Western Digital iPad App

Hmmmm.....that's interesting.

Western Digital announced a free photo viewing application called WD Photos for the iPad that works with its line of external storage products like the My Book World Edition, My Book Live, and WD ShareSpace.  The app is said to allow the user to access up to 285,000 images placed in a shared folder.

The advantage in this is that saved images can be accessed using the app from anywhere through a web connection. The benefits to photographers are obvious...for instance, while traveling I could show my portfolio to anyone in the world on my iPad using this app. The app has pinch and zoom functionality,  and the images can be viewed in 1024 x 768 resolution on the iPad.

However,  wouldn't it be phenomenal if the iPad could connect to a portable external drive, on which I could download my travel photographs as I made them in the field? Once the photographs were saved on the portable drive, I could then use this app to access them (at least the jpegs) through a web connection.

S&F™ Lowepro: MultiMedia Photographer

Here's what is fantastic about being ad-free and not beholden to any manufacturer (or retailer)...I am free in liking or disliking any product I want, and mention my opinion on my blog. I'm not paid to flog a particular product and ignore others that I like. I can use a product from ABC and another from XYZ...I have no particular loyalty to any manufacturer (unless it produces exceptionally good products), nor do I follow a fad...nor another photographer. I like what I like...period.

Now, I happen to like some of the Lowepro products, and I've used a couple of them myself. I use a Top Loader Pro bought in 2000 or 2001 that still works perfectly well, except for one of its zippers that doesn't work any more...it's been badly abused for the past 10 years, and it's grubby...but that's how I like my stuff. I also have a Lowepro backpack and a Stealth Reporter shoulder bag that I seldom use now, but in their heyday, they were great.

I suppose Lowepro realized it had to come up with a separate line of products for the growing number of multimedia photographers, perhaps following Think Tank which also has an interesting product line, and has recently launched the S&F™ Lowepro for the Multimedia Photographer products, which consist of S&F™ Technical Harness with S&F™ Light Utility Belt, S&F™ Slim Lens Pouch 75 AW & 55 AW, S&F™ Audio Utility Bag 100, S&F™ Laptop Utility Backpack 100 AW, S&F™ Lens Exchange Case 200 AW and S&F™ Transport Duffle Backpack.

I am only interested in the S&F™ Audio Utility Bag 100 at this stage, so I'll probably pop in one of the two photography retailers closest to me, and check it out.

I am still enthralled by my The Travel Photographer Pouches, so it'll be difficult to pry them from my hands...but one never knows.

Lightroom 3's Ice Climbing Ad

It's only because I like Lightroom a lot and use it virtually all the time that I agreed to post this advert on The Travel Photographer's Blog. As my readers know, I don't place any ads on this blog, but I occasionally write on products that I like and use...and Lightroom makes that cut.

Tyler Stableford is an adventure photographer, and was given the challenge of shooting an ice climbing expedition and perfecting his images with the help of Lightroom 3 beta 2.

Canon's Digital Photo Professional

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Although I have a couple of international trips in the interim, my mind is increasingly getting focused on my forthcoming Bali: Island of Odalan Photo-Expedition™ in August, and to refresh my memory, I've been revisiting my RAW images files of my 2007 photo-expedition, and even processing some of them.

As is usual when I revisit images files after a while, I uncovered some images that I missed during my initial edits on my return from the 2007 trip, and some that are worth a second look. I viewed these with my Canon's Digital Photo Professional software (version 3.7.3) which, while admittedly somewhat clunky, still does a reasonable job as a viewer and RAW converter.

I also used DPP's built-in image processor, and edited the images you see in this post entirely with it. I didn't use CS or LR at all. I'm not suggesting that DPP replaces any of those, but I was surprised that it did such a reasonable job in adjusting the exposure, de-saturating the colors and sharpening the images of the Legong dancers.

POV: No To Walking Billboards?

Here's a lighthearted tongue-in-cheek post.

In the midst of packing my stuff for about 3 weeks on the road in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and at the risk of being tarred and feathered by the various manufacturers of photographic soft accessories such as Think Tank, Domke, Lowepro etc, I thought my readers would be interested in my alternative choice to the high priced pouches that are marketed and sold by these companies.

With the exception of my Domke camera bag (which I love dearly because of its ruggedness and quality), I prefer not to carry products that have prominent logos/names for a variety of reasons; some reasons are legitimate and others just silly and whimsical.

As an example of the logo-less products, I bought no-name pouches for less than $6 each from an Army Surplus Store in the West Village. They are made of rugged canvas, have belt loops, with metal fasteners, and are perfect to carry my sound recorder, mic & a small gorillapod, or a small lens and other stuff, while in the field. Sure, they're not as sleek or modular as those sold by any the above-mentioned manufacturers, but they're cheaper, and are certainly as resilient. At these surplus stores, one can find bags and pouches (easily adapted for cameras), apparel and a myriad of other stuff a quarter to one-half the price of logo brands.

With this in mind, why should I be a walking billboard for manufacturers who charged me top dollar for the product(s) anyway? Heck, I can even have these canvas pouches printed/embroidered with a The Travel Photographer logo. With my own exclusive line of photo pouches, I'd go in business and be a millionaire in no time!

The logo shown in the picture is photoshopped...so don't get too excited (yet).

But first, I'd better learn how to photograph products better. The picture above is so bad that I can't get myself to put my copyright notice under it!

Field Report: B&H & Adorama

Well, I succumbed to the "bigger is better" axiom and decided to add a 16gb SanDisk Compact Flash card to my inventory.

In arriving to this decision, I was guided by two facts: the first is that the images files from Canon 5D Mark II are monstrously large and that, although my 8gb CF cards are quite adequate, I filled them up a number of times in the midst of a photo shoot. The second reason is that SanDisk was offering interesting rebates on its cards, which meant $20 off the 16gb baby I got.

After spending an hour browsing at B&H, and touching-feeling-playing with the newly released Canon 7D (it feels solid, well balanced and its 8 fps sounds really good to my ears...but we'll see about the image quality), I was told that the SanDisk Extreme III Compact Flash Card were sold out. B&H was a madhouse this Sunday...presumably all from the traffic generated by Photo Plus Expo that took place the past few days.

So my next stop was Adorama where I did find the product I needed. While the delivery system at Adorama is far from being as sophisticated as B&H's, the card and its rebate sheet were readily available. The traffic was also very impressive at Adorama, with long lines at their cashiers.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Beta

Adobe just announced its Lightroom 3 as a public beta version, which means anyone with an Internet connection can download it and start putting it to the test. You do not need to own (or have tried) a previous version of Lightroom. The version of Lightroom 3 beta software available for download is offered in English only. You can download the beta and use it until the product expires on April 30, 2010.

By the way, those who are on a Mac PowerPC are out of luck. Lightroom 3 Beta will not download on your machines.

Notable new features are:

* Brand new performance architecture.
* State-of-the-art noise reduction.
* Watermarking tool
* Portable sharable slideshows with audio, which allows us to save and export slideshows as videos.
* Film grain simulation tool

I'm interested in two of these features; the grain simulator and the sharable slideshows with audio. However, the latter does not seem to allow any adjustment (or sync'ing) individual frames to the audio....so it has a long way before it can be used for semi-serious multimedia. I'm sure the reviews will start flowing in soon.

5D Mark II: New Firmware

Canon USA published the recently announced firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR which enables manual exposure during video capture.

As well as the manual exposure video functionality, EOS 5D Mk II firmware v1.1.0 includes fixes to the lens peripheral illumination correction, auto lighting optimizer, battery information display, and depth-of-field preview button functionality, as well as correcting menu errors in certain languages.

You can download it from here

Canon 5D Mark II's Movie Exposure

I haven't posted much on what I call Soft Gear, so Eric Beecroft's heads-up this morning was a welcome one.

According to DPReview, Canon just announced it will release a firmware update for the EOS 5D Mark II allowing users to manually control exposure when shooting video. The new firmware will be available for download from 2 June 2009 on Canon Europe’s support web site.

(via Planet 5D Blog)

Lightroom 2.2 Available

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.2 is available immediately as a free upgrade for existing Lightroom 2 users. According to the company, its Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 2.2 update includes these enhancements:

• Additional camera support for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon PowerShot G10, Panasonic DMC-LX3 and other.

• Includes several corrections for issues introduced by the Lightroom 2.0 release

Mac users can get it from here.

Windows users from here.

DxOMark

DxO Mark proclaims that it's a website for people who are passionate about image quality. It's still in beta version, and it "features the first database of objective digital camera image quality measurements entirely accessible via the internet."

In addition to the Image Quality Database itself, the website proposes its new DxOMark Sensor scale, which allows it to rank digital camera with a single number for photographers to evaluate and compare models.

Certainly an interesting concept, and quite useful for buyers when confronted with the myriad of camera choices. Being interested in the new Canon 5D Mark II, I'll be keen to have a look at DxO Mark's measurements when these are published.

DxO Mark's Canon Database