Archive for September, 2008

Changes

Friday, September 26th, 2008

This blog has been around for quite a while now, just coming up to 3 years in fact. In that time I’ve spent many an hour typing away and uploaded nearly 390 posts.

The simple fact is that the vast majority of these are just pointers to other articles or news pieces on the web. There are sites out there that do this better than I and have more time available to provide this service.

The upshot…

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More details on Adobe CS4

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

There’s a feature tour of Photoshop CS4 on Adobe TV and also a piece by Jack Nack giving a detailed list of the new features. Both are worth a look.

If you are interested there are also videos on Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop Extended and Illustrator. Be warned, some of these are quite long.

Flash CS4 has some great new features, a lot of my ‘wants’ have been added. Such as much improved animation editing, H.264 video support…

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Kodak sensors - the M series future?

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

DPReview have a press release from Kodak about their sensors - used in the new Leica S2, various other medium format and 35mm cameras. The interesting paragraph is…

The sensor also includes specific design features that optimize its use in the S2 camera, such as the use of microlenses to increase the overall light sensitivity of the device, enabling improved image quality under low light conditions. In addition, an infra-red absorbing optic was incorporated directly into…

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A good quality 5D Mk 2 video…

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Vincent Laforet has managed to find a server for his sample movie taken with the 5D Mark 2. It’s being hosted by Canon USA and is well worth a look.

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Leica at Photokina

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

David Farkas has a rather large piece on Leica at the Photokina show. He also has a piece specifically about the launch of the S2.

He covers both the new M lenses and the S2 range. There’s also a short section about the new D-1200 digital projector and the digicams.

You’ll even find out why the S2 isn’t called the S1. ;) More on that here.

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Extended range of Lens Babies

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

The specialist LensBaby range has been revised and extended. There’s a new, even more locked down version and the other two version have been modified to allow replaceable optics.

It’s the latter that’s most interesting as it allows a double-glass, single-glass, plastic lens and pin-hole inserts to be used. Allowing new effects and other camera systems to be simulated - such as the Holga and Diana cameras.

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Fuji promise better high-ISO on compacts

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Fuji have announced they intend to release a new series of ‘premium’ compacts using their new Super CCD EXR chip in 2009.

The chip technology uses an unusual bayer patter and is proported to improve detail, noise and dynamic range (it uses two sensitivities to improve this).

It could prove interesting but will the new ‘premium’ compact have an optical viewfinder, a wide-angle zoom (starting at something like 28mm) and properly buffered RAW mode? The F31d didn’t…

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Creative Suite 4 announced

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Adobe have announced their Creative Suite 4, including Photoshop CS4 and CS4 extended. These run in 64bit on Windows but only 32bit on a Mac (they should be 64bit in a future version).

There’s a new user interface (see this primary review) and the package uses the processing power of the latest graphic cards to improve performance.

3D support (in the extended version) has been improved as well.

There’s lots more on Adobe’s site.

Update

Martin Evening has a post on the changes from CS3 over on Photoshop News.

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Sigma DP-2

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Sigma have announced a follow up to the DP-1. The new model, the DP-2 features a less wide-angle lens at 41mm (equivalent) but retains the same f2.8 maximum aperture and pixel count on the sensor.

There’s no indication, as I write, that the RAW performance has been improved over the somewhat poor performance of the DP-1

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5D Mark 2 report

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Luminous Landscapes has a report on the 5D Mark 2. The article concentrates mainly on the video features of the new model. The ‘convergence’ between still and video cameras is something Michael Reichmann has been writing a lot about recently.

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