I’m tempted to just keep it for myself.

Will the harness still be comfortable without them? Yes. It’s important to remember that they are user-removable by design, and that some photographers won’t use them anyway. You’ll be missing out on a little bit of width on the shoulder to help spread the weight of your gear, but it’s still as wide or wider than most normal camera straps. It should be comfortable and you’ll still be benefiting from the cross over of leather on your back helping to relieve you of some weight strain.

Large Burgundy HoldFast Gear MoneyMaker

On the buckle on the right side as we’re looking at it on the product photo above, one of the adjustment holes isn’t quite right, meaning that the metal nub at the top side of the buckle (that usually fits securely into the hole) is loose. The other two are still good and tight so the buckle remains very secure and I personally would trust it with my gear.

As a workaround so that all three points of contact are secure, I simply re-adjusted the strap so that the part that is usually on the underside was now on top (as seen in the second photo, on the side closer to the camera). This works perfectly and is just as secure as any other MoneyMaker. It is a slightly different look, but overall it’s a minimal change and something you will not notice when using the harness.

This is a small issue, but it still warrants a discount in my opinion, so I have reduced the price of this large burgundy water buffalo MoneyMaker to £224.99.

95cm Blue Woven Cotton Rope Camera Strap with Ring Connection

How much is a box worth to you? If you’re giving a camera strap as a gift, probably quite highly. If you are just getting it for yourself, then after you’ve opened it that little black box will probably go straight into your recycling.

I have one of these blue cotton rope camera straps that are popular with Fuji X photographers that has no box (it was a display item when I had a small stand at a camera club for an evening). Usually it would be £17.99, but this one is just £9.99 and it is completely clean and brand new.

Cotton DSLR camera strap by !mo – Little Hearts (Pink)

This canvas DSLR camera strap was originally £24.99, it’s now down to £7.99. Why? No packaging.

These imo straps are very strong and durable (they have been tested to 75kg without breaking), but with an additional piece of soft fabric stitched onto the strap where your neck will be for additional comfort.

Cam-in XL range ring connection leather camera straps

I’ve always been fond of the Cam-in XL camera strap range, but they have performed poorly on the site. Perhaps this is because everyone in the world except Cam-in think of XL as meaning “extra large” when they just meant that it was a limited edition release.

They are a lovely range of straps though, the two-tone leather is a bit different to the norm and they’re very nicely finished. They were a good deal at £24.99 and they’re a better deal at £19.99.

Padded Pouch for Mirrorless Cameras by Vlashor

If you’re looking for a pouch to protect your small DSLR or mirrorless camera, then this camera bag insert from Vlashor is a good option. It had been reduced to £8.99 previously from something like £20 (I can’t remember the original price), but to give you a nudge in the right direction (aka the checkout) I’ve taken this down to £5.99.

Brown Leather DSLR Camera Strap

This is actually Rigu’s most popular camera strap ever. Well, not this particular one, but the normal version is. Every so often the tanning process doesn’t work out perfectly and I receive a strap with some blotchy colouring, and this is one of those cases.

The funny thing is, well, funny to someone that spends all day looking at and selling camera straps, is that within a few months this strap will look like the rest because they change colour slightly and gain their own patina through being used, worn and getting a little dirty.

Normally they’re priced at £28.99 each, but this b-grade bargain is down to £19.99, and it’s still possible to have it personalised with a name or message on the camera strap.

Hayden Backpacks by Ideer
I’ve got to put my hands up and admit that stocking these backpacks was a mistake. I thought that as people liked Ideer’s other bags, they’d be interested in a backpack that wasn’t a dedicated camera backpack, and instead a normal backpack that was intended to be paired with a camera bag insert. I was wrong, and that’s probably because there are thousands of other backpacks out there, so it’s hard for people to be interested in getting one from Rigu when the range is small.

They are still nice bags though, my partner uses one of their backpacks for her commute to work and gets plenty of compliments on it. Originally £44.99, they are now available in pink or soda blue for £6.99 each. As you’d imagine, I’m taking a pretty heavy loss on these at that price (postage costs me more than £4, remember?), but I’d rather someone was using them than they were sitting in the stock room.
05/02/2020
HoldFast Gear Accessories Volume Discounts

Rigu offers free delivery on all orders. Most people like this because of the simple “what you see is what you pay” pricing, but sometimes it can be slightly problematic.

When people order a HoldFast Gear accessory clip for their MoneyMaker (because they want a spare, or perhaps they’ve lost one) the cost of postage is included in that price. However, if they order more than one, the cost of postage doesn’t go up since it’s a light item, so effectively they’re paying for postage more than once.

Most companies would probably think this is great (money for nothing, yay!) but that’s not how I do business, and I don’t feel that it is fair to the customer.

With that in mind, I’ve brought about a new pricing structure for HoldFast accessories, which are typically products that people buy a pair of; the tripod screws, sliders, safety lanyards, camera leashes, and belt anchors. When buying two or more of each product the unit price will automatically be reduced by £2.25, giving an overall discount of £4.50 when buying two.

This currently only works when buying two of the same item (e.g. two camera leashes, not one leash and one belt anchor), as cross-product discounts are significantly more complicated, but I am looking into it for the future.

31/01/2020
LunaViz DSLR camera straps restocked

Almost the whole range of LunaViz camera straps have been restocked this week, which was well needed as many of their straps had been sold out for far too long.

02/05/2014
The Pod bean bag DSLR tripod alternative in store now at Rigu

This is something a bit different for Rigu to be stocking, and something pretty different in the world of tripods and tripod alternatives too.

I was sitting around thinking, “wouldn’t it be cool if someone made a bean bag with a camera mount, then I wouldn’t need a bulky tripod, I could just put the bag down anywhere.” It turns out that someone had already thought the same thing, so they made The Pod, an innovative hard-wearing bean bag with a camera mount on it. There are a few different options available depending on your gear setup so check out each product (red/green/silver/black) to see which is best for you.

Rigu is currently the only distributor in the UK so I am very proud to be bringing this practical device to British and European photographers.

18/04/2014
Padded Camera Bag inserts back in stock

After selling out very quickly I have been able to get hold of a few more of the new padded camera bag inserts whilst I wait for a larger order to arrive. Pick yours up now!

05/03/2014
New colourful padded camera bag inserts for your DSLR available now at Rigu

One of the things I get asked to add more of to the site is padded camera bag inserts. They’re really useful for people that don’t want to carry a dedicated camera bag with them all the time, allowing you to keep your camera safe in a backpack, handbag, or even your suitcase if you’re traveling. I just added a new style of bag to the shop and it’s available for £13.99 in four different colours with free UK postage available as usual.

18/02/2014
Christmas 2013 Delivery Cutoff Dates

Rigu sends out packages every weekday at our local Post Office in the Lake District, usually achieving same-day dispatch on orders placed before 4pm (sometimes up to 4:30pm) and this will not change during the festive period as large numbers of orders are placed at the store.

As you can see from the lists below we are now approaching the Royal Mail’s cutoff dates for Christmas packages but there is still a couple of weeks left for people in the UK to place their orders, all the way up to December 23rd for Special Delivery orders.

Royal Mail cutoff dates for international mail (all Airmail, which is the standard Rigu service):

Thursday 5 December Australia

Friday 6 December Africa, Caribbean, Central & South America, Middle East

Monday 9 December Cyprus, Eastern Europe

Tuesday 10 December Canada, France, Greece, Poland

Friday 13 December USA

Saturday 14 December Western Europe (excluding France, Greece, Poland)

Royal Mail cutoff dates for UK mail:

Wednesday 18 December 2nd Class and Royal Mail Signed For™

Friday 20 December 1st Class and Royal Mail Signed For™

Monday 23 December Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed™

05/12/2013
Rigu now processes credit cards via stripe and is more secure than ever!

Rigu likes PayPal, they’re a payment provider that deal with millions of transactions every day, and some of those transactions come through Rigu. That said, one of the top complaints/suggestions that I receive is from people that would like to see options other than PayPal when placing an order on Rigu, people that want to order directly with their credit card.

Today, thanks to the innovative payment processor Stripe that is now an option at Rigu, it’s something that I’ve been trying to achieve for a few months, and I will be hopefully adding other options in the future. Stripe have only just launched in the UK and Rigu is proud to be one of the first companies using their system. Currently in the UK stripe accept payments from MasterCard and Visa cards, with American Express being added soon.

Taking payments directly on the site also represents a challenge in terms of protecting your data. Rigu will not see your credit card number, I don’t want to have that information, but when you type in your card digits on Rigu that means we do pass that information on to Stripe, and so we have had to put in extra security measures to protect you (and us) from hackers. This is completely non-intrusive and will not effect the way that you use the site, so it’s just like before, but safer!

21/06/2013