Moose News Blog

I told myself I wasn’t going to get caught up in PhotoKina madness and for the first time in many years, I’m not checking constantly for new releases. Thankfully, I have some good friends at PhotoKina keeping me in the loop. Epson today announced the P3000 & P5000. Here’s the specs, it’s the LCD & transfer speed that have me instantly requesting the P5000. It will rock for a new book project I’ve started.

• Large Four-inch LCD: View and share images and videos with precise clarity and detail in 640 x 480 high-resolution.
• World’s First Four-Color LCD: New Photo Fine Ultra technology offers the world’s first four-color filter system of red, blue, emerald green and yellow green, rather than the standard three-color LCD technology; capable of displaying over 16.7 million colors, enabling images to be reproduced more accurately than ever before.
• High Capacity Hard Drive: Download, view and store thousands of JPEG and RAW photos, or videos and music with either a 40GB (P-3000) or 80GB (P-5000) hard disk drive.
• Adobe RGB Color Space Support: Supports images taken in Adobe RGB and a wide color gamut reproduces 88 percent of Adobe RGB color space.
• Expanded File Support: Supports image files (JPEG, EXIF and select RAW files), video files (MPEG4, Motion JPEG and DivX) and audio files (MP3 and AAC).
• Faster Download Speeds: New processor provides speeds up to 250 percent faster than previous models.

I wasn’t provided nor could find any photos of the new units, but I’m sure someone will post them in the next day or two.

Epson is really busy…and it’s all good for YOU! First, they announced their new 17″ printer, the 3800. Printing technology is jumping by leaps and bounds with Epson coming out with products that really make our images shine! The price is to be around $1300 with it being available in December.

Next, I just received an email from Dano at Epson that the Print Academy has added new events this coming spring. Having been to the PA myself (had a great time, learned alot) and having friends teach there like Vincent & John Paul, I can’t recommend it enough to you. The new cities/dates are:

October 28 Phoenix
November 11 Salt Lake City
December 2 Atlanta
January 20 Los Angeles/Orange County
January 28 New York City

Both the Track One and Track Two programs will feature the recently announced Stylus Pro 3800 printer

Be sure to check it out. Click on the logo to learn more.

And he says it’s not for pros!

Had a little time on the flight to Alaska, so I read Scott Kelby’s new book, The Digital Photography Book that I picked up at Photoshop World. Scott makes a big fuss that it’s not for pros, but I would argue that! I’m so excited about the material, I set up a little studio in my Kenai Princess room to take the cover shot so I could post as soon as I got online again.

The info is solid, the techniques well described, the logic–flawless! Yeah, some might be a little “basic” for some photographers, but it’s all great info that should the foundation of all photographers. I can’t recommend this enough!

WOW!!! What a week! I’m now up in Alaska, exhausted from an amazing week at Photoshop World. Want to thank everyone for a very memorable week of fun and commaradery. The NAPP Photo Safari started off our week. We went shooting at Valley of Fire were we found some killer landscapes. We had Joe McNally with us as an instructor for the first time. Now not truly a landscape photographer, he still managed to find us some great forms. Joe worked his magic for the group, doing some amazing lighting with the setting sun and lightning. Our model MC was really great, working until the last ray of light bounced off the rocks. Using a student as a VAL, I set up just one light off to the side for this shot. If you’ve not been to a Photoshop World, come join in on the fun!

Photo captured by D2X, 200f2, 1-SB-800 on Lexar digital film

Ever noticed how there are some days when you can’t do nothing right. You ever set up your tripod and getting everything just right, just about to press the button and one tripod leg slips messing everything up because you didn’t tighten it enough? Here’s one everyone can relate to. You’re out shooting a sunset and dial in minus compensation to capture the perfect color. The next day you review your morning images only to find you forgot to dial out that minus compensation from the sunset. How about you put your normal body cap on your teleconverter by mistake?

The list of technical errors can go on and on but they are nothing compared to mental errors. We all know about trying to shoot a series of shots when the film counter was at 35 (yeah, talking about film). There’s always that time when you took one extra step closer to a subject, one your gut said not to take, only to be taken and the subject takes off. The mental list is for me longer than the technical one, but that’s all part of being human and a photographer. Sadly, they all come down to thinking, or not thinking.The one thing that kinda gets under my skin though is when these things happen and photographers start looking at the camera gear as the culprit of the dirty deed. It is as if the camera wakes up and says to itself, “I’m going to mess up my photographer today!� It’s gotta be the cameras fault! But when you look back, it all comes down to us.

I was recently rebuked because I couldn’t give a photographer the golden answer to their problem. The problem, a sharpness one, the photographer couldn’t get an image sharp. The golden answer; a list of possible camera/settings that were wrong that when set differently would cure the focus problems. The answer I gave, go back to basics and practice, practice, practice, was discarded as brush off rather than the solid advice it was. The problem must be a setting on the camera, or environmental or perhaps the lens, anything but PILOT error! What did I know?

There was a time when AF was thought to be a joke, not a viable tool. In fact, I think I wrote something like that back in the days of the F3AF & F4 when we had just one, dead center AF sensor. Now, if we don’t get a sharp image, it must be the AF system, or a setting, or a lens not locking on (does this on purpose you know). There’s no way it could be pilot error!

Photography in all its grandness requires a firm basics foundation for success. That foundation covers everything from camera operation to light to simple technique to monitor calibration. This firm foundation gives us the ability to grow with confidence, build on the last success and learn from the last failures. The firm foundation also gives us a place to go back to when things for wrong, permitting us to back engineer and find the problem. While it is easier on the ego to blame everything else but us, heading back to our foundation often proves otherwise. When things go wrong, I know I RUN back to the basics when all else fails!

Photo captured by D2Hs, 200f2AFS on Lexar digital film.