Breaking News RSS
ScanDigital Offers Aid to Colorado Wildfire Victims
A 50 percent discount on services plus restoration help and digital archiving for the victims. Others can get a 10 percent discount the company will match with a 10 percent donation to the Red Cross on orders coded HELPCOLORADO.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- ScanDigital has announced a nationwide campaign to assist Colorado residents affected by the recent...
Samsung’s WiFi EX2F—Not Just Smart But Bright Too
In a world where every digicam is "above average," Samsung has raised the IQ of its new EX2F with two unusual features.
The more exciting one is the fast, f/1.4 lens. The company rightly brags that nobody else offers that greedy a lens for available light. You get that f/1.4 aperture at the 24mm end of the zoom range. At the 80mm telephoto end, you don't do too badly...
The Fourth, Fireworks & Hot Dogs
Having had such a bad experience using Fireworks mode testing a recent digicam (don't ask) at the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th Birthday, we pretty much have sworn off stills in favor of HD movies of the things for the Fourth of July.
It's ironic that so much of what a digicam tries to do with the average snapshot is just plain wrong for fireworks:
• Autofocus? Forget it,...
Flashpipe Diffuser Becomes Kickstarter Project
Les Tirmenstein has launched a Kickstarter project for his FlashPipe, a new design in diffusers for hotshoe-mounted flash.
According to Tirmenstein, "The quality of the light it produces is soft and bright with an ever-so-slight warming that makes skin tones look great. It's incredibly lightweight at just one ounce. And the coolest part is that it folds flat when not in...
PhoozL Announces ‘The Art of Nature’ Photo Contest
Photography education and entertainment site PhoozL has just announced its latest "super-judged" photo contest: "The Art of Nature." Nature and wildlife pro photographer Daniel J. Cox selected the contest theme and will pick the final winners.
The contest is open for submission until July 31 with participants allowed up to five photos relating to the theme of the art of...
Checkin’ out these hot summer pancakes (shooting the Canon 40mm f/2.8 lens)
As the year of the lens rolls on, I snagged the 40mm f/2.8 pancake for the weekend and managed to get off a shot or two with it. Though it didn't dazzle quite as much as the $900 Olympus 75mm M.Zuiko I posted last week, the Canon 40mm pancake could be a good choice for your first prime lens. It's small, light and affordable at $200, and serves both APS-C and full-frame...
Canon MX892—A Photogenic Office Device
There were two things that intrigued us about the Canon Pixma MX892 when we read the press release announcing its introduction.
First, we wondered how well a current generation office printer could print photos. And secondly, we wondered how well Canon had implemented AirPrint for printing from an iPad.
With the same color ink set as the MG-series of Canon's photo...
Power to the people: DSLR manufacturers ranked by online purchasers
Late last week, marketing info services company J.D. Power and Associates released its annual Digital Single-Lens Reflex Camera Online Buyer Report, created in cooperation with Bazaarvoice's PowerReviews service. Some 8,100 verified DSLR buyers were polled by PowerReviews, and asked to rate their purchase in five key areas. From most to least important, these included...
How to Photograph a Hamburger
On Friday, we shared a video on how to photograph a hot cup of coffee and now here are some great tips on how to photograph a hamburger courtesy of -- who else? -- McDonald's.
Though this video is more about food styling and Photoshopping than it is about photographic technique, it does give some good insight into what goes into making food more appetizing in photographs...
Olympus 75mm f/1.8 M.Zuiko lens captivates editor
2012 is the year of the lens, with more drool-worthy optics hitting the street every month. Some of the most exciting lenses are coming out for Micro Four Thirds cameras, effectively packing lots of imaging power into a small package. With the E-M5 still fresh in my mind, when the new Olympus 75mm M.Zuiko lens landed in our office, I claimed post-test dibs on the gorgeous...
Lens Review: Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM
Canon released the EF 40mm f/2.8 STM alongside its EOS 650D / T4i Rebel body; the lens is tiny, less than an inch in depth, and only four and a half ounces in weight. It employs a new focusing system - "Stepping Motor Technology" - which allows the lens to focus very quietly and is very useful in movie capture. We have put the lens through its paces in our test lab: click...
Nauticam’s NA-EM5: Like having a submarine for your Olympus OM-D?
If you're shooting with Olympus' handsome OM-D E-M5 compact system camera, likely one of the features which attracted your attention was its weather-sealed body. There's definitely something to be said for shooting safe in the knowledge that even if your camera gets wet, all should be well.
Like all weather-sealed, interchangeable-lens digital cameras, the Olympus E-M5...
How To Photograph a Steaming Hot Cup of Coffee
If you visit any of the photo sharing sites such as Instagram or Flickr, you may find that eager photographers seem obsessed with one thing. No, not THAT thing; another more highly caffinated thing. Coffee, that is: blogging and tweeting about it and, above all, sharing photos of it.
Honestly, if we have to see one more close-up photo of the foam on top of a freshly...
Take Coristine’s ‘One in a Thousand’ to your Desert Island
The trouble with most of those books you'd take to a deserted island is that they don't say much about islands. This one is different.
"Several years ago when I was in the aircraft business (distributing Challenger ultralight aircraft across Canada), I went on a random flight with a couple of friends that changed my life. I happened to trip across a relatively unknown...
Canon acknowledges S100 lens issue, promises free repairs
Since its launch back in September 2011, the pocket-friendly Canon PowerShot S100 has proven to be quite a popular camera with photographers seeking better-than-average image quality by compact camera standards. It certainly doesn't hurt that the S100 also offers Full HD video capture, plus a built-in GPS receiver that's used both to geotag images with their capture...
Make Your Photos of Roses Actually Smell Like Roses with These Scented Papers
How often have you heard someone say that one of the pleasures of photography is it lets you stop and smell the roses? But what if you could actually smell those roses in your photos? Or how about a shot of your new baby that smells just like a new baby?
Think that photographs that smell like their subjects sounds too good to be true? Or like something out of a science...
Sigma prices DP2 Merrill, preps for delivery
Sigma Corp. has today revealed pricing and availability for its Sigma DP2 Merrill digital camera, a pretty major update to the previous DP2 model. Announced last February, the Sigma DP2 M has a new APS-C image sensor and processors, all inherited from the impressive Sigma SD1 Merrill digital SLR.
Output resolution from the full-color Foveon image sensor soars from 4.64...
Five Tips For Making Great Black & White Photographs
Rich Harrington and I discussed this the other day and I thought it would make a good post. There are many things that I learned about black & white photography back in the day when we used film: black-and-white film, that is. Some of them translate to digital and some don’t.
For those of you who want to work in black & white, here are a few tips.
1. Capture as much...
More Canon primes tested by LensRentals
A week ago, we told readers about the first test we've seen of Canon’s new 40mm pancake prime lens, courtesy of Roger Cicala, founder of LensRentals.com. Today, Roger's rolled his sleeves up and gotten to work with Norman Koren's Imatest suite once more, to test two more Canon primes announced this year: the EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM and EF 28mm f/2.8 IS USM.
As with the EF...
Canon puts the excitement back into the humble firmware update
At the IR news desk, we report on a lot of firmware updates, but most have one thing in common: they only attempt to squash operational bugs, and occasionally to make very minor feature changes. A small minority are more interesting to us--and likely, to the cameras' owners--as they add one or two entirely new features.
A rare few indeed make comprehensive feature...