Ever had someone tell you about some great new thing, and you promptly forgot about it? That's what happened with me and Tripit. Then about a year later I heard about it again, and wow, what a wasted year!:

Continue reading "Mastering Travel Itineraries" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 06:47 PM | Permalink

You know by now I'm a big fan of using strobes. Good light is so important to good pictures that I love being able to create and/or add it whenever I want. And I've always been a fan of softboxes as a way of controlling and directing that light. Now there's a new softbox that I just can't say enough good things about. But I'll try :)

Continue reading "Great New Softbox" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 04:12 PM | Permalink

I'm in Long Island right now, getting ready to start a photography workshop for American Photo (one of their Mentor Series programs). And for the first time in a long time, I've left on a photo trip without an extra hard drive to backup my images.

Continue reading "Backup in my Pocket" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:08 AM | Permalink

I've been a big fan of off-camera flash since I started using a Vivitar 283 and 15-ft sync cord in the mid-80s. Since then I've added many more strobes and some radio triggers/receivers to my lighting kits. The last few years, though, I've done most of my lighting with wireless flash built into my cameras and strobes.

Continue reading "Loving Wireless Flash" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 04:40 PM | Permalink

Color management is a topic that every serious photographer has to tackle at some point. I've been using and teaching it for eight years now, and just had one of my best experiences yet with the printing side.

Continue reading "Color Management upgrade" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 01:35 PM | Permalink

My daughter Rachel and I are spending this week in Rocky Mountain National Park. We're camping and have a number of hikes planned, including Long's Peak, if possible. Se we're traveling light.

Continue reading "Minimalist Approach" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 07:06 PM | Permalink

Every now and then I'm reminded that these are still the early days of digital. I thought of that again this week as I worked with different RAW conversion packages.

Continue reading "RAW Issues" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 07:03 PM | Permalink

One of the guys I play tennis with asked me if I ever do restoration of old photos. I said, "sure, sometimes." Turns out that as a child, he accidentally burned down the family home. How'd you like to have that hanging over you at every family get-together?

Continue reading "Saving Old Photos" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 05:40 PM | Permalink

I've played with HDR (High Dynamic Range) images for several years now, using filters and multiple exposures. Now I'm using a program that does a great job of automating the process.

Continue reading "High Dynamic Range" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:14 AM | Permalink

If you spend any time retouching photos, then you already know Wacom. If you don't, then you're missing out on one of my favorite tools for working photos in software - their fantastic tablets.

Continue reading "Wacom Intuos 4" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 07:51 AM | Permalink

Okay, we've all seen digital picture frames that let you have a constant slideshow of your favorite photos. What I hadn't seen, though, was a wireless frame that could also connect to your home network. Now that's really cool!

Continue reading "Wireless Photo Frame" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 04:18 PM | Permalink

I've gotten my hands on a Nikon D3X, at 24MP the highest resolution digital SLR currently available. And that many pixels changes how you can use this camera.

Continue reading "Pixels to Spare" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:41 AM | Permalink

For the last two months I've been running Windows 7 beta on one of my computers, and so far I like what I've seen.

Continue reading "Windows 7" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:11 AM | Permalink

That's one of the things I like to call digital photography - continuing education. There's no way to simply stay where you are - eventually you'll need to upgrade to newer hardware and software. If you don't you'll be missing out on some great new advances. And while I do a lot of teaching, I love taking classes as well, because I'm always interested in learning more. Recently I had a chance to attend training for Microsoft's Expression Media and Phase One's Capture One Pro software.

Continue reading "Continuing Ed" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:11 AM | Permalink

Last week I attended PMA 2009 in Las Vegas, the Photo Marketing Association's annual tradeshow. All the big (and many of the small) companies whose business involves photography have booths there, and in the past it was one of the places they'd make their big announcements. These days they tend to announce products as soon as they're available, so there are fewer big stories. What I enjoy seeing, though, are the small, often innovative things that come out.

Continue reading "PMA 2009" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 02:20 PM | Permalink

I consider myself an old-school photographer - I get the greatest pleasure from shooting the picture, not creating something on the computer. Every now and then, though, I'll take some time to play with software filters and see what happens.

Continue reading "Software Filter Fun" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:06 AM | Permalink

This past weekend I headed out to Lawrence, Kansas to cover the University of Kansas men's basketball game against the University of Tennessee. It's become fairly common at sporting events for photographers to set up remote cameras to get more angles on the action, and that's what I decided to do this time.

Continue reading "Cover Two Angles at Once" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 01:51 PM | Permalink

More software packages are making it possible to tether a digital camera to a computer, either for remote operation (from the computer) or to share the images with others without them having to look at the back of the camera. I recently needed that, so I used Nikon's Camera Control Pro 2.

Continue reading "Remote Viewing" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 04:32 PM | Permalink

I've always found it strange that computer manufacturers build specialized computers for gamers, but nothing for photographers. You'd think we must be a much larger market. Well, that's finally changing.

Continue reading "Finally, a photo laptop" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:14 AM | Permalink

I recently had a chance to visit with a group of photography students, some high school, the majority college, and decided to ask a question I've wondered for a while now. Is having experience with a wet darkroom (developing film, printing) still important to a photo education? Their answers surprised me.

Continue reading "Darkroom - Waste of Time?" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 11:48 PM | Permalink

I've been playing catch up recently. When we moved to Kansas City at the turn of the Millennium (just had to use that phrase!) one thing that got set aside was keeping our family photo albums up to date. So that was a project I took on over one weekend recently.

Continue reading "Family Archivist" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:17 AM | Permalink

This past week I received an email from someone looking for help in decoding the AF settings on their camera. This is perhaps the most common, hardest to figure out group of settings on today's digital SLRs.

Continue reading "AF Settings Confusion" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 07:57 AM | Permalink

Over the last week I needed to get some large-format prints made, and a good chunk of that time was spent doing what I call "wrestling computers," trying to get them and their peripherals to do what I want.

Continue reading "Wrestling computers" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 06:18 AM | Permalink

I had a note from a friend yesterday pointing out an article he'd been quoted in. It was a story in the New York Times on the overwhelming use of Photoshop in family photos. It made me wonder where we're headed photographically.

Continue reading "Photoshop Overdose" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 11:10 AM | Permalink

About twenty years ago I put together my first portable light kit. It was pretty basic - one stand, one flash and a cord to connect the flash to the camera. Not long after that I added a second stand and light, a slave to fire it, and eventually a radio remote (so people would stop tripping over my flash cord). For the past fifteen years it's been pretty much the same, and it was time to overhaul it.

Continue reading "Portable Light Kit" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 03:05 PM | Permalink

Over the years I've learned that sometimes you just need to spend more money than you'd like to get the gear you need. That's always been easier for the big stuff - cameras, lenses and strobes - than for the little stuff. I'm finally investing in the little stuff, and it's paying off.

Continue reading "Just Bite the Bullet" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:27 AM | Permalink

I've just returned from teaching a photo workshop in Montana, mostly at Glacier National Park. At one point while out shooting I noticed dirt on the sensor in my photos. There's a right way and a wrong way to fix this. Guess which one I chose?

Continue reading "How NOT to clean a Sensor" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 03:20 PM | Permalink

You know by now that I regularly preach the importance of backing up your photos and other important data. Lately I've been using the HP MediaSmart Server, and am going to be involved in a webinar on this device Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 10am PST.

Continue reading "HP MediaSmart Server" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 05:18 PM | Permalink

If you're a digital photographer, you've probably got lots of batteries. And hopefully, you're using rechargeables. The problem then becomes one of keeping track of them, and figuring out which ones are good and which aren't. No sense in charging all the batteries after every shoot simply because one or two might be done.

Continue reading "Batteries R Me" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:21 AM | Permalink

I've got a bone to pick, and this is about as good a time as any (and it gives me a good excuse to use this nice photo Ed Zurga shot of me!). Does it ever seem that most people preaching workflow want to teach you the most complicated version they can come up with?

Continue reading "Masters of Workflow (?)" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:54 AM | Permalink

This past weekend I taught a workshop in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and thought I'd have some free time to go out and shoot. With that in mind, I brought my infrared camera along to play.

Continue reading "IR in FL" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:54 AM | Permalink

Back in the old days (you know, when we were all shooting film) there was a time when I started doing fashion shoots for the newspaper I worked at. We were too cheap to hire models, so it always came down to the writer finding a friend to "model" for us. I remember how hard it was to get good photos..

Continue reading "In Praise of Models" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:05 AM | Permalink

Okay, I'll admit it - I'm spoiled. When I'm working in my office I've got two laptops, and each is driving a big screen that's almost 2000-pixels wide. So when I travel, being forced to work on one small laptop screen puts me in screen withdrawal. Not anymore.

Continue reading "Screen for the Road" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 06:38 PM | Permalink

By now everyone's heard about Nikon's two new cameras, the D3 and D300. And you've probably heard they handle high-ISO noise better than in the past. That's an understatement.

Continue reading "A Whole New Wonderful World" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:57 AM | Permalink

For any photographer who loves to travel, going on an African photo safari must be near the top of their wish list. I've been lucky enough to do that twice now, leading trips to Tanzania in 2006 and the other one a few weeks ago. Each was great in its own way.

Continue reading "African Photo Safari" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:13 AM | Permalink

Sometimes an assignment is like a puzzle where you know what the final outcome looks like but you have to find the pieces that put it all together. Blue Pixel had an assignment like that recently.

Continue reading "Grammy Puzzle" »

Posted by Alex Stevens at 09:49 PM | Permalink

A short time back I wrote about upgrading my Lenovo T61's hard drive to 200GB with a Hitachi 7200RPM drive. After that it was time to do the same to my Apple MacBook Pro, and I found some nice software to help with the chore.

Continue reading "It's the Mac's Turn" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:03 AM | Permalink

Earlier in 2007 I added a Lenovo T61 laptop to my stable of computers. It's been a very nice travel and office machine, but I wanted to add a larger hard drive and get more speed from it. So that's been one of my projects over the holiday break.

Continue reading "More Space, More Speed" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 07:02 AM | Permalink

I spend a lot of time talking and teaching about digital workflow. And when I'm out shooting, I try to live what I teach. If you follow my blog entries, you'll know that this is the time of year I do one of my larger jobs, and workflow is the key to it.

Continue reading "It's all about the Workflow" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 11:44 AM | Permalink

How many of you guys are old enough to remember making test strips in the darkroom? That's how we used to figure out print exposures. We'd tear off a piece of print paper, put it under the enlarger, hit the timer, throw it in the developer and see how close we were. It might take two or three tries, but eventually we got close, and only then did we risk a whole sheet. It saved money and avoided wasting materials, and I still do it today. Only now I'm doing it with inkjet printers.

Continue reading "Modern Day Test Strips" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 12:44 PM | Permalink

We all know (or should know) that backing up our important photos and data is no longer an option. It's simply a question of how we're going to do it. In the last week I've added a new tool to do this, Windows Home Server.

Continue reading "Windows Home Server" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 12:54 PM | Permalink

If you haven't tried making your own photo book yet, you're missing out on a lot of fun. Apple made it easy at the consumer level through iPhoto several years ago, and then a bunch of other companies jumped in to serve the non-Apple user. The result is that we have a lot of choices now, and it couldn't be easier.

Continue reading "Book Publishing" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:15 AM | Permalink

Since the introduction of Aperture, and then Lightroom, I've been following the development of these tools that I refer to as "super browsers." Geared to solve a number of problems many people had with their workflow - especially if shooting RAW files - these program showed a lot of promise, but I had some issues with them as well. With Lightroom, it was how difficult Adobe made it to open an original RAW file from Lightroom with anything but their software. That's now changed with the release of Lightroom 1.2.

Continue reading "Kudos to Adobe" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:34 PM | Permalink

Having returned recently from a photo trip to Greece, I've been getting all of my images sorted and archived. At one point I decided to total the amount of hard drive space those photos were taking up, and it was something of a shock. Seven days of shooting resulted in 30 Gigabytes of images!

Continue reading "Size Matters" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:36 AM | Permalink

As you know, I've been traveling overseas lately, first to Greece, then to India and now I'm in Thailand. When I'm on the road in the U.S., cell phones have made it easy to stay in touch with my office, friends and family. Leaving the country, though, had made that a lot more challenging.

Continue reading "Hooked on Skype" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:33 AM | Permalink

Sometimes you get amazingly lucky, and then sometimes you don't. Kevin Gilbert and I just finished leading a photo trek of Greece for American Photo. We had a lot of fun with a great group of people, and everyone headed home with some new photos and new ideas for their photography. We started the trip in Athens, with an afternoon tour of the town and the Acropolis, who's most famous feature is the Parthenon, visible from much of Athens.

Continue reading "Parthenon at Night" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:08 AM | Permalink

Last week I was doing a bit of packing, as I was preparing to head to Greece to lead a photo trek for American Photo (www.mentorseries.com), where I am now. Yes, I know, tough life. I do a lot of travel, and am always looking for new ways to cut down on the amount of stuff I have to drag along. That's become even more important now that we take computers, hard drives and chargers with us.

Continue reading "Favorite Travel Tools (Toys!)" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:08 PM | Permalink

I switched to Vista last spring, with hardly a look back. It's on both my computers, the Lenovo T61 and MacBook Pro. For those times I do need XP, it's still running on the AMD tower in my office. This fall, however, I'm doing workflow training for the Associated Press internationally, and need to do that running Windows XP. And the last thing I wanted to do was wipe a laptop and re-load XP.

Continue reading "Run XP inside Vista" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 02:02 PM | Permalink

A big part of what I do these days is teach digital photography, and lately I've been getting ready to start my sixth year teaching the Nikon School of Photography classes. So each of the past six summers much of my time's been devoted to creating two new, all-day programs for the schools. And each summer I'm struck by how much our profession continues to be changed by digital.

Continue reading "The more things change..." »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 11:08 AM | Permalink

For nearly eight years I've been working out of a home office, and only recently has it been a comfortable experience. I've gone from sharing a spare bedroom with my wife and kids' computers to a space of my own in the basement. And thanks to the wonders of modern computer technology, it's become a great place for me to work. My wife jokingly calls it "The Command Center."

Continue reading "Command Center" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 02:17 PM | Permalink

Over the years I've always had a camera or two I could take places where it might get beat up. Mountain climbing, whitewater rafting, winter camping and biking aren't exactly camera-friendly. Once I moved to digital, though, that became a tougher spot to fill. After all, digital cameras are anything but inexpensive, and not exactly rugged. Recently, though, I've had my hands on a little digital point-and-shoot that's almost indestructible.

Continue reading "One Tough Little Camera" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 05:27 PM | Permalink

I received a note last week from a student who was on a photo trek to Tucson with me this spring. His images look different depending on what software he's using. It's a common problem, and involves color management, or the lack of it. Todd was kind enough to let me use his note and photos for today's post.

Continue reading "Different Apps, Different Color" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:53 PM | Permalink

I recently wrote about creating slideshows, which, as I said, is one of my favorite ways of sharing pictures. It's tough, though, to beat a good print, and with 13-inch and wider printers common today, going a step further and creating a photo collage is a fun project..

Continue reading "Photo Collage" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:29 PM | Permalink

Well, it's that time of year again. Graduation time, that is. This year I was asked if I could produce a slideshow that would run during my daughter's 8th grade farewell celebration. No problem. After all, that's something I do on a regular basis.

Continue reading "Sharing Slideshows" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:29 AM | Permalink

I recently received an email with some quesitons concerning autofocus. I thought the question and answer might make a good blog entry.

Continue reading "Autofocus Options" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 01:30 PM | Permalink

Well, I've been running Vista Ultimate for a couple of weeks now, and so far so good. Thought I'd write a little bit more about the software I'm using and my experiences.

Continue reading "Vista, Part II" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:10 PM | Permalink

We regularly get questions from people about how to deal with color space choices, both in the digital SLRs we use and in our editing software. I recently received a question about using a Nikon D70 and Photoshop Elements together, and thought it would make a good blog entry.

Continue reading "Elements and Color Modes" »

Posted by Bill Durrence at 11:11 AM | Permalink

Later this month I'm taking a group of photographers to Peru for a photography workshop. Part of our preparation has been a little high-tech scouting using the internet.

Continue reading "Location Scouting from Home" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:06 AM | Permalink

One of the challenges of being in the business of answering questions is staying out front with technology. We jokingly refer to it as living on "the bleeding edge." Because of that, I started using the beta releases of Microsoft Vista last fall, and last week decided it was time to install the final version.

Continue reading "Vista Success" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:43 AM | Permalink

Part of my job is to stay up-to-date with changes in the field of digital photography. That includes many models of cameras, lenses, strobes, computers, operating systems, software, hard drives, printers, etc. etc. etc. As you know, that's a lot of information, so I'm always looking for better ways to accomplish that. My latest trick helps me do that during time that would otherwise be wasted..

Continue reading "Keeping up With Changes" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 02:59 PM | Permalink

I'm sure that all of you have heard about Aperture (from Apple) and Lightroom (from Adobe). Some of you have certainly used the beta of Lightroom (now shipping the final version, with an initial price of $199). And I'm also sure that some of you have bought Aperture. For those who haven't had hands-on experience with either of them yet, the question I hear most frequently is, "What are they?" It's a good question, since I don't think even Apple and Adobe are sure what they are yet. Download tool? Image management system (with strong metadata features)? Editing package? Print and web gallery tool? All-in-one?.

Continue reading "Lightroom and Aperture" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 04:16 PM | Permalink

Ever since I first read about infrared photography, many decades ago in high school, I've been intrigued by the idea. The images produced by it are otherworldly and I wanted to try my hand at it. Unfortunately, my attempts back then always ended in failure, not in small part due to the difficulty of using and processing infrared film. Thankfully, times have changed, and digital's taken film out of the equation.

Continue reading "Digital Infrared" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 06:40 PM | Permalink

Recently I received an email from someone who was part of a workshop I taught, and thought it might make a good blog entry: "I attended your two workshops in Berkeley last week, and didn't get a chance to ask my specific question. I'm leaving for an Antarctic peninsula cruise this coming week, and any suggestions for specific settings (e.g. White Balance) to try under those unusual lighting conditions?"

Continue reading "Arctic Suggestions" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 11:49 AM | Permalink

Occasionally I write stories for Lexar's web site, in the digital photography tips section (http://lexar.com/dp/index.html). I had a note from a reader of one of those stories asking for help getting his prints sharp. He had all the right settings on the camera, and a good printer (Epson Stylus Photo R800) but still wasn't getting prints as sharp as he expected. The answer was in how he was handling his images after shooting them.

Continue reading "Sharpening" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 06:43 PM | Permalink

I had an email from a friend recently asking how I keep my files organized. With the coming of the new year, what better time to look at the system you use to manage your images and see if there might be a better way.

Continue reading "Resolve to be Organized" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 05:46 PM | Permalink

I'm just back from leading a photo trek to Maui for American Photo (www.mentorseries.com). I do about four trips a year like this, and we had just over thirty people joining us. The second day we spent driving and shooting along the road to Hana, and after dinner that night most of us headed to the beach for a little light painting.

Continue reading "Light Painting" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:26 AM | Permalink

I recently went to a friend's wedding and took along a little point-and-shoot I could carry in my pocket. When it was all over I had a nice set of photos, and wanted to share them with the family. Rather than send a bunch of small prints, I wanted to give them one large print to commemorate the day. My favorite way of doing this is by using the Free Transform tool in Photoshop, and this can be done with either full-blown Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (I used version 4).

Continue reading "Easy Photo Collages" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 02:26 PM | Permalink

Occasionally we at Blue Pixel find ourselves being interviewed and written about, which was recently the case for myself and Alex Stevens.

Continue reading "Blue Pixel in Print" »

Posted by Kevin T. Gilbert at 01:55 PM | Permalink

For the past several months I've been buried with projects, and junk has piled up in my home office. Add to that I've needed to make some major computer and networking changes, and that means it's time for a major office overhaul.

Continue reading "Fall Cleaning" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 03:05 PM | Permalink

Danny Moloshok has been covering Rock Star: Supernova the entire season. He and Jeff Bottari covered the finale this week and wrote about their experience.

Continue reading "Rock Star: Supernova" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 12:53 AM | Permalink

I came to a sudden realization last weekend. I've turned into a light snob. I' won't settle for light that's just "okay" when shooting pictures.

Continue reading "I'm a Light Snob" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 08:09 AM | Permalink

I just returned from a raft trip to Alaska. We had a great time, but one of the big surprises for me was what camera I chose to shoot many of the photos with.

Continue reading "Right Camera for the Right Job" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 05:09 PM | Permalink

For those who've been riding the digital train for some time, the evolution of affordable desktop photo quality printing has been quite remarkable. I vividly remember the shock of seeing the first print roll off an Epson Photo Stylus printer. It almost looked like a "real" photograph. Today, with the proper printer and technique it is quite simple not just to match, but to exceed the quality of traditional wet darkroom printing.

Continue reading "When Good isn't Good Enough" »

Posted by Michael Schwarz at 08:01 AM | Permalink

Sometimes you'll find a picture that's just about perfect, but the light's not quite what you want. If you're lucky, you'll be able add that little bit of light yourself.

Continue reading "Add a Little Light" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 10:47 AM | Permalink

This week I'm in Sweden teaching an American Photo Mentor photo workshop (www.mentorseries.com). The country's beautiful, the people nice, food is good and the group we've got is a lot of fun to be with. Our first day out, though, we came across a photo we couldn't make. At least at first.

Continue reading "Putting the Pieces Together" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 01:23 AM | Permalink

Twenty years ago this Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I were married. To celebrate, we made reservations to spend a little time at Big Cedar Lodge in the Ozarks, one of the premier resorts in the area. As an anniversary trip, I swore to leave computer, computer books, Photoshop books and all things digital (except a camera, of course!) at home.

Continue reading "Fireworks Fun" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 01:53 PM | Permalink

One of the secrets to finding answers in this digital world is to have trustworthy sources, whether they're web sites, magazines, books or friends. I was trying to find out what would be better - to leave my bank of external drives on all the time, or only power them up when needed. For an answer I thougth I'd try Tim Grey. Tim is well-known in digital photography for his deep knowledge of technical subjects (he's written several books and is a frequent contributor to magazines). Here's Tim's answer:

Continue reading "Hard Drives - On or Off?" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 09:30 AM | Permalink

Hi. My name's Nick and I'm a gadget freak. In fact I think being a gadget freak is in the male genetic make-up. As a photographer and digital imaging consultant I'm always on the lookout for new gadgets that will make my job easier, faster and ultimately cooler.

Continue reading "Gadget Freak" »

Posted by Nick Didlick at 09:58 AM | Permalink

If you use a Mac and you video conference using your iSight, you might notice that sometimes the quality, well, sucks. Fortunately, there's a program called iGlasses, which helps you to improve the image quality. It can brighten the picture,...

Posted by David Schloss at 12:00 PM | Permalink

I just posted a large entry on PDNOnline.com about this, but thought I'd share here. Apple's released an update to Aperture, bringing it to version 1.1. The company also dropped the price of the program $200 and is offering an...

Continue reading "Apple Bumps Aperture Up, Drops Price" »

Posted by David Schloss at 10:00 AM | Permalink

From PDNOnline.com Apple announced Boot Camp, software designed to allow owners of Intel-powered Macintosh computers to run Windows XP on those machines. Apple's software solution will allow users to create a Windows partition on their drive, which the user can...

Continue reading "Want To Run Windows On Your Mac? No Problem" »

Posted by David Schloss at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nikon School with Nick Didlick.

Here's a question that I recently received from one of our students attending a seminar in Chicago. It is the type of question that I am often asked so I wanted to share my answer with you.

Question:
What should I look for in digital projectors? What type of projector, LCD or other?  Do I need a lap top computer and a software program like Power Point?  How do I go about preparing a digital travel show? The largest audience I usually show to is about 100 people...

Continue reading "What should I look for in digital projectors?" »

Posted by Reed Hoffmann at 07:45 AM | Permalink

I love technology. I thrive on it. As a photojournalist, it makes perfect sense to me that I have every advantage of shooting a picture and getting it back before the next guy. When cell phones came along, I thought this is the answer to transmitting a photo back to the paper. But it was clunky and cumbersome, and easier to find a motel or rest stop to hook up to a phone line and drop a $20 on the waitress for the help....

Continue reading "Photographers are gadget hounds..." »

Posted by Kevin T. Gilbert at 07:05 AM | Permalink