Apple Aperture 2
March 20, 2008
There are 3 things Apple want you to know about Aperture 2. It’s fast, it’s high quality and it’s integrated. I’m going to look at each of these in turn and then finish up by telling you some things I don’t like about it. I figure you can read glowing tributes about it everywhere so I’m going to declare it my job to tell you where they could improve it.
This review is going to assume you know what Aperture is and why you might want it. If you don’t then either wait for our Aperture vs Lightroom shootout or see Apple’s website.
Photography comes to your TV - kind of
February 13, 2008
Photography’s always been a visual medium so it’s nice to see a new site actually showing you how to get decent shots. It’s called PhotographyTV and despite its name it’s on the web. I talked to Peter Davey the chap behind it and he said that the web was the ideal place to run a TV site - after all most digital photographers spend their time in front of the computer rather than the TV.
Nikon D300 vs Nikon D3
February 6, 2008
Here’s the dilemma. The whole photography world is in uproar over the new Nikons at the moment. There are phrases being banded around the ‘net like
The Nikon D3 is by far the bet DSLR ever made
and actually, I believe that’s true. But here’s the problem. It costs about £3,400. A Nikon D300 is about 1/3 of the cost. It costs over two thousand pounds less.
Let’s take a look at whether choosing the D3 really does mean you’re settling for second best. Oh and where to get a D3 for about £200 less than I paid for mine…
Use Flickr? Get Piclens
February 1, 2008
Actually the title should read “Use Google Images, Flickr, Facebook or Friendster and want to make your viewing experience more enjoyable and altogether cooler? Then go and get a free copy of Piclens”.
But that was too big to fit in the title bar.
It’s actually kind of hard to explain what Piclens does. It simply transforms your browsing experience of most popular picture websites. Instead of seeing the pictures on the site you just see the pictures.
Here’s a snap of my screen when I’m browsing my photostream at Flickr.
Mouse over any picture and it enlarges just like that one of the boat. Double click it and your screen fills with the picture and a little running strip at the bottom showing thumbnails of the other pictures on the page. It’s just like one of those gorgeously designed Flash website - but without the website. It just sits on top of the website you are browsing.
Truly beautiful and totally awesome.
Go to Cooliris right now and install a copy in your browser. Currently only Firefox has the picture wall function but most popular browsers have the full screen slideshow effect.
Once it has installed, pop over to Flickr and hover over any of the pictures. When you see one you like, click the little “play” button…and prepare to be dazzled.
Hydra. HDR just got cool. And cheap.
January 22, 2008
There’s no doubt that HDR is a huge buzz at the moment. As a quick catchup it’s a method of expanding the tonal range of images captured by your digital camera - the theory is you use software to overcome hardware limitations that stop you capturing scenes as you remember them. It also makes for pretty cool pictures.
There’s been a slew of software to do this recently from the big daddy that is Photomatix to hobby applications written for specific applications. Most of them are reasonably hard to get your head round and tend to look pretty clunky. Not any more. HDR just got gorgeous - and cheap!
People from 1 to 100
January 15, 2008
This is just amazing. Not strictly photography but one of the cleverest videos both in concept and execution I’ve seen in a while.
Tribeca Photobot Review
January 11, 2008
Imagine an application that can edit all of your pictures without you having to do anything.
Dream come true? Nightmare? Or another symptom that photographers are getting lazy and relying on automated post processing to avoid having to alter their camera’s controls?
Get to grips with Raw editing
January 10, 2008
If you’re serious about digital photography then you may well shoot raw. Once you go down the raw route it becomes a minefield of which software to use, which settings to tweak, when to make edits, how to make edits. If you’re not careful then your head could explode.
If you don’t want that to happen and you shoot raw and own a copy of Photoshop CS3 then go and get “Photoshop CS3 RAW: Get the Most Out of the RAW Format with Adobe Photoshop, Camera RAW, and Bridge” (M Aaland)if you need convincing (or need a similar book for Lightroom) then read on.
The best book on photographic lighting
January 6, 2008
If I could only recommend one book to somebody getting serious about photography then this would be it.
Many times people say to me “I’d like to take my photography a little further and maybe make some money from it - what camera/lens/software should I buy?”. Time and again my answer is “don’t” - spend your time and money learning to take better pictures.
Photon - do one thing well
January 4, 2008
How long would it take you to run through about 600 raw files, copy the ones you like to one folder and the rest to another? 2 hours? Half a day? More? I just did it in 12 minutes using Photon, an insanely fast picture browser for the Mac.
