While Photoshop is one of the the industry standards for photo editing, it can also be quite costly. With Photoshop CS5 running you about $700 (and CS5 Extended costing as much as $1000), it can be a difficult purchase to have to make. Of course, if you are a student or educator of some sort, Adobe will cut you some serious deals, with Photoshop CS5 Extended only costing $200. Even if you’re not qualified for that discount but you know someone who is, have them buy it for you with their discount. However if $200 is still too steep a price for you, one of my favorite tech websites did a little write up on some free alternatives, for both Mac & PC. Unplgged is a great site for all things tech, and while there is generally more mac related content, you can count on some really interesting articles regarding photography/cameras. Check out the 10 Free Alternatives Here
Random Tip #2
It’s always better to error by focusing too close instead of too far. This is because the depth-of-field works in a way where 1/3 of the depth is in front of the exact point of focus and 2/3 is behind said point. Except in the case where you have your lens focused to the closest focusing distance, in which case 1/2 the depth is in front and 1/2 is behind the point of focus.
Random Tip #1
When you are shooting film, specifically black and white, you want to expose for the shadows (that is, get a direct meter reading of the darkest area of the image (zone 0) and set exposure accordingly) and develop for the highlights (N-1 processing- shorten developer time or dilute the developer). This will ensure you have all tonal values present in the final image.
All things considered, it is better to overexpose negative film (black and white or color) and to underexpose color reversal film and digital images (slide film and 0’s and 1’s).
If none of this makes sense to you, learn the Zone System and thank Ansel Adams for his research.
Posted in Tech
iPhone about to be most popular camera on Flickr
This here chart shows the most popular cameras used by Flickr members. I’m guessing that spike about 1/3 of the way in is when Verizon started service.
New Canon 7D firmware 1.2.5
– Fixed a rare phenomenon in which there were rare cases where movie files taken could not be opened when repeatedly shooting movies with specific CF cards.
– Fixed a rare phenomenon in which there were cases where “Err 02″ appeared when repeatedly shooting still images with specific CF cards.
– Fixed a phenomenon that occurred when using high-capacity (32 GB or greater) CF cards: If either a CF card with only a little available space remaining or the battery was removed and then reinserted into the camera, and then the user attempted to start shooting movies immediately, shooting would stop.
– Improved the writing/reading speeds when using UDMA 7-compatible CF cards.
– Fixed a phenomenon that occurred when custom function C.Fn 4-1 was set to assign IS start to the AF stop button on the lens: When used with lenses that do not have an AF stop button, the IS function would not work.
– Corrected some mistakes in the menu screens displayed in Arabic and Portuguese. (This applies to models in overseas markets. The models for the Japanese market do not display those languages.)
Photographers killed in action
Posted in Photo
AOTC 5×5
A couple of the AOTC guys have come up with a cool new little video project. Basically, they consist of five 5 second clips from either our iphones, or maybe some leftover footage from one of our DLSR’s. Combine those clips with a 5 second intro, and you’ve got the 5×5. CB Coombs came up with the concept and films a lot of the random iPhone clips. Chris Zeppieri puts most of them together, and Adam Spitalny did the intro art, which in my opinion is pretty sweet. I think it’s a cool idea, since not all the clips are riding based. It’s really a short look into the “behind the scenes” of AOTC. Check them all out here.
Push It A Stop 