It's easy being green

Increasingly, Australians are becoming conscious consumers, paying greater attention to their impact on the environment as a result of the products they purchase. Sustainable practice is at the heart of this awareness, as a trend towards recycled materials, fair trade, organic farming and renewable energy sources continues to grow. Since 2009, with the aid of Australian government initiatives and incentives, the movement towards energy efficiency has been strong.

Despite constant debate, solar power is consistently proven to be a reliable, clean and affordable means of energy efficiency. Solar power works by capturing the sun's energy to generate electricity, a much cleaner way of gathering power than traditional black power.  According to the Australian Government Department of Industry and Science, as of February 2015 more than 1.36 million rooftop systems have been installed across Australia.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer

Xara Photo & Graphic Design has a deceptively simplistic design: tools are located on the left, layers on the right. Experienced users of photo-editing tools will find themselves at home with Designer's toolset, but its friendly Ul conceals a plethora of tools - so many that less experienced some may find it a steep learning curve.

Designer's non-destructive integrated photo tool very useful, especially for quick, simple edits. This is your one-stop-shop for all photo-editing essentials, all of which can be adjusted manually or via presets.

Camera Bits Photo Mechanic 5 for Mac

Whatever area of photography you work in, or even if you're only just starting out in the field of photography, having a decent organiser tool at your disposal will reap untold benefits for your workflow. Applications like Adobe Lightroom or Bridge do the job well enough, but Photo Mechanic 5 truly excels as a photo organiser.

This software is purely for organising your images; aside from rotation and cropping, you won't find any image-editing tools here. But it will take you through every step of the image-organising process, right from when you extract the images. It starts with the Ingest process. Use this to import from multiple cards simultaneously and modify your images' keywords, captions, IPTC data. Mechanic uses IPTC Stationary Pads and variables to make the process more flexible, so you can write contact and copyright information too.

Sigma 20mm f 1.4 DG HSM A

Designed to compete with the best autofocus lenses from the camera makers, Sigma's Art-series lenses are setting new benchmarks, but as the company expands the range, each model becomes a tough act to follow. Ultra-wides are difficult to produce to a high standard at the best of times and high-speed models are harder still.

Perhaps the biggest problem is retaining affordability. With a list price of £849 it's still quite an investment, but you're getting one of the fastest 20mm lenses available.

Sony FE 90mm f2.8 Macro G OSS

Sony's full-frame mirrorless models are wonderfully lightweight and compact. but the body is only half the equation. While the collaboration with Zeiss has delivered some equally compact models, this new lens is at odds with the small size of the bodies. Despite the size, it handles well on the Sony
a7R body used during testing.

Ergonomics are generally good and there's no lens extension, but some aspects could divide opinion. A large focus-hold button and the controls for the built-in stabiliser and focus limiter fall naturally under your left thumb, but the push-pull feature of the focus ring for de-clutching the AF mechanism is the kind of thing you'll either love or hate. Still, the manual focus ring has hard stops at either end, even if it focuses past infinity, as lenses like this are inclined to do. It also has a very short throw from the three-metre mark onwards, making manual focusing on distant scenes quite tricky.

360fly

The 360fly is one of many newly released 360 cameras, so it's becoming clear that this new trend is here to stay. However, what's not so clear is whether these 360 capabilities are just a gimmick to drive sales or if they are actually a worthwhile investment.

Looking like a sci-fi eyeball in coal grey, the 360fly is packed with 32GB internal storage, a 1600mAh battery for up to two hours of HD shooting, 1500x1500 30fps filming and waterproofing up to five metres. The 360fly holds some prospects for the discerning 360 videographer as well as 360 filming in general, but. this being the first incarnation of the 360f ly, the more you use it, the more it becomes evident that it's missing something.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ80

Small but mighty, Panasonic's latest compact comes with a 30x optical zoom and the latest 4K technology, packaged in an attractive retro design. The camera feels very well made, with grips in all the right places for comfortable shooting. There's a bright three-inch LCD that's easy to view in sunny conditions, and it's the first in the line-up to feature touchscreen capability. You can tap to focus anywhere on screen, as well as make adjustments to settings, which considerably speeds up the shooting process.

The only thing letting the LCD down is that it's fixed. We've grown so used to vari-angle screens, which really do help when composing high and low-angle shots, particularly with street photography. There's also a small but serviceable EVF, but it's awkwardly positioned in the top left-hand corner. This means that the eye sensors can easily be accidentally activated by your finger while trying to frame a shot. Thankfully, you can turn this feature off if you prefer.