It has the distinction of winning Best Gadget at the Consumer Electronics Show. It looks to us like it has a lot of potential. It’s aimed at allowing you to post instantly to a social network, but do us Pro’s need something like this. Heck ya! We’re thinking shooting tethered without the tether. Shooting an event and having an assistant edit instantly as they come in. We would like to see a compact flash version, but is this takes off that should be a given… We hope!
Gavin was a guest host for this Monday’s edition of the Totally Cool Tech Podcast, reviewing the Canon Selphy ES1/ES2 Printers. The best on the go 4×6 printers available. At least in Gavin’s opinion.
TCT is a short podcast that talks about cool gadgets, and this printer is no exception.
The real question is that while it looks nice do most pro’s really care. Competition is good, and we don’t mind rooting a bit for Pentax but they are way behind in what most serious photographers want. Lenses are more important than bodies too, and Nikon and Canon londa got it cornered.
Times change though and Pentax seems dedicated to increasing it’s dslr market share. More power to em we say!
Engadget reported today about this neat little gps device. There are various tools available the connect to the camera and tag your images with coordinates using gps.
The way we understand this neat little gadget however is that you carry it with you and it records where you are at what time. It then matches this to the times on the images you took and tags them with the correct location coordinates.
We don’t have a lot of details but it’s coming out next year and look pretty interesting.
Optics Pro, is a popular photographers worflow tool from DXO Labs that allows you to batch edit images. It’s receiving a lot of anger due to the anti piracy methods, or DRM (digital rights management) they have used in the latest Version 5 of the software.
The idea of these systems is to prevent people from stealing the software by downloading it for free online. Companies vainly think they can prevent this activity by adding intensive licensing systems. The reality is that it simply does not work! Hackers crack the DRM, and then make the cracked software available free. Yep that’s right! We could go out and download free copies of most of the major software we buy, and often the anooying DRM will have been removed thereby making it more enjoyable to use. Yet companies like DXO still don’t get it. They choose to distrust the customers who do want to support them and make the user experience of their product a bad one. The afore mentioned hacking, and stealing of software is of course not legal, and I am a believer that when a developer makes software he should get something for his time, so I do not condone pirating software, but something does need to be done.
It seems that DXO Labs has used a very invasive DRM on this version that can cause all sorts of problems. Pace the company who develops the DRM even tells us in it’s own FAQ of a myriad of problems that can be caused if their system decides you might be a pirate. There’s a good Forum thread over on DPReview where people are talking intensively about this problem, and the problems that Pace Interlock DRM can cause. It seems that along with all the irritation the system, it can actually cause damage to your computer system as well.
On a lighter note DRM however has gotten invasive that the consumer tolerance for it is low, This is a prefect example and DXO is paying for having missed the consumer satisfaction boat in such a big way. For many users of Optics Pro, the solution is to simply not buy it anymore.
Hopefully because of consumer outrage like this DRM will gradually fade away, just as it is staring to do in the entertainment industry. Will DXO be around to see it? That is not yet certain. We have offered to allow them to comment, and if they do we’ll let you know what they intend to do about this problem. If they were smart they would probably apologize to all these paying customers, and stop messing up their product with DRM. That however remains to be seen.
Lastly, our recommendation to those in the DRM bussiness is to start planning for a new job. To companies that use the systems like DXO, Adobe, and many others. We say we’re tired of this and you better get rid of it.
Bored with your average run-of-the-mill memory card?
Optics Pro, is a popular photographers worflow tool from