Thursday, November 29, 2007

Ordered a new lens today... arrives Monday!

After waiting for a good deal on the coveted Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS Image Stabilizer USM lens, I finally ordered it today from B&H! There was a $125 instant rebate by Canon, and I got an additional $100 off from a recent NAPP Photoshop CS3 seminar that I attended recently which B&H was a sponsor. I also got FREE shipping as a benefit of being a NAPP member.

The lens arrives on Monday! Since it gets dark early around here, I'll need to find something indoors to tide me over. Maybe I'll pick up some flowers.


Wednesday, November 21, 2007

"The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2" available for pre-order

Scott Kelby announced on his blog today the pre-order availability of The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2. This is the sequel to his The Digital Photography Book, which I always recommend to my friends.

If you pre-order it from Amazon.com, currently you also get an additional 5% pre-order discount bringing the final price to $15.67.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

There's a lens calling my name

I visited my local camera shop this evening. I've been eyeballing the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for several months, but I had never tried one yet... until tonight. The salesman reached into the cabinet and pulled out the f/2.8 and f/4 versions of the Canon EF 70-200mm lens.

The two lenses were quite different from each other. I understood before seeing the lens that the f/2.8 was much heavier than the f/4, but I didn't realize that the f/2.8 was also quite a bit larger too. I'm not talking astronomical differences here, but still quite noticeable.

I tried the f/2.8 lens first on the Canon EOS 30D camera body (the same camera that I use). It was substantially heavier than my Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM and Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lenses. However, when I held it in my hands and snapped a few shots it just felt right. Very well balanced and if I'm doing handheld shots the tripod mounting bracket sits nicely in the palm of my hand.

I swapped it out with the f/4 lens and that really felt too light. Don't get me wrong... it's an amazing lens. But with the f/2.8 I felt like a superhero... and with the f/4 I felt like the superhero's sidekick.

I tried the f/2.8 lens a second time and felt that excitement flow again! I think I may rent it before making the big purchase so that I can get a feel of how heavy it is after lugging it around for several hours.

I told the salesman that I was going to have to take some time to think about it. He joked around saying that "this was the kind of money (for a lens) that you don't tell the wife about." I haven't crossed that road yet, so no worries here.

If you own either the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM or the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens, let me know what you think of it and whether you would recommend one over the other.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Adobe updates Lightroom, Photoshop CS3, and Camera RAW

Adobe released a cornucopia of updates today for Lightroom, Photoshop CS3, and Adobe Camera RAW today. I have installed each of these updates on my Mac Pro OS X 10.5.1 Leopard system and haven't seen any adverse effects (knock on wood).

Lightroom 1.3

(Download: Mac / Win)

From the release notes:

Lightroom 1.3 includes corrections for the following issues:
  • Writing XMP metadata automatically has been corrected for performance issues
  • Printing with the native resolution option enabled no longer sets the wrong dimension for portrait oriented images
  • Prior to Camera Raw 4.3 there was the possibility that artifacts in edge transitions could be introduced through the
  • Bayer demosaic and luminance noise reductions algorithms. This has been corrected.
  • The Canon sRAW format and the Fuji compressed RAF formats are now supported.
Lightroom 1.3 includes the following enhancements:
  • The import dialog now offers the option to render 1:1 previews as part of the import process
  • The export dialog layout has been enhanced
  • A Lightroom Preview Export SDK is available for developers to create and distribute Export Plug-ins. Further details
  • are located on Adobe Labs
This update improves support for OS X 10.5 Leopard, however Time Machine was nowhere to be found in the release notes. When I questioned Tom Hogarty (Lightroom Project Manager) about this, he had this response:
"I would still recommend not running Time Machine backup or restore operations while Lightroom is in use. I'll have more details as soon as they're available."
Keep an eye on Adobe's Lightroom Insider blog for more on this topic.

Lightroom Export SDK: The Lightroom team has also released an Export SDK to allow developers to create and distribute Export Plug-ins. It includes plug-in sample code for a Flickr and FTP plug-in. This holds great potential and I am excited to see what the development community produces. The SDK can be downloaded from the Adobe Labs website.

Adobe Camera RAW 4.3

(Download: Mac / Win)

Support for the following cameras has been added. Visit the Camera Raw page for a complete list of supported cameras.
  • Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
  • Canon PowerShot G9
  • Nikon D3
  • Nikon D300
  • Olympus E-3
  • Olympus SP-560 UZ
  • Panasonic DMC-L10

Adobe Photoshop 10.0.1 update for Adobe Photoshop CS3

(Download: Mac / Win)

The most significant fixes in the Photoshop 10.0.1 update include the following:
  • The speed of moving objects contained within multiple layer sets has been improved.
  • Converting images to CMYK using certain profiles no longer results in black files.
  • The Save for Web feature now includes an option to "Include XMP" (metadata) in the settings menu within the main Save for Web interface, making the existing capability easier to access.
  • When using Save For Web with "Include XMP" enabled, all XMP data is now included in the optimized file.
  • Print color matching has been improved.
  • Images saved as DICOM and reopened in Photoshop CS3 are no longer corrupted on PowerPC based Mac computers.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Lightbox 2.4 plugin for Wordpress

These are just some tests of the Lightbox 2.4 plugin for Wordpress. Version 2.4 was released earlier this week, so I thought I'd give it a try.

My model today is my beautiful niece, Mackenzie.



Thumbnails - click to view slideshow