PShizzy: The Blog

A buddy of mine clued me in on this a few days ago. ThinkTank Photo, maker of photography bags and accessories, has started an affiliate program. Here’s the deal: Purchase anything from their site over $50 using an affiliate and you will get a free bag (note the image) with your purchase. Using my affiliate code means I get a commission on the purchase, 10%, sent to me twice a year. Here’s how:

• Go to http://www.thinktankphoto.com/affiliates.aspx?code=AP-208
• Enter my affiliate code: AP-208
• Fill out your purchase order
• When you hit “Review Order” a new window will open, resembling the image on my blog. Select your free bag, and continue on.

ThinkTank regulates the prices on their equipment sent to distributors, so prices do not vary greatly from store to store. Buying from them direct means you get a free bag and pay the same you would anywhere else. So, naturally I should recommend that you all go out and buy some ThinkTank gear, right? Well, sort of.

Read on to hear about my personal experiences with ThinkTank, including their equipment, and customer service. (more…)

Tags: equipment // 4 Comments »

Tomorrow, November 18th, starting at 6am PST, you can get a free copy of Zonealarm 2009 Pro for free. Lifehacker, a favorite site of mine, has more info. As soon as the link is available, I will edit this post and include the direct link. For now, check out the article at Lifehacker, or the Zonealarm site.

Note, this is Windows only, which makes me a sad Mac. Not really though, because I have a PC laptop.

EDIT: Link is up. Click on the links above, or HERE.

Tags: business, general // 1 Comment »

Another quick update for everyone. I got this note in my email from the folks at Adorama. Their online print shop, AdoramaPix, is offering 16×20 prints for 4.95. This is a great deal, and it gets even better. They offer this price for metallic prints as well. By comparison, MPix (also an excellent print shop) charges 19.99 for metallic 16×20, and White House Custom Colour charges 16.80 for a 16×20. Just click on the image to head on over to AdoramaPix.

And, if you look closely, the ad mentions prepaying. Lock in that price over 25 prints for 124.00, so you can still cash in on the savings long after the sale is over.

Of course, there are other factors to consider besides price. I love Millers lab (same place as MPix, but for businesses, while MPix is open to anyone), and their service and shipping time is superb. Still, a big metallic for five dollars is hard to beat. I would say that anyone considering the prepaid option should at least order one print up front, or a couple, and see how they like Adorama versus their current print shop.

If anyone has any experience with Adoramapix, please comment, I’d love to know more. I typically don’t print much of anything for myself (I’m more of a digital screen kinda guy), but if I do put in an order, I’ll report back.

Tags: business // 6 Comments »

First, Instant JPEG from RAW has been updated to version 1.1. Added support for new cameras (50D, anyone?) and some bugfixes make it a worthy update. Click on the image to head on over to their site.

Next up, I thought I’d test out a photo gallery. Photoshelter has recently updated their site to offer Flash based photo galleries. I think it’s pretty cool because it’s so easy to set it up. In fact, it’s retroactive, so I can set up a Flash gallery for any galleries I’ve already made. Creating the gallery itself isn’t too hard either, but this has further motivated me. So, I’ll give it a test run after the jump.

Oh, and I’ve been playing with a few D3′s lately. I really like the cameras. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from users over at the FredMiranda forum on a few posts about the D3 and my opinion on it. Link to that after the thread. It’s been a long couple of weeks. Preseason NBA, NCAA and high school football, even a local kids soccer game, plus other non sports shoots (wedding, and two schools) have kept very busy lately. It’s been great to be so busy, but it’s also been time consuming. And of course, it’s my favorite time of the year, with the NBA season finally starting. More after the jump! (more…)

Tags: photography // 2 Comments »

One of the most common sources of frustration I have on a regular basis is that of filesharing. That’s because while everyone has the internet, how we have it and how we use it is so unique to each of us, that we often end up with a few incompatibilities.

Let’s take email. Everyone’s got an email address. But not everyone supports the same file size for attachments and downloads. I can send 20MB files (thank you GMail), but you might only support 5-10MB (like my Cox account supports). Now what?

How bout IM’s? Excellent. I use AIM. You use MSN? How are we even friends? Ok I use Adium. What? Ya, it lets me use AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Great. Wait, does it let me share files across? Yes. But crap, I’m on a router, so now I have a firewall. What, you’re on a router too? But it says the file is sending. Of course, it’s said that for the last 10 minutes. And ya, I’m just trying to send you a small jpg, so this should have been done nine minutes ago.

Ok how bout FTP? Great. I have one. Do you have a server? What’s your ftp address. What, that’s private. Ok. I’ll post the file on my webspace. Wait, now it’s too public.

Using a common protocol is tough for sharing because we may not have any in common. Making a file public is bad because now the file is public. It’s funny because the answers we seek end up being their own problems. So what if I had a place where I could store files, make them public or private on a file or folder level, share them via email, a special link, or otherwise, and generally have the ease of use of a download for our users, while we have the security of using a service with its own protocol on our backend.

Oh ya, what if it were free too, unless you want to move single files that are over 100MB (which at the rate cameras keep upgrading the sensors and megapixels might be next year)? Keep on reading! (more…)

Tags: general // 8 Comments »

When you preview a RAW image taken on your camera, most often what you’re doing is reviewing a low resolution JPEG rendering from that RAW data. Some applications offer ways to extract these jpegs. Canon’s own Zoombrowser allows this, as does Photo Mechanic. It’s not a big deal to open up these apps and extract a few files, but now there’s a better way.

From the crew over at Imagenomic (known for their Portraiture and Noiseware plugins), comes Instant JPEG from RAW. It’s not a program, but rather a system level utility. Right click on a folder, select the utility, and just like that the images are extracted. Sounds great. Here are my favorite features

1) Um, it’s free. This is big. I don’t like installing weird apps like Zoombrowser (which is free) to do one single thing. It’s a waste. But a simple utility, that’s right clickable? Awesome.

2) The Imagenomic folk aren’t strangers to many of us. I know a few people who use their Portraiture and/or Noiseware applications.

3) It’s cross platform. Since I rock a Dell laptop and a Mac Pro tower, these things are important to me.

There are limitations. The biggest one, as noted on their blog:

IJFR has no control over the look of the file. Since the file was created by the camera, it was the settings on the camera at the time of capture that rendered the file into what it looks like. In the case of a DNG exported from an application like Lightroom or ACR, it is the adjustments in that application that will affect the look of the rendered JPEG that is stored in the JPEG (it is called the Preview image).

There are ways around this, but it could be more work than just exporting out of Lightroom or Photoshop.

A little more info, the link, and thoughts after the jump. (more…)

Tags: general // 3 Comments »

I’m not old school or anything, in fact I’m only 30, but for some reason, whenever I see boxing, I just think it needs to be done in black and white. I’d actually really like to break out this RZ67 I have and get some frames with it. But, for now, what I can do to appease my desire is simply present my work in black and white.

It’s been a good while since I’ve shot boxing, and the scene in Phoenix, even Arizona, just isn’t as strong as it once was. I remember shooting the “retirement” fight for Julio Cesar Chavez (this was actually a tour, as he retired a few times), and even shooting the stunning upset of Sergei Liakhovich by Shannon Briggs, in the very last second of the very last round. The fights themselves weren’t amazing comparatively speaking when you consider the depth of boxing lore. But for a few fights, Phoenix was the place to be.

Back to the point: I love black and white boxing photos. You’re left with fighters and details when you remove the color. Tonality, the contrast of the image, works to great effect with a nice black and white conversion. A couple more photos, a small gallery, and an oldie but goodie link after the jump. (more…)

Tags: photography // 2 Comments »

The moon is now full. Canon had a teaser site, with the moon slowly revealing a new camera body. Rumors and speculation all talked about it being the new 5D II (or 7D, or fabled 3D). Well, the moon is now full and the 5D II has been revealed.

In this quickie article (Its 11pm, after all), I’ll do a roundup of links to some specs and a forum or two, and my thoughts on it. Oh and Canon’s also released an updated lens, the 24 1.4 II, as well as announcing a few new P&S cameras, including the G10 (an update to the very cool G9), and others. (more…)

Tags: equipment // 5 Comments »