I first visited Berlin in 2006 and found it to be a wonderful city, one whose history was still clearly punctuated by segments of the wall now protected from souvenir hunters by fences. I am sure that I was not the first to contemplate the irony of protecting the wall with fences, but I can see the need. The desire to take a piece home with you is irresistible, “oh this, it is just a stone in my pocket….” I was able to get a piece from an area where there was really nothing but foundation left and it was about to be built over, so I don’t feel so guilty.
(more…)

So you are diligent about backups. You have an external hard drive, and maybe you even backup your digital photos to CD or DVD, but where do you keep them? If the answer is in your house, you are not really fully backed up. Sure, you are ready for the inevitable hard drive crash, but what about fire or burglary?

(more…)

I was hesitant to take the plunge. I actually gave up my turn when I was up for a D300 back in November. We had just had a costly vacation and I wanted to make sure that the camera would be a notable upgrade over my D200. I waited it out a bit and read some reviews and it seemed that the D300 is, in fact, a substantial upgrade. I can confirm that it is, quite substantial.

(more…)

I admit it. I own five camera bags. That is not too bad though. I know of several people who have double that number and still aren’t satisfied. The problem with camera bags is that each photographic situation requires a different combination of equipment. I tried the one lens solution with an 18-200 mm VR lens, and thought I had the ultimate lightweight travel kit, but that didn’t work out. For city travel, the lens is not wide enough, the zoom is wasted, and I have never been blown away with the quality of the photos from the lens either. I keep it as my backpacking lens though, because in the backcountry, weight really does matter.

(more…)

When Apple released Aperture they changed the way photographers thought about workflow, and I was an early adopter and advocate of the program. However, today I find myself using Adobe Lightroom and needing to transfer another 7,000 images out of Aperture. Why did I make the switch? Read on and I will try to explain the rationale behind my change of heart.

(more…)

Reading Michael Clark’s recent post on Inside Lightroom, I got to thinking about the current jpeg workflow that I developed after switching from Aperture to Lightroom and I just realized an extra benefit that I hadn’t realized when I developed the steps.

(more…)

Introduction

I love the workflow in Aperture. I hate the user interface in Capture NX. That said, I decided to see if the RAW conversion in Aperture lives up to my expectations. Frankly, I think I am getting great images out of Aperture, but I am letting others that I read cast some doubts on the quality of the RAW conversion. Also, I really do like the fact that Capture NX can read the camera settings in the file and that makes it my application of choice when I need to generate a quick CD of JPEGs for someone who says, “hey, can I have a copy of those photos you took tonight?” It is easier to just generate JPEGs than explain that I have to process the files first. (more…)

The fact that I just got around to processing some photos from a trip to Glenwood Caverns over a month ago illustrates the problem with shooting snapshots in RAW. Sure, I could have batch processed them with Capture NX and uploaded the JPEGs right away, but I new these photos would need some work. The conditions were far from ideal. We were in a large tour group, several hundred feet inside a dripping wet mountain, and the wet, reflective surface wasn’t cooperating with my attempts to light things up with my SB-800. I was anxious to get some decent shots because I had visited these caves a year ago with a point-and-shoot Pentax Optio, and the photos were worthless. Too bad, because it was dry on my first trip and we were a small group.
(more…)

By Saturday, I had my D200 for four days. I was anxious to get out to do some real photography, but I just had major surgery and I am limited in my activities. Up until Saturday, all my photos were of my pet cockateil, Blake. Here is one of hundreds…
(more…)

Note: this entry is based on something I posted on the D200 forum at Nikonians

There has been a lot of posting in online forums about how to choose between the D80 and the D200 (believe me, I have read a lot of it in the past two weeks) and the best advice that I have found in those threads is to look inward at the type of photographer you are and then match the camera to your needs. I am posting this to help others who may be going through the same process, but ultimately, you need to make the choice based on your own evaluation of your needs and your assessment of the equipment you test. In other words, don’t decide to buy one camera or the other based on my choice or someone else’s review. Instead, evaluate your needs; evaluate the features of the cameras you are considering, and best of all, test them all, if you can.

(more…)