Kia ora tatou:

As I mentioned in a previous post, the battle is on.

Alan Blacklock, a dear friend and the photographer for NIWA , in Wellington, New Zealand, proposed a small competition around the subject of urban landscape. I have no problems with that, although I have to say UL is not a genre I work in very much. I suspect he does. Perhaps that is why he suggested it….

The rules are simple (until he starts winning, at which point I will begin changing them, i.e all future work is to be shot with a Canon 1-series DSLR..).

The first round is entitled:

You show me mine, I’ll show you yours.

You get to nominate the winner. No honours, acceptances or merits . It’s either him or me.

Please post your comments/voting in the comments section over the next 3 weeks. If you feel like having some club judging practice, indulge yourselves!

And without further ado, here they are.

NB, mine is the one with the traffic light…

Over the year I get to try a lot of software in the digital imaging and related computer area. Some is good and some unashamedly awful.
I felt like having a small ceremony to give an award of no value whatsoever as a way of celebrating the best and worst in a few simple categories.
So here as follows:
The Most Useful Piece of RAW Processing Software
And the winner is…. (more…)

DNG vs RAW vs Jpeg-the mission continues…

Kia ora:

in a post not long ago, I pointed out that sooner or later, I would respond to Mary Jo’s request for some sort of statement on the question of the DNG format and why you might want to use it instead of Raw or JPEG format. Well, I thought the answer would be relatively straightforward.

It isn’t.

I guess the best way to think of it is to imagine going out. late one night for a swim in a clear blue mountain stream sparkling in the moonlight, but finding instead that you have jumped into a muddy, swollen torrent. The more I have attempted to swim, the more I’ve found that I am trying to cross the Mississippi!

Nonetheless, I have kept on going, realising that the answer (if any) is as important for me as it probably is for you.

With that in mind, here is a summary of what I’ve learned to date. It is not an easy read, far from it, and at the end of this you may well be as confused as you were at the beginning, but I have done my best to try and unpack the whole vexed process.

I would strongly suggest that you do not try reading this after a full meal and a few wines. This is the sort of read you should only attempt after a light salad and half a dozen Red Bulls. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

MaryJo sent me an email detailing this vital piece of photographer’s kit . I checked my diary to see whether the months had slipped by and it was April 1. Then I followed the link. I am still not sure about the date….

So I include her letter in toto..

Like shooting fish in a barrel. With a camera. Underwater.

It’s not often that I need to take pictures underwater, but it pays to be prepared for all potential eventualities-that’s why I continue to carry my trusty bat shark repellent with me at all times. Were a need for submerged photography to arise, Liquid Image’s Digital Camera Mask would unquestionably depth charge the competition. I mean, come on: it’s built into a diving mask; how awesome is that? Now you can see underwater and take pictures. That’s two things I wasn’t able to do before.

Available in 3.1 or 5.0 megapixel models, the mask takes SD memory cards (it comes with a 16MB card that you’ll fill up pretty quickly) and can even shoot VGA video at 18-25 frames per second. It’s waterproof at depths up to 15 feet, making it ideal for your next snorkeling expedition (I hear you’re quite the snorkeler)(-yes, but not in the same league as the newly-engaged-to-Tim Ann Worthy. Ooops. I let that one out…). And the whole shebang takes just two AAA batteries and has a standard USB port, so it’s compatible with both Windows and Mac users who like to spend time beneath the deep blue sea (Hopefully the PC users will leave them on the shore- MAC users will probably believe they can take theirs underwater, unless they are waiting for their 4th motherboard replacement)

Plus, have we mentioned its truly slicktastic styling? I mean, it’s so useful having your camera mounted on your head-so convenient, in fact, that I’m considering wearing this thing all the time, just so potential photo ops don’t escape me. See a celebrity on your lunch hour? Click. Something funny happens at the office? Click. Monkeys start rollerblading down the street? Fire up that video. See? This won’t annoy your friends and loved ones in the slightest.

.

Kia ora tatou:
Lightroom 2.0. I love it!
The list of cool things goes on, and while it is slower than 1.4.1, the new features justify the slight slowdown. I have converted to using .dng, ie importing and converting my .cr2 files to dng. After a conversation with Adobe Ambassador John Doogan (look for some joint workshops in the future), all my doubts have been allayed. And the main reason? The new dng 1.2 standard, which allows you to import the picture styles in your camera-specific software and use them inside LR2.0 and finally have a reason for using the calibration tab in the Develop module. Not only that, you can create custom camera profiles. It is so damn good, it was worth the upgrade price just to get this. I am not going to explain it; others have done it sooner and better. Have a look here and here and here. Then go and download it. Awesome!

If you are wondering what the future of photography of photography looks like, then there are 2 words you need to get to know; RED and Scarlet. The movie industry already know about them. We will need to do so as well. Read about it here and here