February 2011

Think Tank now allows zooming into product images on their site

Think Tank Photo has implemented a long overdue feature for photo equipment sites—especially camera bag sites. You can now zoom in on the images on their site to give you a closer look at their bags. I can’t count how many times I’ve squinted at an image of a bag to try to figure out if it had the layout or feature I wanted. For popular bags (or those living near B&H which stocks nearly everything) you can of course go check them out in person, but for niche offerings sometimes that isn’t an option.

Update Available for Photorescue–The only camera image recovery software you’ll ever need!

Photorescue has long been a favorite of ours and a virtual “lifesaver” more than once when a card has become corrupted with vital images on it. It is the best product with the best support of any we have found and they’ve backed it up for nearly a decade. Their new release, version 3.2.5, offers support for additional raw formats from new cameras and also better performance for large media and large files (like video!). If you’re a current customer you can upgrade or update or if you’re a new customer you can learn more at our dedicated . At $29 for Mac and PC you almost can’t afford not to own it!

Going Inside The Photographer’s Mind with Michael Freeman

Freeman deals with difficult topics like using shapes, lighting and leading the viewer's eye into the image as typified by this Namibian Sand Dune Photo. Image Copyright David Cardinal.There are a lot of great “how-to” books on photography, including some of our favorites like Joe McNally’s Hotshoe Diaries and Moose Peterson’s Captured, but there aren’t many good ones on the elusive subject of composing photographs—which is where much of the true art lies in photography. One of our favorite authors on this subject is Michael Freeman. An accomplished photographer in his own right (his photographic studies of Cambodian temples in Ancient Angkor are still the high-water mark of temple photography) and prolific author, we’ve recommended his excellent The Photographer’s Eye since it was first released. Now he has another ground-breaking book that pushes the topic further into how photographers think about composition with hundreds of examples covering dozens of topics in The Photographer’s Mind…

A Leica For The Rest of Us? The Sigma DP1X Reviewed and Field Tested

Even as a kid I knew enough to lust after a Leica. They represented the zenith of no compromise image quality. At first a Leica was way out of my budget so I didn’t think much about it. And then by the time I could seriously think about buying one I needed the breadth of a D-SLR system for my wildlife photography work. And with the price of the current Leica M9 digital rangefinder camera a cool $7,000 (plus thousands for each lens) I certainly wasn’t going to buy one just for fun. So I was excited when Sigma started producing small, rangefinder style cameras using the same Foveon sensors that they were using in their D-SLR. But the question was whether at 1/10th the price of a Leica I’d found a no compromise solution to high quality images in a small form factor. Read on to learn what I’ve found…

Free Updates to Bibble, Aperture and iPhoto

Bibble Labs announced a free update for users of Bibble Pro and Bibble Lite version 5 to 5.21 adding support for the new model Canon cameras. .

Clash of the HDR Titans: Comparison Review of Photomatix Pro and nik HDR Efex Pro Posted

I've posted my comparison of the top two stand-alone High-Dynamic Range (HDR) image processing programs, the brand new HDR Efex Pro 1.1 from nik Software and Photomatix Pro from HDRSoft the longstanding champion on my . It's already stirred up some great controversy among readers who each have their favorite. And this version left out a direct comparison with Photoshop's own built-in HDR features which I've written about previously but as Photoshop continues to expand its offerings in this area we'll begin adding it to future versions of our comparisons.

You can see all the articles we've published on this site about HDR by .

Luncheon Talk on "Take Photographs Like a Pro" by David Cardinal Next Wednesday

I'm speaking at the local Princeton Club next week on Wednesday about "Taking Better Photographs." It's open to the public--you just need to pay $15 for lunch in advance. I'll show some photos (of course) and give everyone some tips on better vacation photography as well as always popular kid's sports tips and ideas on photo trips. If you live near Palo Alto, California I hope to see you there! You can read more about the talk as well as sign up online at the PCNC website or with the event information below.

New Nikon Coolpix P300 Shatters Price Barrier for Full-featured “Point and Shoot”–P500 Extends Super-Zoom to 36x

Calling the new Nikon Coolpix P300 a point and shoot is something of a misnomer. Featuring an f/1.8 lens and 12MP sensor for great low light performance and 1080p HD video the P300 operates more like an entry level D-SLR or high end rangefinder camera—except of course it isn’t. It has an integrated 24-100mm (4x) zoom but the manual controls we’re familiar with from SLRs. What is even more stunning is the price. All this for $329! For those who don’t need the ultra-fast lens Nikon has also released some other great new models…

Canon Announces Ground-Breaking “Video” Flash along with new Rebel D-SLRs

For anyone shooting video with a D-SLR you’ve already figured out that your flash is useless. Instead you need to invest in a separate video light if you want to do any shooting that requires more than ambient light. Until now with Canon’s new Speedlite 320EX II which it announced today along with the Rebel T3i and T3. Read on to learn which it’s such an exciting innovation…