Photography Bay

Digital Camera News, Reviews and Tips

Olympus E-3 Full Review at Photography Review

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Photography Review has posted a full review of the Olympus E-3:

Photographing with the Olympus E-3 is a bit like driving a sports sedan. You may not need the speed and power most of the time, but you’re sure glad it’s there when you do. Plus, you get comfort and style with your scoot. The E-3 is more than competent for everyday shooting, and its speed and burst depth handle demanding moments with ease. Then, when you’re pushing pixels, the E-3’s files help you get back to pushing shutters sooner.

Thanks for the tip John. Keep up with the latest Olympus E-3 news and reviews on this post.

[tags]olympus, e-3, review, test[/tags]

 

Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS Lens Reviews

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Compact and lightweight, the EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS offers the longest zoom range in the EF-S series to date. The 88-400mm equivalent focal length opens up new framing possibilities for owners of EF-S mount cameras shooting wildlife, sports and travel photography. Optical quality is assured through a UD element, which minimizes chromatic aberrations that could otherwise cause reduced contrast and color fringing.

Canon EF-S 55-250mm Reviews

PopPhoto

A natural for globe-trotting vacationers and soccer parents, this is the obvious second lens for Canon EOS 40D and Rebel XSi owners. Clearly it and the 18-55mm IS make an attractive team that promises sharp pictures in dicey light across an amply wide 13.9X zoom range. And you can’t beat that price.

The Digital Picture

The one great feature the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS Lens has beyond just the basics is a 4-stop Image Stabilizer with vertical and horizontal auto-panning detection. With IS switched on, A half-press of the camera shutter release results in a much less jittery view through the viewfinder.

Photozone

Technically the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS is a tiny lens with a great performance potential. The resolution is very good across the range. Chromatic aberrations are basically a non-issue. The level of distortions remain moderate. The most obvious flaw is, unsurprisingly, vignetting at large apertures. The build quality is fine for a lens in this class and it is one step up from the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS that we’ve seen here recently.

Where to Buy

If you’re buying online, I recommend sticking with Amazon, B&H Photo and Adorama. These three vendors are reliable, trustworthy and generally have the best (legitimate) prices.

[tags]canon, ef-s, 55-250mm, lens, is, usm, review[/tags]

28 Great Adobe Lightroom Resources

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If you’re an Adobe Lightroom user (or a wannabe), you’ll want to take a look at these books and links:

Links

Free 30 Day Trial – try out LR on Adobe

Adobe Design Center – tons of info from Adobe on how to use LR effectively

Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts – a simple, but handy chart

Lightroom Journal – blog by Adobe LR crew

Lightroom News – gobs of essential info, updated regularly

Lightroom Killer Tips – one sweet LR blog from “the Photoshop guys”

Photo Presets with One-Click WOW! – Over 80 free presets for LR designed by Photoshop Hall-of-Famer Jack Davis w/ tutorial video

Inside Lightroom – best known for its awesome collection of LR develop presets

Official Lightroom User Guide (.pdf) – the manual

Lightroom Getting Started Guide (.pdf) – again, from Adobe

RawWorkflow.com – instructional videos from Michael Tapes

Layers Magazine – several workflow tutorials, including some nice vids

Getting Photos to Your iPhone – a handy post for iPhoners from O’Reilly

Keyword Tagging – tutorial on Peachpit on keyword tagging in LR

Project Photoshop Lightroom – several great tutorials on using LR

Tethered Shooting – another Peachpit article on tethered shooting in LR

Peachpit Lightroom Resource Center – the best of the rest from Peachpit

Update:

Matt over at Lightroom Killer Tips has aptly noted that I missed Sean McCormack’s Lightroom Blog. Fixed. That makes 29, but what the heck.

If I’ve missed anything else, please leave it in the comments and it’ll go here.

Books

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers by Martin Evening

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips by Matt Kloskowski

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for Digital Photographers Only by Rob Sheppard

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Workflow: The Digital Photographer’s Guide by Tim Grey

Digital Photographer’s Guide to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom by John Beardsworth

Photoshop Lightroom Adventure: Mastering Adobe’s next-generation tool for digital photographers by Mikkel Aaland

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 for the Professional Photographer by David Huss and David Plotkin

Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom by Uwe Steinmueller and Jergin Guelbins

Adobe Lightroom Photographers’ Guide by John G. Blair

The Digital Photographer’s Notebook: A Pro’s Guide to Adobe Photoshop CS3, Lightroom and Bridge by Kevin Ames

[tags]lightroom, resources, books[/tags]

Canon to Announce Next DSLR on January 24

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It seems that Robert Westin, VP for Canon Sweden, has spilled the beans on Canon’s upcoming Pre-PMA 2008 announcement. This article on Kamerabild.se (a Swedish site) quotes Westin regarding Canon’s 2007 performance and thoughts on the upcoming year. A little help from Google and some translation sites helped me read some of this stuff.

Key points:

1. Canon will announce the next big thing on January 24 – the week before PMA starts.

2. Canon will release more photo products in 2008 than 2007.

My Thoughts:

1. My money is on a Canon Rebel XTi replacement (aka 450D) being announced on January 24th. As I’ve said before, the Rebel XTi (aka 400D) is due for replacement – now at the end of its 18 month produce life cycle. Read more about this camera here.

2. If not announced alongside the 450D, the Canon 5D Mark II is sure to follow later this year. For all the reasons why I think this is the case, check out this page.

3. Something else may be coming too. Canon had three big ones for 2007 – the PowerShot G9, EOS 1Ds Mark III and EOS 40D. If he’s talking about more cameras, then we could be looking at a gap filler DSLR. 3D or 7D anyone?

[tags]canon, 5d, mark ii, rebel xti, replacement, 450d, rumor, news, announcement[/tags]

5 Great Photography Gift Ideas

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Christmas is almost upon us now. So, what to get for that special photographer?

Here’s 5 ideas that will make any shutterbug happy:

1. The easy bet is a new camera, right? But the real question is, which one? If your special photographer didn’t spell it out for you, then you’re left to decide between a DSLR or point and shoot camera. For a primer on how to choose, read Photography Bay’s Holiday Shopping Guide.

2. Get you shutterbug a good book. If he or she owns a camera or you’re getting one for them, then they’ll needs to read Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. Does your photographer like tinkering with photos on the computer? Get a book by Scott Kelby on Photoshop or Lightroom.

3. Photoshop. If they don’t have it and you know they like tinkering on the computer with their photos, get Photoshop Elements – available for Windows or Mac.

4. Lightroom. Do you know your shutterbug shoots in RAW? If so, pick up Lightroom and the Scott Kelby book suggested in number 2.

5. Give the gift of flickr. Sign your special someone up on a Pro account on flickr. While flickr is free, the Pro account is only $25 per year (if they like it, you’ve got an “in” on Christmas gifts for life) and it gives the gift unlimited bandwidth, photos and no size limits. It also allows your shutterbug to share all those photos that they doesn’t know what to do with. As cousin Eddie would say, “It’s the gift that keeps on giving the whole year!”

Good luck and Merry Christmas!

[tags]photography, camera, gifts, christmas[/tags]

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Reviews

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The new Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS was developed by Canon in response to consumer demand for a high-quality yet affordable optically image stabilized lens. While it features the wide-angle to mid-range zoom flexibility of its non-IS predecessor, this new EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens offers the significant advantage of a true lens-shift image stabilization system that yields up to a full four stops of image-shake correction. [Read more…]

Scott Kelby’s Nikon D300 Review

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Scott Kelby has posted his review of the Nikon D300 and really thinks that it kicks butt.

Nitpicking above aside, the D300 is a much better, more fully featured update to the D200 than I had ever imagined it would be. How much so? Well, needless to say, I’m selling my D200 (through the EquipmentLady.com), but I guess what I’m most shocked about is that I’m going to sell my Nikon D2Xs now, too.

Get more news and reviews for the Nikon D300 on this page.

[tags]nikon, d300, review[/tags]

Help Save Kodak HIE-135 Infrared Film

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Kodak HIE-135Since Kodak announced its plans to discontinue HIE-135 film . . .

KODAK is preannouncing the discontinuance of several smaller running families of Professional film – EPR, EPN and High Speed Infrared (HIE) effective end of December 2007. Demand for these products has been declining significantly in recent years, and it is no longer practical to continue to manufacture given the low volume, the age of the product formulations and the complexity of the processes involved.

We will continue to ship product through the end of this year. (Kodak.com)

. . . James C. Williams has started a jihad to save it.

Important to this cause is the fact that Kodak is listening:

Below I have copied an email I just sent to Patrick Hamilton, Public Relations Director, Kodak CDG EAMER: patrick.hamilton@kodak.com

Mr. Hamilton has encouraged me to write Kodak and is aware that I am attempting to start an email campaign to save HIE-135. He has assured me that he will get the messages to the appropriate people.

You can see James’ email to Kodak, along with emails from others, on this thread over at Photo.net.

If you shoot film or have been thinking about shooting film, consider picking up a roll of HIE-135 from B&H Photo or Calumet, a couple of the few places that I’ve been able to find it online. Thirteen bucks isn’t much for a good deed this time of year (I’ve ordered a roll from B&H for myself). Also, send an email to Patrick Hamilton at Kodak if you like the stuff.

UPDATE:  Kodak has heard the voices of many and still refuses to keep HIE-135 alive.  Amatuer Photographer published a portion of Kodak’s statement on the matter:

While we very much appreciate the correspondence we’ve received from some photographers – who use our infrared film and would like to be able to purchase it in 2008 and beyond – the fact is the decline in the use of infrared film has been so substantial over the years that it is no longer practical for Kodak to continue to manufacture the film given the extremely low demand and volume, the age of the product formulations and the complexity of the processes involved.