Digital Camera reviews - Best Reflex Camera

Canon 5D Mark II Review Updated with sRAW Comparison

Roland Lim — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 04:02:48 +0000

I have finally updated my 5D mark II review with sRAW comparsion with full resolution RAW files. You can see it at the full review here.

Saturday Morning Sketch #3

Paul Lasaine — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:47:00 +0000

My family and I spent a few weeks in Italy last summer. There's so much art there - it's impossible not to be inspired. Of course I shot tons of pictures! Here's a painting based on one of them.br /br /Once again, I painted this using Corel Painter. Though I do most of my work in Photoshop, for getting the look of oil paint, Painter still can't be beat.br /br /span style="font-size:85%;"(No, I didn't paint the entire thing this morning. Most of it, /spanspan style="font-size:85%;"I painted /spanspan style="font-size:85%;"the other night...but I finished it today.)/spanbr /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pYhtd5F751g/SaBrsYwQcwI/AAAAAAAABCg/CKFTaTCNZws/s1600-h/Venice.jpg"img style="cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pYhtd5F751g/SaBrsYwQcwI/AAAAAAAABCg/CKFTaTCNZws/s320/Venice.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305358771345715970" border="0" //abr /br /Here's my lay in...after about an hour of work. One of the nice things about digital painting, is you can keep the early versions of paintings. Often, the under painting is just as interesting as the final product.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pYhtd5F751g/SaBv3eT5SGI/AAAAAAAABCo/xhp0j4pvkiQ/s1600-h/Venice+-+Lay+In.jpg"img style="cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pYhtd5F751g/SaBv3eT5SGI/AAAAAAAABCo/xhp0j4pvkiQ/s320/Venice+-+Lay+In.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305363359862442082" border="0" //a

Canon Lenses Price Rise From 1st March 2009

Roland Lim — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 10:03:06 +0000

Probably due to the very strong Japanese Yen, Canon Hong Kong will be raising most lens prices from next month. The price increase will be roughly between 5 to 10%. Although a few lenses prices will remain static. If you intend to buy a new Canon lens in Hong Kong. You better hurry and buy [...]

“The Touch Of Your Lips”

Carlos — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:44:00 +0000

div align="center"a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ7sI1IDlII/AAAAAAAAKFI/0Hlig1iHsU0/s1600-h/The+Touch+Of+Your+Lips.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304937047532999810" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 264px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ7sI1IDlII/AAAAAAAAKFI/0Hlig1iHsU0/s400/The+Touch+Of+Your+Lips.jpg" border="0" //aemstrongspan style="font-size:130%;""The Touch Of Your Lips"br //span/strong/em©David A. Ziser/divdiv align="center"br /We wedding photographers are always taking photographs of the bride and groom kissing. We take a few shots of them looking lovingly at each other and then a few more of them kissing. Let me give you a hint how to make it an even better shot. After you get a few images of them looking romantically at each other, encourage them to draw closer - closer -ALMOST KISSING - but not fully kissing. It's the anticipation of the kiss that heightens the emotional thrill of the shot. One note here, DON'T have them pucker as they draw closer to each other - otherwise they will look like two "a id="nyrx" title="Kissig gouramis" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissing_gourami" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="6258"Kissing gourami/a" fish. So remember, almost kissing, no pucker, adds romance to these kind of shots. Camera Fuji S-1 fitted with 80-200mm lens at 105mm, F2.8 @ 1/70 second, ISO 320. strongemEnjoy! -David/em/strong/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/544148101" height="1" width="1"/

Business Day Thursday On Friday: Customer Service Or Customer Appreciation - 20 Ways To Appreciate Your Customer

Carlos — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:35:00 +0000

strongema href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ7q6Vh1l7I/AAAAAAAAKE4/diC-Gu4YI8E/s1600-h/Thank+You+-+iStock_000003393808XSmall.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304935699021404082" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 132px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ7q6Vh1l7I/AAAAAAAAKE4/diC-Gu4YI8E/s200/Thank+You+-+iStock_000003393808XSmall.jpg" border="0" //aGood Morning Everybody,br //em/strongAt least it's morning here in Las Vegas. Boy, will I be glad to get back on schedule next week. I was going to do another "The F-Stops Here" post today, but decided to hold off till next week to post it.br /br /Here's why. Last evening, I was reading a copy of Success Magazine that my buddy Bruce Hudson gave me at the WPPI trade-show. I had subscribed years ago and had always enjoyed the magazine so it was a nice surprise to see a copy again. While reading an article in the issue it reminded and struck me as to the real importance of customer service we provide our clients. Give today's post a read and let me know what you think.br /br /strongemHit the "Read More..." link for the rest of the story./em/strong span id="fullpost"br //spanspan id="fullpost"br /br /strongemspan style="color:#cc9933;"Customer Service Or Customer Appreciation?br //span/em/strongHere is a quote from the article, em"Every single person on this planet has an invisible sign on the front of them that says; Appreciate me and make me feel good."/em That quote caught my eye right away and I started wondering how well I appreciate my own clients. Was I doing a good enough job at it. Sure, I thanked them for their business when they picked up their order. Sure, I thank them for a referral when I saw them the next time, which many times was several months later or even worse never. Sure, we would send them our promo pieces asking for more business - but does that even qualify as a Thank You? I think not.br /br /Let me ask the question differently. Is thanking your client part of your marketing plan or simply the end of the transaction? Unfortunately for most of us I think the latter. For too many businesses or those wanting to grow their business, a customer out of site, is also a customer out of mind.br /br /For too many businesses, marketing is simply getting their name out there, offering some kind of special, and hoping the customers will come to them. Folks, I DON'T believe this is the wave of the future when it comes to building our business - I think it's the wave of the past. Look how many businesses, large and small, are using Facebook to connect and build relationships with their clients. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Facebook should be at the heart of your marketing plan, but I suggest you take a peek at it.br /br /I've been driving the same make of car for over 25 years which means that I've seen many levels of service and more importantly, appreciation for my business, from a number of dealers I've experienced over the years. The dealer that stands out for me is my current dealer that has gone above and beyond the call of duty to rectify a few service issues with my car when the warranty was long since expired. It was the personal connect that made a difference to me.br /br /Let me try a little test. Also, let me preface this by saying I'm not necessarily picking on any one company here.br /br /strongemspan style="color:#cc9933;"Think if you have felt appreciated as a customer in this situation:br //span/em/strongem1. Getting tech support on your computer - almost any brand.br /br /2. Even getting through to tech support at Symantec for Norton's Anti-virus. I've never gotten through.br /br /3. Paying the extra "BAG" charge to get on an airplane.br /br /4. Dealing with airline "Customer service" if there was a change of plans. True story - I was trying to change travel plans last year when my mother was dying. After offering not many alternatives for my travel plans, the "customer service" rep told me to have a nice day! Did she hear me? My Mother was dying -- Unbelievable!br /br /5. Having your EULA - End User Licence Agreement tell you that you are eligible for only two installs when you have a work, home, and laptop computer. Their solution... just buy another copy for the third install. That only doubles the price for the last install, doesn't it.br /br /6. Being told the software won't work on a MAC / Being told the software won't work on a PC. I heard them both this week at WPPI.br /br /7. And lastly, trying to buy a new cell phone. True story - LaDawn and I just last week visited a Verizon Store, or more correctly, an authorized Verizon reseller. My advice - avoid the Verizon resellers like the plague and only do business with a Verizon corporate store. The two guys working behind the counter looked like they should be working for Jiffy Lube with their frayed ball caps and less than professional appearance.br /br /The first guy made it seem like we were an inconvenience to him because we were asking too many questions. We were ready to buy the phone for a savings of $50 off the $199 price. I offered my Amex card and they said they didn't take Amex - red flag #1. The other guy - the store manager - made a snotty remark that lots of stores don't take Amex - red flag #2. He may be right, but national corporate stores surely do.br /br /Even though, we nearly sealed the deal, the red flags on their lack of customer appreciation made us walk out of the store and drive the extra 3 miles to the corporate Verizon store where we picked up the same phone for - get this -for only $30! By the way, we spent 3 hours in the corporate store as they finally managed to undo the lock on the account the Verizon authorized reseller had levied on the account.br //embr /Whew! What a day, but you get the point. An unappreciated customer may never return. So folks, it's not always about having the best product or the best price. That may get them to make the first purchase. But it's about appreciating your customer on a regular basis that keeps them coming back.br /br /So how well do you appreciate your clients? Do you send your wedding clients anniversary cards every year? Do you send birthday cards to the kids you have photographed? Do you send random Thank You or Thinking of You cards to your clients just - get this - just to say Thank You or I've Missed You without including a pitch or a new offer to buy your product?br /br /Let me say this, "A client that feels appreciated will help grow your business much more than a client whom you just say Thank You." OK, I've gone on for quite a while here, but let me wrap by having you think about this. How often do you get to appreciate your client from the time of the first phone call? Let me count the ways.br /br /strongemspan style="color:#cc9933;"20 Ways To Show Customer Appreciation/span/em/strongbr /emstrong1./strong Sending a Thank You note for initially contacting you.br /br /strong2./strong Mailing then directions to your studio for their first appointment.br /br /strong3./strong Monthly or maybe bi-monthly, before their wedding letting them know how much you are looking forward to spending their wedding day with them.br /br /strong4./strong Calling the week of the event just to check in verify schedules, adjust for any last minute change of plans, secure immediate family names and relationships and wrap any loose ends.br /br /strong5./strong Showing some of their wedding images at their wedding reception on your laptop.br /br /strong6./strong Telling them and the bride and groom's parents how much you enjoyed spending the day with them as you get ready to leave for the evening.br /br /strong7./strong Dropping them a note within the week telling them how great their pictures look maybe even including a 4x5 image from the day. They get to read the note when they get back from their honeymoon.br /br /strong8./strong Posting a short show, maybe with Animoto, to let them and their families share in the "preview of coming attractions."br /br /strong9./strong Thanking them for their order after it's placed. Thank them for referrals.br /br /strong10./strong Dropping them a note while their wedding album is in process letting them know how great it is going to look.br /br /strong11./strong After delivering the album, follow up with yet another personalized Thank You note with your own personal message.br /br /strong12./strong Send out Birthday cards on their birthdays - you asked for that info during the booking process.br /br /strong13./strong Send them an anniversary card every anniversary.br /br /strong14./strong If you hear they having a baby give a call or send a note. We include a free sterling silver frame with an invitation for complimentary Mom/Dad and Baby shoot.br /br /strong15./strong Give them free family portrait session for life, maybe include photographs of the new baby.br /strong16./strong Send birthday cards to the baby each year, and don't forget mom and dad too.br /br /strong17./strong Send holiday cards every year.br /br /strong18./strong Make the occasional phone call just to say HI and/or you were thinking about them.br /br /strong19./strong Be sure to ask and then let them know if you are going to use any of their images in your promo materials and be sure they receive a copy of the promo material with a complimentary photograph used.br /br /strong20./strong Pick a few of your clients randomly each month and just send out a little gift, say something as simple as a brownie or cookies. This will really get the buzz going for your studio.br /br /21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28......... Continue to add your own - you get the idea.br //embr /The truth is that if you constantly work at building client relationships, you will have a customer for life! Sure you have to go the extra mile, but as Roger Staubach said, "There are no traffic jams along the extra mile."br /br /emA quick note - my /ema id="ll-e" title="Digital WakeUp Call - A New Dawn" href="http://www.digitalwakeupcall.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="14999"emDigital WakeUp Call - A New Dawn/em/aem kicks off in only 5 weeks. This post is just the tip of the iceberg - I'll be covering several other business building ideas at the program too. Here is the /ema id="ie34" title="link to the Digital WakeUp Call" href="http://www.digitalwakeupcall.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="15178"emlink to the Digital WakeUp Call/em/aem website - see ya' there!/embr /br /embr //ememimg id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304935781697733570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 103px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ7q_JhaQ8I/AAAAAAAAKFA/DuTY8kFn2hc/s400/DWC+2.jpg" border="0" / /emHey gang, that's it for me today. We head back to Cincy on Sunday, so I'll see you on the flip side of the weekend. strongemHave a good one and I'll see you Monday. -David/em/strong /spanimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/544148102" height="1" width="1"/

Software Review: Kubota AutoAlbum V3 From Kubota Image Tools

T. Michael Testi — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:30:00 +0000

One of the hotter trends in wedding albums is what is called the magazine style. It is a digital photo album that is flush mount and is constructed of a hard bound cover and ridged pages. The flush mount album doesn’t have matted pages and is much like a cross between a traditional wedding album and a coffee table book. Kubota AutoAlbum V3 is a software program that assists you in

“Night At The Museum”

Carlos — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:53:00 +0000

div align="center"a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ3VjhM4U7I/AAAAAAAAKEM/KwMVktLhskE/s1600-h/Night+At+The+Museum.JPG"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304630742296843186" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 267px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ3VjhM4U7I/AAAAAAAAKEM/KwMVktLhskE/s400/Night+At+The+Museum.JPG" border="0" //aemstrongspan style="font-size:130%;""Night At The Museum"/span/strong/embr /©David A. Ziser /divdiv align="center"br /We occasionally have the wonderful opportunity to work a wedding at the a id="uo0d" title="Taft Museum" href="http://www.taftmuseum.org/pages/museumhistory.php" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="6639"Taft Museum/a in Cincinnati, Ohio. a id="wxve" title="William Howard Taft" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="6679"William Howard Taft/a announced his presidency on the portico of this beautiful home. It's a more intimate venue for smaller weddings, but serves as a great background for this type of image. We always try to work this shot into the client's coverage when the wedding is held here. It's an easy shot to set up. My assistant is behind the the bride and groom holding my radio controlled Quantum. The random bounce of the light highlights the porch area and creates a nice compositional interior frame around the couple. We take several of them just looking at each other and always finish with a few of them kissing. These images are always favorites for the album. Camera specs: Canon 5D fitted with 12-24mm lens at 15mm, F5.6 @ 1/15 second, ISO 800. emstrongEnjoy! -David/strong/em/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/543537451" height="1" width="1"/

Thursday: 4 Photographers - Lots Of Ideas and Tips

Carlos — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:47:00 +0000

strongemGood Afternoon Everybody,br //em/strongWe made it to Thursday and get a little break in the action today. We're sticking around a few days, mostly to wrap tour details and put the finishing touches on the book. There it is, I see it - a little light at the end of the tunnel - but heck, better busy than not.br /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ3UWZua9LI/AAAAAAAAKD8/pYuhescSpFs/s1600-h/1024x768+-+Four+Photographers.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304629417440113842" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ3UWZua9LI/AAAAAAAAKD8/pYuhescSpFs/s200/1024x768+-+Four+Photographers.jpg" border="0" //aToday I've got that long promised video for you. It's taken a little while to put together but I think it came out kind of cool. I hope you like it. It features a id="jddw" title="Joe McNally" href="http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="7986"Joe McNally/a, a id="j870" title="Michele Celantano" href="http://www.michelecelentano.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8003"Michele Celentano/a a id="aali" title="Hanson Fong" href="http://www.hansonfong.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8025"Hanson Fong/a, and a id="j_7x" title="Mary Fisk Taylor" href="http://www.hayesandfisk.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8046"Mary Fisk-Taylor/a giving presentations at various booths at the WPPI trade-show.br /br /Michele and Hanson were both presenting at the Canon booth as they are both Canon "Explorers of Light". Mary Fisk-Taylor was presenting at the Marathon booth giving some marketing ideas. Joe was giving his presentation at the Nikon booth. All presenters were gracious enough to give me their permission to post the videos. My thanks to them.br /br /You know, I think this is a good idea and is an easy way to get a quick peak at other photogs we sometimes hear about but seldom get a chance to see. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys the show. Just hit the play button below and enjoy.br /br /a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ3Ud9dJDhI/AAAAAAAAKEE/HKwUCFmejqw/s1600-h/Master+Class.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304629547290398226" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 91px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ3Ud9dJDhI/AAAAAAAAKEE/HKwUCFmejqw/s200/Master+Class.jpg" border="0" //aOne last thing, I was talking to my office today and they tell me we only have 2 more spaces left for my upcoming a id="k0sw" title="Digital Master Class" href="http://www.davidziser.com/index.asp" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="16900"Digital Master Class/a April 27 - May 1 so give Jennifer a call [a id="x9vh" title="link" href="http://www.davidziser.com/index.asp" target="_blank"link/a] if you want to reserve a space. Hey gang, that's it for me today, I'll plan to see everyone tomorrow. strongemSee ya' then, -David/em/strongbr /br /br /br /object id="viddler_63decc5b" height="370" width="437" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"param name="_cx" value="11562"param name="_cy" value="9790"param name="FlashVars" value=""param name="Movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/player/63decc5b/"param name="Src" value="http://www.viddler.com/player/63decc5b/"param name="WMode" value="Transparent"param name="Play" value="-1"param name="Loop" value="-1"param name="Quality" value="High"param name="SAlign" value=""param name="Menu" value="-1"param name="Base" value=""param name="AllowScriptAccess" value="always"param name="Scale" value="ShowAll"param name="DeviceFont" value="0"param name="EmbedMovie" value="0"param name="BGColor" value=""param name="SWRemote" value=""param name="MovieData" value=""param name="SeamlessTabbing" value="1"param name="Profile" value="0"param name="ProfileAddress" value=""param name="ProfilePort" value="0"param name="AllowNetworking" value="all"param name="AllowFullScreen" value="true"br /embed src="http://www.viddler.com/player/63decc5b/" width="437" height="370" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" name="viddler_63decc5b" wmode="transparent"/embed/objectimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/543529581" height="1" width="1"/

Introduction to Manual Photography

Erich Zechar — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:39:00 +0000

div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/erichz/3277111784/" title="photo sharing"img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3389/3277111784_eba80fa369_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" //abr /span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/erichz/3277111784/"Afternoon Dog Walker/abr /Originally uploaded by a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/erichz/"Apocaplops/a/span/divI wanted to do an introduction to Stereo Photography (that's 3-d, folks!), but I figured that would be a little too much too early, and seeing as how I have yet to even touch upon how to use an old camera like the a href="http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~tobiko/Bilder/Stereo%20Realist/stereorealist.jpg"Stereo Realist/a, I have decided to do a bit of an intro to those who want to use older cameras effectively. There are other sites, a href="http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm"this is my favorite/a, out there to help you get a bit more in depth as far as exposure guesstimation, so if you have the want or need to figure out how to do this like a pro, then by all means do the research and practice a bunch. But if you want to cheat a little bit, just follow these handy tips.br /br /First, the bcamera/b. I'm assuming you have an all-manual camera on which you can set A) shutter speed, and B) aperture. If you have an old film camera, like an SLR or rangefinder, you're all set. If you have a dSLR, you're all set there too, but you won't have to wait for lab prints to find out how your exposure guesses went. To do this, set your camera to M mode (manual!), and adjust aperture and shutter speeds accordingly.br /br /Next, bfilm speed/b. A good all-around film speed, or ISO, to start with is 400. Why? Why not - it will give good results in cloudy to sunny light. If you're using film, use a color negative film, as it has lots of room for error, or latitude if you will. If you're using a dSLR, change the ISO accordingly.br /br /bSunny 16/b br /This is an easy rule to remember, and it works well. If you go outside, and it's bright and sunny, you should set your aperture to f/16, and film speed to the inverse of the ISO. So if you took my advice and loaded up color 400 film, that would make a good sunny day exposure f/16 at about 1/400th of a second. Simple!br /br /It gets complicated when you have to change shutter speed or aperture to get different effects, and if you want to know how to do that, I'd suggest looking into the other sites I mentioned earlier. As it is, when you start out stick with f/16 on sunny days and you'll be a-ok. br /br /I also like to use the rule "cloudy 5.6" to mention you can do this on cloudy days too. If it's really super cloudy out, you need to open aperture up to about f/5.6 at the inverse of ISO, or in our case 1/400. If it's somewhere in between, you can set the aperture at f/8 or f/11, depending on how bright it is. Use your instincts, and practice!br /br /BHolga Tips/bbr /br /What does this mean when using a a href="http://www.foundphotography.com/PhotoThoughts/archives/holga120s.jpg"Holga/a? Well, the Holga is all-manual in a way - its settings are the same all the time, and the only thing you can change is the film speed. Suffice to say, the Holga shoots well in cloudy light with 400 speed film, and really sunny light can do well with 100 speed film. But don't overthink it. Matter of fact, I've shot with primarily 200-speed film in my Holga, and haven't had any real exposure problems.br clear="all" /

Software Review: Kubota Pro Pak from Kubota Image Tools, Part 2

T. Michael Testi — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:58:00 +0000

The Kubota Pro Pak is a bundled package of products that contains six of the most popular tools from Kevin Kubota's professional image enhancing tools for Adobe Photoshop. This package includes the four Artistic Series of actions, his Production Tools, as well as his Formula Book which contains 42 separate recipes to get just the look you want. In part one, I looked at the four paks that are

What a contrast

imageo — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:37:00 +0000

pa href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ9auMCQYUI/AAAAAAAAGro/oLg9k2Ol1uM/s1600-h/IMGP9480%5B3%5D.jpg"img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="292" alt="NEW ZEALAND View towards Mt. Cook" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ9au5Jo-zI/AAAAAAAAGrs/7jJRxsw8QSo/IMGP9480_thumb%5B1%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="192" border="0" //a a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ9avh1LNOI/AAAAAAAAGrw/BBoQsHIaO-E/s1600-h/IMGP9498%5B3%5D.jpg"img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="292" alt="VICTORIA View of Great Dividing Range near Healesvilles" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ9awcrZ69I/AAAAAAAAGr0/BWVOZ4S8Kq0/IMGP9498_thumb%5B1%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="192" border="0" //a /ppI am returning home from New Zealand to bush ravaged Victoria, and the fires are still burning (seems like everywhere). Such a contrast/p

“Angel Eyes”

Carlos — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:44:00 +0000

div align="center"a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzIPaZFncI/AAAAAAAAKD0/Q-GrtrCJKM0/s1600-h/Angel+Eyes.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304334628243742146" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 260px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzIPaZFncI/AAAAAAAAKD0/Q-GrtrCJKM0/s400/Angel+Eyes.jpg" border="0" //aemstrongspan style="font-size:130%;""Angel Eyes"/span/strong/embr /©David A. Ziserbr /br /I always like photographing the kids at a wedding, but how do you get a shot of the small child quickly in the heat of the shoot? The easiest way is take a photograph of the bride and child with the bride’s reassuring hand on the child’s shoulder. After I take a few shots of both of them, I drop to my knees and capture a few of the child by herself. With the bride still adding reassurance and support at her side, the little girl still feels composed and confident and I get the shot. I also like how the the bride frames the scene too. Camera specs; Nikon D1x fitted with 50mm lens, F2.8 @ 1/160 second, ISO 400. strongemEnjoy! -David/em/strong /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/542935355" height="1" width="1"/

Better Late Than Never Wednesday: Yes, Bloggers Do Have Faces; Helicopter Videos: New Radio Poppers

Carlos — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:31:00 +0000

divemstrongGood Evening Everybody,br //strong/emI'm breaking from my regular series, strongemThe Analysis of A Wedding Shoot/em/strong, to bring you a few updates on what we've discovered at the WPPI Tradeshow. The last few days I've been shooting some videos of some of the celebrity speakers giving their presentations at the various booths in the trade show.br //divdiva href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzE55ZonEI/AAAAAAAAKDE/rkc2LTtnxVs/s1600-h/Radio+Popper3.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304330960075529282" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 199px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzE55ZonEI/AAAAAAAAKDE/rkc2LTtnxVs/s200/Radio+Popper3.jpg" border="0" //aMy idea was to pick up a tip or two from each one of them and share them with our DPT readers today. Late programing and early wake up calls today kept me from posting earlier today. So, if all goes well look for it tomorrow. I've got video snipits of a id="jddw" title="Joe McNally" href="http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="7180"Joe McNally/a, a id="j870" title="Michele Celantano" href="http://www.michelecelentano.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="7195"Michele Celentano/a, a id="aali" title="Hanson Fong" href="http://www.hansonfong.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="7215"Hanson Fong/a, and a id="j_7x" title="Mary Fisk Taylor" href="http://www.hayesandfisk.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="7234"Mary Fisk-Taylor/a. There are some good ideas there so I hope you enjoy it.br /br /Conventions do make the posting a bit inconsistent. I thought I was going to bail today but I found a few minutes, get this, at the Bloggers Lounge at WPPI. a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ7spEG8g8I/AAAAAAAAKFQ/7sWjCWGwSk0/s1600-h/Spidy.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304937601310688194" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 152px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZ7spEG8g8I/AAAAAAAAKFQ/7sWjCWGwSk0/s200/Spidy.jpg" border="0" //aYep, even Spidy was there. Oh.... the addiction of all this. I wonder what Freud would have said about all this blogging. Anyway it has been a great show in Las Vegas - over 12,000 people - a new record - have attended the trade show and programs! - Unbelievable!br /br /strongemNew Radio Poppers Hit The Market!/em/strongbr /While I was in the middle of the post I got a call from Kevin King, the inventor of the very popular a id="p2-2" title="Radio Poppers" href="http://radiopopper.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="7894"Radio Poppers/a. He was showing the models at the show and is letting me give them a try when we get back in town - I can't wait to run them thru their paces. a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzFkDV6k9I/AAAAAAAAKDM/l47XN54UOeY/s1600-h/Syl+w-radiopopper.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304331684298789842" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 134px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzFkDV6k9I/AAAAAAAAKDM/l47XN54UOeY/s200/Syl+w-radiopopper.jpg" border="0" //aI headed over to the a id="bgcx" title="Radio Popper blog" href="http://radiopopper.com/blog/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8076"Radio Popper blog/a and there is a ton of info and videos on these handy dandy little dudes. Here is the a id="l3cx" title="link" href="http://radiopopper.com/blog/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8182"link/a - worth the peak. That's a picture of famous blogger, Syl Arena, from a id="nhup" title="Pixsylated.com" href="http://pixsylated.com/" target="_blank"Pixsylated.com/a helping me test them on the show floor.br /br /strongemBloggers Have Faces Toobr //em/strongI'll tell ya', when you blog you get emails and comments from other bloggers. For me, I always check out their site to see whats up. Kerry Garrison from a id="iizo" title="CameraDoJo.com" href="http://cameradojo.com/" target="_blank"CameraDoJo.com/a fame dropped me an email and we planned to hook up today. Shortly after that, I received a note from Syl Arena from a id="xpij" title="pixsylated.com" href="http://pixsylated.com/" target="_blank"Pixsylated.com/a about hooking up at the show too. So as we found each other amongst the crowds we had a great visit talking blog stuff while LaDawn just rolled her eyes at the whole thing. I really don't get it - Kerry, Syl and I along with the hundreds and thousands fellow bloggers have simply figured out the meaning of life;~)br /br /The bottom line was this, it was like meeting old friends you haven't seen (in forever). We had a great visit. In the photo, from left to right is me, Kerry, and Syl. /divimg id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304331836312088002" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 267px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzFs5otbcI/AAAAAAAAKDU/YUT4oQ6HZJc/s400/Kerry+and+Syl.jpg" border="0" /Kerry just put up another post, "a id="jo4d" title="Understanding Exposure" href="http://cameradojo.com/2009/01/28/understanding-exposure-with-the-exposure-triangle/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9081"Understanding Exposure/a". Here is the a id="dtyx" title="link" href="http://cameradojo.com/2009/01/28/understanding-exposure-with-the-exposure-triangle/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9121"link/a. a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzGCNrRrkI/AAAAAAAAKDk/alt4J2WYDek/s1600-h/Camera+dojo+Exposure.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304332202468814402" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 127px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzGCNrRrkI/AAAAAAAAKDk/alt4J2WYDek/s200/Camera+dojo+Exposure.jpg" border="0" //aSyl was telling us about his experiments with high speed flash sync and hooked up 12 - yes 12 - Canon 580 EX II flashes with Radio Poppers and used the set up for some very interesting images. Check out his a id="pst5" title="post right here" href="http://pixsylated.com/2008/12/i-shot-ben-willmore-in-broad-daylight-gang-light-part-1/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9338"post right here/a where he used the multi-$1000 rig to photograph a id="br36" title="Ben Willmore" href="http://www.digitalmastery.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9404"Ben Willmore/a - very interesting.a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzF8LUiaSI/AAAAAAAAKDc/eKaE6SwqItk/s1600-h/Syl+12+lights+-+Ben+W.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304332098757355810" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 148px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzF8LUiaSI/AAAAAAAAKDc/eKaE6SwqItk/s200/Syl+12+lights+-+Ben+W.jpg" border="0" //a Anyway, I hope we all get to catch up again.br /br /div/divdivbr /emstrongspan style="color:#cc9933;"Video From A Remote Controlled Helicopterbr //span/strong/emYep, you read right - this had to be the most interesting product I saw at the show. For under $300, you could buy a remote controlled helicopter complete with video camera, transmitter, and receiver! The company selling the helicopter was a id="cz:l" title="DigitTronics" href="http://www.digittronics.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9777"DigitTronics/a - here is their a id="utzt" title="link" href="http://www.digittronics.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9808"link/a. a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzGIS_JHbI/AAAAAAAAKDs/TANAyOZLr-4/s1600-h/Helicopter.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5304332306973531570" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 150px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZzGIS_JHbI/AAAAAAAAKDs/TANAyOZLr-4/s200/Helicopter.jpg" border="0" //aThe demonstration was so cool. The gentleman in the booth would show how easy it was to control the helicopter and we could all see the video image on the monitor - definitely a "toy" for the kid in lots of us. Yep, I bought one - can't wait to see how it works.br /br /Hey gang, I know it's late for me and I've got to go. Dinner plans with friends happen in less than an hour. I'm planning to cut the video together from the show so look for it tomorrow afternoon - remember, I'm on Pacific time this week. strongemSo I'll see everybody then. -David/em/strong/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/542923412" height="1" width="1"/

5D Mark II Night Shot

Roland Lim — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:22:10 +0000

I just came back from Macau yesterday. I have not been to Macau for at least 3 years and it was was first visit there since all the new Vegas style casino resorts were built. I took over 25G during the 2 days trip. While going through the photos, I am still amazed by the [...]

Software Review: Kubota Pro Pak - Part 1 From Kubota Image Tools

T. Michael Testi — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:54:00 +0000

Book Review: The Photoshop Lightroom Workbook - Workflow Not Workslow in Lightroom 2 by Seth Resnick And Jamie Spritzer

T. Michael Testi — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:28:00 +0000

As co-founders of the photography training and consultancy company D-65, the authors Seth Resnick and Jamie Spritzer understand the importance in the use of Adobe Lightroom 2, and especially in how to manage its workflow. In The Photoshop Lightroom Workbook, they will attempt to present a well tested workflow that photographers can implement exactly as they do at D-65. What's more is that in The

“April Breezes”

Carlos — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:57:00 +0000

div align="center"a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZq1CBwSPZI/AAAAAAAAKC0/Fo_qIY99xMQ/s1600-h/April+Breezes.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303750557617503634" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 271px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZq1CBwSPZI/AAAAAAAAKC0/Fo_qIY99xMQ/s400/April+Breezes.jpg" border="0" //aemstrong"April Breezes”/strong/embr /©David A. Ziser/divdiv align="center"br /I remember taking this image so vividly. I took this image on a Monday afternoon during a bridal shoot. Three days later, after a soft spring rain, all the delicate white buds you see on the trees were on the ground. What struck me was how short lived and such a limited opportunity I had to capture this beautiful scene. I was lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time. My radio controlled off-camera flash was coming in from the right and cast a beautiful light on the bride. For me, it's always about the light – highlights next to shadows to create detail, depth, dimension and added color saturation. This recipe always kicks the beauty of the image “up a notch”, at least in my opinion. Notice the shutter speed of 1/400 second – just a bit faster than the native sync speed of the camera. But as long as you keep the subject in the “flash sync” part the viewfinder, you still receive the benefit of the faster flash speed in controlling the ambient light. Camera specs; Canon 20D fitted with 70-200mm lens at 135mm, F 4.0 @ 1/400 second, ISO 400. /divdiv align="center"strongemEnjoy! -David/em/strong/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/541748424" height="1" width="1"/

Technique Tuesday: 5 Good Ideas - Uh, Tomorrow?, and Revisiting a Classic

Carlos — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:49:00 +0000

a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZqy6R-uZPI/AAAAAAAAKCc/UmUscne-7S8/s1600-h/John+Henry+2.jpg"/adivdivstrongemGood Morning Everybody,br //em/strongMan, Oh Man, yesterday was quite a day! Right after my program wrapped, we had a short break, then headed back to the convention to help my buddy, a id="kfl1" title="Mark Garber" href="http://www.markgarber.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="7916"Mark Garber/a with his program. Mark and his wife, Jennifer, gave a great program on how to juice your business with some good ideas most of us don't even think about. Here is the a id="nog9" title="link" href="http://www.markgarber.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8109"link/a to their nicely designed site - check out the "Photographers" button especially. I'll give you a sneak peak on Business Day Thursday on a few of their best.br /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZqyeNIQgfI/AAAAAAAAKCU/UsCdqjSwwmI/s1600-h/John+Henry+1.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303747743172297202" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 134px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZqyeNIQgfI/AAAAAAAAKCU/UsCdqjSwwmI/s200/John+Henry+1.jpg" border="0" //aI've been experimenting with what I think is a good idea on the trade show floor. There are so many booth presentations going on - so much learning, so little time to take it all in - I'm getting tidbits from many of them and hoping to get them posted through out the week. My plan is to have tiny video segments containing one good idea from that particular speaker. We'll see how it works out. I'm cruising the show again today - stay tuned.br /br /In today's Technique Tuesday, I'm going to revisit a classic past post entitled, "Easy John Henry". I posted this technique once before and received a lot of positive comments on the idea. When I revisit one of the classic posts, the idea is to put a new twist on it or come up with a new way of using an old idea. Check out today's Technique Tuesday and I think you quickly understand - good information.br /br /strongemHit The "Read More..." link below/em/strongbr /span id="fullpost"br /strongemspan style="color:#cc9933;"Easy John Henry - With A Twist One More Timebr //span/em/strongWhenever I do my week long a id="k0sw" title="Digital Master Class" href="http://www.davidziser.com/index.asp" target="_blank"Digital Master Class/a, which is coming up - April 27-May 1 - a id="axhq" title="here is the link" href="http://www.davidziser.com/index.asp" target="_blank"here is the link/a, this Photoshop technique is always one of the favorites. It shows how to add your own personal signature to an image by creating a"Signature Brush" in Photoshop. It's cool how easy it is to do and always adds a nice touch to our larger wall portraits we deliver. With just one mouse click, we can easily sign our prints.img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303748351385506786" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 278px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 152px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZqzBm5lk-I/AAAAAAAAKCk/JB3NC2p4Fys/s400/John+Henry+2.jpg" border="0" / Here is where the twist begins. If it's that easy to make a "Signature Brush", why not develop some other "brushes" that can help us in our work flow. That's exactly what we do. After each wedding shoot , we have to edit the images, prep them for order, slightly tweak them in lightroom if needed, create the client presentation, and get them on-line for the client to view. One of the key elements in creating the client presentation is the "titling" process. I want a beginning title image and an ending title image as part of each presentation.br /br /The beginning title is easy. We create a virtual copy in Lightroom, pop it into Photoshop, add the text, that includes the bride and groom's names, date of wedding celebration, my signature - and we are good to go with the beginning title. Well, I also want an ending title too. The end title is basically your business card info placed over one of the more dramatic images from the shoot as shown here. You could just go into Photoshop and create all that information for each new client, but what a waste of keyboarding. Why not just create another brush with all the same info. Now it becomes super-easy to create the ending title to the presentation.br /br /With my new DAZ brush in my brush pallet and saved in the brush presets, all I have to do is create another layer, hit it with my new brush, bevel and emboss it, and I'm good to go with my ending title. There are times when I need to re-adjust the size of the brush which may not place the bottom text - the address info - exactly where I want it placed. No problem, just place the the top text on a new layer, then use the erase tool to delete the miss-positioned bottom text, Create a second layer, place the bottom address text, erase the top text, and you have your end title ready to go.br /img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303748430824715762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 283px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZqzGO1XtfI/AAAAAAAAKCs/8jZXa_Lecgs/s400/John+Henry+3.jpg" border="0" /We are working on other Text Brushes to make life easier at the studio. The other brushes might include, Thank You, Special promos, what ever you can dream up. With you new brush set, you can easily and quickly create personalized invites, reminder cards, etc for your client.br /br /I loved what Mark and Jennifer had to say yesterday, em"Photoshop is NOT marketing - don't spend all your time there when you could be spending time doing real marketing."/embr /br /Hey gang, enjoy revisiting the John Henry tutorial below. See what ideas you can dream up and let all the DPT readers know in the Comments section below. Time for me to get back to the convention - I want to give it a good browse today and see what's hot. strongemSee ya' tomorrow. -David/em/strong/div/divbr /object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="437" height="304" id="viddler_148e87f2"param name="wmode" value="transparent" /param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/player/148e87f2/" /param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /embed src="http://www.viddler.com/player/148e87f2/" width="437" height="304" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" name="viddler_148e87f2" wmode="transparent"/embed/objectbr //spanimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/541748425" height="1" width="1"/

End of the Line

Mark — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:03:00 +0000

This is a little bit of sadness I thought I would share. The artist in the Museum of Anthropology stopped by my office last week to let me know that their darkroom was being decommissioned and that I should stop by. I never used that particular darkroom, but it has a very personal history for me. You see, the person I bought my house from (Bill Brudon) was the Museum Artist and used that

Nikon Coolpix S710

Digital Trends - Digital Cameras — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:27:15 +0000

Barring any earth-shattering announcements at the PMA photo convention in March, the current megapixel peak for compact digicams is close to 15, while DSLRs like the Sony A900 hit 24.6. In Nikon’s aim-and-forget Coolpix lineup, the S710 has a 14.5MP sensor, the highest in that series. Of course there’s also the ridiculous 24.5MP Nikon D3x DSLR for a mere eight grand, if you’re a fanboy of this brand! The far more affordable S710 has other notable features including a wide-angle 3.6x zoom, a 3-inch LCD screen, optical image stabilization and a top ISO of 12,800 – for under $300. In theory this sounds like God’s gift to shutterbugs, but are more megapixels what you really need or are there more important intangibles? Let’s charge the battery and find out…

Read | Permalink | User Reviews | Linking Blogs

click, click, click

imageo — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:18:00 +0000

pa href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ3om69fGMI/AAAAAAAAGpo/QOdywEuqihU/s1600-h/IMGP89275.jpg"img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="TOO CONTRASTY :: Automatic Exposure" border="0" alt="TOO CONTRASTY :: Automatic Exposure" src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ3ono0T9rI/AAAAAAAAGps/1k4mRcow9MM/IMGP8927_thumb3.jpg?imgmax=800" width="194" height="131" //aa href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ3op1dVB9I/AAAAAAAAGpw/H1fjT9ujlRU/s1600-h/forresthdri2adaptive19.jpg"img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="TOO GREEN :: HDRi adaptive mapping with computed gamma" border="0" alt="TOO GREEN :: HDRi adaptive mapping with computed gamma" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ3oq4F1N3I/AAAAAAAAGp0/jLuG_kgTAY0/forresthdri2adaptive1_thumb5.jpg?imgmax=800" width="194" height="130" //a#160; /ppToday was bright and sunny, so attempting to photograph the dappled light in the beech forest, on the a href="http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/southland/te-anau-area/kepler-track/"Kepler track/a, gave a very contrasty result. The strong light is appealing but the shadows are dark and featureless and the spots of light burnt out. So I set my camera to a href="http://imageo.blogspot.com/search/label/Bracketting"bracketting/a, for two reason. Firstly it might give me a better ideas of the right EV adjustment (but judging this by comparing small images on the LCD screen outside is not really a reliable approach), Secondly it gave me the opportunity to post process the set of photos as a HDRi image (using the three exposures to get detail into the murky darks and/or washed out whites). I had plenty of card capacity (doing the three clicks at every photo soon eats up storage space if you are not careful) so most of my photographing in the forest was bracketted/pp/pp/ppa href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ3osR3OWpI/AAAAAAAAGp4/dYqdRUWerqg/s1600-h/manualadjustment8.jpg"img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; margin-right: 0px" title="manual adjustment" border="0" alt="manual adjustment" align="left" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ3otTxJF2I/AAAAAAAAGp8/T8JXaV6P3-M/manualadjustment_thumb6.jpg?imgmax=800" width="234" height="179" //a To keep everything simple while I travel I just have a href="http://www.hdrlabs.com/picturenaut/"picturenaut/a on a memory stick, so I have been relying on its fairly automatic tone mapping selection. However they were in my opinion changing the “greenness”. Ok, I know some parts of Lord of the Rings was filmed nearby but the green was just not what I had seen. The remedy lay in the gamma adjustment settings, I change that from computed gamma to none. Suddenly my forest photos was beautifully lit again without the artificial green glow./ppa href="http://lh4.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ3ovVxdqJI/AAAAAAAAGqA/a6DbvAgYUMk/s1600-h/forresthdriadaptive13.jpg"img style="border-right-width: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" title="JUST RIGHT :: HDRi adaptive tone mapping without computed gamma adjustment" border="0" alt="JUST RIGHT :: HDRi adaptive tone mapping without computed gamma adjustment" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZ3ow26RelI/AAAAAAAAGqE/4mOCrVDHjow/forresthdriadaptive1_thumb1.jpg?imgmax=800" width="404" height="271" //a/p

“Morning Glory”

Carlos — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:35:00 +0000

div align="center"a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZncpPAMzHI/AAAAAAAAKCM/i9pXvfDjWVk/s1600-h/0003_0008_DAZ-MasterClass05.JPG"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303512637165587570" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 267px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZncpPAMzHI/AAAAAAAAKCM/i9pXvfDjWVk/s400/0003_0008_DAZ-MasterClass05.JPG" border="0" //aemstrongspan style="font-size:130%;""Morning Glory"br //span/strong/em©David A. Ziser/divdiv align="center"br /I love the feel of this image, even though it received a small boost from Photoshop. My off-camera flash supplies the illumination, of course. Here is where it got tricky. I was using two Canon 580 EX flashes in “High Speed” sync mode with the on-camera flash set NOT to fire so as to not light up the foreground. My assistant had the off-camera 580EX flash “zoomed” to a tighter cone of light to keep the light off the ground and only on the subject. My assistant was out of camera range to the far left. Notice how his light position gave a perfect loop lighting pattern on the bride’s face. By controlling the shutter speed, I can control to density of the sky which added quite a bit of richness by under exposing slightly. Photoshop gave the final boost to the colors. Pretty cool how it all worked out. Camera specs; Canon 20D fitted with 10-22mm lens at 10mm, F 4.5 @ 1/2000 second, ISO 400. emstrongEnjoy! -David./strong/em/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/541243799" height="1" width="1"/

Quick Hit Monday: WPPI, A Visit To Matt’s Place, Crash Is At It Again

Carlos — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:16:00 +0000

divdivdivemstrongGood Afternoon Everybody,br //strong/emWith a 4 a.m. wake up call and a program at 8:00 a.m. should justify the late post. Anyway, we arrived safe and sound in Las Vegas yesterday morning, got settled and checked out the trade-show a bit. I put some finishing touches on my presentation which I presented bright and early this morning. Thanks to my DPT readers that showed up and said HI. I spent a few days last week scouring my hard drives for images for the program going back to 2000. It was cool to see some of the images I so much enjoyed taking over the years – I’ll share a few with you guys and girls this week. Anyway, I found a few tidbits on the net over the weekend I thought you might enjoy. Here we go…br /br /strongemspan style="color:#cc9933;"a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZnZIRGZn0I/AAAAAAAAKBs/Xi2Zded-RT0/s1600-h/DAZ+WPPI+-+IMG_0157.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303508772257898306" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 178px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZnZIRGZn0I/AAAAAAAAKBs/Xi2Zded-RT0/s200/DAZ+WPPI+-+IMG_0157.jpg" border="0" //aMy WPPI Program This Morningbr //span/em/strongWhew! Blogging during a convention makes things a bit busy for us lonely bloggers. It was fun and funny to see a Bloggers Hot-Spot set up outside the program rooms with fellow bloggers blogging away. I'm going to swing by during the show and see what up. I'll keep you posted with any interesting news.br /br /a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZnbKUdzEbI/AAAAAAAAKB0/N3wfyjwekAs/s1600-h/DAZ+WPPI+-+IMG_0163.jpg"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303511006544335282" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 134px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZnbKUdzEbI/AAAAAAAAKB0/N3wfyjwekAs/s200/DAZ+WPPI+-+IMG_0163.jpg" border="0" //aAnyway, the program went great today. Yep, that's me getting fired up at about 8:30 in the morning. These two photos were taken by a good friend and excellent photographer, Larry Weaver from Louisiana. THANKS! Larry. About 800 photographers showed up to hear my new program on lighting. Another thanks to fellow blogger Kerry Garrison from a id="vhzs" title="CameraDojo.com" href="http://cameradojo.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8532"CameraDojo.com/a fame for attending my program and sticking around to sayHI.br /br /What's cool for the speaker - yours truly - was that everybody was locked to their seat till the end. I was test driving content for my a id="hkh-" title="Digital WakeUp Call" href="http://www.digitalwakeupcall.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8728"Digital WakeUp Call/a tour - here is the a id="t335" title="tour link" href="http://www.digitalwakeupcall.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="8769"tour link/a for all the info again. It looks like I hit a "sweet spot" with this morning's attendees who seemed to love the topic and the program - my sincere thanks to all that attended. We are kicking off the tour March 30 right after a id="zqoj" title="Photoshop World" href="http://www.photoshopworld.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9007"Photoshop World/a and yes, a lot of the lighting techniques will be covered. Remember, you can save $20 on registration by entering code DWCDPT09 - a steal of a deal.br /br /strongemspan style="color:#cc9933;"Heading Over To Matt's Placebr //span/em/strongOn a completely different topic, I have to tell you that you can never go wrong heading over too Matt’s place - a id="e673" title="FlashFlavor.com" href="http://www.flashflavor.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9333"FlashFlavor.com/a. Matt Adcock is a master of his lighting and it is always a joy to see what he’s been up to lately. I haven’t been there in a while so it was a real pleasure to catch up seeing his latest images and checking in on his latest posts. img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303511768440599714" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 267px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZnb2qwBdKI/AAAAAAAAKB8/wtI5XeDWWto/s400/Matt+Adcock+1.jpg" border="0" /You have to check out his wife's Sol's best images of 2008. They will blow you away! Head on over to Matt’s place today and give a peek. Here is the a id="sa55" title="link" href="http://www.flashflavor.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9742"link/a.br /br /strongemspan style="color:#cc9933;"Crash Lands Another Great Interviewbr //span/em/strongCrash Taylor has his continuing series of interviews going on too – always a pleasure to read. This week he welcomes a id="oe1m" title="Jeff Ascough" href="http://www.jeffascough.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="9921"Jeff Ascough/a . Jeff is considered one of the best wedding photojournalists in the world. img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303511942847161538" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 186px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_B9QptPHH85Y/SZncA0dyZMI/AAAAAAAAKCE/y1lNzI0FCl0/s400/Crash+Taylor1.jpg" border="0" /I’ll tell you, his work is a bit edgy capturing the wedding day emotions in a unique way. Go check out a id="xs.n" title="Crash's interview with Jeff right here" href="http://www.interviewsbycrashtaylor.com/" target="_blank" goog_docs_charindex="10128"Crash's interview with Jeff right here/a. Crash is a frequent commenter on this blog too. I’ve contacted him about doing a pod-cast for DigitalProTalk – we just need to get it scheduled – hopefully in the next few weeks. I’ll keep you posted.br /br /Hey gang, that’s it for me today. It was a late night and a very early morning for LaDawn and I. We are heading back to the convention and check out what's new, improved, different, and exciting. Be sure to check back for Technique Tuesday filmed on location in beautiful Las Vegas. strongemSee ya’ then. -David/em/strong /div/div/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DigitalProtalk/~4/541243800" height="1" width="1"/

Mirror Lake

imageo — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:33:00 +0000

a href='http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZkk7lxcP1I/AAAAAAAAGoA/OvkTvPh6Vo4/s1600-h/IMGP8851.JPG'img src='http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__Q6Pr8L8nXQ/SZkk7lxcP1I/AAAAAAAAGoA/OvkTvPh6Vo4/s400/IMGP8851.JPG' border='0' alt='' //anbsp;div style='clear:both; text-align:NONE'a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' //a/divbr /br /A HREF="http://www.copyscape.com/"IMG SRC="http://banners.copyscape.com/images/cs-wh-234x16.gif" ALT="Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape" TITLE="Do not copy content from the page. Plagiarism will be detected by Copyscape." WIDTH="234" HEIGHT="16" BORDER="0"/A

High-def with a 35mm camera

Mark — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:37:00 +0000

Last night I finally processed a roll of TechPan film that I had recently shot with my Zeiss-Ikon Contina. I started the roll probably on 2007, and finished it up a few weeks ago, photographing the ice and snow at Barton Dam. A cold day, and perfect for a camera like the Contina, since it's easy to adjust and use. I'd shot several rolls of film in the camera before with great result.The