Photo&Cameras

Photo News and Camera Reviews

About

Photo life blog..

Archive for March, 2008

Sony DSC T300 Review at DP Review

Monday, March 31st, 2008

DP review has posted their review of the Sony DSC T300 and gives it a rating of ‘above average’. They write – ‘The question this camera raises is: if the extra megapixels added are too mushed-up by noise reduction to allow for large prints or cropping-in on images, then what are they good for? It’s a question that we believe a lot of new cameras will have to answer, and needs to be considered by a potential T300 buyer.’


Source: www.livingroom.org.au

Read the rest of this entry »

Color calibration is a process that allows you to adjust the colors of one output device to match another. The Spyder3 Elite is a sensor that is used to profile monitors of various types. These include LCD, CRT, and projectors. When they come from the factory, most monitors display very approximate colors. To get accurate color representation, you either have to have a very good eye for colors, or use a monitor calibration tool.

The Spyder3 Elite is the latest product from Datacolor for monitor calibration. I have used the Spyder2 for a couple of years and have been really pleased with the results for the price range of the product, and so I wanted to see what the new Spyder3 Elite brought to the table.

What does it take to run the Spyder3 Elite? Either a Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista, or Mac OS X (10.3 or higher), a USB port, a color monitor with 1024×768 or greater resolution, 16-bit video card (24-bit recommended), 128 MB RAM, and 100 MB of hard-drive space.

So what is new with The Spyder3 Elite? The  color engine now has 7 detectors which results in much better performance especially when calibrating LCD displays. It is focused more toward photographers and by having a larger sampling area results in more accurate color calibration. It has user defined choices for white point, gamma, white luminance, and black luminance that allow you to tune your calibration to various details such as shadow, studio light, lightbox matching, and destination output device. There is even an expert console where power users can bypass the step-by-step wizard.

Well first off, especially if you are working with monitor calibration. It is not something that is just done once and then you move on. Because of changing conditions, a monitor can go out of calibration over time. So it is recommended that you recalibrate every 2 to 4 weeks. The process of automatic calibration could take a while; although it took only 10-15 minutes, at times it seemed like it took a half an hour. Most of it is automatic, but it still meant that you had to make the time and you could not use your system while it was being done.

The first thing that I noticed was how much faster the Spyder3 Elite was. While I still had to make the color adjustments which are a manual process, the rest of the automatic portion went by in about 5-10 minutes and the recalibration was even faster. That made it so much nicer.

The device also, while becoming smaller in size, has a larger light measuring aperture which helps it take more accurate in measurements. It also has an ambient light detector so while it sits in its cradle on your desk; it measures your ambient light and adjusts your display accordingly.

What do you get with the Spyder3 Elite? Primarily you get the sensor and the software that installs, and sets it up. I know that it is simple touch, and its real use is for calibrating projectors, but the little holder makes the sensor look nicer and more functional when sitting on your desk.

page 1 | 2

From: feeds.blogcritics.org

Read the rest of this entry »

The Antennae Prize MMVIII

Sunday, March 30th, 2008


On the historic Caoling Trail in Yilan County, Taiwan. Taken by Todd

Source: planetearthdailyphoto.blogspot.com

Read the rest of this entry »

Our Place World Heritage Photo Project

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Panasonic has renewed its support of the World Heritage photographic project, Our Place. The Our Place project is committed to presenting to a wide global audience, the wonder and significance of our planet’s most important cultural and natural locations. “Panasonic is proud to continue its support to help promote and protect the important UNESCO World Heritage sites. Through the Our Place project, we would like to change peoples’ minds, both about the value of World Heritage, and about Panasonic’s strong commitment to photographic culture. Our vision for Lumix is to create a new photo culture in the digital era,” said Mr. Tokikazu Matsumoto, Managing Director of the DSC Business Unit at Panasonic AVC Networks Company.

Panasonic Press Release

Panasonic continues to support the largest ever World Heritage photographic project by UNESCO, “OUR PLACE”.

Panasonic is pleased to announce it’s continual support of the UNESCO partnered World Heritage photographic project, OUR PLACE – The World’s Heritage, by renewing a 3-year sponsorship contract starting from April 1, 2008.

As part of the support of OURPLACE, Panasonic has invited 15 professional photographers from OUR PLACE to participate on a 6-day shooting tour at Japan’s ancient capital, Kyoto between the 24th and the 29th of March. Participants were each given LUMIX camera equipment for the duration of the tour.

OUR PLACE is a project initiated by New Zealand professional photographer Mr. Geoff Steven, in close association with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. The OUR PLACE project is committed to presenting to a wide global audience, the wonder and significance of our planet’s most important Cultural and Natural locations, by building an exclusive photo archive of the World Heritage sites. OUR PLACE’s team of international photographers, including world-renown landscape photographer Mr. David Muench, have already visited World Heritage sites at more than 180 locations in 60 different countries. OUR PLACE is also the home of photo gallery displays, web publications, as well as print publications of its photo collection.

Panasonic has been a strong supporter for the OUR PLACE project since April 2006, providing Lumix camera equipment for photo shooting, and using the OUR PLACE photo collection in Lumix promotion on a global scale.

“Panasonic is proud to continue its support to help promote and protect the important UNESCO World Heritage sites. Through the OUR PLACE project, we would like to change peoples’ minds, both about the value of World Heritage, and about Panasonic’s strong commitment to photographic culture. Our vision for Lumix is to create a new photo culture in the digital era,” said Mr. Tokikazu Matsumoto, Managing Director of the DSC Business Unit at Panasonic AVC Networks Company.

“As a company that believes in its responsibilities as a Global Citizen, Panasonic’s strong support for the OUR PLACE Project is a model example for all international commercial organizations,” said Mr. Geoff Steven, Director of OUR PLACE World Heritage.

The OUR PLACE photo gallery will be on display in the corporate showrooms at Panasonic Centers in Osaka between April 24 and May 20 and in Tokyo between June 10 and July.


Via: feeds.feedburner.com

Read the rest of this entry »

A landscape photographer last night captured a picture of gales striking the Cornish coast during the worst storms to hit Britain this winter.

Devon-based photographer David Clapp used a Canon EOS 5D digital SLR and 250mm lens to record this rare image at 6.58pm yesterday.

The picture was recorded at a shutter speed of 1/640sec, using an aperture set at f/6.3.

For more about David’s photography visit www.davidclapp.co.uk

Picture credit: David Clapp

Souce: www.amateurphotographer.co.uk

Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques came to be when the author, while looking at all the Photoshop books at the local chain bookstore, realized that there were fundamentally two types of Photoshop books. First there are the "cookbooks" that taught you Photoshop in a step-by-step manner. These, which while showing how to do something, never seem to explain why you should do these steps in enough detail to make you feel you understood. Secondly, there are the technical books that are so technical that, unless you knew Photoshop, they were too hard to understand and left you frustrated.

Enter Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques. The goal here is to explain, in everyday language, how to use Photoshop, taking everything from the simplest feature to the most advanced technique an distilling it down so that you can understand it. As an instructor, the author has used this approach for many years and hundreds of seminars and workshops. His goal with this book is to take you from "going through the motions" to "at last, I really understand." The book is 592 pages long and divided into 16 chapters (there are five bonus chapters on the CD which required no update for CS3 and so I will concentrate on the 16 printed chapters and list the bonus material below). It is also divided into three basic areas.

Working Foundations

Chapter 1, "Tools and Palette Primer," is all about effectively managing your workspace and finding your way around all of the features that has made Photoshop the industry standard that it is. Here you will learn about the palettes, tools, and panels that you will be working with in this book.

Chapter 2, "Selection Primer," will take you through what many consider to be one of the most central techniques to Photoshop success: the ability to make selections. This is because when you want to be able to edit a portion of an image you must first select it. Here you will work with the marquee tools, lasso tools, crop tools, selection tools, magic wand tool, and others.

Chapter 3, "Layers Primer," examines what is another fundamental Photoshop device – Layers. The Layers palette is what helps you keep everything organized. While on the surface it may appear to be complex, it really is very simple to learn. Throughout this chapter the author shows you how to use Layers while teaching you all sorts of tricks that will prove invaluable later in the book.

Production Essentials

Chapter 4, "Optimizing Grayscale," explains that when working with grayscale, your adjustments and corrections are tonal in nature and therefore you only have to deal with the brightness and contrast of the image. Here you will learn about all of Photoshop's tools for working with these tonal adjustments which will be of use as well later when you get into working with color.

Chapter 5, "Understanding Curves," will show you the power of Curves and how they are like the Swiss Army Knife of the Photoshop world. This is another really great chapter in that the author, by way of explanation, shows you how the curves dialog box works before you realize that you really do understand it.

Chapter 6, "Color Management," is another one of those areas that seems too complex to grasp, but by dissecting it down into non-technical jargon, it can be made much easier to understand. Here you will learn how color works, the problems with color, and how you can implement color management to make colors consistent among devices.

Chapter 7, "Color Correction," now shows you how to control the colors in your images. Here you will learn how to get rid of the color casts in your image by using gray to fix your colors. Don't worry, you will use color as well, it just won't be of a hit-or-miss nature.

page 1 | 2

From: feeds.blogcritics.org

Read the rest of this entry »

Just posted! Sony DT 18-70mm lens review

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

Our new lens review of Sony’s DT 18-70mm F3.5-5.6, as supplied with their triad of entry-level DSLRS, including the 14Mp Alpha 350. Essentially a rebadge of a 2005 Konica Minolta design, does this lens have what it takes to deliver the detail demanded by the latest DSLRs?
(NOTE this review, along with its companion 16-105mm review, also contains our first samples from the new Alpha 350 DSLR).


By: www.dpreview.com

Read the rest of this entry »

PhotoShelter has added a Flickr Import Tool to its online archiving and e-commerce service for photographers. The new feature allows PhotoShelter account holders who also use the Flickr photo sharing site to import images to their PhotoShelter Personal Archive from a Flickr Pro account and to export photos from PhotoShelter to any level of Flickr account.

Images can be imported with the tool in sets and exported singly or in batches, and retain IPTC metadata such as tags and keywords when copied between the sites. Being able to migrate images easily between the two sites allows photographers to take advantage of both the rich sharing and community features available on Flickr and the photo marketing, royalty-free and rights-managed sales, and secure archiving tools provided by PhotoShelter. To copy images to the PhotoShelter database, account holders log into their PhotoShelter Personal Archive, select images to transfer, and then select “Import from Flickr” from a pull down menu.

March 11, 2008 Update: Use of the Import Tool has been suspended while PhotoShelter and Flickr address implementation problems. According to a Flickr spokesperson, Photoshelter did not follow the guidelines outlined by Flickr around API usage when it first created the tool. PhotoShelter has estimated that it will take a period of weeks to resolve the issues.

Souce: feeds.feedburner.com

Read the rest of this entry »

£60/€80 Cashback on Nikon D60

Friday, March 21st, 2008

Nikon UK is offering ВЈ60/€80 on the new Nikon D60 DSLR twin lens kit until June 30th. The Nikon D60 cashback promotion will run from the 20th March 2008 until the 30th June 2008. All claims must arrive by 31st July 2008 in order to qualify. 

Nikon UK Press Release

Nikon UK is pleased to announce that its spring cashback promotion has been extended to include up to £60/€80 cashback for purchases on any new D60 kit, until June 30th 2008.

Customers purchasing a D40, D80 and now the D60 camera and lens kit from any retailer can go online to download a claim form which will entitle them to the following cashback:

Kit
D40
Single lens kit
£30/€40
Twin lens kit
£45/€60

D60
Single lens kit
£40/€50
Twin lens kit
£60/€80

D80
Single lens kit
£50/€70
Twin lens kit
£75/€100

The D60 cashback promotion will run from the 20th March 2008 until the 30th June 2008 (inclusive) and all claims must arrive by 31st July 2008 in order to qualify.

For more information on the promotion, and how to submit your claim, please visit: http://www.nikon.co.uk/cashback.

Terms and conditions apply. Offer is subject to availability.


Via: feeds.feedburner.com

Read the rest of this entry »

The Weaving Chronicles

Friday, March 21st, 2008


“A sadhu weaving in a little workshop of Ramnagar while a man is peeping in”. Taken by Claude Renault

Source: planetearthdailyphoto.blogspot.com

Read the rest of this entry »