Photo&Cameras

Nokia 6260 Slide : People use mobile devices to share their lives with friends and family and with this in mind, Nokia introduces the Nokia 6260 slide mobile phone. The phone call is the most obvious way to use the new handset to connect with people, but it will also be used to share photographs and videos, check on a friend’s social network status or be guided to a restaurant to meet up with a loved one. For this, the Nokia 6260 camera phone features quick access to search engines and points of interest straight from the home screen and the new 360В° navi-key allows a great mobile Internet experience.

Nokia 6260 Slide
Uploading images and videos to websites, blogs and social networks is quicker than ever with Nokia’s newest arrival, which features lightning-fast speeds over both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. The Nokia 6260 camera phone comes with the latest 3G technology, with high speed uploads (HSUPA) and downloads (HSDPA), a great camera, music player and web browser with a simple, instantly familiar interface. Combined with the range of Ovi services on offer, Nokia brings a compelling mobile Internet experience to a huge group of consumers.

Nokia 5 Megapixel camera phone
A 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss digital camera with flash takes fantastic photos which can be easily shared and uploaded to Share on Ovi or other photo and video sharing websites. In addition to the photo, music and sharing features that come packed in the Nokia 6260 slide, Nokia Maps and the assisted GPS provide a great navigation experience. The Nokia 6260 camera phone brings GPS into the Series 40 software platform for the first time, really signifying navigation arriving in the mass market.

Nokia 6260 Slide price & availability
The Nokia 6260 slide camera phone is expected to begin shipping at the beginning of 2009 for an estimated retail price of 299 Euro, before taxes and subsidies. For Nokia 6260 price information and full technical specifications, please visit this page.

Souce: www.letsgodigital.org

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Canon has asked US customers planning take advantage of its rebate program not to cash the checks they have received, following the company handling the rebates filing for bankruptcy protection. The problems relate to rebate checks for video and printer products dated prior to November 14th. Any customer yet to send-in rebate materials should also delay until further notice.

Canon made the following statement: "The third-party rebate processing company that implements Canon’s rebate program covering printer and camcorder products filed a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy petition on Friday, November 14. Any customer who has received a rebate check for these products dated prior to November 14, should not cash the check as it may bounce. Canon is diligently working on steps to ensure that eligible consumers receive valid rebate checks as soon as possible. More information will be available on our Web site by Friday, November 21.

"We understand this is an inconvenience to customers. We are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Consumers who have questions about our rebate programs should call  Canon’s Customer Call Center 1-800-OK- CANON."

By: www.dpreview.com

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“Peaceful Mountain Foothill Housing, Nepal“. Taken by Wonderlane

Source: planetearthdailyphoto.blogspot.com

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This is the first of a series of reviews that will cover what is contained in the Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) Master Collection. When Adobe released CS4 fall 2008, they not only released single version products, but also six separate suites of products. They are Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, Web Standard, Production Premium, and Master Collection. You can go online to compare what is contained in each version. The goal of this series it to define what each product does and provide information on what the new version brings to the table.

What do you need to run Adobe Photoshop CS4? On Windows you need an 1.8GHz or faster processor, Windows XP SP2 or Vista; on Mac, a PowerPC® G5 or multi-core Intel processor, Mac OS X v10.4.11 – 10.5.4 (Leopard), 512 MB RAM, 1,024×768 display (1,280×800 recommended) with a 16-bit video card, 2GB hard drive space, and DVD-ROM drive.

Just like with the previous version of Photoshop, this latest version also comes in two editions: the standard version of Photoshop, and Photoshop CS4 Extended edition. The extended version is targeted to professionals in film and television, manufacturing, architecture, engineering, medicine, and science.

Photoshop CS4 is the graphics editor that is developed and published by Adobe Systems, the market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation. It was originally developed by Thomas Knoll, and later with the help of his brother John Knoll, it was first introduced in 1990. Photoshop CS4 is version 11.

Photoshop CS4 is a raster graphics editor. That is it is an editor that allows users to paint and edit pictures on a computer screen and save them in one of many popular raster file formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, and TIFF. The other popular image editing format is a vector format. Adobe Illustrator is a vector image editor.

So what is new with Photoshop CS4?

• Adjustments Panel – will save time when you are making non-destructive adjustments. The Adjustments panel eliminates the need to navigate through a dialog box maze of menus and it presents everything in one place. The Adjustments panel puts everything right at hand. It even contains the new Vibrance adjustment control that will give you greater control over your color saturation while still preserving your delicate tones. The panel also allows for modifiable preset for each type of change, including more than 20 preconfigured customizable starting points.

From: feeds.blogcritics.org

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DxOMark Digital camera benchmark database : At the Image Sensor 2008 conference in San Diego, DxO Labs unveils the DXOmark, a new website delivering key objective metrics of sensor performance for a variety of cameras measured directly on the RAW image. Available as a free online resource, dxomark.com makes it possible for the first time to assess the intrinsic quality of a camera before the impact of any RAW conversion. “There are many valuable resources reviewing the image quality of digital cameras, but none of them consider the actual RAW signal straight from the camera sensor,” explains Nicolas Touchard, Vice President of Marketing, DxO Labs Image Quality Evaluation business.

Camera benchmark database
“Demanding photographers who shoot in RAW should only care about the genuine quality of the RAW image, yet until now they have had to rely on measures based on converted RAW images, obviously biased by the processing applied to them, whether embedded or performed offline with a software RAW converter. Furthermore, as RAW converters evolve and improve, the latent potential of RAW images can only be gauged by analyzing the RAW images themselves, projecting the potential quality achievable with the ultimate RAW converter. This is why we believe that our approach will dramatically change the way photographers evaluate digital cameras.”

DxO Mark website features
DxOMark provides in-depth measurements of all the relevant characteristics of a sensor: actual ISO sensitivity (which generally differs from the value reported by the camera), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), dynamic range, tonal range, color depth and sensitivity, metamerism, etc. dxomark.com already covers 50 popular cameras, including Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLRs) and high-end bridge cameras offering RAW image format. The site will be updated on a regular basis with new cameras.

RAW image quality database
DXOmark RAW image quality database relies on DxO Analyzer, the world’s leading turn-key laboratory solution for image quality evaluation. Thanks to its accuracy, completeness, and reliability, DxO Analyzer has become the reference tool for numerous leading imaging industry players, photography magazines and websites.

DxOMark Sensor scale
DxOMark Sensor aggregates dxomark.com’s large and complex set of measures into a simple scale, allowing for easy comparison between camera performances. The DxOMark Sensor scale is designed to map to real world photographic scenarios such as portrait, landscape and action photography, ensuring that the scale is relevant to photographers. DxOMark Sensor is naturally an open scale, as it will need to cope with performance improvements driven by the evolution of sensor technologies.

DxO Labs scientists
To help understand the ramifications of such a new tool, and to assist those who want to take advantage of the RAW image quality database, DxOmark features a number of technical papers, collectively referred to as “Insights,” written by DxO Labs scientists. These technical articles aim in particular to give an original perspective on the technology challenges faced by the imaging industry. Early Insights include a paper on how pixel count impacts noise, providing an unexpected yet well-supported contribution to this controversial topic, along with an analysis of the evolution of camera sensor performance over the past few years. The Insights section will be updated on a regular basis with more technical papers.

Resource for photography journalists
Free camera resource for photo journalists and imaging experts. Accessible for free to visitors, dxomark.com has in fact been designed to serve the imaging community, and more precisely the photo press. Photography journalists and experts can now complement their analyses and reviews with an evaluation of the intrinsic performance of cameras, regardless of optics or processing considerations.

Souce: www.letsgodigital.org

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Canon has announced instant rebates on select products. The program, which runs until January 17, 2009, is available on a select group of lenses and speedlites, while supplies last.

Rebates range from $30 for a Canon Speedlite EX/EXII to $125 for an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens and are available from authorized Canon dealers and resellers. This promotion applies only to new equipment, and is limited to residents of the United States and Puerto Rico.

Check out www.canoneos.com for the full list of rebates.

Souce: feeds.feedburner.com

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Samsung Techwin, the Korean manufacturer, plans to separate out its camera division into an individual entity (under the same ownership), according to news agency Reuters. Samsung Techwin is part of the Samsung Group’s machinery and heavy industry division and makes mobile artillery and gas turbines, as well as digital cameras. Tentatively named Samsung Digital Imaging, the new company will have a separate listing from Feb. 1, 2009, allowing its management to concentrate on the fast-moving consumer market into which its products are sold, without also having to also consider sales of aircraft engines.

By: www.dpreview.com

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Photojournalism: The Professional's Approach is a large book in more ways than one. Sure, it's a hefty book at 512 pages, but it also has another kind of weight: the weight of responsibility. Photojournalism as a practice has an accountability that goes beyond judgment and values; the photojournalist becomes our eyes to the world, and must try and capture only the truth and not impose his or her own judgment on an event.

Photojournalism, now in its sixth edition, features interviews with leading professionals along with many examples of fine photojournalism. This latest edition has been revised to include international pictures and stories as well. This book contains everything from hard news to sports to features in its eighteen chapters.

Chapter 1, "Assignment," examines where most dramatic news stories come from. No, it's not from the city desk of some newspaper, but rather from the vigilant photographers who monitor the emergency scanners waiting for the next breaking situation. These photographers may just sit in their cars near a crossroads monitoring multiple scanners, hoping to be leaving the scene already by the time everyone else is just arriving. Also discussed in this chapter are other resources that can be used to track down news stories, including PR departments, websites, TV, and a good contact list.

Chapter 5, "Portraits," concerns the journalistic portrait. These are photographic essays that tell the story of a person. In this chapter, you see what it takes to put a person at ease so that his or her real personalities can emerge in front of the camera. Some of the tips offered include knowing when to talk and knowing when to listen, and even knowing when to bore the subject so that he or she stops posing and starts relaxing.

Chapter 7, "Photo Editing," takes the stance that when someone examines multiple images, he or she spends less than three-quarters of a second looking at an individual photo. The challenge becomes finding the right image out of hundreds - possibly thousands - of images that will communicate a story in a meaningful way. In this chapter you learn about theories of picture selection, research on reader preference, how to work with images, effects of cropping, working with space in an image, the size of image, and how to work with captions.

Chapter 11, "Photo Story," is about telling a story using pictures. This is the ultimate professional experience for many photojournalists. Some stories can take minutes to develop and others can take years. Here you learn how to communicate a story with pictures and words, including the different formats of photo stories, and the equipment that you will need to do things right. Also included in this chapter are a number of professional photo stories as examples.

From: feeds.blogcritics.org

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Sony Alpha 900 SLR camera review : We all know Sony as the huge electronics giant, active in the world of photography for many years now. If you have been around for a while, you probably remember the Mavica digital cameras. Large and bulky, however, the way of storing was very innovative for that time, namely; on a diskette. At that time, the cheapest and most frequently used storage medium for the consumer, and partly also for the industry. When the digital camera became smaller and more compact, Sony bid farewell to the Mavica concept and fully focused on the compact camera market. The Cybershot compact camera has been around for several generations now and was a real success. Sony moves on in 2006 and enters the digital consumer market; the Alpha DSLR camera is born.

Sony Alpha SLR cameras
Although being the only model in the DSLR assortment of Sony, the Alpha 100 was an amazing success. Simply ruling out all prejudice which sprung mainly from the more traditional world of photography. The consumer was ‘ready’ for a Sony digital SLR camera and its successor in 2007, the Alpha 700, that was introduced as a middle segment DSLR camera. Six months later, Sony launched a threesome new Alpha DSLR cameras (Alpha 200/300/350) with which Sony was able to deliver an entirely new line of Alpha cameras. Only one DSLR was missing in the line-up; a high resolution DSLR camera that would establish Sony as a serious DSLR manufacturer belonging to the top 3 ranking.

24 megapixel Sony A900 camera
Some weeks before the Photokina 2008 kicked off, the beginning of September to be precise, Sony introduced its top model of the Alpha assortment: the Sony Alpha 900. The Sony Alpha 900 features 24.6 megapixels of resolution, a dual BIONZ processor, 5 frames per second and a built-in SteadyShot module that make the A900 a serious candidate to demand its market share in a segment that is currently dominated by Nikon and Canon.

Sony A900 review including a DIWA Labs test
During the Photokina 2008 event, the new Sony A900 attracted a fair amount of attention. Sony offered the possibility to experience working with an A900 body and lens, with a large choice of available ZEISS lenses, to actually feel how a racing monster like this works in practice. We had the Sony DSLR-A900 in the office for a while and were able to test the camera thoroughly. In addition, a test sample of the Alpha 900 was technically extensively tested in our DIWA test lab. The results from these tests and the test in practice came together in a final conclusion that can be read in the following

Source: www.letsgodigital.org

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“Top of Ayer’s Rock, Australia. Northern Territory, near to centre of the continent. Recent cleanup really brought this photo out a lot better”. Taken by Absolutwade

Source: planetearthdailyphoto.blogspot.com

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