Hardware Review: The 70-200L f4.0

May 18, 2009 Jason7 Comments

In keeping with the last few weeks of hardware reviews, I am taking a look in my own bag one more time to bring you this weeks’ hardware review: the 70-200mm L lens from Canon. Canon has several variants on this lens, with different minimal apertures both with and without Image Stabilization (IS). So, in the interests of full disclosure, this is a non-IS lens, and the aperture range is the standard one, 4.0 to 5.6. So, with that distinction being made, we’re off and running:

Canons 70-200mm f4.0 lens — Canon's 70-200mm f4.0 lens

The “L” distinction is one that bears discussion right off – Canon only gives this out to lenses that it deems have superior optics – which means a wider range for it’s sweet spot, tack sharp focus, and better sealing against the elements. This naturally means that this lens will, by definition and categorization, be sharper than a comparable “non-L” lens. However, for this particular range of zoom, Canon doesn’t make a non-L lens, so one would have to make a comparison with a 3rd party brand such as Sigma or Tamron. Even there though, comparisons are tricky primarily because vendors are moving toward faster glass (in the 2.8 category) and IS features.

In that regard, the 70-200 f4.0 really is in a class by itself. As a result of its unique status in the field of available lenses, comparisons are rather arbitrary as no other lens out there has the same specs. Rather than making those comparisons though, I’ll just say that this lens does deliver superior performance for its’ category.

So, how is this a review? Well, it’s not just a question of performance, it’s also a question of price. Anything can be stellar, but whether it’s worth the price is another story. I know of luxury cars that exceed 6 figures for their cost, however, most cannot justify the expense, either because of their financial situation or the expected need. So, how does the 70-200 fit when it comes to cost? Pretty well actually.

The cost for this lens at B&H Photo is $600 right now (technically $599.95) after a $50 rebate. Considering the next step up is twice the price for either an f2.8 or an IS lens, this is actually a steal! I was able to find mine second hand from a fellow photographer when I lived in SC, so got it for considerably less. Included in my package was a lens hood, and a collar for mounting to a tripod (which I definitely would recommend given the weight). The previous owner was also nice enough to leave the Tiffen filter on it that provided protection for the lens. All told, the lens and accessories would run around $700 for the lens, lens hood, UV filter, and tripod collar.

When looking at comparable other lenses from Canon, this is where you really see the bang for the buck. Take a look at the most recent prices from B&H for similar lenses:

70-200L f2.8 = $1250
70-200L f2.8 IS = $1600
70-200L f4.0 IS = $1025

So, you can save at least $425 if IS isn’t important to you, or $650 for the next fastest version of this lens

At a smidge over 1.5 lbs, the weight does balance the mid-grade SLR’s quite nicely, although on the Rebel line I recall it being a tad heavy. As a general rule of thumb, with larger and heavier lenses, you’ll want to carry this by the lens itself rather than the camera as you don’t want to put undue tension on the mount.

Overall though, for the price and range, I would highly recommend this lens. It’s tack sharp at both 70 and at 200 with a sweet spot ranging from f5.6 to f16. Kind of hard to say no to that kind of quality when it’s offered at such an affordable price. Here’s some sample shots to show what I’m talking about:

Here’s a sample from 70mm at f9.0

And the same scene from 200mm at the same aperture:

Then, just to give you an idea of the sharpness, here’s some shots at f4.0 (a little noiser because I was at ISO 3200)…first the 70mm shot:

And now at 200mm:

And the 200mm shot:

Okay, so that’s about it for the day. Hope you found it useful and informative (as always). Don’t forget the Lightroom Contest going on over at the Flickr Thread – only about 12 more days left and still not a lot of entries. Great chance to win a free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (retails for $300)! If you have ideas, suggestions, comments, feedback or other insights on future gear you’d like reviewed, feel free to share those in the comments below or with me via email.

One last little nugget to share today…Scott Kelby announced his 2nd Annual Photowalk early this morning, so be sure to register in your city. I’m already registered in the Denver group and that’s rolling early (7:45ish am) in the Lodo area. More details to come on route, eating place, etc. , but mark your calendars now for July 18th! Here’s the link for more info if you’re not in Denver: Worldwide Photowalk Have a great day, Happy Shooting, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Shooting tethered with Canon gear

May 12, 2009 Jason8 Comments

I’ve not seen much coverage of how to shoot tethered using the Canon proprietary software, so for today’s post, I thought it might be useful to offer the Canon perspective here (since the blog bears the moniker of my camera vendor of choice). For those who are Nikon shooters, I would highly recommend reading the post Scott Kelby did a while back that shows how to shoot tethered into Lightroom. While he walks you through the Lightroom element, he then discusses the Nikon approach… the counterpoint here is to take a look at the Canon approach.

To start off – a little explanation of what tethered shooting is would be helpful. Tethered shooting means you have your camera connected to your computer or laptop (usually a laptop for portability purposes). This allows you to shoot straight into the computer with direct saves. There are a couple advantages to tethered shooting. First off, you don’t need any media cards, because the camera is transferring straight to the computer. Second, regardless of what size LCD you have on the back of your sensor, nothing will compare with a 15″ or 17″ monitor. You can see greater detail, see a broader tonal range, and get a much better handle on the finder points of composition when it comes to things like posing, lighting, and minimizing distractions that you could likely miss when using a 3″ LCD of your camera.

Okay, so now that we know when and why you would shoot tethered, and given an appropriate nod to Scott Kelby for his coverage of the Nikon version, here is a Canon-centric approach to tethered shooting. Since the Lightroom component is already pretty well covered, I will just be limiting the discussion to showcasing the settings, screens and considerations to take into account when configuring the EOS Capture Utility.

When you first start the EOS Capture Utility, you get a rather unassuming window that doesn’t look like much:

It’s pretty straightforward – the top button would be used to download images if you are importing from all your images off a CF card. The second button would enable you to select which images to import off a CF card. More relative to this content is the Camera Settings/Remote Shooting button and the Monitor Folder button. I’ll get to those in a minute. Lastly, it’s helpful to draw your attention to the Preferences button on the lower right – this is the one I’d like to take a closer look at now.

When you click on the Preferences button the window will change:

eos2

From here, you now have access to all the details of how you want to configure your tethered shooting options, starting out with the basic settings (see the drop down menu in the upper left). This first setting tells the EOS Utility what screen you want to show when you first start the software. This really is a matter of personal preference, but I would recommend the main window so that if you want to change your preferences, you can do so easily and quickly – often with software preference settings will require you to restart the program, so if that must happen, it’s always best to do that at start-up.

Moving right along, let’s take a look at the other preferences settings:

eos3

The Destination Folder Preferences

This should be pretty self-explanatory, but in the interests of covering each aspect, this is where you can specify what folder you want to save your images to on connecting your Canon camera to your computer. For the purposes of this demonstration, I created a folder called EOS Capture and put it on my desktop to use as the destination folder. To point the EOS Utility to your destination folder of choice, simply click the browse button, as shown:

destination2

Note that the EOS Utility does a nice little thing here – it creates a subfolder by date so helps to keep your images organized whether you are downloading images, doing remote shooting (tethered shooting), or set a monitored folder for some third party application (like Lightroom). If you are going to be doig remote shooting, here is where you would likely select the remote shooting option so that when the camera gets connected, that specific task will create a subfolder and get you ready that much quicker. Here, since I don’t have the full hardware connection, I am just going to leave it on the default setting and select the folder I created on my desktop:

destination

File Name Preferences

If you want to change your image names from the default of _IMG_1234.jpg to another more descriptive naming convention (say JamesSmith.jpg this would be the place to do it. The options are shown below:

filename1

If you choose to modify your images, you can elect from many options, including the option to customize for your needs – just click the drop down menu to select your options. By default it’s set to Do Not Modify so I’l just leave that here to show your options for filename formats:

filename2

The next option here in your filename conventions is where you can define custom naming conventions, either by subject name (JamesSmith), event (SmithWeddding), or whatever convention works for you:

filename3

Feel free to customize these as you prefer for your own shooting conditions and, well….preferences! Moving right along now…

Download Images Preferences

Here is where you tell the EOS Utility what to do with images as they are generated. It’s pretty straightforward… the options are:

Remote Shooting Preferences

The remote shooting preferences here are also pretty straightforward: Do you want to save your images to a card or not? Do you want the software to rotate your images if needed to show the right orientation? Depending on your preferences, check or uncheck these boxes:

remote

Linked Software Preferences

Last but not least, do you want to use another piece of the Canon Software family of products to work on your tethered images , whether it be Digital Photo Profesional (aka DPP) or ImageBrowser:

eossoftware1

Since my work flow incorporates the Adobe product line (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.), I would suggest choosing “None” here, but again, that’s why these are called preferences.

Once these Preferences are set, go ahead and return to the main window, then click the Monitor Folder option, because there is two last items that merit discussion here:

The Monitoring Folder

monitor_folder

Note that the folder has been specified for me, but Canon has generously recommended that I take advantage of a specific Canon hardware connector to connect the camera and computer – the WFT-E1 Wireless Transmitter. These are available from most camera retailers and e-tailers, but I like B&H so that is the one linked (and the price is fairly reasonable at $999.99, so if you get one, let me borrow it to review here on the blog! 🙂 ). Basically what this allows you to do is shoot “tethered” to the computer, but without the tether…pretty cool stuff!

The Software Version

I created this post using the older version of the EOS Capture Utility, primarily because I had not used it since I owned my XT. As with any software though, as camera bodies are added to the vendor family of products, the software must update too. On capturing all the images for this post, I did not think the software would be what updated, only the camera drivers. Clearly, that was not the case as the software itself has undergone a colorful transformation since then, and is now at its most recent update as of just last month at 2.6.1 You can download it and update via the 40D web page here (where I got mine just earlier). The upshot though, and why I am keeping the original screen shots, is because functionally nothing has changed – there are just more camera drivers added to the library. To get your own drivers for other Canon cameras to use with the EOS capture, go to the main page here and select your camera…

Finally, I wanted to share a very short video from what the new interface looks like and how to use it when shooting in “tethered” mode:

So, there you have it! My down-n-dirty summary of the Canon EOS Capture Utility – with photos, text, and video! A virtual cornucopia of media to look at the feature set. Enjoy the material! I’d love to hear your thoughts, hear your feedback and get suggestions (other than checking the software for updates before I write the post! 😀 ) on future material that may be useful. Don’t forget too – that contest to win a copy of Adobe Lightroom (which you can use to edit shots taken in tethered mode!) is going on through the end of May, so don’t delay – get those contributions in today! One shot could be worth a free copy of Adobe Lightroom! That’s it for today – have a great one, Happy Shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for the latest in photography composition.

No Trumpts, No Fanfare, Nada

April 15, 2009 Jason2 Comments

As I was sorting through the CB archives for some content to update for todays post, it dawned on me that I blew right past post #400 without even a mention of thanks to anyone. So, at post #411 (see, I really blew right past it), let me take a moment to give some belated thanks to the listening and reading audience for the past two plus years…

Your comments, feedback, emails, insights and thoughtful notes over this time have been very helpful and motivating in keeping the ball rolling, often through some rather tedious times. I’ve had people share efforts to increase visibility through iTunes reviews, Digg promos, generous donations for offsetting bandwidth, Tweets and Re-tweets, pretty much the whole schmear! It truly is humbling to see the amount of support I have received in this continuing journey, and today I would just like to say:

THANKS!

Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Cactus, Trigger, Zebra, Oh My!

April 14, 2009 Jason6 Comments

Remember the old game of password where you said a related word to one on your card to get your partner to guess it? Well, here goes: What do the words cactus, trigger, and zebra all have in common? If you answered “flash photography” you’d be right! As you may have realized, that does mean that the podcast will not come out today – I simply didn’t have time to get all my thoughts and notes together. So instead, here’s a review of sorts that I did just earlier this evening.

A while back I decided to ditch the Canon ST-E2 wireless trigger for a number of reasons – those being:

It relied on line-of-sight
It didn’t have a very good range
It wouldn’t work with non-Canon gear

I, like many others, have been salivating over the new developments in radio trigger technology. And, at my last job, I had access to multiple lights, strobes, and such for experimentation. So, in order to do said experimentation, I decided to invest in some Cactus Triggers that I purchased off an online web vendor (I forget the vendor off the top of my head – search the archives and I am sure it’s there…). Much to my chagrin though, it would not work with my Canon 550EX flash. So, when I left my previous job, it was back to the ST-E2. In order to spur some motivation to invest in some more serious lighting gear on my own, I decided to sell the ST-E2 to fund the purchase of some Cyber Syncs.

Long story short, I ended up with no off-camera method to trigger my one flash unit. So, I was back on-camera. Needless to say, ambient light photography was a large focus for that time period. Well, after the economy stabilized a little for the household with my state job, I decided to invest in the Cyber Syncs – but as a measure of insurance, wanted to make sure the devices would work in my 550EX (the 550EX does not have a sync port). So, a quick email to them revealed that a neat little device from the folks over at Flash Zebra would make the Cyber Syncs compatible. A mere $14 later and the device arrived late last week (while I was in SC). So, next month the Cyber Syncs will be making their way to my doorstep.

In the meantime, I have these Cactus triggers, and I thought with the inclusion of a sync port, perhaps I could jerry-rig something together. With the sync port going out to what looks to be an RC-mini, and the receiver also going out to an RC-mini, I needed a way to join two RC-mini’s together. A quick dig through my various buckets of cables and connectors revealed a dual mini that is normally used to connect to headphones to a single audio. Worth a shot, since it’s only about $50 total invested. I connected everything together to get this:

lightcables

On your left is the trigger that came from Cactus, to the RC male. A reducer on that took it to an RC-mini male. In the center is the well-hidden PC-sync device that came from Flash Zebra. (For a better picture, see below…) A female sync port on that was able to connect to the male sync port that was included with my Cactus gear. That also went to an RC-mini male. These are both connected on the right to the y-connector that you would typically see two headsets connect to the same audio source. The technology is the same, so it’s worth a shot right? (No pun intended…)

I fired off a test shot from the 40D and it worked! So, how well would it work? What kind of reliability would there be? I took the flash into the next room and fired the trigger from a further distance away…about 20 feet. Flash! Then I took the trigger around the corner and fired it. Flash! How cool is that? Another set of tests was needed. One where radio waves wouldn’t bounce all over the place – outside! If you recall, I interviewed Scott Eccleston from Weekly Photo Tips a while back, and a recent post of his armed me with a good testing method of the Cactus triggers. Armed with the inspiration of this video, I enlisted the aid of my wife and took to the great outdoors.

I began with a fresh set of batteries in both the trigger and receiver, as well as the flash. Starting from ten steps away from the flash, I tripped the shutter – flash! Twenty paces – flash! Thirty paces – flash! Fourty paces – nada. Hmmm…tried again – nada. So, I moved back to 35 paces – still nada. A couple steps closer and it flashed again. About four more tests at this distance and I had 100% flash rate. Starting back to my wife, I counted the paces, 1-2-3… all the way to 33 paces. At an average gait of 3 feet per pace, that’s an outside range of 99 feet! Considerably better than the ST-E2 and at a third of the price!

For posterity’ sake, and since I am in a very casual way reviewing the PC-sync adaptor from Flash Zebra, here’s a better shot of just that device.

zebra

Also for posterity sake, here’s a view of the trigger that attached to the hot shoe of the 550EX:

trigger2

Double your laptop storage in ten easy steps!

April 6, 2009 Jason4 Comments

So, I’ve got the Macbook Pro with the factory default 150GB hard drive. Sounds like a ton of space, right? Well, we all know how quickly that amount of storage can get sucked up these days. So, I considered buying a new laptop drive, buying the latest iteration of the Mac OS and just building one from scratch again. But then I realized, I have lots of storage being eaten up in the drive already by means of exactly that – the OS, the applications, and everything it needs to run. Then it dawned on me – why not just add a second drive?

I bet you are asking, “Ok, Ace, where you gonna add a second drive?”

Well, here’s an easy way to add a second drive to your laptop in 10 easy steps:

1. Buy a USB drive (I got mine at Best Buy – they price matched Newegg which was in and of itself a jaw-dropper but I digress)… but the point here is that addtional storage is cheap! Less than $80 bucks for 320 GB

_mg_9027

2. Buy a strip of two-way Velcro tape. I happen to have some from other projects, but at most it’s $5

_mg_9029

3. Before messing with the physical setup, plug the drive in and configure as desired. For mine I re-formatted to a Mac partition (journaled), then created folders for my music library and my working photo library on the Mac.

4. I then moved all the data over for the above folders from the pre-existing OS drive.

5. Position new USB drive on back-side of laptop monitor to see where it best fits according to your USB layout – I happened to like mine on the left, as shown:

_mg_9031

6. Wrap USB (or Firewire) nice and snug – I used another velcro strip to keep it tightly wrapped.

_mg_9028

7. Cut one or two pieces of two-way Velcro, and place one in the middle, and the other one near the top or bottom. (I started with one and added the second):

_mg_9033

8. Peel the backing and affix to the USB drive. With the other side still stuck, peel the backing off the second two sets and affix to the back of the monitor.

9. Plug mini-USB (or Firewire) and USB ends of cable back in. (I’d already done it to ensure the slack of the cable was how I liked it, but you can do this afterward too if that makes things easier for you…)

10. Open monitor top, and voila – you have a laptop with two drives!

_mg_9037

For the record, I saw someone once with a setup like this, so it’s not completely an original idea. The onyl difference was that he had two of these bad boys connected – a Dymo label printer had identified each as a Time Machine drive and a Files drive. For the cost/size/weight and portability, it’s really not a bad idea. When they fill up, just buy a new drive and port the data over, or even just archive and store in a tupperware shoebox if you prefer.

So, there’s a neat little idea for you this Monday. Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow.

Wanna Get Lucky?

February 11, 2009 Jason2 Comments

How many times have you seen a picture where it just made you say “WOW! I wish I could capture something like that!” And, you ask the person, “How’d you get that shot?” Typically you’ll get an answer like “Just got lucky I guess.” Well, I am not sure I buy into that. Does luck really factor into taking good pictures? Perhaps on rare occasions it does, because as the old saying goes, “Even a blind squirrel can find a nut occasionally”

But consistently taking good pictures requires more than luck. It requires certain key elements that anyone can incorporate to increase their “keeper ratio”. Today, I’ll look at 5 ways to increase your keepers. So, here’s 5 ways to get lucky!

Plan ahead. Just the mere act of planning for a shot can help. If you know you’re going to be in the mountains, take a wide angle lens with you. If you know you’re going to be at a party, take that nifty fifty. Wildlife? Take a zoom! Remember, prior planning not only prevents poor performance, but it also can help you take better pictures.
Learn the technical stuff. Know the technical stuff. Memorize it. There are certain fundamentals you just have to know, and by taking that sundry stuff and migrating it to a point where it’s in the back of your head and you don’t even have to think about it, then they can become tools. If you understand apertures inside and out, then you can really use depth of field to create better pictures. The same goes for planes of view, angles of view, composition rules, and all that other stuff.
Take lots of pictures. As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect. So, stop reading forums, blogs, magazines, books, and all that stuff from time to time (except for my blog of course!), and get out there and practice, practice, practice!
Look at the pictures of others. Not only is appreciation of others work inspiring in its own right, but you can also train your eye to see what makes some images just “work”.
Dedicate some time each day to do something related to photography. It can be any of the above, from taking pictures, to editing pictures, looking at the works of others, studying your manual (learning about apertures, shutters, etc.), or any other photography-related ideas. You can only improve your skills by repeated use. Since I’ve referenced other idioms, another one could apply here: If you don’t use it, you lose it. Just like musicians who practice every day to get better, if you don’t practice your craft regularly, you won’t get better.

So, there you have it, 5 ways to improve your luck. And this is just from my own perspective. As is always the case when it comes to opinions, there are probably many more out there. Got your own ideas about ways to “get lucky”? Share them in the comments section or via email. In the meantime, Happy Shooting – hope everyone can “get lucky”!

Multimedia Monday

February 9, 2009 Jason1 Comment

With the “New and Improved” podcast starting out at PLM this week, there’s a couple exciting things to announce. First off, the drawing for the Think Tank Photo Streetwalker bag was done live on the podcast this week, and the winner was announced in the lead segment. Congrats go out to the winner (you know who you are!), so do get me your address so I can ship you the bag post haste!

The meat segment (aka middle segment) I talk about some new sources of inspiration – specifically the grocery store and in a restaurant. The next time you are at a restaurant, take your camera because the table makes for a great tripod, and you can get some really cool shots. Case in point, is the new gallery I have set up here at the blog, titled Tabletop Photography. I’m also sharing a few sources of inspiration from the grocery store too (tune in tomorrow for those).

The listener questions were really good ones from Meredith and Jason, where I take a look at the value of carbon fiber and the issue of when and where are we permitted to photograph. Last but not least, the photo tip of the week concerns copyright and registering your work, so make sure you stay tuned for that.

Lots of photo goodness to share, so make sure you tune in for the audio, and stop by the blog to pick up the link for the photo gallery. Photos, podcasts, and questions galore. Enjoy the day and we’ll see you back here tomorrow! Happy Shooting!

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License Lockout

January 28, 2009 Jason4 Comments

First off, a bit of quick news about the blog in general: the layout has changed. Can anyone tell the difference? It’s a rather significant one, so hopefully it won’t go unnoticed! 🙂 Chime in and that’s your chance at winning the Think Tank Photo Streetwalker bag I reviewed a few weeks ago right here on the blog!

So, back on today’s post topic, as part of my maintenance routine that I recently posted, last evening I was doing some of my extended “IT” maintenance on my Windows computer. As a part of that maintenance, I was trying to optimize my hard drive performance, and thus resorted to cleaning out temp files, cache files, history files, restore points, and other sundry stuff. A defrag procedure on the hard drive, and I was back up to some pretty screaming speeds again. Puffing out the chest at getting a 5 year old Dell running a 2.4 Ghz Celeron processor, Windows XP, and 2 GB of RAM to move that fast without over-clocking, I checked off on what I thought was a job well done.

Then I opened Photoshop:

CS3 Error

Uh oh – it seems I cleaned things out a little too much. Well, since I have diligently kept all my media, documentation, license#’s and other information in multiple places, I was easily able to find the needed materials to re-install. But, here’s the thing – that would require importing all my actions again, re-installing other elements like Noise Ninja, and then also go in and customize all the features I like (scrolling with my mouse to zoom in and out of the image, curves menu with more lines, etc.) Who wants to do all that? Well, not me! So, off to Google I went.

That five minutes on Google doing some research saved me probably two hours of software maintenance time. Adobe has a neat little utility that can be downloaded and run when things like this happen to restore your licensing info without having to go through the entire re-installation. Not sure what it does or how it does it, but the utility is very handy, so I thought to share it with the reading audience today. Here’s the download link, and supporting reading materials.

Licensing Service Update

The underlying point here though, is that even the extensive maintenance I itemized the other day does not cover everything. Go into Photoshop, copy your preferences down via image pastes into a Word doc or other such format. Make a copy of your plugins folder external to PS – the same goes for Actions, noise removal, automation tasks, brushes, etc., etc., etc.! With as advanced and complex has an application like Photoshop has become – you can save a ton of time if you take some proactive measures.

What do you save from your Photoshop configuration settings? Share your ideas in the comments! As always, thanks for tuning in, keep on shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow – Thursday Thoughts returns again with Chris Breedlove!

The Meat is in the Maintenance

January 23, 2009 Jason7 Comments

With another week come to a close, I got a late start in recording and putting together the podcast for today, so it’s going up a tad late. However, as the old saying goes, good things come to those who wait. This week, I look at some of the photo news, relevant to Canon users, photographers, and just some good old news tidbits. In the “meat and potatoes”of the week, I look at what should be included in an extensive maintenance schedule for any photographer, including cleaning, software, firmware, batteries, data, backups – literally the whole schmear! It’s quite the meaty helping on maintenance, so be sure to bookmark, download, listen, and whatever it is others do when enjoying podcasts as this is sure to be useful info for lots of people!

I also remind everyone of how you can win a Think Tank Photo Streetwalker! This is a $150 value bag, and there are still a few opportunities left to participate in the random drawing. Make sure you tune into the third segment to find out how (sorry, but only domestic US residents are eligible…) this can be yours for a simple song! (Hint: Make a post to the blog and you will probably be entered to win!)

Finally, I take a few listener questions from Josh and LaRae (thanks for the comments and email), as well as your weekly photo tip. I made same changes to the recording process that I think have cleaned it up quite a bit, so I’d really like to hear some feedback on what people think of the difference in audio quality this go around! Please don’t be shy, and make sure you let iTunes know they’ve dropped the feed!

Have a good weekend everyone. Happy shootin, and we’ll see you back here Monday morning!

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The Final Broadcast… of 2008!

December 23, 2008 Jason1 Comment

That’s right, this week is the final podcast broadcast for CB this year! It’s a good one though with an announcement of the new product line I’ll be reviewing. For those of you getting this in feed readers, here’s the short version:

Christmas Wrap-up: A few last minute gift ideas for the photog-type in your circle
The New Product Line Review Announcement (you gotta listen to find out! 😉 )
The Value of Starting Over
Listener Questions and Answers

Dave from PA – Hot shoe flashes: tungsten or flourescent?

Lynn from WI – Are 3rd party batteries safe?

Kevin from CO – Best way to learn photography

Tomorrow, the last What’s This of the Year, and then lights out…nothing again until next week. The next edition of Thursday Thoughts will come back the second week of January (I couldn’t find it in myself to ask someone to put something together for New Years Day any more than Christmas Day!) That means you’re actually gonna have to spend time with family, friends, and loved ones for a few days. Oh darn! Hope that shopping is almost done! If not, be sure you tune in for those last minute gift ideas! Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

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P.S. What made this week’s podcast different from any other podcast I’ve done this year? (Other than the fact that it’s the last one of the year…)