I Almost Bought a Lens...

That's right, almost.
We managed to have a night of from running chickadees to various ECAs (extra-curricular activities), and I jumped on the chance to drag the wiz to Henrys to peruse their lenses.
Particularly the CANON EF 28-135MM/3.5-5.6 IS USM and the CANON EF 24-105MM F4 L IS USM LENS

For a moment, ignore the fact that there's a $600 difference between the lenses. This is going to be my *everyday* lens. The one I reach for like a best friend, whenever things get tough. The one that's going to be taking atleast 75% of all my photos. I can *justify* an extra $600, just give me enough time and incentive.

In fact, I was almost 100% convinced to go with the 24-105, and asked Brian (the smart photo guy behind the counter to get me the real lens, in the box, so I could bond. Alas, they were out of stock. WHAT!?!?!? Henrys was out of stock on what could arguably be one of the most popular lenses for Canon? WHAT!?!?!?!? 5 days to get one in? In this day and age when I can have something FedEx'd overnight, they stuck with 5 days? Do you know what could happen in 5 days?? I could find another lens. How about an option to have something not in stock FedEd'd to the customer's house?

Sigh. Alas, no sale was made. In fact, I'm now reconsidering everything. I might go back to the 28-135. In fact, if it's going to be my everyday lens, and is going to take the most beatings and wear and tear, maybe I don't want that for a $1200 lens. See - I can justify just about anything. And where to buy it? Maybe Craigslist.

:-)
Technorati Tags: Henrys, Canon, Lens, Craigslist, Federal Express

Dreaming of the Perfect Lens

I've been lamenting the fact that I've got a hole in my lens collection. I need something that squeezes nicely between the 50mm that I try and use with some regularity, and the 17-40 that I don't use enough.

I'm dreaming about the
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM Standard Zoom Lens



In my camera bag.........

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Medium Telephoto Lens


Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM Telephoto Zoom Lens


Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens



Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM SLR Lens

Publishing Books

Keri & David

July 21st 2007

By Photography by Jul...

Book Preview

Picnik vs Adobe Express

Yesterday's big hubbaloo was the announcement of Adobe's new web based, low cal version of Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Express.
Of course, being the gurl I am, I set up an account, uploaded a few photos and gave it a whirl.
Yes, you can also connect to your existing, on-line photo streams (Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa), but I couldn't get it to work with Picasa Web Albums. (maybe just a launch problem).

The good:

• the ability to see a whole bunch of versions of a particular change, i.e. black and white - you can vew a few flavours of black and white.
• the ability to control sharpness
• the nice touchup ability

The not as good:

• limited effects (Picnik has wicked effects)
• no border creation

I'm sticking with Picnik. Sure, Adobe's thrown in space, but space is the last thing I need right now, what with photos scattered around the internets like breadcrumbs. Picnik is faster, and lets me do more with less.

Side note: I downloaded the Mac version of Photoshop last night. I've got 30 days to decide if it's something I'm really going to pick up or not. I fell onto Joey Lawrence's site. I might be convinced. His photography is stunning.



Technorati Tags: Joey Lawrence, Adobe Express, Adobe Photoshop, Picnik, Flickr, Picasa

WiFi Photo Frame - WiFi Digital Picture Frames - WiFi Wireless Digital Photo Frame - eStarling

It's a brave new world, world. Imagine having a wifi enabled digital picture frame. Anything you shot, or had shared on the internet, or had stored on your hard drive could automatically be sent to the frame. Now imagine your grandmother having this frame on her desk in Florida. Imagine your parents with a frame in their kitchen. Sharing photos has never been easier. No more memory cards to load and replace. You could be anywhere, and could email new pictures to the frame with a few clicks of your camera-phone keypad. I just need one of these. In fact, I think I need 3-4 of these!

WiFi Photo Frame - WiFi Digital Picture Frames - WiFi Wireless Digital Photo Frame - eStarling

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Tags: wifidigital picture frame, eStarling

Smell the Flowers

Floobergeist Prom Paparazzi

At Floobergeist, we know your prom is a big deal. We also know your purse is small, too small for a camera. You want to be *in* the pictures, not taking them all night. You want someone to tell you when you need to add lipstick, or fix your fly. 

Hire Floobergeist Paparazzi to spend the evening with you, and then choose which photos you'd like turned into a hard-cover, professionally published, photograpy book.

The details:

• 75 page, hardcover book with dust jacket
• full colour and black and white photos
• you proof - we publish
• all photos also available to purchase on-line - soft copy or hardcopy - it's your choice - it's your prom
  

Contact Floobergeist Fotos for more information.

Sleepy

Horsewoman

Sharing Photos Online

There are literally hundreds of sites that will help you share photos online. Your choices may depend on if you're also using a photo editor or a media management application (photo organizer).

I've got a few different processes that tend to work best for me, but really, it's all about personal preference, and what path you may have started down previously.

I use Flickr for *internet safe* photography. Photos that don't involve kids. I have friends and colleagues on Flickr. The Flickr community is outstanding for social media, sharing interests and gaining feedback.

I use Picasa for some photo management and easy editing, and have recently started using Picasa web albums, simply because it's built in and easy to use. I have family, and private albums on Picasa. Picasa is fantastic to be able to really control access, but there's not any emphasis on sharing or social media.

I now use Picnik quite a bit, it's agnostic between my computer photos and those that are already uploaded to Flickr and Picasa WebAlbums. Picnik is an extraordinarily rich photo editor, and it's browser based, so there's no fighting between my windows and my MAC computers. With Picnik, I can pull out a Picasa photo, do some edits on it, save it to Flickr, or even email it to Floobergeist and have it auto-publish.

 Now with the Mac, it looks like I'm going to have even more options - with iPhoto and Aperture and Mac's iWeb features.

It's going to be a busy spring. 

Dog in Flight

infrared

Comfort

The New Age of Photo Albums

It's a brave new world when it comes to turning your digital creativity into something that can be preserved and shared in an analog world.
Over the holidays, I created and published 2 hardcover photography books to give to different families as Christmas presents.

It was a labour of love.
After testing various different photo book publishing applications, I decided that Blurb was the solution that fit my requirements the best.

• needed to offer a configurable dust jacket
• needed to have reasonable software to download (I wanted something more than just drag and drop in a browser window
• needed to have LOTS of configuration choices in the format of the overall book, as well as individual pages
• needed to have a great price for 40+ pages

Blurb answered all those requirements, the main one being the dust jacket. Blurb didn't charge me extra for the dust jacket, unlike some of the alternative publishers.

It took me about 2 weeks to finalize the formatting and the pictures for each book.
Ordering was a SNAP.
Delivery was speedy.
Books were outstanding.
The printing and the photos were incredible.

Due to the subject matter (pictures of little kids and the wild internet don't mix very well), I unfortunately can't show you how the exact books turned out... but I will be creating new ones, and will provide you with the URL to them!

Sunrise Zooms By

Dreams for a Wireless Photo Future

Ever since reading about the develipment of wireless memory cards, both SD and CF, I've been dreaming about the possibilities.

Now, of course, I want one *right now*, and they are hard to come by in Canada [read: Impossible].

Still, a girl can dream.  I'm going to be in Miami for about an hour on Tuesday, maybe I can get one there?

SanDisk's Wireless SD Card Has Memory

Picnik: Best On-line Photo Editor

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to photo editors.  A lazy geek. I don't want to spend hours with PhotoShop, and I don't have a Mac (yet) to be able to play with Aperture. That being said, I'm pretty picky about post production work on photos.

I've been a hard core Picasa gurl. I'm addicted to the *glow* enhancement in Picasa. I've also been pretty hot on paint.net... but for some reason, I don't have enough reserve memory to make it run smoothly on all my machines. (My fault, not Paint.net's fault). Paint.net has got some outstanding plugins for softening portrait pictures.

Before Christmas, I stumbled on Picnik. I'm in love. So much so that I'm using it almost as much as I use Picasa. So much so that I even opted for the uber-membership. Picnik integrates itself nicely with Flickr, Facebook, your Picasa Web Albums, and any other on-line photo infrastructure you might have adoped.

Picnik's got features, flexibility and some really neat creative tools. Think Lomo-styling, or Holga, or the Infrared filter I've been trying to recreate. Utterly goof proof. Now that I've shared the secrets, I'm sure amost everyone who thinks I'm a reasonable photographer will begin second guessing my so-called skills.  Really, it's all about the tools ;-)

Powered by ScribeFire.

Photo Worth 100,000 Words

I am in awe of the ever increasing tide of photo contests. Facebook has a new sponsored photo contest from picture.com that promises $100,000 in rewards for best in class photos.

The trick seems to be that there's no rhyme or reason on the photos - picture.com simply judges photos - thousands of them, and publishes the winners online..... and there are HUNDREDS of winners. Perhaps that means the odds are good? :-)

Publishing Analog Albums

There's such a growing interest in publishing professional "coffee table" photography books. On the flip side - everyone and their uncle seems to be getting into the "self-publishing" game. Blacks, Future Shop, Shutterfly, Chapters, and even Shopper's Drugmart.
That being said, I've found that the best options are those sites that allow you to download software that you can play with to customize the look you really want to achieve.

I've tested out about a dozen of these sites, and over the next week, I'll be reviewing some of the ones I spent the most time with:
Blurb Booksmart
My Publisher
Shutterfly
..... stay tuned!

Infrared Photograph

Ever since discovering BeyondSight, I've been rolling the idea of infrared around in my mind like a smooth pebble. Infortunately, when I asked the good folks at Henrys about an IR filter for a specific Canon L series Lens, they were confused "Are you sure you don't mean a UV filter?  Granted, the fellow was young, and likely not many folks ask for something as obscure, so I left it, to return to the 'net to see what else I could dig up on Infrared photography.

Taking IR pictures is harder than one might imagine.  Apparently it doesn't work so very well with digital SLR cameras - better with digital non-SLRs... so I've already got that going agains me. Something to do with the blocking of IR light in an SLR, and the fact that you can't see the composition in the LCD screen (really, i'm not convinced of the reasons why SLRs don't allow for that feature.) 

Using software to try and mae an IR feeling photo from a regular photo is hard too...Of course, in theor Adobe can do it, but only on a Sunday, and only when the wind is blowing from the east.

Suggestions anyone?