Snowflowers - 2
Schneeblumen - 2
fotografie - 16.10.2004 - 6.3.2005
Beach Hut by the Canal?
Strandguthütte am Kanal?
No idea who has settled there and for what purpose - it is a small hut made of garbage, fenced and with a small area. Everything is equipped with garbage bags and right in the bushes - normally not visible. Only through the preparations for the canal expansion did it become visible. Somehow reminds me of these beachcombers on the beach of Amrum.
Kyocera to end camera production
Kyocera to end camera production - so now we have the first confirmation from Kyocera itself. Maybe it will be continued by someone else, but whether the product range will survive is rather questionable - at best the name will be of interest to others.
Kyocera Hamburg at the End?
Jutta just told me this: according to photoscala, Kycera Hamburg has issued termination notices to all employees. There have been rumors about Kyocera's exit from the photo sector for several weeks now. It would be a real shame if the name Contax disappeared from the camera world - I still associate Contax with high-quality equipment with a little extra something special.
For owners of a Contax N1, this is of course particularly bitter: the N-System was only introduced a few years ago and is by no means fully developed - and with the high-tech monsters, service is no longer affordable at every field-forest-and-meadow service center. Even with my RTS III and the vacuum pressure plate, it's difficult to get service if there are any problems with the camera.
PIXELPOST - Small Photoblog Software - looks quite nice, as do the demos. Fun is the small strip calendar in the demo - I think I'll do something like that for WordPress, it takes up significantly less space in the sidebar than the classic calendar. For someone who just wants to photoblog, PixelPost looks quite nice.
At concord.antville.org there is a reference to these color photographs from the First World War made by the French army.
New iPod models at lower prices - well, I should probably plan a new purchase for March. A small iPod Photo with a camera adapter could be quite nice for on the go ...
Leica in financial crisis - oh Shit. Hopefully it works out anyway, or Hermes will shoot after. It would be a shame about Leica.
HP Photosmart 8750 Printer Announced - hey, that sounds really good. Maybe it could eventually replace my Epson Stylus 3000. Archival-quality prints are definitely something that's still on my to-do list. And there's also a 3-gray ink cartridge available for the HP, which should make black-and-white prints look nice.
Canon EF-S 60 mm F2.8 macro lens - could be a replacement for the 50/2.5 macro at the right price. Not that I wouldn't like the 50mm, but the 60mm is just the necessary bit longer in focal length and above all it goes directly without adapter down to 1:1. The 50mm only down to 1:2.
Nikon Face-Priority AF is another step towards subject-tracking focus
Canon EOS 20Da, Japan Only - well, surely astronomers outside Europe would want something like this too. And I think some infrared photography enthusiasts could be interested in it as well. In any case, I think it's good that some exotic variants of digital cameras exist, even if for me a pure B&W digital SLR without a Bayer filter would be more interesting (Kodak made them once, but unfortunately they've all been discontinued).
Sigma: 30-mm lens with F1.4 for digital cameras - could be quite interesting for my 10D, the angle of view is nicely close to the normal focal length I prefer, and the light intensity is a clear plus. On the other hand, of course the question remains whether the bokeh of the Sigma lens is typical for Sigma - i.e., poor...
What are you looking at?
What are you looking at?
A reposting of an old image from 2002 - near Husum. I'm currently playing around with my new photo plugin for WordPress and needed test material.
New Polaroid 600 SE
New Polaroid 600 SE
I got myself a new Polaroid 600 SE. My old one was pretty beat up — from a bargain bin, broken shutter release, dents, dings, etc. The new one is in pristine condition. And it even came with the 127 lens, which I had been missing so far. Nice optics, especially with a much more sensible minimum focus distance than the 150. And the results look great — I just love Polaroids. However, my scanner was pretty dusty after not being used for a long time, and of course the dust didn't just disappear after a few wipes. As a result, there were lots of dust streaks visible in the image. Well, Photoshop and the Polaroid Dust & Scratch Removal Plugin saved the image pretty well. But anyway, I don't usually scan my Polaroids — I make them for the photo album. Really old-fashioned, with cardboard pages, tissue overlays and such …
Camera Bellows and Hoods - Bellows manufacturer that produces replacement bellows. Possibly a solution for my Fujica problem.
Camera Bellows Restoration Trick - Tips on the repair and sealing of camera bellows.
Reprinted Repair Manuals - all kinds of service manuals for all kinds of camera types.
8 Pieces Winter
8 Pieces Winter - 1
This afternoon I had the opportunity to take the little digital camera for a walk. By the way, you can use "View Image" on the larger image to display the image in its original size - with newer images, these are then available in 800x600.
8 Pieces Winter - 2
First Winter Images
First Winter Pictures - 1
Not particularly impressive what winter has managed so far this year, but this morning there was actually some white powder snow on the ground.
First Winter Pictures - 2
Apple - iLife
The new iLife05 sounds good too - especially of course the new iPhoto with RAW file support. What's ultimately quite annoying for me: I then have to ask myself even more why I actually bought iView Media Pro in the first place - especially since iPhoto 5 now has the calendar view and keyword search has been available for a long time anyway.
Steves Digicams - Konica Minolta MAXXUM 7D - User Review
The test report of the Minolta Dynax 7D sounds very interesting. I especially like the camera's strongly classic design and operation. Unfortunately, it wasn't available when I had to retire my old Kodak DCS 520 - otherwise the Minolta might possibly have won out over the Canon EOS 10D for me.
Just the fact that the silly scene modes are missing I find particularly appealing.
KODAK EASYSHARE-ONE Zoom Digital Camera
Not uncool: a camera with wireless LAN. And the large display is certainly not impractical either. Something like this could appeal to me for on the go: simply shoot pictures and send them off. However, only via appropriate WLAN hotspots - those are rarely to be found outdoors in nature where I prefer to photograph
If the camera had Bluetooth and could connect via a Bluetooth phone over GPRS, then it would be pretty perfect as a digital notebook.
PNGCRUSH - Small command-line tool for optimizing the size of PNGs
Kyocera Discontinues Some 35mm Film Products
The dismantling is beginning. Kyocera is phasing out the analog line - something that had been expected for quite a while and was already in the works. But now even the bestselling Aria and the RX2, which was launched only relatively recently, are being discontinued. And a whole range of lenses. It's a shame - one of the most fascinating SLR systems is slowly disappearing from the market. And sorry, but the N1 and its lens lineup are nice, but definitely not comparable to the MM System. That one had grown over many years and was therefore nearly perfect in its equipment by the end. It will take quite a while before the N1 reaches that point.
I found the original article on PhotographyBLOG.
Cadmium batteries to be (partially) banned in the future
Ouch. Bad times for photo flash units. They draw so much power that NiMh batteries typically have significantly longer flash charging times compared to NiCd batteries. And far from all flash units offer LiIon batteries.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Pixelog - Very nicely made picture blog with pleasant layout and good photos
Luminous Landscape field test the R-D1
The first test of the R-D1 that I've come across so far. Well, 3000 dollars (or euros) is no small change and not everyone can just pick one up right away - so it can take a while before the first tests come in. The camera is still interesting. But simply incredibly expensive.
At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.
the Degree Confluence Project
Absolutely Cool: someone has started a project to find and photograph all the intersection points of integer-valued longitude and latitude coordinates. You have to come up with an idea like that in the first place
Holocore / Mac OS X Software / OnDeck - Upload plugin for iView Media for image uploads to commercial image services
Fuji Discontinues Medium Format Cameras
Orks. Fuji and Bronica exiting the medium format market. Fuji in particular had some really cool cameras on offer - they will leave gaps behind. Where else is there such a compact rangefinder camera for 6x9 format? Or something comparable to the highly flexible 6x8 (ok, the Mamiya 67 comes close - but only 6x7, not 6x8). Too bad.
At PhotographyBLOG there's the original article.
SanDisk's budget 2GB Secure Digital card
Crazy. 2 GB for 200 dollars. Under 200 euros. Back in the day you were happy if you had a hard drive that worked — today you've got tiny plastic postage stamps with that kind of capacity. Even crazier: today's megapixel monsters actually make these cards necessary ...
At Engadget you can find the original article.
Double Your Data Volume with the PROshift+ Adapter
Not really new, but elegantly implemented: a shift of the camera within a larger image field produces two images that are then stitched together in the computer to create a larger image. Of course, this only works if the lens also provides the necessary image circle.
At PhotographyBLOG you can find the original article.
Fred Miranda Releases Velvia Vision Plug-in
Sounds quite interesting. Sure, you can do all of it by hand if you know how. But not everyone feels like figuring it all out themselves - a plugin like that is pretty handy. And Fred produces quite decent plugins - his Stair Interpolation is still one of the best upsizing tools.
You can find the original article at PhotographyBLOG.
Does focal length change perspective? - Another explanation of perspective and focal lengths
What is "Perspective"? (2) - ... and why telephoto lenses don't compress perspective at all
Bibble Labs - Professional Photo-Manipulation Software
I don't often link to commercial software, but I'll make an exception here. The reason: the software - a pretty nice image management and processing application - now runs identically on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. For Linux, you can even choose between RPM and DEB package formats. And as a Debian user, I naturally like that sort of thing. The only thing missing now would be for them to learn that Debian, like RPMs, make sense not just for Intel processors, and to also produce a PowerPC version of it - then you could manage images on Linux-powered Macs as well.
Update: after I installed the test version, I have to say the program looks very promising. However, the current version still seems a bit rushed - at least in the OS X version there are one or two problems. Dialog boxes (particularly noticeable with all floating toolboxes) occasionally have disabled dialog elements, even though they can normally be clicked. The main window sometimes just won't minimize or collapse to the title bar (WindowShade). The Preferences dialog hung when I moved the mouse around a bit over the tooltips of the options. The (switchable) docking check for tools makes the response very sluggish and jerky.
However, I was immediately impressed by the proper support for Canon's RAW formats and the good integration of image edits - every change is visible live, even with .CRW files. And the changes are only saved as .bib files, the original files remain untouched. The background conversion works quite well too, although there's a small pause when a batch conversion starts, but after that you can browse through the images quickly again.
I only tried the Pro version because Work-Queues (consolidation of images from various folders) and multithreading would be important for me - my images are organized on disk chronologically and roughly thematically, but to compile a gallery or arrange a printing job, for example, I need to consolidate various image sources. And without multithreading you have to wait for the conversions - which can definitely be annoying.
Bibble might actually be a useful complement to iView Media Pro. Because with the latter, image editing is rather meager and primitive (especially the possibilities for influencing CRW files), but on the other hand, searching in large image collections is brilliantly well solved. Both iView Media (you might even be able to skip the Pro version) and Bibble can access the same directory tree without any problems, and this way you can use the strengths of both programs. The use of Photoshop could then definitely be dispensed with in one or another case, because really it would then only be needed for possible effects or special sharpening.
Compared to Canon's own software, Bibble wins by a mile in any case. It seems faster and is much more powerful. And the image results can easily be compared.