Photographs, Photographers and Photography

Archive for March, 2006 - click any heading for the full Article

31 Mar 2006

Wither digital?

How long will digital last?

I wonder whether digital 35mm cameras have come to a point where the rate of technological change is very much in the world of diminishing returns?
I got thirty years out of my Leica M3, bought in 1973, and it remains very capable today. The later Leica lenses are a bit […]

30 Mar 2006

Your nearest and dearest

Put them on a US postage stamp
If you want to mail friends and relatives with a legal stamp bearing the likeness of your nearest and dearest, go to Stamps.com, upload your favorite snap and send some money. Turnaround is about a week and the post offce accepts these. Here’s our boy Winston:

29 Mar 2006

New EOS 5D firmware

It pays to stay current
Canon has released Firmware update 1.0.5 for the EOS 5D.
Here’s mine loading and the result:

This fixes a problem with color pictures taken with the Standard Picture Style with +4 Color Density setting (the pictures would lose saturation on the sRGB setting and appear monochrome) and with the 85mm f/1.2L lens when […]

28 Mar 2006

And now for some pictures

Which is what it’s all about.
All that cataloging in Aperture did have a bright side, specifically an opportunity to reacquaint myself with many pictures from days past. So after all this talk of cameras and printers and software in recent columns, I thought it might be nice to share some pictures with you.
As is […]

28 Mar 2006

Global interest

Isn’t the Internet wonderful?
Recent data on the locations of some of the visitors to this site - a truly global selection! Don’t worry, I do not know your identity, only the location of the reader.

Let me see. The United Kindom where I grew up and learned that most civilized of games, cricket. […]

26 Mar 2006

Apple’s Aperture - Part IV

Output, back-up and conclusions
Output in Aperture means several things. These include:
Paper prints
Slideshows
Books
PDF files
Lower resolution files
Web pages
All are beautifully implemented and for anyone unfamiliar with iPhoto ’06, the book publishing option is simply a knockout. Aperture offers what iPhoto’06 has and more. Apple is capitalizing on much of the code developed for iPhoto […]

25 Mar 2006

Apple’s Aperture - Part III

Image adjustments
Starting from the premise that there is no way on God’s earth that image ‘processing’ will ever be fun for this photographer, it sounds disingenuous to admit that manipulating photographs in Aperture is, well, almost a blast. That’s because the natural flow of steps taken to get a good display or print image […]

24 Mar 2006

Apple’s Aperture - Part II</