Apr
03
2008
This is one of my favorite canon lens. I like it when i used to shoot surf action on the beach. You can make great shoots with this lens, especially if you are like sport actions and wild life. It will become a good photography gear with a good price. Some of my photos in my gallery where taken by this lens. It’s sharp, easy to handheld and quick focus in all range.
Some of other people’s review to this lens are:
- ”Crisp, sharp,contrasty images extreamly easy to hand hold even at 400mm quick auto focus”
- ”Portability for such a long range zoom. I found it was extremely useful, even handheld in bird photo…”
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Apr
02
2008
Slip an accessory flash into your SLR’s hot-shoe, crank all your settings to auto, and you’ll immediately get better pictures than you would with your camera’s built-in flash alone. But exert just a bit more control, and you’ll take your pictures to a whole new level — no lightmeters, flash triggers, or stands required.
Without taking that extra control, you end up with those typical flash snapshots: Sure, your subjects in the foreground are properly exposed, but more than likely the background fades to black. That’s never good. Whether you lose a dramatic sky or the interior of a room totally disappears, your subjects look like they’re hanging out in a cave.
The trick to overcoming this problem is to set your camera so you know the background will look the way you want it, then let your flash fill in the foreground — without overexposing your subject.
Sound hard? It isn’t, because of a little miracle setting on your flash called TTL. TTL stands for “through-the-lens,” and it means that the flash fires a pre-flash and uses that, along with information from the camera’s meter, to figure out how much light to put out. In other words, once you set the flash to TTL, you’re free to set your camera to manual and mess around with the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture until you get the background you love — the flash will take care of the subject in the foreground with no extra work from you. (One note for old-schoolers still hanging on to the flashes from your film days: It’s time to upgrade. Get yourself a dedicated flash that works with your camera model, and make sure it’s got TTL in its name.)
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Mar
27
2008
The full version of the Popular HDR software is out of beta with a full release
HDRSoft has released the stable version of the popular High Dynamic Range Imaging program Photomatix Pro 3.0. Among notable new features are a Workflow Shortcuts palette and two ghosts removal algorithms. The program is available for $99.00 direct from HDRSoft and a free trial version is available. There is no upgrade charge for license holders for 2.x versions of Photomatix Pro.
A Standalone application. Merges differently exposed photos into one image with details in both highlights and shadows:
› Exposure blending
› Creation of 32-bit HDR images
› Tone Mapping tool
› Automation with easy-to-use Batch Processing
See more new features of this version on HDRSoft site
Mar
22
2008
Here is some interesting technic posting at psdtuts wrote by Collis
Before and After
Before we get started, lets take a look at the result comparably. As you’ll see we’re taking a great photo and making it really punchy by getting it really contrasty and changing the colour palette.
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Mar
20
2008
The Pentax SMC DA* 200mm f/2.8 ED [IF] SDM is a long awaited lens in the Pentax community. The DA* 200mm f/2.8 is part of Pentax’ professional grade lens lineup and, correspondingly, it is a beautifully crafted lens. The outer body is obviously made of metal and the broad, rubberized focus ring operates very smooth. The lens is also sealed against dust and moisture and The Pentax Super Protect (SP) coating on the front element has been optimized to repel dust, water and grease. Thanks to an IF (internal focusing) design the front element does not rotate and the physical size of the lens remains constant regardless of the focus setting. The deep lens hood features a removable “window” which provides access to the filter area so it’s possible to use a polarizer even with attached hood - a simple and smart solution.
Specifications:
- Optical construction, 9 elements in 8 groups inc. 2x ED elements
- Number of aperture blades, 9
- min. focus distance, 1.2m (max. magnification ratio 1:5)
- Dimensions, 83×134mm
- Weight, 825g
- Filter size, 77mm (non-rotating)
- Hood, Barrel shaped (supplied)
- Other features, ultrasonic AF motor with quick-shift. SP-coating.
Its a good lens with low distortion, low vignetting, really sharpness lens. Check it review in photozone.
Mar
19
2008
It different with its old versatile EF16-35mm f/2.8L USM, this Mark II type is really great and full frame Lens from Canon. The Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM Lens is what I consider one of the most important lenses in Canon’s lineup.
The Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Autofocus Lens is a high performance, water-resistant, and ultra wide-angle L-series lens. The optical design has been improved to offer better edge-to-edge image quality. Compatible with all EOS SLRs past and present, it uses three high-precision aspherical lens elements and two Ultra Low Dispersion (UD) lens elements to minimize lateral chromatic aberration and to produce superb image quality with excellent resolution and contrast.
While most Canon L Lenses have 8-blade diaphragms, the ultra-wide L zooms including the Canon EF 17-40 L Lens, Canon EF 16-35 L Lens and Canon EF 16-35 L II Lens diaphragms contain only 7 blades. The circular shape of the 16-35 L II’s blades help create desirable round-shaped OOF (Out Of Focus) highlights and an attractive background blur. Of course, a lens this wide is not the best for creating a blurred background.
Unfortunately, It need a 82mm filter thread (77mm is standard). If brick walls are your thing, like all ultrawide zooms, there is plenty of distortion at 16mm. Shoot at 21mm and it goes away. Bigger and heavier than the previous big and heavy 16-35mm. But It still isn’t that bad, and is a few ounces (100g) less than 70-200mm f/4 L IS.
Here to find full specification at Canon site.
The Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM Lens could also make a reasonable walk-around lens if your needs are typically for a wide angle lens - especially on a 1.6x FOVCF body. The short focal length range limits this lens’ usefulness as a 1-lens-does-it-all general purpose lens. But, this lens performs excellently as part of a kit.
The Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM Lens - not inexpensive, but highly recommended.
Mar
16
2008
You will not find them in the CS3 program you thought you bought
First time, Adobe Bridge was just a glorified file browser and Camera Raw a neat alternative to the RAW processing software that came with your camera. But, now if you have Photoshop CS3 and you don’t delve into these programs added, you’re wasting your top-dollar investment.
I have some favorites RAW image editing tips using Camera Raw on Adobe Bridge. It’s so good and you may not even need to open Photoshop. Some of this great stuff wasn’t here when CS3 first launched, so before you start, go to Help > Updates to ensure you have the latest versions.
Adobe Bridge also can copying your images from your memory card into individual folders, and back them up while it’s at it: go to File > Get Photos From Camera.
Here are some of my favorites tips on Camera RAW Adobe Bridge:
Clarity slider in Basic panel Find the new Clarity slider on the Basic panel, and crank it up. Essentially, it adds midtone contrast to make your image pop all the more.
Sharpening in RAW Your best bet used to be to sharpen in Photoshop. Now, with Camera Raw’s excellent sliders, and the fact that the sharpening is done to the luminance data (essentially helping you avoid sharpening noise), you may want to use Camera Raw’s sharpening tool on your JPEGs and TIFFs, too.
Click on the Detail tab (symbolized by two small triangles). Then, to harness the full power of sharpening, zoom in to 100% or more.
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