• Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
• State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
• Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
• Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
• Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
• Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
• New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
• More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*

Of course the “improved everything” is going to be awesome but the slideshows as videos and new publishing options have me excited.

So to get your self started you need to do the following things.

Download the Beta

You can find the beta here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/

Note: you will need an Adobe account to access the download and the downloads are 120mb for windows and 68mb for Mac OS. Either way it will be a wait for the download to complete.

Backup backup BACKUP!

Can’t say this enough. This is a Beta kids so there will be bugs in the system and the last thing you want to do is open your catalog of 14000+ images to only have find it reduced to nothing and taking all the changes you made to your images with it.

Install and have fun

Well you don’t need me to explain that huh!

I have not installed the new version yet (downloading as I type) but to be sure I will be giving a review shortly.

Check the link out.

BBC NEWS UK

The photographer had been sued for taking (and to be honest they are) terrible pictures and awful video for a wedding!

Just a lesson to be learned. If your gonna take some one’s money for making photos. Be good at what you do…

• Digital Photography School has a 5 Tips for Young Family Portraits. This hits quite close to home with me as we still have not taken a family photo yet and time is getting on.
• Next is a music video by the Cinnamon Chasers for their song “Luv Deluxe”. This is an impressive show of how powerful video on a DSLR is. Granted the guy had a Canon 5D MrkII strapped to his face but it give me hope that with the new Canon 7D out now we will see more high standard of videos from normal people… Hell maybe I can make one? Anyone got 1500 euros? Oh and the song is not too bad either!  You can find the video on Youtube and I do suggest you put it into HD and let it buffer before playing

Using heavy lifting machinery they will walk a couple of giants around Berlin.

Normally they don’t give any notice of their shows and just show up and do their thing. But this time they are letting people know that they will be here to celebrate the anniversary of German reunification.

But I have seen the ads around Berlin and to be honest it’s not been directly easy to find information about the event.

Info : http://www.riesen-in-berlin.de/

So if your passing in Berlin between the 2nd and the 4th you should really check it out. You might not have another chance.

Long time no see. I am working on getting this site back up and running.

In the next week or so I will have wordpress updated and a new template implemented.

Just to give you guys a taste of the things to come I thought I would upload a little preview of the theme.

Sorry I have not been around often. I have been uber busy lately with work and some redesign issues. I am trying to update wordpress 2.7 but it messes with some of my other plug ins so I have had to take it long and slow. But hopefully I will be back to normal soon.

Want to mention quickly… Congratulations to Scalespeeder for buying the 350D – He has released a podcast discussing that!

I wanted to share this video with you about time lapse. I found it at Digital Photography School – An Introduction to Time-Lapse Photography. Its just a interesting look into how to start time lapsing. But the showcase video is from Ross Ching that shows just how impressive time lapse can be! And yes he was tilt shifting while time lapsing… Super impressive!

Eclectic 3.0: The Roads Less Traveled from Ross Ching on Vimeo.

]]> http://hatphoto.nomagicpill.org/2009/04/updates-and-time-lapse/feed/ 0 http://hatphoto.nomagicpill.org/2009/03/some-rules-just-change/ http://hatphoto.nomagicpill.org/2009/03/some-rules-just-change/#comments Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:47:24 +0000 The Laddie http://hatphoto.nomagicpill.org/?p=55 As a long term digital camera user I found a consistent rule that went with bundled software.

DO NOT INSTALL!

The issues that you can potentially get from installing are:

• It can change all your images to load into a default program and not photoshop like you had it set before.
• It can on starting up look for all the images in your personal folders and regardless of them being photos you have taken and ignoring your folder structure (if any) and places them some where else in a different folder structure.
• When you connect your camera or a mates camera it will start automatically and go nuts downloading all your pictures even though you only wanted to look.
• Takes way too long to load.
• Takes way too long to download.
• No upload features (upload to flickr).
• No support for other operating systems like Linux or MacOS.
• Key photo manipulating features can be missing.
• Can be buggy as hell.
• Your camera will only work in this software even if before you could browse your memory card via windows.

That’s only the things I can think of. I am sure there is more!

So maybe leave your software in the box because you would be better off?

Now for the exception to the rule!

I was talking to my mate ‘S’ from high school about his new Canon 450d and one thing lead to another and I found out that he did not even take the disc out the box. Now addmittedly he runs Linux so he does not need to bother looking if the software is supported.

But it planted the this seed.

What if there is other users that don’t install the default software because of the bad experiences like the ones listed above?

If you have a Canon DSLR then you should install the EOS Utility and here is why.

You can tether your camera to your computer or laptop and have the possibility to control the camera and even use live view! After that you can also set up time lapse or a interval in bulb exposure mode. Not impressed yet?  can take it a step a further by setting up a folder where your EOS Utility could store your photos. Then have lightroom (or potentially any other good photo suite) monitor that folder in your hard drive and automatically have lightroom import anything new from it.

So you get a remote control, mass storage and the editor of your choice! Seamless integration!

There are other alternatives! DSLR Remote to name one but it is not for free. I feel that it is more featured and no frills but it costs too much to warrant buying it unless you are a super pro photographer (then why are you reading my blog ).

Regardless of the camera you have. Give the manual a look over and also read the reviews. Try to find out if the software is useful and bug free.

Don’t rely on past experiences any more.

“Low”

Yamaneko_ has kindly chosen “Science & Technology” for the March competition.

So lets get started.

1. Shutter Release

Pressing the shutter release fully will take a picture. The button can also be pressed half way (not completely down) which will tell the camera to auto focus and to take a meter reading to determine your settings. This half pressed feature is really important, here is why: when your taking a picture in auto mode the camera will guess what you want to focus on but its not always right. Lets say your taking a picture of a model in front and to the right of a tower, so the tower is in the middle. The camera will keep focusing on the tower as its big and in the middle but then leaving your model blurred. You can just point the camera at your model, then half press the shutter release button to focus on him/her and then while holding it half pressed you can move back to having your tower in the middle again. You will have kept the focus set to the model and if you release the button and try again it would focus back on the tower.

As a little side note. Nikon and Canon use a AF point system which means you can set where the camera will focus to within the camera without using the shutter release method.

2. Main Dial or Configuration selector

Depending on which option you have selected this cog dial will allow you to change the value of that option.

3. ISO

You can press this and then select an ISO that you need or set it to automatically select the ISO.

4. Power On/Off

If I have to explain this… Well you should know its the switch that activates the mini black hole that sucks in everything into your cameras memory card. Use with caution.

5. Mode Dial

Here you can select all the modes that are available for your camera. Starting from A-Dep we will work our way around (of course more detailed explanations will be available for each mode later).

A-Dep : Auto Depth of field - This mode allows the camera to automatically set the depth of field without any fuss. What is depth of field?

M : Manual Mode - Full manual mode giving you complete control over all the cameras functions!

AV : Aperture Priority Mode - Turns everything on Auto except Aperture and ISO.

TV : Shutter Priority Mode – Turns everything on Auto except Shutter speed and ISO.

P : Program Mode - When used will set all the settings automatically but then gives you the ability to change things depending on your situation. (maybe auto mode makes the image too light and you can adjust it within P mode)

Green Square : Full Auto Mode - All the configurable functions in the camera are under the cameras control and you can’t change anything.

Persons Head : Portrait Mode - Auto mode that will configure the camera for portraits

Island with Tree : Landscape Mode - Auto mode that will configure the camera for landscapes (including night scenes)

Flower : Macro Mode - Or also known as “close-up mode” is an auto mode that will configure the camera for really really close up shots.

Running guy : Sports Mode – Auto mode that will configure the camera for shooting Sports or moving objects.

Guy with a Star : Night Portrait Mode - Auto mode that will configure the camera for night portrait shots.

So we now know where some of the basic functions are for the Canon 450D which hopefully wont be all that different form Nikon’s or Sony DSLR’s. If your using a point and shoot camera however you might not have any of these options at all and if you do they could be hidden in some menu. Simply consult your manual for these modes and hopefully you have them.

In part two I will finish off the rest of the Canon 450D and then after that we can move on the more technical side of photography explain Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.

If I have made any mistakes please let me know!

• Squeeze The Lime released this little gem of a video about “Herlinde’s Fist Photo Shoot”. Bert Stephani shows what he would normally do when braking in a new model. I found though that the video sort of morphed into this less complicated guide to portrait photo shooting. Just simply showing the user position of lights, reflectors and what lenses to use then after that show the result is just simply inspiring! Thanks Bert! –>Click Here<–

LIME008 – Herlinde’s First Shoot from Lime Photography on Vimeo.

• Check out Vimeo.com. Its a great site that shares flickrs concept of free service but can go pro. Of course its only for video. You get a 500MB a week uploading free which video from those small cameras is more than enough. The processing time is a little long (max I have seen is 1 hour) before your video is live but you can remove that waiting time by going pro. Now pro is not the cheapest thing either but you can upload HD video after that so it really depends on what your doing. Regardless if you join or not take a look at some of the videos. You wont be disappointed. –>Click Here<–

• Last but not least I wanted to reference Victor W. again! If you have not added this guy as a contact you need too do it now… I am waiting… I said do it now!!! Ok joking aside you really need to keep an eye on this pro photographers stream as he is a real inspiration!  His recent master piece I can’t stop looking at either. Fantastic lighting, great subject and very very original!