• Networking with local photographers and cinematographers is a wonderful thing. Through my friend Jordan, a local filmmaker, I had the chance to join their small group for a meetup where they were testing out some of the latest tools that they had picked up. As a still photographer, I was pretty mesmerized by all the goodies that they brought, like HD monitors that fit in the hotshoe of the camera and have many interesting features like false colour for measuring exposure and edge peaking to help with focus. Somethings, like the LED video lights are already being adopted by photographers as well. Jon (reluctantly) volunteered to model for us while we tested some of the gear. Here's my belated shout out to the gang for letting me tag along! Thanks guys, all of whom you can find on twitter: @jdog23 , @phoric ,@mattdrake123 , @stevetan , @klimlevene , @jonrawlinson
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I've had the 12-24mm on my shopping list for awhile, but other equipment always seemed to take priority. Now that I've got it ... well, cold cold weather be damned, time for a test drive!


People waiting for the bus at the Bay

After admiring this lens for quite awhile, I finally rented it from the good people at Beau Photo for a chance to play with those cool tilt/shift controls. You always need to test your gear before using it on a job, and I wanted to have it handy for a shoot I was about to start.

We've signed on with Pictage and are in the process of trying our next couple of weddings using them for client proofing and ordering. They are endorsed by many well-known wedding photographers, and seem to have a good workflow and event management system. At first glance, membership seems a littley pricey, but they offer a number of unique products that we're interested in trying and that we think our clients will enjoy. We'll post more when we receive our studio sample albums!

If you have experience with them as photographers or clients, we're curious to know how happy you were with them? Please share any experiences in the comments below ...

We all have 'background' projects that we work on and for me, scanning in my old slides and colour negatives is one that I've been chipping away at for a long time. This shot was part of a "key-shifting" assignment back in the day for a lighting course at Langara.



I hadn't scanned any for awhile and last night when I went to use my Minolta Scan Elite, it refused to scan. After a couple of hours of troubleshooting with no success, I started scouring the web for possible solutions. I found that Minolta became Konica-Minolta and that now Sony has taken them over. Along the way, the available information on this scanner has slowly evaporated and of course, it's no longer supported. I really didn't want to buy a new scanner since this one used to work fine, but you start to run out of options once items get discontinued. The product cycles are so fast theses days it's kind of crazy. Anyways, I eventually found another piece of software which worked (Vuescan) and I was able to get back to my project. Whew! Scanning in the above photo, I was reminded how nice film can look.

Nikon France seems to be the first Nikon site with images & specs.

My French is a little rusty, but it seems like the rumour mill had the D700 specs correct - the D3's 12 MP sensor (& ISO range), 1 CF slot, Live View, built-in flash, etc.

The SB-900 sounds interesting, with a new user interface, wider coverage, more power, faster recycle time and filter detection for white balance adjustments.

Update: Nikon Canada's site now has all the info ...

Since seeing David Honl's flash accessories mentioned on Strobist a few months ago, I finally decided to order this past week. Strangely, the velcro speed straps were the things that initially drew my attention - mostly because I really didn't like mucking up my flash with the sticky tape velcro of previous light modifiers I had tried. I added the straps and the snoot into the online shopping cart, and then said "well, since I'm paying for shipping to Canada anyway ... I might as well get a few more items". So I ended up getting at least one of everything, including the gel set and grids. :)




The gear arrived today, simply packaged in ziplock bags with little card inserts giving the URL to the infamous "belly dancing" example video. The quality of the materials is quite good and they feel like they will withstand heavy use. I'm looking forward to putting them into action as soon as I can, and I'll post some comparison images when I get a chance.

Links
David Honl's main site
David Honl's blog
Honl Online Store