Nikon just announced 2 new bodies, the D300s and D3000, as well as two new lenses a AF-S Nikkor 70-200MM F/2.8G ED VR II and a new AF-S DX Nikkor18-200MM f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II. They each have a few very interesting features. The D3000 introduces a new guided shooting mode designed to walk users though [...]

 July, 2009 New Gear Announced by Nikon

I’ve always liked clouds, not normal clouds but big cumulonimbus clouds. Especially when they’re back-lit in the morning or late afternoon. Abstract in nature, often with interesting lighting and tonalities and always impressive in scale. On that note, I shot these of a brewing storm a couple of weeks ago.

 July, 2009 Clouds

This one comes from DTown TV but works equally well on Canon bodes. If you’re ever in a situation where you want to set the white balance in camera but you don’t have an appropriate target, there’s hope. If your camera has Live View it will show you in real time the affect changing the [...]

 July, 2009 White Balance: Wing it with Live View

Creative uses aside, accurate white balance is critical to insuring the proper reproduction of colors in a photograph. In cases with difficult lighting conditions frequently we create and turn to custom white balances to insure the color in their images is correct. However using the common copy or printer paper, which usually contains optical brighteners-chemicals [...]

 July, 2009 Custom White Balances: Why Not to Use Printer Paper

I just found out about DTown TV, even though it’s apparently been airing for some time now. It’s a new weekly video series put on by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski for photographers who use Nikon DSLRs. I have to say, even though I’m a Canon shooter I’ve watched a couple of episodes and you’ll [...]

 July, 2009 DTown TV: Webcasts for the Nikon Shooter

Today concluded round 2 of serious focus testing. What’s different this time from the last? A new target, a new alignment strategy, and some new results. Last time I looked at autofocus, I had enough problems focusing fast lenses that I was growing concerned that there was either a systematic design flaw or similar error [...]

 July, 2009 Autofocus Testing and Microadjustments, Round 2

I just finished up helping a fellow photographer and friend setup and calibrate his new Dell 2407WFP LCD display and yet again I am reminded how much I really hate dealing with color and color profiling. What settings should you use to calibrate your display? In Michael Reichmann’s From Camera to Print, Jeff Schewe comments [...]

 July, 2009 Adventures in Color Calibration

This is the third segment in my series of Photoshop Lightroom keywording tips. Last time I covered how to create keyword files that you could import into Lightroom as an easy way to build large keyword databases. This time we’ll cover the last two ways to add keywords from within Lightroom. The final two methods [...]

 July, 2009 More on Hierarchies

Syl Arena, over at www.pixsylated.com recently put up a Canon Speedlite Wishlist. Syl gives us 17 points to chew on that he thinks would make Canon’s Speedlite system better; most of which I agree with, some I think are silly, and some I think are a bad idea in the larger scheme of things. However, [...]

 July, 2009 Re: Pixsylated’s Speedlite Wishlist

The fourth of July, Independence day in the USA. The one time per year I get to photograph serious firework displays with out having to travel out of my way or fight crowds. The only disadvantage, there’s never a foreground to speak up, which makes the images a lot less interesting. However, it does have [...]

 July, 2009 Painting with Fireworks