In this week’s Sunday Morning Photographer, Mike Johnston talks about Canon’s introduction of the 5D.
Category: photography
About taking pictures
MacAddict’s lowtech product shot setup
Product Shot Setup 1, originally uploaded by silverkeys.
Last month, I ran across a gorgeous whiteground product shot from Dave McNally and decided to duplicate his setup when I had an opportunity.
Caitlin has decided to sell her JVC JY-HD10U videocamera. The JY-HD10U was the first camera in what is now called the HDV video standard.1 The cool thing about this camera is that it records high definition video2 with standard DV tapes. At the time, it was very difficult to work with HDV, but now iMovie, Final Cut Pro and others support it natively. She used it for filming dance instructional tapes and weddings, but has recently purchased a Sony 3CCD HDV video camera and no longer needs it.
Caitlin selling off her camera would qualify as an opportunity.
Continue reading
Corporate tutorials
D70 Photography Kingdom, originally uploaded by silverkeys.
I noticed on Mark Goldstein’s excellent Photography blog. that Manfrotto launched some online tutorials in conjunction with Web Photo School.
Though I have been drooling over their monopods and Caitlin uses their tripods and heads, I’m currently a Gitzo/Really Right Stuff guy. On a quick skim it seems they are using Manfrotto products in the examples but parts of it are relevent to anyone with a halfway decent tripod.
Wedding Filmography
Caitlin decided to try her hand at Wedding Filmography. You can see her samples.
We’ll see how it goes. She films in high definition video, knows non-linear editing, and has the all the right toys. IMO, she is quite good. I’m biassed though. 🙂
Astrophotography for the Amateur
When we arrived in Yosemite on a new moon late at night, the most noticeable thing was the stars in the sky. It was so dark you could easily pick out the Milky Way. So I stayed up even later to take 30 second bulb exposures with a tripod and timer. I wanted to edit some of them and asked Sean if he could suggest something.
He suggested “Astrophotography for the Amateur” by Michael A. Covington. Even though the book is “hardcore” there is apparently a whole section on taking photos without telescopes with separate chapters on comets/meteors, the moon, and eclipses. (I wonder if there is anything on taking photos of the sun.)
“God’s Own” AppleScript?
About a year ago, when Tiger was in Public Beta, Thies told me to check out Automator. I didn’t get around to it because Thies is in the habit of saying things like, “Skype is God’s Own phone.” When everything is “God’s Own” X, then saying something like, “Automator is cool” isn’t going to get me jumping onto BitTorrent, especially since I never grokked AppleScript.
Earlier this year, I gave a talk in Vancouver. After Cal, the lead developer of Flickr, complimented me on it, I decided to see his talk. Okay, so his doesn’t have cool Keynote transitions like mine, but in terms of content, it totally rocks. What he and Ludicorp were able to do building Flickr is textbook case of why LAMP rules in the right hands. Go see his talk! I was impressed.
I registered for Flickr.
Google Video “Up Yours”
Hello,
We’d like to remind you that in our continued effort to respect the
rights of copyright holders and content providers, Google is only
accepting video uploads from persons who hold all necessary
rights to the uploaded material.Both U.S. copyright law and the Google Video Terms of Service
prohibit distributing copyrighted works, unless you have the legal
right to do so. If you’re not sure whether you have the right to use
any of the content you submitted to Google Video, including any
music in the video, you can remove your uploaded video to the
product by following these instructions:(blah blah blah)
Yeah, that’s nice but you still haven’t verified the two test videos that I uploaded two weeks ago. What’s the point of a “video upload” program if the user can’t download/link it?
Continue reading
BFD Today
Once a year, driving around work becomes impossible and and I become Grumpy Old Man. That is because of BFD at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Does anyone know how long this lasts? I have leave at a regular hour (5:30pm) to visit my brother and I need to know if I need to allot an extra 30 minutes to get picked up.
Caitlin pointed out that “for my safety” that “professional cameras” are not allowed there “point and shoots are okay”. How does that work?
Would my camera be banned? Probably. No wonder Ken Rockwell is obsessed with surreptitious uses of his digital camera. And yet when I buy plugins, I can get the consumer editions because my camera isn’t cool enough.
Continue reading
“Blowing” highlights?
Before I go on my rant, I need to give a little background.
When Andrei purchased his Nikon D70, we discovered that we had purchased different eBooks. I had purchased Peter iNova’s book and Andrei had gotten Thom Hogan’s. So after we had read our respective books, we initiated a exchange of CDs.
The two books are very different. Peter’s book capitalizes on features unique to PDF (actually somewhat frustrating since I hate Adobe Reader), is prettier, and doubles as an introductory book on Photography. Thom’s book is more practical (specific camera setting advice), has some nice tips you don’t get elsewhere, and is laser focused on one thing: talking about the Nikon D70. They both come with a bunch of Photoshop Actions, which I haven’t had a chance to use.
What I’m trying to say, in my roundabout way, is that Thom Hogan’s book is really, really good. It’s the user manual that should have been included with the camera.
[Good, I’ve gotten that off my chest. Now let me rant.]Continue reading
Why computer magazines shouldn't review cameras [reprise]
To further emphasize last week’s tirade, PC Magazine usurps C|Net’s position as poster child for digital photography review incompetence. This time it is a review of the Nikon D70s, a small upgrade of my Nikon D70.
Check out this gem:
We love the D70s’ feel and design as much as we did the D70’s, and for those with larger hands, these two models may be preferable to the lighter Canon Rebel XT. The Rebel XT, however, ups the capacity ante to 8MP, which gives you the ability to print very large images, still besting the 6.1MP Nikons. The Canon kit (lens and body) is also cheaper than the D70s kit, although the Nikon lens is longer.