Photography Bay

Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips

Archives for September 2009

Wacom Adds Multi-Touch To Bamboo Tablets

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Wacom Bamboo Multi-touch Tablet

Wacom has added multi-touch capabilities to its popular line of Bamboo tablets. There are now 2 tablets in the Bamboo family that now offer multi-touch capabilities – the Bamboo Touch; and the Bamboo Pen and Touch.

With the new Bamboo Touch, you can navigate your PC or Mac in a totally different manner than using a mouse.  It works much like the multi-touch screen on an iPhone.  The Bamboo Touch uses 9 key gestures to do things like click, zoom, scroll and rotate.  It also has 4 programmable buttons to take care of common actions.

Bamboo Pen and Touch has two sensors, one for pen and one for multi-touch.  What’s more, the tablet automatically recognizes when you are using your fingers or pen on the tablet’s surface.

The Wacom Bamboo Touch carries an initial retail price of $69, while the Bamboo Pen and Touch runs $99.  Check availability on Amazon.com:

Bamboo Touch

Bamboo Pen and Touch

My first take on these multi-touch products is that they are quite cool and could be used productively.  I have an older Bamboo tablet that I break out for image editing sometimes, but the multi-touch capabilities of this new series give me the hope that I might one day soon be able to ditch my mouse for good.  We’ll have to wait and see how the product performs in real world use to make that call, but I happily welcome effort from Wacom  on this new feature.

More details below. [Read more…]

 

Think Tank Photo Airport TakeOff Rolling Camera Backpack

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Think Tank Photo Airport TakeOff Rolling Camera Backpack

Think Tank Photo has just released their new Airport TakeOff rolling camera backpack.  The new camera bag has a telescopic handle and wheels for pulling it around airports or other smooth surfaces.  The Airport TakeOff also has handles in place for vertical and horizontal toting positions, as well as backpack straps when you need to throw it over your shoulders for a trek. [Read more…]

Nikon D300s ISO Test and Sample Images

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Nikon D300s

The Nikon D300s is a 12.3-megapixel DSLR with an equivalent sensitivity range of ISO 100-6400.  I have had the pleasure of testing the D300s for a few weeks now and wanted to share some sample images that demonstrate the image quality and low light potential from this camera.  The following images were captured at night using the Nikon D300s and AF-S 50mm f/1.4 lens.

Below you’ll find several handheld shots at ISO 3200 and ISO 6400, followed by a series of shots from a tripod capturing the same scene from ISO 100 to ISO 6400 with one series using noise reduction and one series without noise reduction.  Additionally, you will find several charts showing a comparison of the sensitivity range at a variety of Noise Reduction settings. [Read more…]

Picasa 3.5

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Picasa 3.5

Google has released Picasa 3.5.  This new version of the popular, free photo photo editing software adds a number of features for organizing and sharing online.

In Picasa 3.5, you can now import to Picasa’s desktop client and upload to your Picasa Web Albums account in one step.  Additionally, Picasa 3.5 has added face detection technology and will help you tag faces of individuals in your photo library (see above screen capture).  You also get geotagging integration with Google Maps for easy drag and drop to the location you got the shot.  Google also improved the tagging system for better bulk tagging, quick tags and tag counts.

To read more about the updates and download Picasa 3.5, see picasa.google.com.

Fuji Instax Mini 7S Instant Camera

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Fuji Instax Mini 7S Instant Camera

The Fuji Instax Mini 7S instant camera is becoming available in the US. The Instax cameras have been available overseas for many years.  While the professional market has had the Instax 200 instant camera since last year, consumers have been without many options in the instant film department, particularly since Polaroids have dried up.

The Instax Mini 7S  uses ISO 800 speed film and produces a 2″ x 3″ instant print.  It should be available September 2009 at an initial retail price of $95.99, while the film will retail for $19.99 for a 10-pack.  Check availability on Amazon.com.

More details in the press release below. [Read more…]

Panasonic GH1 Sample Images

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Panasonic GH1

The Panasonic LUMIX GH1 is a Micro Four Thirds camera that captures still images and 1080p HD video.  It is packaged as kit with a special lens designed for enhanced video capabilities.

While you can expect an ISO evaluation and a full review of the GH1 soon, below you will find some images that I’ve taken in my testing of the camera.  These images are from a production model.

The lens used was the 14-140mm kit lens, which offers optical image stabilization.  Unless otherwise noted, image stabilization was turned on, file format is JPEG large/fine, handheld, and using auto white balance. [Read more…]

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8

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Adobe Photoshop Elements 8

Adobe has just announced Photoshop Elements 8, which offers a number of enhancements that appear to be geared toward a more user-friendly environment.  That’s not to say that there isn’t horsepower available in Elements 8, given that it borrows even more tech from Photoshop CS4, like Photomerge Exposure for an HDR experience in Elements.  Additionally, Windows users can pony up for a “Plus” version, which adds 20GB of online storage for automatic backups.

Photoshop Elements 8 will be available in October 2009 at an initial retail price of $99.99.  Check availability on Amazon.com.

See the following press release from Adobe for more details. [Read more…]

The Best Camera

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World renowned photographer, Chase Jarvis, has developed an iPhone photography App called “The Best Camera.”  You may recall that we recently covered 24 Cool iPhone Photo Apps.  In that post, there were many photo apps which applied a variety of different filters and methods to share your photos with others; however, there was no one app that took care of it all.  That was Chase’s goal in creating The Best Camera – one app to rule them all.  [Read more…]

Canon Dust Delete and Mapping for Video Files

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Canon has a Dust Delete Data process in its recent EOS DSLRs.  Essentially, this process records where the sensor dust is located on your camera’s image sensor and appends that information to each image file.  This file appendage is then interpreted by Canon’s Digital Photo Professional software and applied to the imported images in order to automatically remove dust spots from your images.  Canon says this is for RAW and JPEG images only – not H.264 video files.

The recent surge in video recording capabilities for DSLRs like the Canon 5D Mark II, Rebel T1i and Canon 7D have made it apparent that similar technology is needed for video files.  As far as I can determine, this technology is not available in-camera yet.  From my limited knowledge of video post-processing, it is possible to remove dust spots, hot pixels and the like from video files, but it is not an ideal solution and must be done in post-processing.  However, that is something that Canon aims to change. [Read more…]