What’s in my Camera bag?
by Kevin Mullins
Firstly, I’d like to thanks Jason, not only for offering me a “spot” here today, but also generally, for this great blog and the Learning Digital Photography podcast – they are both great resources and Jason, I applaud you for keeping them both going so strong. Continue reading “Guest Blogger – Kevin Mulllins”
Lots to cover today on the blog so I am going to get right to it. First up, I’m trying to maintain the schedule of hardware reviews, so rather than go into detailed analysis, I am just sharing an abbreviated review here today on the Canon 28-135mm lens. Also up on todays blog, the OnOne Software giveaway finalists have been announced! Last up, a few administrative things to address. So, without further ado, let’s get started:
The 28-135mm Review
The luck of this review is due to the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. I had been hearing good things about this lens for a while, and finally bit the bullet and rented it from a local camera store to try it out. I tried to keep in mind that the gear is a little more worn than usual, but did see some pros and cons on the lens, so let’s get started:
The 28-135 is an excellent walk-around lens. The focal range is perfect for going fairly wide and also zooming in to a certain degree. It offers some of the best features of both worlds, and does so at a pretty reasonable price considering what it has to offer:
Pros
Cons
There’s a lot more I could go into here, but on the whole, the lens is a great one, and with the pros definitely outweighing the cons, it’s definitely one to consider adding to your gear bag – if you like to photo walk! If you’d like to see samples of the 28-135 in action, feel free to check out this montage of shots I compiled from the Scott Kelby Photowalk:
The OnOne Giveaway Finalists!
I know, the moment you’ve all been waiting for – the finalists. I am pushing forward here partly because my counterpart at OnOne, Mike Wong, has been on vacation, and is getting back soon, and secondly, because I understand OnOne is having an excellent promo sale going on right now for the suite, so I’d like to get this wrapped up so that those who have been waiting to hear can still take advantage of the opportunity to save a little $$$! Lastly, also because the anticipation over the OnOne giveaway is a primary focus for many listeners, and other contests are both underway and coming up! So, without further ado, here are the finalists I’ve chosen.
OnOne Software Giveaway Finalists
The quality of entries made it super hard to pick, because there were so many that were deserving of moving forward into the finals – but decisions had to be made. Thanks to all for entering, and best of luck to the finalists – Mike and I will talk this week and hopefully have someone get a great email by Friday with the news that they are the proud winner of the OnOne Software Plugin Suite Giveaway!
Blog Notes
A couple updates are coming soon to the blog, and a couple have already been made. Some things you may or may not have noticed that have already taken place:
The links in the sidebar have been broken out into categories from one another so you can find things easier
A paypal link has been added to the sidebar – I had mentioned this once before, and try not to push it, but donations are always welcome to help offset the costs of running this blog (bandwidth, time, and storage on my hosting provider)
The picture has been updated in the header. I try to change this out periodically, and in the next incarnation that will randomize on each visit through an entire gallery of photos, but a new one is in place, so if you are picking up the content from a feeder – stop on over to see the changes!
Last but not least, thanks to Terry Reinert, I’ve added a plugin for fellow bloggers – when you post a comment here, your last post from your own blog is happily linked to your comment! Enjoy!
So, that’s it for today? Like the review and the changes? How about those OnOne finalists? Kudos to everyone who submitted images too. Don’t forget to jump into the latest and greatest giveaway – the winner will get Wacom Bamboo Fun valued at $100! Be sure to throw your best “Fun” themed images into the contest thread here: Giveaway Thread
Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
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Hardware Review/Eulogy – The Canon 550 EX
Ah, how I loved thee, the Canon 550 EX, with your 3 flash modes, ETTL, Manual and Multi mode. You were especially wonderful because of how well the ETTL worked in conjunction with the Canon bodies. Your typical standard hotshoe fit every Canon SLR from the first days of DSLR’s (I think)), and you worked beautifully both as a slave and as a master via the toggle just below the button panel.
Another especially nice feature you had was the variable power settings when in manual, where I was able to adjust you from full power down to 1/128th power. YOu also were very kind in allowing me to adjust your zoom range from 24mm to 105mm for the range of output too. Compatability with the ST-E2 and the infra-red line of sight was another added benefit, although the infra-red technology has dated you beyond use in the current spectrum of choices.
When it comes to working in master-slave modes, you were pretty rockin’ though. The ability to adjust ratios from 1:1 all the way to +/- 1:8 was pretty sweet, as was the ability to assign you to one of three different groups, A, B, or C. Although I’ve never used you in the multi-mode, the options there seem quite nice as well.
The Flash exposure bracketing, and High Speed sync with later EOS models has been a nice feature for me too, which is why I’ve hung on to you as long as I have – provided I’ve got the batteries and power to support it!
However, it was your time to go as you did not have a full-360 degree rotation on the head (without a hack), and your vertical tilt only had 3 adjustments at 60, 75, and 90 degrees. You also went through your 4 AA batteries like a hot knife through butter without the accessory battery pack (pricey in its own right).
Additionally, at a smidge over 14 ounces without batteries, and your large size (3.1 x 5.4 x 4.4) you’ve taken up a lot of space in the gear bag. YOur remote limitations also had their downside since I could only fire you with the ST-E2 or Canon proprietary cable. Don’t get me wrong, I love Canon gear, but sometimes others had flashes that I would like to have been able to use or borrow and could have if only you had a PC-sync plug. Sure, workarounds and jerry-rigged devices are out there (which I have ended up using), but the endless testing, mis-fires, and other tangential effects of a home-made brew had some less than desirable outputs.
Ahhh…550EX, I loved thee well – you shall work well as a secondary with your newer cousin, the 580 EX II when she arrives in another month or so! But when she arrives, I shall bid thee farewell, relegating you to the dust mites of my camera bag. Good thing your owner kept your vitals intact here
Until that day, I’ll shoot again tomorrow! (Happy shooting everyone!)
The time has come to say goodbye – that’s right, the time has come. You knew this day would happen – we all did. It was inevitable. It was a good run while it lasted, but there is no avoiding it. No tears please… No cries, no weeping, no condolences, regrets, or farewell parties are needed. As the old saying goes – all good things must come to an end. For better or for worse, it was a tough decision to come to, but I have decided that it is time to say goodbye – there’s just not enough time left. It’s time to charge forward into the future.
Goodbye.
There are those among you that are wondering where I am going, and what is going to happen next. There is good news and bad news in this. The good news is that I actually am not going anywhere. The bad news? I’m not going anywhere! So, why the heartfelt goodbye? Because my Macbook battery has finally bitten the bullet and died on me. It’s not all the way gone, but I can barely hold a charge for more than 30 minutes before needing to plug in. I am going with the replacement option from Apple direct, though the $129 price has me cringing. Thank goodness for NAPP discounts! It also has me looking at other options though for external power that is also portable. A friend in the NAPP forums linked me to a product called the Hyperdrive, and it looks like a pretty cool option. Here’s the link for it in case you are interested: Hyperdrive Website
So, why is this in the hardware review section? It’s not for lack of products to review, rather because of the timeliness of it. As I encounter roadblocks or problems, I like to share them with you – so that we can learn and develop and grow from the shared experiences. My lesson this time? To always use an AC source when available. Just because your laptop is capable of being cord-free doesn’t mean you simply must be cord-free. If you have an AC source, use it! As I learned, replacement batteries are expensive, and having to get a new one in under 3 years is not an easy pill to swallow. Since batteries are finite in the number of recharge cycles they can take, you don’t want to deplete your battery when not necessary, so plug in when you can! Make sure you charge!
Here’s a couple resources from the Apple website on batteries, their conditioning, and maintenance (yes, batteries need maintenance too – perhaps I should write a maintenance schedule for batteries! 🙂 ):
So, make sure you charge, discharge, and calibrate your batteries. I’ve done so with batteries in other devices, like my camera, flash batteries and all, but had never thought to do so for the laptop. Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
The good folks at Wacom were kind enough to donate a Bamboo Fun to me for review on the blog a while back. In order to really get a full handle on it though, I wanted to use it within the context of my at-home work flow. You see, I’m not a newcomer to tablets, as at work and through previous experience, I’ve grown quite accustomed to their usage. I’ve had to instruct people on how to use, configure the basics, and such on their computers. as well as used them in many of their varying sizes (most recently being the Cintiq). Having said that, I’ve never really had the need to incorporate a tablet in my home work environment for a number of reasons. Before I get into the reasons though, let go over some of the basics…and rather than a listing of pros and cons, I am following a slightly different format this time. I should also give fair warning that there are a LOT of pictures coming, so for the graphic avoiders in feeds, you may want to visit the site…
Installation
Installing this product can’t get much easier. Regardless of whether you are running a Windows or Macintosh environment (it really doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot) the system will auto-detect the drivers for your Bamboo fun. Still, it never hurts to go through the CD installation on their provided media, so I thought I’d share with you the process (and a few bonuses) of installation. It’s pretty much identical, but I am showing the screen shots from Windows:
Here’s the main splash screen where you can choose what to do, ranging from installation to viewing video tutorials, or browsing the CD contents…
I opted to do the driver installation first, and got this following message…
Then the notice that the pen drivers were being installed…
Then notification that installation was complete…
After finishing that, I was offered the video tutorials on how to do different things. For first-time users, a very useful resource…
And finally the extras that are included on the CD. I am not sure about files with an extension of x32, but believe this is a carry-over from Macromedia software like Flash. Since I do not own Flash, I can only guess based on my own research…
Ad additional CD also gives you a copy of Photoshop Elements 5, Nik Color Efex Pro 2, and Corel Painter Essentials 3.0, which also help to offset the cost the the product. I didn’t want to open this and negate the serials or licenses of the products contained, but did scan the front side so you can see what you get in the companion CD:
Configuration
The added buttons at the top of the tablet make for some very intuitive advancements in its usability and properties. Rather than cover each of these in detail, screen views of each tab (there are four total) should be indicative enough of the control and customization you can get:
Pop Up Configuration
The pop-up tab is probably the only tab that isn’t completely self-explanatory, so let me delve into a little more detail here. The reason why is because you can program common keyboard combinations (like the ones I referenced in my post last Friday) to be controlled from the tablet (provided you have “Pop-up menu” selected as on option on the tablet tab (seen next)…
Here’s how you do it:
First, click the drop-down to indicate what it is you want to program on the tablet. For me, the biggest advantage would be in incorporating keyboard keystroke combos so I have to switch less between kb and tablet.
You’ll get a window now where you can define the keystrokes you want simply by typing that keystroke set in the blank space…
The tablet will detect your keystrokes and populate the fields
Then, give your keystroke set a name…
and Click OK. You can see the ones I programmed below…
Last but not least, you can also include special keystroke combinations that are unique to your system (like Printscreen on Windows), as shown next:
So, you can see how having the pop-up tab configured with your most commonly used keyboard combinations, as you can reduce the swapping between inputs even more! Very cool! And here’s what the right-click menu looks like once inside Photoshop:
But, make sure you have a button set on the tablet to “drop down” (as shown next…)
Mechanics
Here is where your specific work flow may have an impact. On my Windows desktop environment, I have a 19″ and a 17″ LCD, so that’s roughly 36″ of real estate that this tablet (which measures roughly 6×4″) has to cover. What this means is that movements on a scale that size makes everything larger proportionally speaking. You can adjust the tablet settings under the pen mode details screen to manipulate for just one monitor instead of all screens, but if I am going to use a tablet, Idon’t want to jump between that, a keyboard AND a mouse…two inputs is all I really would want to switch between, but that’s just personal preference. But, for those that are interested, here’s how you make that adjustment in the pen settings tab of the tablet properties. Click on the pen tab of the tablet properties, then the details button to get this screen:
From here, change the button from “All Screens” to “Monitor”. It will default to the monitor you have set ot #1:
But you can use the arrows to set it to monitor two if you prefer:
On my Macbook Pro, since I only had the one monitor, the experience was quite different as I had less real estate for the tablet to cover – with only a 15″ LCD of screen space to cover. So the pen was much less sensitive to location on the touch pad given that less than half the real estate was needed to cover the range of the screen (and I noticed greater position control even when I did just the 19″ monitor versus the 15″ LCD of the MBP – it’s just a happenstance of the tablet size, and the only way to do that would be to increase the tablet size – at the expense of desk real estate space…pick your poison, ya know?)
Usage
Tablets rock! Let’s just get that bias out of the way right off. If you want the ultimate in cursor control (and when I say cursor I mean movement of your tool, whether it be a brush, a pencil, an eraser, clone stamp, whatever, it’s just amazing). The first major difference between a mouse and a tablet is touch sensitivity. No matter how you tap a mouse, it delivers the same intensity or strength when it paints in Photoshop. With a tablet, this is not the case at all. How hard you press determines the strength of the brush. This is truly remarkable as now you can apply just a touch, or go full hog on anything you want from painting, to clone stamping, and anything you want. To demonstrate, I created a blank document and selected some brush settings to illustrate what I am talking about. Take a look: from left to right are light touches to hard pressing with the pen…followed by dots of the same strength top to bottom.
So now you can control things like jitter, hardness, and a whole myriad of options that you didn’t have before (well, at least not to the same degree anyway) with just a mouse. I know what you’re thinking now – “Great, for graphic design that’s super cool, but how can I use this as a photographer?” Excellent question! Ever catch a picture where the eyes are darker and you want to brighten them up? Well, now you can with greater ease and control both of area, intensity of the lightening (or darkening) by using the pen tool for the Bamboo Fun. Take a look at the sample below, where I took an underexposed picture of the dog and selectively lightened the eyes and teeth, here’s the before:
and after:
One of the best parts is that this functionality is there in whatever application you use that incorporates brushes. I tried it in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Corel Painter Pro (I installed a demo version of the last one for this review). The Bamboo Fun can also expand your ability to clone things out, say a stray light pole or some telephone wires, or even the nasty -ex that you want out of that super cool shot of you in Hawaii! The possibilities are limitless both for graphic designers and photographers.
So, this now begets the question of why I don’t have one in my home environment. The main reason is because I’ve never had the need at home. Most of the time I am at work, and if I need to work that requires that level of control, the work hardware has always been there for me. Granted I’ve also gotten used to the Wacom Cintiq which has a much larger surface area, so I have even a greater degree of control over the desktop, cross-hairs, and all brushes, so it’s also a matter of being spoiled – I just can’t afford a Cintiq at home, or justify its need – I am just not that much of a re-toucher either with photos or in graphics design creation.
Additionally, for me, the use is only really there in graphic design, because I am also of the mentality of “getting it right in camera”, so I don’t like to do a lot of edits in photos. Of course no one is perfect so I do occasionally need to do some fine tuning that requires a tablet. In cases when I do, I just take the photo in to work and do the retouching there as the tablet does give a much greater amount of control than any mouse or trackball will.
When I’ve not been successful in camera, it’s not that my home work flow is good enough, it’s just that the tools are already there for me if needed at work, so the financial justification really hasn’t been there. As my personal usage has been increasing lately though, I must admit that I am thinking more and more about adding a tablet to my home work flow. So, would I would recommend this?
Yes! This would make a great tablet for anyone who does not have access to a tablet elsewhere, or if you are looking to enter the tablet market – the Bamboo Fun is a great entry level tablet, that takes up minimal desk space while offering a maximum range of precision and control. I think for my own personal usage, I would probably prefer a larger tablet because I do have the desk space, and have been accustomed (as I said) to the Cintiq, so perhaps the Intuous 4 would be more easily incorporated…but only time will tell!)
Finally, as prone as we are to repetitive motions, and with conditions like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome becoming much more common, the tablet does offer a much less repeated motion tendency than a mouse or a tablet. So, if you make the move to a tablet, you are only decreasing your chances of things like Carpal Tunnel and repetitive motion problems in your wrists.
Two thumbs up (in Siskel and Ebert style) for the Bamboo Fun from the good folks at Wacom. Many thanks for the demo product, and I am sure the listening/reading audience appreicates their generosity as well. Happy shooting everyone, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for an exciting software review that includes the announcement of our latest contest, which is starting in July!).
Don’t get too excited – no software giveaway on this one folks, as I’ve not had a chance to call OnOne yet and see if they’d be interested in participating in a contest. Instead, I am working off a trial version of one of the premiere up-sizing software programs on the market – Genuine Fractals from the good folks over at OnOne software. Available for both Mac and Windows, this product really has developed a good name for itself in the industry. While reputation may precede it, I have been wanting to give this product a try for some time now, so here we go!
To do this review, I decided to just share the work flow on a particular image that I happen really like, but because it was a pretty heavy crop, never really had a chance to see it in print very large as the limitations of Photoshop prevented more than a 4×6 image. The first step was to open that image:
Here we’ve got this heavily cropped image of a butterfly I liked – and the capture shows the image is a 600px photo. Way to small to print – I want at least an 8×10. So, after installing Genuine Fractals, I loaded that in Photoshop by going to the File | Automate option and it showed up in there:
So, after selecting that, I got the GF window, which shows the current image dimensions, and the upsizing options, as shown below:
You can see the default dimensions of 2.5×1.72 just will not work for anything useful other than a desktop background or a postage sized stamp. I need to make this bigger. So, I plugged in the values that would take me up to an 8×10, and in this case the aspect ratio wasn’t exactly on, so I took the short side up to 8″, and that put the long side at 11.6″ roughly. Nothing I can’t crop out a little as I move through post, so here’s the larger sized image.
The little dots are the logo of OnOne software so yo can disregard that because when you purchase the software, those go away. Instead, click on the image and zoom in on the antennae for a better idea of how it handles the up-sizing process. I was actually pretty impressed. Granted this image is unusable as it stands because there is too much jpg artifacting since I was working off an already processed image, but if I was going off the original raw, the results would likely be that much better – and the results are much more impressive. Take a look at this next one.
That”s the original file, a roughly 15×10″ image, cropped to about the same dimensions and then sized for the blog here. I’d include a hyperlink to the re-sized version, which blew up to about 75″ on the long side, for the same approximate increase in percentages (500% – GF claims boosts up to 1000%), but it really is too huge to accommodate on the web. Besides, since it is copyright-protected, just putting that large a file out there is like – oh I dunno – like leaving your garage door open for thieves to steal your car! 🙂 ! Think about 75 inches though! That’s like 6 foot wide. We’re talking billboard sized posters now, and the degradation in image quality is much less because I was working with the original file.
So, whether you are trying to recover size from an accidentally compressed image, or trying to increase an image to use in large applications – you can see how Genuine Fractals might be a route to consider. It may be a pricey option at$300 retail, but when you sell just one billboard print – the software expense is covered.
I’d give GF6.0 a two thumbs up just because it produces such impressive results. To me, the proof is in the pudding! So, what do you all think of the software? Does anyone else use it? I’d like to hear others opinions, as well as some alternatives if you have any. I am pretty convinced, and should I ever need to up-size, I know where I am going from here! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
Cleaning your gear is a maintenance ritual each of us must develop that suits our own style and behaviors. For me it’s lists…logical lists that I formulate after thinking about what makes sense to me, so I can do things the same way every time. For me it’s all about consistency and repeatability. While this same technique is something I recommend for others, it may not always be the best course of action if you don’t like that kind of rigidity.
However, regardless of what styles or approaches you use to clean your gear (and I’ve talked about my approach to gear maintenance in the past in detail), some of the best recommendations I can make is in reference to the types of utilities and tools you use. So, today, I’d like to take a look at one of the tools that I have come to rely on more than any other – the Giottos Rocket Blower.
So, what makes this thing so great? Funny you should ask, let’s get started with the…
PROS
CONS
There you have it, 6 pros and 1 con means this product gets a thumbs up in my book. (Surprise surprise since it’s in my cleaning kit!) As always, if you have any ideas, suggestions, or are interested in products that have not been covered here on the hardware review days, drop your thoughts into the comments area or kick me an email (is it possible to kick something that is all 1’s and 0’s inside a computer?). Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
This week I am going to talk about the lack of software in the weekly software review. That’s right – the lack of it! You may be sitting there wondering which software item I am going to talk about, promote, or diss in some way shape or form, but instead of that, I actually want to talk about the general trending of software, hardware, and system resources. Why? Because we demand a lot from our computers these days. Think about it – we want our computers to do many things from surfing the internet, to designing graphics, office functions, building websites, and yes, processing ever-increasing image file sizes. At what point do we say we are asking enough of our computers?
Lately my main desktop computer had been getting slower and slower and slower, and it seemed no matter what I did whether it was beefing up the RAM, adding a faster hard drive, processor, or the like, and even re-installing the OS every 6 months – it was just getting pathetic. At one point, I clocked abut 5 minutes for Firefox to start – on a fresh boot! The culprit? I am asking my computer to do too much. I finally said enough is enough – and am re-purposing the computers in the house. We have a grand total of five computers and each has a unique function: from Office to web, to image processing, and podcasting. And that’s just it – each computer has a task. Yet I have not been disciplined about asking the computer to only perform its assigned task. I revert to the one desktop and the one laptop. The end result: the systems s……l……o……w…… d……o……w……n…….
With a grand total of 78 programs at last count, it’s no wonder my cmputer was screaming “Mercy!”. So, enough is enough. I vowed to make each computer perform only one set of tasks, as explained above. The end result: removing about 50 applications from the main computer. It took the better part of an evening (4 or 5 hours) but at the end, the computer is now screamingly fast again – and Firefox loads in seconds, not minutes. The reason – purposing your computer for a specific software function.
So, instead of looking at adding new software all the time to your computers, you may want to take a look at the computer itself – is it doing the job you want, or are you asking too much? Think about purposing your resources more efficiently. Do you really need that HP 3600 printer driver on there from 4 years ago? What about that trial version of Elements you downloaded a few months ago? And the 4 instances of Tweetdeck you have there? Really? Clean out your software and watch your computer performance increase a notch or two as a result. It’s just like us humans – we can get more done when we’re asked to do less all the time! We’re faster, more productive, and yes, more focused on the task at hand.
So, check that installed software list and try cleaning things out from time to time – your computer will thank you!
Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!
Well, there’s some other good news too. Wacom delivered the something to me door yesterday to review here on the blog. I’ll be doing a more detailed write-up for both Windows and Mac in the near future, but thought y’all might be interested in the unboxing – seeing what you get from the good folks at Wacom when you order a:
BAMBOO FUN!
So, here’s a little teaser video for those that are interested:
This might be fodder for an upcoming contest or giveaway, but only time will tell, so keep your fingers crossed. In the meantime, here’s the rest of the Friday news:
Okay all, that’s it – been a crazy busy week, and I am tired, but also geared up for the weekend. Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here next week for hopefully a little more of an uplifting series of content!
This week’s hardware review is the Sigma Lightstand. Specifically, the Impact 8 foot Air Cushion Lightstand. While you may think that this is something that wouldn’t garner much discussion – I actually have found this to be a very handy tool. “Tool?”, you ask. Yes, a tool. Sure, it’s primary function is to hold lights, but look at the variety even there – I’ve used it for small flashes (like my 550 EX II), studio strobes from Smith Victor, and water bags.
Lest you do a double take, that’s right, I used it along with a makeshift boom (arm that extends out to the side) to hold a water bag for a photo project. The point is, light stands, like tripods, can function in a wide variety of capacities. While I tend to shy away from making generalizations because I know my own gear experiences are unique, for me the biggest difference between a light stand and a tripod is weight and stability – light stands seem much lighter and aren’t as stable. I am sure there are some high end light stands that provide excellent stability and can weigh a decent amount, but this one that I use is pretty light:
I’ve linked the photo to the item at B&H (Item #IMLS8AQ ) for those that want all the detailed specs, but here’s my two cents.
Pros:
Cons
Bottom line – I’d recommend this for people needed an extra set of hands from time to time. If you are into off camera lighting (and after Wednesday, you should be!), then a light stand is a must – and this is a great entry level one that will fit your needs indefinitely, because even if you upgrade, an extra set of hands is just a few seconds away.
That’s it for today – make sure you stop in tomorrow for the next installment of software reviews! Happy shooting and see you then!
