April 13, 2007
Hey gang…
Just wanted to pass along a cool Web site I came across.
Granted, it’s an advertisement, but Kingston has done a really good job of highlighting some rather cool photographers.
I’ve learned something and been inspired – not bad for an ad!
April 12, 2007
So, Apple Dropped the price on their displays again. What does this mean? Well it could mean that those of us who have been wanting and craving a beautiful display such as these pretties finally have a chance to pick one up. BUT, it could also mean that Apple is trying to sell as many as possible because they could be announcing new displays. Now I’m NOT saying Apple is going to announce new displays. However, taking into account Apple’s history of dropping prices and announcing new products, one can speculate something is on it’s way.
These beautiful displays have not be upgraded in quite sometime. So here is my perdition and hopes for the new displays. Of course you have to include a built in isight camera. Especially since apple has stopped offering the isight camera from it’s online store. Higher resolution capability is always a welcomed upgrade. Larger displays would be another joyful event, I’m thinking 50″. And finally, I would love to see some Advanced Color Calibrator sold with the display or some how built into the display.
No matter what may or may not happen concerning an announcement of new displays, lower prices on the existing sophisticated displays is simply great news for professionals.
The Apple Cinema Displays work with both Mac and PC.*
The 20″ is $599.00, that’s a $100.00 drop.
The 23″ is $899.00, that’s a $100.00 drop.
The 30″ is $1799.00, that’s a $200.00 drop.
Hey remember when the 30″ was $3200.00. Times have changed.
For more information see Apple.com.
Until Next Time,
Jarrod Michael
*I don’t know if there are any problems when using the Cinema Display with Vista
April 10, 2007
Hey Everybody,
In a recent past episode Gavin talked about backing up your data. A task that many of use agree should be done regularly, however neglect or forget to do.
I thought I would pass along a quick tips that I use on my Mac to try and keep my backups more regular and consistent.
It involves Automator and iCal and the Energy Savings System Preferences.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to play around with Automator, I would strongly suggest to take an hour and open up the program. Automator is basically a user friendly version of Apple scripts, its a program designed to take care of repeative annoying tasks, such as backing up!
Within an hour of playing with Automator I imagine the majority of users would have been able to create a basic backup application. I would have included my own automator backup program, however it would likely be of little use since everyone likely backs up to different locations. However, the majority of my steps come from the finder package in Automator. Basically its choosing the following steps, Open a location (either an external drive, or netowork location), tell Automator to Copy your particular folder and subsequently paste it to the location you selected. Then disconnect the external or network drive.
So lets imagine you have played around on Automator and created your own backup program, save it as an application in a suitable location and test it just to make sure its going to work.
Here is the tip to daily backups that can occur anytime you want. Open up iCal and create an Appointment, under the Alarm Section choose Open File and choose the newly created backup program you just made in Automator. Now choose to repeat the appointment and choose when you want to repeat it (eg daily). Now after you have setup iCal your appointment will trigger the backup program to run at the time of day you specified and the day(s) you chose to run the Appointment.
Now most people really don’t want to run backups while there working on there computer, they can take up a lot of time and memory. The best time I found to run them is while I’m asleep, however I really don’t like to keep my Mac awake 24h a day 7 days a week. This is were the Energy Saving System Preferences comes into play. You can wake up and put your computer to sleep at specific times by going to the system preferences, Energy Savings (the lightbulb icon) and clicking on schedule. There you can setup when to wake up your computer and when to put your computer to sleep. Choose at night for it to wake up and then go to sleep shortly after. Allowing your computer to be awake just before the iCal event triggers the Backup program
Here is an example of a daily backup
I close my laptop and put it to sleep around 11pm when I goto bed, at about 4am my computer is told to wake up by Energy Savings. At 4:05am my iCal appointment is triggered and automatically runs the backup program which opens up a network connection and copies all the files in my Picture folder to the network drive. The backup takes about a half hour, so I also told my Mac to sleep at 4:45am. Thats it.
Every day, my computer repeats these tasks ensuring that pictures are stored elsewhere. The great thing about this is that I don’t even think about backups now, I just know its there if I need it. Furthermore with daily backups, even little changes I make get saved just in case anything bad happens.
Cheers
Jeff Tindall
Tips and Tricks Photography
April 9, 2007
Just wanted to share this handy Photoshop Lightroom tip I came across while playing around in the menu bar. This one goes out to all you keyboard shortcut freaks out there. You know who your are (command or control+a)!
If you press command and forward slash (control + / on a PC) while in PS Lightroom, a menu pops up with a list of keyboard shortcuts. It can also be found up in the menu bar under “Help-(currently selected module) Shortcuts.” Cool huh? There is a different list of shortcuts depending on which of the five modules is currently active. To get the shortcut list to go away, simply click on the shortcut window to make it go away. Why even mention this? To save you the time of looking for the “close window” icon that doesn’t exist!
PS Lightroom doesn’t really give you an easy way to print out these cheat sheets if you wanted to do so. One way around this on a Mac is to do a screen capture (shift+command+4) of each shortcut list and combine them in Photoshop to fit on a single 8.5 x 11 page. Now you have a PS Lightroom keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet taped next to your monitor to refer to until you have them all memorized. Ok maybe not all of them but your most frequently used ones at least.
For information on Photoshop Lightroom or to try it free for 30 days, visit Adobe.com. Already using the trial version? Remember there are just 21 days left with the $199 introductory price and then it goes up to $299! For even more Photoshop Lightroom information check out PPS Episode #24 and check out all of the resources listed by Gavin in his “Picks Of The Week” section.
Dennis
DZ Photography
April 6, 2007
In Gavin’s most recent podcast, he briefly touched on the future of photography. It had me wondering…
In an earlier post, Gavin gave us the news of the new Better Light, large-format digital scanning camera. At a price tag of $23,000 and a sensor that can accommodate 416 megapixels, it brings the term MEGA-pixel into a new light. The specs on this camera are truly unbelievable and had me thinking about the future of digital photography.
It’s a future that can be both intimidating and exciting.
First, a quick look at the past. It’s a lot of fun to read about the early digital cameras, when manufacturers bragged about “a whopping 4.0 megapixels”. Digital cameras have grown exponentially in a short period of time and there is room to grow even more.
ANTI-SHAKE
In many ways, the future is here NOW and it begins with anti-shake technology. It was originally introduced for lenses alone, but it’s now being incorporated into body styles. I am still amazed at how this technology works and the more – the better! There will always be a need for a tripod, but there is no doubt that anti-shake technology will be a staple in future camera bodies. Personally, I hope manufacturers don’t abandon the technology on lenses, in favor of bodies, as it’s nice to use an anti-shake lens on an older model camera.
DIRECT EMAIL
Nikon recently introduced a feature that will get refined and perfected over the next few years. 
The new COOLPIX S7c offers wireless LAN support, and when used with Nikon’s COOLPIX CONNECT service, you can take a picture and wirelessly email it to any email address. This technology is very exciting. Soon, the air will be filled with invisible images floating from cameras to email servers.
What a great back-up idea!
Imagine coming home from a wedding to all your images properly stored on your PC in its proper folder (or in Gavin’s case, three separate hard drives!) The sky is the limit for photojournalists, as they will have no problem meeting deadlines. In fact, in today’s digital news environment (all the news fit to post NOW!), it’s almost a necessity.
PREVIEW MONITORS
For the longest time, preview monitors have been reserved for point and shoot models. While shooting through the lens is the preferred method, there are advantages for a preview monitor and several DSLR’s will be offering preview monitors – Canon being the first.
You can expect many more to follow suit. This makes sense from a marketing standpoint. I will never forget handing my brand new DSLR to my wife. She stared at the back and asked, “where do I look?” I told her to look through the viewfinder and she asked, “I thought it was digital?”
While most of us professionals cringe at the idea of using a preview monitor, there are just too many “everyday” photographers who are accustomed to the monitors, so many that it’s becoming hard for manufacturers to ignore them.
SIZE
Now to what matters most in life – size! I found this article where Nathan Myhrvold of the New York Times makes an excellent point:
“You’ll own a 16- or even a 25-megapixel point-and-shoot in a few years, and it will not stop there. By some estimates, your eyes have an effective resolution of more than 500 megapixels. If you can see it, why shouldn’t a camera record it? “
Wow – we can debate how much is too much at another time!
What would you like to see? I know it’s physically impossible, but how awesome would it be to carry around a 70-200 2.8 COLLAPSABLE lens? Or how fantastic would it be to fire a shot and push one button for automatic HDR processing?
The future is now and it’s changing everyday.
Todd Rossnagel
www.keepyourphotos.com
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