The Pentax 645D has been Announced. Again. I think. The 645D is a medium format digital camera with 40mp of resolution, backwards compatibillity with film Pentax 645 lenses, and a price point of under (a bit) $10,000. A bit pricey, but compared to the Hallelblad at $23,000, not all that bad if you're in that business :)
Kudos to Nicolesy for this great find: Judge Joe Brown & Cheap Wedding Photographers. I'm not sure if His Honor Brown really knows his camera gear or is just repeating what his staff has researched for him, but it's entertaining and surprisingly not dumbed down camera lingo. Well worth the 10 minutes to watch the segment, regardless of your opinion of stupid shows like the "Judge [name]" and it's ilk.
Yet another reason I'm terrified to become a wedding photographer :)
Little bit of photographic inspiration if you're stuck with just a 50mm lens and want to see what you can do with it.
Pretty funny series of videos of Mr. Pixel and Mrs. Grain, a couple in counseling. If you're not into photography, you can probably skip this one.
Fascinating and beautiful collection of photos of The One Who Got Away.
If you're a photo geek, you probably have heard of, and most likely use, either Aperture or Lightroom. You've also probably heard that Apple released Aperture 3.0 recently. Lightroom killer tips has taken a stab at starting some good discussion with 5 Reasons To Stay with Lightroom (and not switch to Aperture). The author is biased (duh) and is responding to this article on switching the other way (Lightroom 2 to Aperture 3). From the LR Killer Tips article:
Obviously there's been a lot of buzz around lately about Apple's Aperture 3. I read an article yesterday titled "Five Reasons For Switching from Lightroom 2 to Aperture 3" by a gentleman named Marco. So I figured I'd take a stab at my own rendition of the "5 things" article (no offense to Marco) and write about 5 reasons to stay with Lightroom.
Personally I think it's not a cut and dry thing. Both programs have their good sides and downsides, and quite frankly, I'd love some features from AP3 in LR and vice versa. In reality though, use what works best for you (as always), but don't go flip flopping every time there's a new software release, cause (most likely) your time and effort is worth way more than that :)
The most awesome Trey Ratcliff (@stuckincustoms), famous for his HDR photographs and tutorial, did a talk for the Authors@Google series, embedded below.
The full talk is almost an hour long, and while I have yet to watch it yet (silly work disturbing my video watching), I look forward to seeing it.
Nice article on how In photography, rules aren't laws. Some great advice and inspiration in there for people who are exploring the world of photography.
Interesting article on an artist's decision to not retouch images of super models he took for a gallery show.
Very cool for the photo geeks out there: First Large Format Skydiving Photographs.
So looking through the What's new in Aperture 3 page, it looks like some people's dreams will come true, with "Faces" and "Places" from iPhoto appearing, brushes for retouching (echoing the local adjustment brushes from Lightroom), presets (they didn't have those before?), and what looks like a gorgeous full scren browser for browsing and viewing. Rounding out the major features is new slideshows with advanced affects, ability to combine video and audio with your photos, etc (sounds like they mixed in some Final Cut/iMovie in there as well).
All I can say is I kinda wish I a) wasn't already invested in Lightroom (come on Adobe, bring us Lightroom 3!!!) and that my main and most powerful computer wasn't a windows machine.
Bending over backwards in Photoshop. Literally is a great post from a flickr superstar, photographer and model. Miss Aniela shows how she created a very cool image from another fairly "meh" one. An interview with her was done for TWIP a while back and can be found here.
Light Chasers Photography has a great article on How to Shoot (Photographs) Like A Terrorist. An excerpt:
Bring the largest camera (or lens) you have
We all know that terrorists want attention - that's why they plant bombs wreak as much havoc as they can. They want people to notice them so they can get their message heard. This means that terrorists don't want to bring around small, inconspicuous cameras - they don't attract any attention. If you want to look like a terrorist, bring out the biggest hunks of plastic, metal, and glass that scream out "I'm a photographer terrorist."
Nice list from Scott Bourne for you photogs out there: Seven Things To Ask Before You Take Your Next Photograph. Via Andy Ihnatko who also added a few of his own on there :)
One of the (sad IMHO) realities these days is that if you have either a site that gets a non-trivial amount of traffic, or want to have the time available to you to run a site as more than a hobby, you need to run ads. Google ads are the most common, and are easily blocked with Adblock. Note: I both use adblock and also run google ads on this site. Anyway, the very cool site 1001 Noisy Cameras is going ad-free.
The site is a plethora of camera related news, with an amazing amount of content each day and while I had to put 'maybe' in the poll, I definitely wish them the best of luck and look forward to seeing how the endeavor goes.
As an aside, over here in UFies land, the income from having ads on the blog is somewhere between $0.07 - $3.50 a day on average (that's $0.008/h to $0.44/h) . Though I do appreciate everyone who goes to visit some sponsors :)
X-Equals is giving away their +X=IMAGE KIT, 2 years set of presets for Lightroom. Hat tip @nicolesy.
Aryk pointed me to a deal that Gizmodo blogged, where you Buy 200GB of Google Storage, Get a Free Eye-Fi Card. The eye-fi geo card details are here.
This pains me a bit. On one hand, I don't need extra storage from Google. On the other hand, 200G of online storage would be kinda nice. On one hand I know this deal is basically hoping that you forget to cancel the 200G of space and keep on paying the $50/year, but hey, you get a $60 wireless eye-fi card for $50, plus online backup.
Some more info here as well, including some of the fine print. One of the items indicates ("...includes one free year of Web Share and Geotagging ($24.98 value)") that the Geotagging is actually a service, not built into the card.
I normally don't like these "N Amazing Photos of [whatever]" type links, but DPS's link of 25 Spectacular Light Painting Images is pretty spectacular.
Great video of Canon and Nikon, a modern day Romeo+Juliet.
BoingBoing has a great story about a Leopard seal teaching photographer how to catch penguins, told by a National Geographic photographer who went to get some shots in the arctic.
I've seen a few of these types of projects lately. Check out Help-Portrait... there are a couple of videos on there that are pretty powerful, make me want to go and grab my gear.
Andy Ihnatko has a great set of images comparing Droid Camera vs. iPhone with surprising results. Remember of course that more megapixels doesn't mean a better image all the time.
Learn And Explore for the iPhone from Nikon, has become available in the US app store. Nice little app for my Nikon shooting friends.
Macworld has a great review of different outsourced scanning services (for negatives, slides, and prints) and compares a couple of the big ones in terms of time, quality, etc. Good stuff if you have a shoebox of slides that you need to do something with.
Other than it looking way too "CG" for a lot of it, looks potentially interesting (assuming they didn't give away the entire plot in the trailer of course).
Whoah, what a way to start the morning! No, I don't mean that it's Windows 7 release day, I mean I was perusing my RSS and saw: Adobe ships Lightroom 3 free public beta over on 9 to 5 Mac. I'll have more links soon as the coffee kicks in. Here is the release notes (PDF). Main changes are "architecture for the growing size of image libraries" (cool, though catalogs and smart folders work well for this) and better noise reduction (sweet), posting to internet sharing sites directly, better watermarking, and a bunch more stuff.
More info on the Adobe Labs page.
Some demo Videos found as well.
Flickr! It's made of people! just launched. a facial recognition system similar to Adobe Elements, Picasa, and iPhoto (and probably others). Very cool feature, I'm looking forward to playing with it.
Now I just wish support for this sort of tech was built into Lightroom and Aperture!
Update: Note that this isn't a facial recognition system, but just a way to tag people's faces manually in images.
Anyone who is into photography probably noticed the new Canon 1D Mark IV was released and here's a pretty awesome video by Vincent Laforet called Nocturne, shot in ISO 6400 with the Mark IV.
Not the camera I'd want slung around my neck all day, but I don't think I'm on the level that I need a Mark IV :) Dana also points that there is some back story here about the short film.
Trey Ratcliff, of the excellent Stuck in Customs HDR blog and tutorial has created a very cool looking HDR Spotting, a Gallery of HDR Photos by the community. HDR doesn't appeal to everyone, but this is a nice resource to see (and be inspired by) some of the "good" ones.
Two bits of Flickr news tonight:
Found via the Tack Sharp photography podcast is a great collection of Launch Photography of the Space Shuttle and other rockets. Some really good examples of creative views of the same scene.
Maybe that recent update for the Panasonic LX3 wasn't so great. Seems they are suspending the LX3 firmware update and have announced version 2.1 for October 20th. Via 1000 noisy cameras.
Steve Huff has posted a fantastic 13 page Leica M9 review. Wonder if I can just email them and if they'd send me one to play with?
Just a quick note that if you're one of the lucky ones with an LX3, there's a firmware update to version 2.0 ready for you. The list of improvements is impressive as well, faster AF, a new aspect ratio, new scene mode, etc.
Almost every photographer I know (mostly noobs like me) says that their weak point is taking pictures of people and especially strangers, and I also have never had the balls to ask some random strangers to take their picture. Zack's Street Portraits video shows how to do it and how damn easy it is.
The Flickr Blog has details of Galleries, the latest feature on the site. In a nutshell, galleries are like sets of other people's images. Currently you can use Sets to collect images of your own, Galleries allow you to collect up to 18 images from other people.
The camera nerds will probably drool over the newly announced Leica M9, and balk at the price. Still, full frame sensor, classic range-finder body, compatibility with what people claim to be the best lenses in the world, etc etc. Anyone got a few months of mortgage payments spare that they can give me to buy one? Pretty please?
More details and pricing ($7k!!!) here.
Update: Hands on preview over at DPreview.
I just saw the Panasonic DMC-GF1 Hands on Preview at DPReview. I have the LX3, but this one is a) 4/3rds sensor and b) not that much bigger. Seexxxxxxy.......
The latest from Canon has appeared. Check out the Canon EOS 7D at DPReview. Updated are the viewfinder (100% @ 1.0x magnification), integrated speedlight control, 18mp sensor, 8fps, 24fps full HD movie mode, DIGIC 4 (that's one better than DIGIC 3), and other bits. See the link for way more details.
Well, not only is there going to be an Apple Event in September, looks like Leica is set to unveil new products on 9.9.09. The video says "a collection of ground breaking products", and there's a webcast. Personally I'm excited in so much that I greatly admire the craftsmanship, quality and history, but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to afford it whatever it is. Maybe a new M9? A full frame version of the digital rangefinder? Who knows....
DPReview has the press release and images of the Canon PowerShot G11. This comes of course, right after my dad got himself the G10. Same lens, a downgrade from the 15mp sensor in the G10 to a "high sensitivity" 10mp sensor (maybe they listened to people talking about the insanity of huge megapixels on a tiny sensor), better anti-noise (they claim 2 stops) and various other things. No HD video yet either...
Interesting to see what the people screaming in the forums about how Canon was right and DPReview and their unjustified crusade against high megapixels in P&S cameras have to say...
Update: Engadget has a hands on with the G11.
Models.com has a Keep It Real post with a bunch of supermodels without makeup. Look good too, and as they say, more human than the normal plastic people you see in the supermarket rags. That said, they were also still done in an "artsy" way, with good lighting and using a vintage 70's black and white look to minimize and hide some of the imperfects (instead of airbrushing the smeg out of them on the "well lit" covers). Still, good to see some of these (unrecognizable) people looking more human.
Macenstein has a cool Time-lapse video of a Macworld cover creation. As a photography it's particularly interesting in their lighting setup and the amount of post processing that's involved to get the shiny gadgets to look so shiny. Also I didn't realize what was all involved in setting up and tweaking all the stuff on the cover, fonts, and text and layout and whatnot.