Neil Duffin Blog

Just a quick note. I’m having a problem with CaptCha! on my hosting service and no comments can be left at the moment. If you really want to contact me you can send a message from my contact page.

I’ve found a couple of reviews of the new features in Lightroom Beta 3 (via The Luminous Landscape). They are on PhotoshopNews and Computer Darkroom.

I’m still waiting on a couple of features (as I think a LOT of people are), namely de-spotting and versions. I have a whole list of other things I would like to see, but they seem to be covered already in the ‘feature request’ forums for Lightroom.

I’m going to try (when…

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I’ve been revising my ASP.NET skills for my work and I’d just like to give a quick review of this book…

It’s a fast paced book covering pretty much everything to do with ASP.NET development. As such it’s not massively detailed on any subject and is really more of an introduction (as the ‘Essential’ part of the name would suggest) but coverage does seem quite good.

I have worked on web programming in the past and also…

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Beta 3 of Adobe’s Lightroom is available for the Mac. A Windows version is to follow, but is not yet ready for download.

You can download from this page. You need to register (if you haven’t already) and you can register to be informed when the Windows version becomes available.

One of the problems with the Epson R-D1 is that you have to remember which lens you used for which shot - well you do if you care. I tend to place my shots into sub-directories under the main ’shoot’ directory, one for each lens type. The reason you have to do this is because the camera has no idea what lens is being used. There’s no data communication between the lens and the camera.
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There is an interesting article linked from Digital Photography Review about using capacitors to replace batteries. Two groups, one the in the UK and one in the USA, seem to be working on very similar techniques to use nano technology to increase the surface area (and therefore the amount of energy stored) in capacitors.

Potentially, this gives a huge advantages over batteries in terms of charge time and environmental friendliness - they should last years and…

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Scanning the web I found a couple of interesting websites that I thought other people might be interested in…

If your photo budget is a bit minimal or you just like making stuff, check out Macro Photography On A Budget. Some of the shots produced with this ‘DIY’ solution are really quite good. The main body of the Photocritic site is also very interesting and definitely worth a look.

There is a posting on the Photocritic site…

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I purchased a Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard some time ago. One of the issues with this device in that it doesn’t appear to play nice with the Mac. My version has a British layout and this just makes it worse. I could just use a standard Mac keyboard, but…

• Their ‘British’ keyboard is nothing of the kind and is instead an ‘International English’ keyboard.
• The keyboard is not very ergonomic and I value my wrists - I…

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A report on the BBC shows a survey by Nokia saying that mobile phones are taking over from standalone cameras as people’s main device. Interestingly, this is mainly in places like India.

I’ve been saying for a while that I think this is going to happen. It’s just so much easier to have the camera, video camera, MP3 player and PDA all in one device. You ‘have’ to carry the phone anyway.

It’s also a good thing…

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So, it’s the 3rd of June and I’d been looking for the firmware update for my R-D1 since the 1st.

You would think that Epson would put a link on the front page of the R-D1 site (where is says it will be available) or perhaps have a file download from the download section on that site or their European site’s download area.

Nope.

I’d come to the conclusion it had been delayed, but thought I would check…

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