That wasn’t really what I wanted though, so I decided to table the project as the holidays were rapidly approaching.  Then earlier tonight, while tucking away some Christmas presents in a place I know Tracy will never go, some video cables zip-tied neatly into a shoe tupperware fell out into my office.  I looked curiously at this one called the Diamond Multimedia VC500.

It had been purchased a while back to help convert some old VHS tapes to digital (circa 1998 and 1999), then put away indefinitely…until tonight.  I then went searching for the video cable to one of my EOS cameras…after all, I am a pack rat!  And sure enough, after ten minutes, found it and started kicking the tires.  With my rudimentary video editing skills, I was able to cobble this together:

This should work pretty much anywhere too…whether you are viewing on a computer, laptop, iPad, or phone…the vid has been made as cross-source supported as possible, so let me know if you can’t see it!  It’s, of course, a very cheesy first attempt, but suggests that there may be more of a library to come in explaining SLR settings to help demystify things!

Not much other news here – a few more projects in the final steps of review to put out this week, including the AluminArte from Image Wizards, another eBook, and a couple other nuggets as we inch closer to the holidays!  (Are you ready yet?)  Stay tuned, and if you have suggestions on how to clean up that video noise at the bottom of this test video, I am all ears!

Last but not least, the Holiday Giveaway Bonanza is getting pretty hefty, and ready for your entries – get a photo in for a chance to win an amazing package of prizes!  Submit your photo today!

It’s somewhat dated in that the podcasts themselves were published back in 2009, but so much of what he did in that short series is timeless, even though the videos only encompass about 4 hours of air time.  David was also a guest on the podcast here a while back, so we’ve crossed paths a few times.  As you may or may not know, David also suffered some pretty painful injuries from a fall in Italy while teaching a class a while back.  He is in therapy and from my last understanding, almost fully walking again (doctors have given him permission to bear weight on his legs), so if you get a minute, stop over to his blog and give him some “get well” wishes if you haven’t already!

Anyway, todays’ post isn’t so much a back story on David, rather it’s on something David mentioned in his first podcast (you really should check out the entire series too, it had a limited scope, and that gave the arc of critiques he offered that much more meaning and impact – here’s the link again for those of you who missed it above: Within the Frame podcast series ).  What David mentioned almost in passing was this concept of “If Only”.  The thing of it is, we’ve all had these “if only” moments before – can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had this experience.

On one such occasion, I was driving down a road in south Denver, and a wizened lady with her possessions in a shopping cart was crossing the street.  beyond her, the street sloped downward and the mountains of Colorado were shooting up in the distance, in all their grandeur.  It was a moment that beautifully combined elements of several of the artisans I admire, including Cartier-Bressom, Moose Peterson, and of course, Ansel Adams.  It was such a “clickable” moment, but I ended up said to myself (wait for it, you know it’s coming):

If only I had my camera!

If I did have my camera, I would definitely have probably parked the car, halted traffic, and made several compositions to bring one into my permanent portfolio.  There have been others too.  What struck me though, is that we can spend our time cursing the timing, the light, our gear, what we could have, should have, or wanted to do to capture the image….or we can make a mental note of it to hopefully make the image again later!

In his podcast, David mentioned the phrase “In a perfect world” as well.  These two ideas convey rather nicely the entire reason for photography – because there is no perfect world.  The planets will never align themselves for you.  You have to align things yourself.  By recognizing the composition of the moment, the timing, the light, what’s present, what’s lacking, and how you can make the image better – you actually are making yourself better.  So, the teachable moment here is to not kick yourself for the timing of things or the “if only” moments…rather to make note of these elements, because that’s how you truly grow as a photographer – seeing what’s right (and wrong) to make your work and your vision stronger!

What kind of “if only” moments have you had in the past?  Did you make note of what could have made things better?  Did you remember?  Did you ever go back to re-create the image?  Share your own thoughts, moments, and comments below!

After nearly 10 years with one hosting company, I’ve decided to up and move.  They just aren’t getting it done.  The blog was/is running slow, and the folks at my current provider are about to get kicked to the curb.  They didn’t seem that interested in helping me resolve performance issues – all they wanted was more money.  It’s never about satisfying the customer, it’s only about more money.  With that in mind, I’ve always been of the opinion that you reap what you sow.  Since they weren’t all that keen on keeping me, I’m moving this weekend.  On Monday, Canon Blogger will be better, stronger, and most importantly – FASTER!

So, say goodbye to Dreamhost, and say hello to Hostco.  In the meantime, here’s a fun little video that I took on a recent canoe trip.  My seat on the canoe broke on me, and at the time I was sure surprised.  Afterward, the video of it was even more surprising.  Less than ten minutes to watch, but a fun diversion for the weekend.  Have fun, happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here on Monday!

To start, I took an image and pulled it into Photoshop.  Realizing that I would need to do some virtually identical steps across several images, on the first one, I started the process of creating an action.  The action in essence, creates a duplicate layer of the image, converts it to black and white, then repeats the duplication for another 9 black and white layer copies.  So, ultimately your Layer panel has 11 layers to it – 10 black and white layers and one color layer (at the bottom).

Next, I went to each layer and adjusted the opacity down by 10%.  So, the top layer was at 100% opacity, then 90%, then 80%, etc, etc, all the way down to 10%.  At this point I stopped recording the action.  Now, it was a simple matter of saving each of the 11 total images to a folder.  I started with the full layer set visible and saved to web (Control+ALT=Shift+S).  I saved to a specific folder so that each subsequent image could easily be numbered sequentially for easier management later.  In the end, I had 11 images, numbered 1-11.

For the final step, I opened my video editor (Camtasia) and imported the media.  Here it now may take some trial and error to determine image length, transition length, and if you want titles included.  Next, I picked some audio from the native library and added to the time line.  After clipping and taking the last few seconds for a fade out, the slide show was done. All I had to do now was export and share.

In Camtasia, there are many options to choose from for sharing your work online, from Screencast.net (their host) to YouTube, exporting as Flash, .mov files, .avi files, and many other options.  Here you should choose the one that works best for you and your needs.

Last but not least, it’s just a matter of either exporting the video you created and uploading either to your own host through FTP, or using the native interface to export to any one of a number of video hosting services as mentioned above.

For those interested in giving it a whirl, here’s the action I put together in 10% increments.  Feel free to experiment and try your own settings and percentages to style and taste as needed.

Black and White Layers

Got your own ideas for how to create new effects and appearances with stills in videos?  What are your thoughts on this technique?  Share your thoughts, comments, and feedback below or with me via email.

As a final reminder for the week, there’s limited time left on a couple of fronts:

1. The contest for July is about wrapped up – you still have a chance to enter to win a copy of Lightroom 3 from the folks over at Adobe, so don’t forget to sign up today!  Just submit your photo in the Flickr thread.
2. The Lightroom Workshop Series kicks off in a little over a week in Anaheim CA, with Denver following shortly thereafter.  We’ve also added some webinars for those who can’t attend an entire day, and more info coming on that.  We’d love to see you in on a workshop day though, so sign up soon as time and space are limited!  Signups are being handled over at Lightroom Dudes
3. Last but not least, the eBook is out of the gates and initial response has been overwhelming!  Thanks to everyone who has shared their thoughts and feedback on the sequel for 49 Photo Tips.   The 20% savings window is almost over too, so be sure to get your digital download before the end of the month.  After that, it’s regular price of $4.99

I could go on and on with the details here, but without the visual aids it really doesn’t work, so I recorded a video of how things work for you to view here on the blog.  This may seem like a rant (and it is slightly), but it’s also a way of letting others know about the quality of service this company delivers.  It’s less than 4 minutes, but well worth your time.

If anyone has other services they think do better, by all means, give them some link love in the comments!

The monthly contests here encourage everyone to go out and capture new work with a theme in mind, and creating new work is always a good thing, but sometimes, when given a theme, and then looking back at archives, you can find new meaning in older images, when looking with a different perspective.

For instance – I was reading an article over on Nikon (yes, I read Nikon’s website – we all know it’s the photographer and not the gear by now, right?) about the value of sounds.  The article was talking about pet photography and that you can get certain expressions if you catch the right sound (full article here:).  It got me to thinking – what would the lack of sound look like in an image?  So, I decided to close my eyes and try to imagine what a photo of silence would encompass:  the serenity of a flower, the peace of a beach or the darkness of an evening or morning sunrise or sunset when it’s just you and the landscapes, even the chill of the day with snow covering everything in a blanket of quiet.

It gave me such a burst of inspiration from my own archives that I decided to go through and pick these specific ones out with the idea of “silence” in mind…  Of course I couldn’t just leave something like this alone – so I added a little taste of music that I thought would be appropriate:

[podcast format="video"]http://www.canonblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/vids/silence.mov[/podcast]

This is, of course, just my own interpretation.  What are your thoughts when you think of a series of images that captures “silence”?  Would you set it to music?  How many images would you include?  Here I had 8 images…was it too many or not enough?  Sound off in the comments, as it’s really the viewer thoughts and input that is always so valuable!

[podcast format="video"]http://www.canonblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/vids/tether.mp4[/podcast]

As you can see – nothing too difficult or fancy to tether a Droid, which makes for great file manipulation and transfer, which means photos are also easily archived across multiple platforms!  How are others tethering their smart phones?  Just as easily?  I didn’t like the Touch having to go through iTunes and be “licensed” on each computer.  Thoughts and feedback welcome in the comments!

Don’t forget – I am also sharing pics daily on http://mydroidpics.com Won’t set the photo world on fire, but you can get an idea of the quality of images coming off the Droid!   Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

The Easter Egg had some cool trivia too. For instance – does anyone (outside Adobe) know how many babies were born to members of the team during production? WHo is the queen of the tenth floor? Is the wizard still there? If so, where is he now? Neat little nuggets just waiting to be discovered all in CS5!  Got the answers or your own nuggets?  Sound off in the comments!

Also, a final reminder about the April giveaway – some lucky participant will win an Expo Disc from the folks over at Expo Imaging.  Get your balance-themed photos in before midnight tonight to have a chance at winning!  Here’s the link:  April Giveaway

I tried to include as much info in the teaser as possible, but if anyone has questions on how I did all this, feel free to share your questions (or feedback if you prefer) in the comments or vial email!  Here’s a dry run of my daily commute home (if only the real time commute went that fast!):

Happy shooting!  If you have your own time lapse productions, feel free to link them in the comments too!  See you back here again tomorrow…

LR3B2 (that’s my nickname for it), has added several features, and the ones I am most excited about include:

• The ability to manage your video files (short video demo):

[podcast format="video"]http://www.canonblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/vids/LR3B2/lr3b2_blog.mp4[/podcast]

• Addition of point curve control (like in Photoshop)

• Native tethered shooting ability for both Canon and Nikon cameras (a full set of gear was not immediately evident – this is just a first look)

I’ve not had a chance to test the tethered shooting yet, but based on some videos and other resources Adobe has put out, here is a list of the cameras that support native tethered shooting mode for LR3B2:

• Canon
  • 1D Mark III
  • 1Ds Mark III
  • 5D Mark II
  • 5D
  • 7D
  • Rebel T1i

• Nikon
  • D3X
  • D3S
  • D3
  • D700
  • D90

I am sure more will come, but I am not going to hold my breath for the Canon 40D as it’s no longer even in the Canon line-up (but I am betting that soon other models will become available, including the 50D…)

Last but not least, the added feature for Lightroom 3 that is so exciting (again, for me), is Luminance Noise Reduction. This is going to save untold time bouncing back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop on those occasions where I need a little more granular control than previous versions of LR gave me.

More news is sure to come out as the big boys from places like NAPP and others were likely in the know from much earlier than I, and they will have a whole slew of videos, blog posts, and articles covering every nuance.   But, here’s a quick first look that I learned from watching the site for news, installing the beta 2, and giving it a quick whirl to show a few screen shots.  Hope you enjoyed it – let me know your thoughts on the new features!  Are these enough to make you think about upgrading?  What other features would you like to see in an upgrade?  Will you still use Photoshop for your photography work flow or do you see yourselves going solely to a Lightroom environment?  Sound off in the comments – I’llbe back tomorrow with more photo goodness!  Happy shooting!

P.S. Only four more days to enter the Flickr Giveaway for LDP – winner gets a Cheetah Quickstand!

P.P.S. I’d also like to thank everyone that has shown interest in and support of the latest mini e-book offering in the store:  49 Photo Tips which is still for sale in the CB eStore and I’ve kept the price down too, so it’s only $1.99 – that’s less than a nickel a tip!

The community quickly sprung to action, pointing him in several directions, and it occurred to me that I had never done this sort of tutorial before!  It’s not too difficult but there are some pitfalls to be aware of when dealing with borders and logos in photos, especially if you are trying to program these steps into an action or script.  Suffice to say, I figured this was as good a time as any to jump back into Photoshop and keep the digits (and brain) fresh!  So, here’s a new video tutorial on creating borders and logos!  Enjoy!

Your thoughts and feedback are welcome and encouraged as always!  Thanks for stopping in, have a great week, and be sure to stop back in tomorrow for more photo goodness!  Oh yeah, and don’t forget the March contest is in full swing where the winner will go home with one of these super cool Cheetah Quickstands – the theme is wild and the link for submissions is here!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you tomorrow!

Well, when I recently twittered with excitement over the newly released calendar of some of my favorite images for 2010, someone asked me about the template I used to create those images.  I honestly answered that I didn’t really use a template as the website www.lulu.com just let me upload the images and they handled the rest.  On realizing that they were talking about the images on my Photography Website, I recalled that a template was used for those images.  I could have done a written post about this, but those take a lot of time to put together (lots of screen grabs, lots of writing, and lots of uploading), so I instead decided to put together a new video on how to create a template for your photos inside of Photoshop.  The video may take some time to load, so please be patient as this is a self-hosted video production!

Keep in mind – this is just one way – in Photoshop there are always many ways to reach similar results, and as the old adage says, there’s more than one way to skin a cat!  Anyway, this is for you @mitz!  Enjoy, happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!  Oh, and lest we forget, there are very few days left in the January giveaway!  For your chance to win a free copy of Photomatix Pro from the folks at HDR Soft, get your Circle-themed photos in the Flickr Contest Thread by midnight on Friday (Mountain Time – GMT-7).

P.S.  For those that like my videos and want to see the archives, check out the Learning Resource Page from the sidebar for more materials.  And as an additional side note, this is post #600.  No fuss, no muss, no fanfare, but yet somehow I landed back on video tutorials – which is kind of how it all started!  Somehow, ,ind of poetic, eh?

Not only did we get a little piece of history about the place, we got some great shots of the building itself.  With several hundred to parse through over the weekend, I’ve trimmed it to the slide show below showing some shots from both around Brighton and the Armory itself.  The other thing that was exciting about this is that after expressing an interest in volunteering our photographic services for any events, they seemed interested in taking us up on the offer.  We shall see what may come of these serendipitous meetings.  It just goes to show you that it’s always a good thing to support the arts, and always good to think about networking – even when you are just having fun on a photo walk!

Here’s a couple links for those interested in learning more about the area and the Armory:

http://brightonarmory.org/

http://heartofbrighton.org/ArmoryVideo.htm

Enjoy the slide show and we’ll see you back here tomorrow – happy shooting!

[podcast format="video"]http://www.canonblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/vids/brighton/Brighton-Large_2.m4v[/podcast]

Don’t forget too, the January Flickr contest thread is open, and the Circle theme should be producing some interesting images.  Speak your creative vision and enter today!

YouTube:

Thoughts

Price: It’s free! Nothing beats free in my book, and with the competitive landscape of technology, this is pretty hard to beat.

Quality: The thumbnail does not look right, but that’s a minor nit…on playback it seems pretty good.

Ease of use: Another pro here as well…it was easy (and quick) to upload. It took less than a minute to upload, and adding the video details was also easy. You do need a Google account to do this though, but since that is also free, the downside here is hard to find.

Accessibility: It was VERY easy to find the embed code to copy/paste into the blog. And YouTube/Google is pretty recognizable as far as things go, so it’s going to be hard to compete here. But, let’s look at the other services…

Limitations: The only one I can find is that you are limited to videos under 10 minutes. You can do HD quality, up to 2GB per video (so no data size limit), with no waiting in line for video conversion or anything like that. At first I thought 10 minute limit was, well…limiting, but after looking at the other two services, not as much.

Vimeo:

Review of Video Hosting from Jason Anderson on Vimeo.

Price: It’s free…kind of. You can go the free route, but there are downsides which I will go into shortly.

Quality: It seems on par with YouTube in terms of video quality,

Ease of use: Also on par with YouTube, and the dialogs are very similar, so kind of a 6 of one, half dozen of the other sort of comparison here.

Accessibility: Vimeo videos are just as accessible as YouTube ones are, anyone can see them if you set them up the same, so kind of an interesting dichotomy here…

Limitations: Your limitations with Vimeo are that you can only upload 500MB of data per week.  This may sound like a lot, but when it comes to video, that could get eaten up pretty quick. I didn’t see a length limit on Vimeo, but could be wrong here. Another limitation on the free account is that you have to wait in line for your videos to get uploaded. I uploaded the video 20 minutes ago, and still have another 40 minutes to wait before it will start the conversion for me. If you upgrade your free account to the Vimeo Plus one, you can get 5 GB of content, HD quality, no ads, and for $60/year or $10/month. Not too pricey, but again, in a competitive economy, it’s something to consider…

Animoto:

Not reviewable – as it turns out, Animoto only allows 30 second videos for free – everything else is a paid service. The price is cheaper than Vimeo for the service at $30 per year, and it does seem to have no limitations on video length or things of that nature, but the fact that you can only do a 30 second video on their free service seems rather lame. I realize that we need to be quick and to the point with our content, but 30 seconds? Really? This one gets a major thumbs down from me for this and on that basis would not recommend it.

Self-Hosting

In the interests of being as broad in the review process as possible, I thought it would help to also include the self-hosted option as one worth considering. There are some caveats to this though, as services and limitations would vary from one hosting service to another. I use Dreamhost, and I like their hosting, so figured it would be worth showing that here.(You can sign up from the link or from using the promo code CBPROMO to save 50% on sign-up!)

[podcast format="video"]http://www.canonblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/vids/VidReview.mov[/podcast]

Price: Free…kind of. You do have to pay the hosting company for hosting your website, but as far as I know ISP’s typically do not charge additional fees for specific types of content.

Quality: Perfect! Since you are uploading the original video, there is no degradation in video quality – but that being the case, you are solely responsible for quality control…fair warning.

Ease of Use: Again, it depends on your host. For me and the blog, it’s pretty straightforward as I am using a self-installed version of WordPress and I am familiar enough with the functions and formats to handle it, but if you don’t want to be bothered with uploading a video via FTP, then referencing that source URL in your WordPress or website with HTML and all that, it could be challenging.

Accessibility: I hate to beat a dead horse, but it also will be a function of your host, and what format you choose to upload your videos. I uploaded the raw Quicktime video, so it will be dependent on people having Quicktime on their computer. There should be a conversion utility (I think it’s called jwplayer) that converts the .mov format to flash for easier viewing on the web, but this may need to be installed in your version. It is free, but could be a limitation as Flash viewers are more common.

Limitations: You are only limited by your own comfort level here – if you don’t want to deal with all the nitty gritty details, then this could be problematic. For those that enjoy managing all their own content, this could be ideal though, it really just depends where on the spectrum you are. For me, I am okay dealing with it, but if I had my choice between fussing over the details and using a service like YouTube to host it for me so I can go back out and shoot more, record more, and research more content, I’d choose the latter.

*****

So, that’s the top three reviewed for your consideration. If I had to vote on one, I would say YouTube gets the nod. Ease of use, lack of expense, and visibility is just unbeatable. But, keep in mind, that’s just my thoughts. What are yours? Anyone have any particular favorites or preferences for video hosting? Any I missed? Benefits and downsides? Sound off in the comments!

In other blog news, don’t forget, the post from Saturday (yes, I made a Saturday post!) allows you to embed your own photos to the comments! Share your own thoughts on the best photos of 2009 – they do have to be online (embedded via URL) but it’s a great way to share your favorites with the community at large.

Finally, time is ticking away on the December Giveaway. Over $400 in prizes including books, prints, paper, and software are up for grabs so make sure you get your “Giving” themed photo to the Flickr thread before the end of the year!

Also, some major shout outs to friend-of-the-blog, Jason D Moore for his honorable mention in the NAPP sponsored contest “So You Think You Can Teach Photoshop“.  I know Jason had his heights set higher than an honorable mention, but believe me – Jason really can teach the you-know-what out of Photoshop.  So, if the software is what you want to get up to speed on – go check out his site and sign up for a workshop, because I’ve learned a lot from him.  Major shout outs dude – congrats!

Finally, to finally break the ice once and for all on the Canon vs. Nikon debate, I came across this video from Joey L – absolutely hysterical.  Thanks to the NAPP forums for the link, and if you want to know more about JoeyL, check out his recent interview on TWIP – great stuff there too.  (He’s also on Twitter and worth the follow).

You’ve probably heard of Mpix before, at least because I’ve talked about them on the blog, and even shown some of the results in using their metallic inks to get some amazing prints.  Well, I got three new products from them recently while prepping for an art show that is coming up the first weekend in December.  To change things up a little, and give more of a “multimedia” aspect to things, I did a video on this to show you each product, as well as show you what to expect in terms of wrapping, packaging, and delivery time frames.  It’s available on YouTube, but also embedded here for viewing convenience.

Have you had similar experiences with Mpix?  Better?  Worse?  What are your thoughts on the quality of their service?  Feel free to sound off in the comments, or over on YouTube.  For the time being, keep on shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Only four days left to win the $500 package of a Thinktank Photo Multimedia Bag System and the Topaz Labs Photoshop Plugin Bundle over at the Learning Digital Photography Flickr Thread.  Get your photos in soon!  Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Truth be told, the reason for the deferment again is to admit to the charges – and I may as well come clean, since my “friend” Gregg Lowrimore was kind enough to capture me with the evidence in hand.  So, before the rumor mill starts blowing things out of proportion, let me just post the evidence myself and be done with it:

Busted with a Nikon!

So, there it is – the “Canon Blogger” – holding a Nikon!

*****

The back story:  I was holding the gear for a friend who had to use the facilities during the photo walk, when Greg happened to make note of the fact that “The Canon Blogger is holding a Nikon!”  He snapped a picture of me (smiling happily for fellow photogs – and now you see why I prefer the other side of the lens than being the subject of the lens), and now is holding me ransom until I come clean.

He is, of course, kidding, but let me tell you that Gregg’s photography is far from a joke – you simply must visit his site as he’s got an incredible portfolio of work there, and is someone that I could definitely learn a thing or two from (including his skullduggery)!  Please take a moment to visit his site here:  http://www.lowrimore.com and get a taste of what I am talking about.

The other photo walk news I have is a short video of some of the results from the Worldwide Photowalk.  Most of you have probably seen this by now, but I would be remiss if I did not share it here on the blog.  Rather cool too that Scott also generously shared some of his blog space yesterday to the video as well.  Regardless, here it is, and please, feel free to stop over to YouTube and share your own comments:

Since this was totally a “fun” post and not much depth or deep meaningful content here today, I promise to be back tomorrow with something that everyone enjoys – another podcast!  (Episode #27 if my counting is correct…)  Happy Shooting all, and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Initial thoughts?  It’s pretty sweet – love the App Store, the WiFi, email access, twitter access, youtube, and so much more!  A few downsides though – no built in camera, and no microphone – I know it’s not for phone, but recording audio snippets would be ideal.  There are apps you can download but need a mic and with just the audio jack, not sure I am gonna be able to do one of the things I had been dying to do after getting this.  There may still be a way so Googling and researching to see.  In the meantime, we shall wait and see!  Look for a more detailed review of this in upcoming weeks!  Until then, just a couple reminders for everyone:

The Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk is this Saturday in cities all over the world.  There are still openings and it’s free to join.  You could win prizes too, so check for a city near you at www.worldwidephotowalk.com to see.  You can still join the fun if the group leader is okay with it, but if you are not registered, then you can’t contribute images or be eligible to win!

The OnOne Software Plugin Suite 4.5 Giveaway is going on for the entire month of July, but time is starting to tick against you as we are halfway through the month.  This is a $500 retail value and some lucky winner will walk away with this package for free!  Details and rules for participation are at the Flickr thread. If you own the software already, tell a friend as it’s an NFR copy.  If not, then chime in as the deadline will be here before you know it!

BAMBOO FUN!

So, here’s a little teaser video for those that are interested:

This might be fodder for an upcoming contest or giveaway, but only time will tell, so keep your fingers crossed.   In the meantime, here’s the rest of the Friday news:

• Get a good laugh at What the Duck (here’s my favorite)
  
• 

• Check out Jason Moore’s blog – he draws something positive from my negative too (thanks Jason!)
• Rob Weiher keeps capturing unique and fun imagery in his 365 Project
• A neat nugget about Flash card speeds that I didn’t know about

Okay all, that’s it – been a crazy busy week, and I am tired, but also geared up for the weekend.  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here next week for hopefully a little more of an uplifting series of content!

Grab the Feed

Here at the blog though, rather than take sides on such post processing methods, it’s more fun to show people how to do things, and then let you all take your own liberties either with the approach or with your processing afterward, or both to get results that appeal to you!  With that in mind, the feedback I’ve received from the previous discussions included a large number of people that asked for visuals of the process (I guess they are all visual learners).

Well, rather than take several dozens of images showing all the various settings and then explaining how I got toeach, a video seemed a more appropriate approach.  So, here’s the video short for those of you that requested visual aids.  It’s not the most professional but you should be able to get the gist.

This would also be a good time to remind everyone that we are in the dwindling days of the Adobe Lightroom contest.  You can win your own free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, courtesy of the folks at Adobe, simply by entering images you’ve taken in May over at the LDP Flickr thread.  Limit two images per person, but there’s still room for many more entries (no limit on the number of PEOPLE that can participate!)  just join the group for free and post your images.  Good luck to all and may the best photo win!  (Final results will be posted in June – I’l send my top ten picks back to Tom Hogarty for final judging when he’ll pick the winner!)

That’s it for today – I should have the podcast up tomorrow, but as always, no promises as my schedule has been fluctuating at work lately.  Happy shooting, and I will be back with more news, information, insights, tips and tricks tomorrow, whether in written or audio form.  Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Grab the Feed

Additionally, I should also note that the project was finished a while ago (two maybe three weeks), but I am just now putting all the shots together and into a photo montage and tracked to music.  YouTube compression also takes away from it to a certain degree, but you can get the gist.  Thanks go out to my brother-in-law Bill, for letting me use a track off his bands’ CD.  if you want to know more about the band, they are called Billband, the CD is called “Blurred” and the track is called Original Blend.  They can be found at www.billband.com

And now – the basement slideshow:

Like the video? Think it was horrible?  Want to learn more about how to create engaging and interesting videos and slideshows?  Already know how?  Share your ideas,feedback, suggestions, and such in the comments either over at YouTube or here on the blog.   n the meantime, Happy Shooting and be sure to stop back tomorrow for the completed presentation of another project – the weekly podcast!

Enjoy and Happy Shooting!  We’ll see you back here tomorrow (when I’ll hopefully have a podcast ready for all…)

Thanks to the folks over at Blubrry, I have been successfully able to implement a new alternative to embed podcasts into the native feed that already exists for CanonBlogger.  So, in the interests of getting the content posted to iTunes and to those feeds that had not been updated from web references, I am going to spend the next few days providing some video content updates.  The expanding ease of the .mov format not only in this interface, but also for portability purposes also seems to suggest that I am going to stick to that format exclusively for the foreseeable future.

For those that had been coming to the blog for their content, you will already have seen this video, but for those who have been waiting on the feed for new multimedia, this will be new material.  Today, I am re-publishing the tutorial on reducing noise in your images. Enjoy!  For the rest of you, see if you can tell the differences between some clouds shot with and without a circular polarizer.  Share your thoughts in the comments on which one is with and which is without.

Image A:

Image B:

Here’s the nuts and bolts of all the specs:

• HD Video @ 1920×1080 and 30 fps
• SD Video @ 640×480 and 30 fps
• video capture up to 4 GB or 29min, 59 sec
• Video recorded in .MOV format
• Input terminal for microphones
• HDMI output
• 3 Live View Modes
• Peripheral Illumination Correction
• Two Small raw formats
• Silent shooting in Live View
• Integrated Cleaning System
• 21.1 MP
• ISO from 50-25,600 (not a typo!)
• 3.9 fps
• UDMA card compliant
• 15 point auto-focus
• 3″ LCD (920,000 dot resolution VGA)
• 150,000 shutter count cycle
• Price: $2699!!!!!

I guess the only thing that surprises me is the frames per second for still captures.  Yeah okay, it’s capturing 21.1 megapixels and at a full frame, but it is also able to capture 30 fps in HD video!  Why is the still frame rate so slow comparatively speaking (at 3.9 fps)?

That being said, the video features are astonishing, as is the low price point!  I would expect the older Canon 5D’s to drop into the $1000 range shortly…start checking the auction sites!  For the full story that gives all the hype and glamour of Canon news announcements, check out the press release here with all the above shots also in high resolution:

Canon Announces 5D Mark II

Anyone else want to salivate over it with me?  What are your thoughts on this new release?  Will this answer the gauntlet of the D3 that Nikon threw down a short while ago?  I would tentatively say yes – but only time will tell!

Video clips:

http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop01.html

http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop02.html

http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop03.html

http://www.canon-ci.co.kr/product/smov/pop04.html

As you may have guessed from yesterday’s post, today is Tutorial Tuesday, and since time is ticking away from me here, I’ll get right to it. The tutorial today does a comparison of reducing noise from the built in settings inside Photoshop versus a third party plugin. Granted, I went through it pretty quick and didn’t go into a lot of detail on the various settings, but I did want to give you the upshot of applying the different types of nosie reduction, so you can see how superior a 3rd party plugin is to pretty much any native reduction method.

The plugin I am using is for Noise Ninja, but I am sure that the others mentioned in yesterdays comments (thanks go out to Michael Palmer, Jen Rinaldi, and Brian Reyman for their contributions) perform equally well. So…without further ado:

Noise Reduction Tutorial (Web based)

Noise Reduction Tutorial (Quicktime)

So, that’s it for today. Tune in tomorrow for the latest edition of What’s This? Until then, happy shooting and watch those apertures!

Oh yeah, one final thing – for those picking up the blog in their feed readers: Is this podcasting plugin that I am using working? (I am trying a switch from Podpress to Podcasting on the blog, and am curious how the feed crawlers and readers will pick this up). Don’t forget too, the poll on the right hand panel has another few days left, so be sure to chime in and share your thoughts on casual shooting trends.