Photography Bay

Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips

Archives for June 2010

Adobe Lens Profile Creator Prerelease 2 Available

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Adobe has made a second prerelease version of the Lens Profile Creator available in Adobe Labs.  As you may know, the Adobe Lens Profile Creator is a utility designed to work with Photoshop CS5, Camera Raw and Lightroom that allows you to build custom profiles for lenses in your kit.  These profiles “describe[] the types of optical aberrations that exist in a particular lens and prescribe[] how to correct the lens distortions in an image captured from the same lens.”

More details and download instructions over at Adobe Labs.

 

Manfrotto & Datacolor Offering Free Monitor Calibration Webinar This Week

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Manfrotto Distribution and Datacolor will be putting on a free webinar on monitor calibration.  It’s coming up on Wednesday, June 16 from 2-3PM EDT.

The course will be hosted by Datacolor’s education manager, Josh Fischer, as well as Manfrotto Distribution product manager, Will Holowka. Together, Will and Josh will cover the importance of calibrating one’s monitor as well as the how-to’s using Datacolor’s Spyder3 solutions.

Attendees will have a chance to win some Datacolor Spyder products as well.  You can register here.

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

Video Stabilization Options

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I just wanted to pass along a little update for those of you into video cameras and accessories.  Over at Tech Tilt, I’ve recently review the Barber Tech SteddiePod, which is a pretty darn sweet, all-in-one video camera stabilization device.  It does a lot of things from steadicam-type shots, to doggie cam, to boom shots.  It’s also got a nice little fluid head built-in.  You can find the whole review, which includes some sample footage, here:  SteddiePod Review.

After using the SteddiePod for a while, I started thinking about ways to DIY a similar device on a shoestring budget.  So, I took $30 to Lowe’s and Wal-Mart, and came away with what I call a DIY GlidePod.  While it’s not as pretty as the SteddiePod, it can do many of the same types of shots.  Of course, the SteddiePod is a smoother, more refined device, but the DIY GlidePod can get the job done for the backyard cinematographers out there.  So, if you’ve got $30 and an hour to kill, you can see how to make your own DIY GlidePod here.

I’ve had some great suggestions on ways to make the GlidePod better, along with alternatives that do a better job with some of the shot types from the GlidePod.  If you’ve got other ideas, feel free to drop a comment here or over on the GlidePod post.

If you’re interested in video gear and accessories, you’ll be able to find camcorder reviews and such over at Tech Tilt in the future.  However, I’ll also provide occasional updates on noteworthy gear here at Photography Bay.

Lightroom for iPad? Adobe says: It’s Hard to Make It Work

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Over on his blog today, John Nack, Principal Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop,  briefly spoke about the huge demand for a Lightroom App for the Apple iPad and how hard that it is to make it work right.  Adobe’s Terry White had previously given us a wink and a nod that we might see Lightroom soon on the iPad, and Nack’s brief commentary suggests Adobe is hard at work to make it happen. However, citing Camera Bits’ troubles, it looks Abode is running into similar road blocks that other app developers have faced when it comes to making a truly worthwhile app for photographers.

Head on over to John Nack’s blog to see his thoughts, and speculate as you see fit.

Canon In-Camera HDR Maps Single Exposure to Individual Pixels

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Talk about changing the way HDR is done . . . .

A recently published Canon patent application (see USPTO Appl. No. 12/630,594) reveals a method for altering exposure values at the pixel level, which would allow Canon to produce a camera that captures a much wider dynamic range with a single image.

The lengthy patent application spells out a process whereby the camera captures a preliminary image with normal exposure values and then evaluates the exposure level across the entire image.  After creating an exposure map of the scene, the camera alters the exposure amount at the pixel level for the primary HDR image capture. [Read more…]