A Beautiful High Def Video Shot on a Canon 5D Mark II

According to ProPhoto Magazine, this slick looking video short was conceived and shot in 14 straight hours, and edited in 3. Reverie, by Vincent LaForet.

PhotoAnswers, a good new link added

Here's a worthy addition to our already great selection of links, PhotoAnswers. Be sure to check out the video section, there are reviews and tutorials there.

Extract embedded jpeg images from RAW files

You've probably opened a RAW file and then saved it as a jpeg, or even done this as a batch process. Did you know that jpeg images are already embedded in every RAW file? Yep, it's true. And did you know that there is a free piece of software that you can download to extract those jpegs? Well, you do now. You can read about it here, and you can download it here. I tried it, and it works.

Hitler Rants about the cost of the new Nikon D3x

Interesting shots I came across

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10 Last Photos

Interesting.

RED's Camera System is Now Official

In an earlier post, I posted a link to information on a new high end camera system by RED. Well, the system is now official!

Esoteric article on Noise, Dynamic Range and Bit Depth

Here is a good article for the freakishly intelligent. In it, you'll find everything you'd ever want to know about noise, dynamic range, and bit depth, complete with bewildering charts and inscrutable diagrams. Here's hoping one of us will be able to absorb and digest this, and be willing to regurgitate it in an understandable form for us at a future meeting.

BBC Series "The Genius of Photography"

Warning: some of these contain pictorial nudity.

Program 1
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Program 2
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Program 3
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Program 4
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Program 5
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Program 6
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

GIMP's Big Improvement

I tried out GIMP many years ago, but the one thing that kept me from sticking with it was its 8 bit limitation. Well, that limitation is no more. GIMP's latest version (2.6) has a major improvement in that department. It now has something called GEGL, which processes the images in 32 bits.

Excerpt link

"Important progress towards high bit-depth and non-destructive editing in GIMP has been made. Most color operations in GIMP are now ported to the powerful graph based image processing framework GEGL, meaning that the internal processing is being done in 32bit floating point linear light RGBA. By default the legacy 8 bit code paths are still used, but a curious user can turn on the use of GEGL for the color operations with Colors / Use GEGL."

The good news: it's a free download.
The bad news: as of 9-5-08, there is no ver. 2.6 for Windows or Mac. At this point, it's Linux only.

No Sherpa Included

In keeping with my (thus far) tendency to have very practical links and very impractical posts, here's a nice video of a lens you may never see, much less buy - Sigma's 200-500mm f/2.8 telephoto, also known as "Sigzilla".

New technique uses flash to create 3D shots

Now you can use your flash to create 3d modeled images. This new technique is as effective as an older more tedious method using laser scanners. The basic idea is to take two shots - one with flash, the other without. Read about it here.

New super video camera called "The Red One"

Below is a link to an incredibly high resolution video clip shot by a new 120 frames-per-second (at least) super video camera called "The Red One", developed by billionaire Jim Jannard. According to the article, the camera's resolution matches film! Its sensor is 4096 x 2304 pixels, which I calculated to be 9.2 megapixels.

Click here to see this incredible video. Keep in mind that his videos are 5 to 6 times the resolution that your monitor is capable of displaying. The small window you're seeing it in is not doing it justice.

It's currently available for the low, low price of $17,000. I'm getting a couple - one to keep and the other as a door prize for the next meeting.

Real photographers do this

If you're truly dedicated to the art of photography, sooner or later you'll find yourself doing this.

You gotta read this!

Today I learned two bits of news about Firefox, both having to do with viewing pictures.

First, I learned from Judy Howle that there is a Firefox plugin called Piclens. It lets you view images and video fullscreen, you can scroll and choose among them in "3D" (not really). The video shows what it can do.

(Thanks also to Judy for pointing out the Katrin Eismann chapter on printing, now in the links.)

The other thing is that Firefox 3 (not previous versions) can now let you view images with richer color. This is done by installing a plugin (and a tweak) that gives Firefox control over color profiles. This article explains how it's done.

Together, these two things add up to nothing less than the dawn of a new age. Your life will be changed forever. You'll always be in a good mood. Food will taste better. And you might even create an online gallery.

Convert a Canon point & shoot into a super camera

"If you're using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you've got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box. With the help of a free, open source project called CHDK, you can get features like RAW shooting mode, live RGB histograms, motion-detection, time-lapse, and even games on your existing camera. Let's transform your point-and-shoot into a super camera just by adding a little special sauce to its firmware."

Read the full article here.

Using Adobe Camera RAW (ACR)

Photoscape

I just added this to the list of links. Here is a description from PC World.

"Photoscape includes everything from a file viewer to a photo editor, slide show creator, batch editor, screen capture program, and more.

Here's yet one more remarkable free piece of software that any self-respecting digital photographer needs on his or her hard disk. There's no possible way to begin to describe the wide range of tools and features this one has--there's everything from a file viewer to a photo editor, slide show creator, batch editor, screen capture program, and more. There are some quite original and innovative tools here, such as combining multiple photos in a single frame. There's also a small, but extremely useful tool--it will take photos that are in the RAW format used by many digital cameras, and convert them to JPG, so that they're more useful.

Even though this program is free, by the way, the creator will take donations if you find Photoscape useful. Pay via Paypal. Given the quality of this software, if you keep using it, consider making a donation."

Strobist Preliminaries

Free software to stitch photos into panoramas

Here is some free panorama software, for those of you who are into that.

The first is called Hugin. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

And here's another, called Autostitch, which is a demo version that expires, but there are 3 commercial versions available.

A Free e-book: Lightroom tips

Joe Barrett at dpreview pointed out that there is a free Lightroom tips book, available here.

Photoshop Express (Web based editing)

Last night at the meeting I mentioned that Adobe has a new online photo editing application, called Photoshop Express. I said I was concerned about item 8 in their terms and conditions, and it looks like a lot of other people were up in arms about it too. The situation is still developing.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/03/a_note_about_ps.html

Thanks George Perina, and South Mississippi Living Magazine!

Thank you George Perina, and South Mississippi Living magazine, for the article featuring the Nutties in the January 2008 issue of South Mississippi magazine. We are indebted to you. Seven of us had photos published: Rhonda Clark, William Lee, Randy Bynon, Tony Anselmo, Gary Cook, Terri Wescovich, and John Rhodes. Congratulations to you all!

Here is the link to the issue, the article about our group starts on page 94.

I'll add a link to South Mississippi Living to the list of links.