Sony has announced a pink color variant of its NEX-3 interchangeable lens camera that will only be available in the Japanese market. It joins the existing color choices of black, red and silver. The pink version will be available from November 2010 with a variety of optional pink accessories.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
A more in depth look at bouncing flash and using fill flash to get more appealing images. This is an abridged version of the Flash chapter from my Mastery of Photography Essentials DVD. Hello all who chose to read this far, can you believe this is the 12th installment already. Thanks for watching all these tips and tricks so far, there is so much more to come. =o) You guys Rule!!! If you wish to buy this series on DVD and help me live happily ever after follow this link www.photomagicsocal.com To where I sell my DVDs. Thanks to all who have purchased and all who are about to. Peace
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Over the past several years new software options have become available for converting RGB images into Black and White.
One of the most versatile programs on the market for doing this is NIK Silver EFEX Pro. It has developed an avid user base, including our regular contributor, Mark Segal, who today takes us through the full preparation of an image to demonstrate key aspects of the program’s creative possibilities.
"Awesome video presentation.
I have learnt so much more after looking through this on the weekend. The tip about pushing blacks and fill light in the Basic Module was worth the price alone. My images of a recent trip to the Australian Outback are popping and punching with delight!
Thanks Michael and Jeff – I really appreciate you taking the considerable time to share your in-depth knowledge and insights."
Sometimes I miss working at a newspaper.
And when I say “I miss,” I mean that I miss it in the rose-colored glasses sense. Because some of the most fun I have had in the last 20+ years has been while shooting for small, community newspapers. So a few months ago I started stringing for a local business monthly as a way to keep touch with what I used to enjoy so much.
It was in that capacity that I was assigned to shoot a full-page portrait of Stan “The Fan” Charles, pictured above. Stan was to be the cover for the Maryland Entrepreneur Quarterly section. Which is pretty impressive, considering his entrepreneur chops are being earned running a successful newspaper in 2010.
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During a time when most papers’ circulation charts look like black diamond ski slopes, Stan is going great guns at Press Box Magazine. (They call it a magazine, but it is really a tabloid-format newspaper.)
Press Box succeeds by serving a strong niche better than anyone else. Their motto is “Baltimore Sports. Period.” And any guy who is succeeding in newspapers is by default a hero of mine. So many papers — and so many former colleagues — are taking it on the chin these days, it is great to see a newspaper guy killing it.
Stan is a character with a long and rich history familiar to any true Baltimore sports fan. And I wanted to give him a kind of superhero look, with a palette normally reserved for a comic book.
Believe it or not, the fedora — complete with a “Press Box” card in the band — was on the shelf. I could not make this stuff up. It took me about 5 seconds to convince Stan to don the hat, and we were good to go.
But the wide-brimmed hat starts to restrict your lighting style options pretty quickly. So I decided to use what is normally a ring fill at almost a full exposure — maybe one stop down. (I used an SB-800 in an Orbis.) That gives me detail everywhere under the hat no matter what. And the ring goes darker as it wraps around the edges, for a cool look. The catchlight dead center on the eyes is a nice bonus.
The key is a bare, gridded SB-800 with a 1/4 CTO — a very hard light source at only about two square inches of surface area. It is coming from hard camera right. You can see the super-hard nose shadow very clearly. But the ring (at only one stop down) carries lots of detail in the shadows, which somehow makes it okay. And it is aimed out in front of Stan’s face a little bit, so the grid kills the beam on the back camera right part of Stan’s head.
I love the hard key / ring fill combo. You can light for character and still retain plenty of legibility. Umbrellas are safe light sources in part because they tend to mold peoples’ faces more towards the mean. Safe, but sacrificing personality, shape and character.
People look different, and I want to celebrate those differences more than try to minimize them. I mean, take a good look at this guy’s face. It’s got some character. Would you get into a poker game with him? I wouldn’t.
The way I use umbrellas has changed drastically since the Lighting 101 days in 2006, and I am planning on going back and updating that post and several others.
Back to Stan, the separation light is a 3rd SB-800 with a grid being raked at a hard angle across that wall from back camera left. The color scheme was just pulled from his shirt and the surroundings.
To finish off the comic book/hero look, I used high pass filtration and cranked it up way past where I normally go. Somewhere around 85% opacity, if I remember correctly. Plus, it was going full page in the paper, so I wanted it to pop even after the newspaper repro process tried to kill it.
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Rose-Colored Glasses
It was shot to spec for the full page layout (an inside section front in a multi-section tab) with space left on the side for refer text and room for a boxed headline at bottom.
When the paper came out, they promo’d it in the ear (upper right box) off of the front page, and I started flipping through the issue to see it big. When I found it, it was in black and white and not much bigger than a business card. The issue didn’t did’t have the space — the full-page layout was killed.
Then I remembered why I like shooting for the web better than papers. I can run my photos any damn size I want and good repro is a piece of cake.
For the past two months, Takaya and Naoe have been exorcising spirits left and right. For another lovely history lesson, Naoe takes Takaya to a special place where a war rages on.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Watch Salman Khan & Madhuri in Mujhse Judaa Hokar – Hum Aapke Hain Koun. Click www.rajshri.com to watch more blockbuster bollywood songs.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Is the weather rotten? Raining? Snowing? Too hot? Too cold? A good day to stay in bed and read LuLa on your iPad?
Fugedaboutit. Get up, grab your camera and get outside. That’s the lesson learned by many photographers over the years. Get outside your comfort zone. Push yourself. You may come home at the end of the day, cold and wet, and possibly without a single worthwhile shot. Or you might have captured something wonderful.
You can read more on this thought by Contributor Mark Dubovoy in his latest essay – Photography, Rain or Shine.
Speaking of Mark, he is now on his way to Germany for this week’s bi-annual Photokina show. Mark will be reporting regularly throughout the week on the major product announcements as well as many of the more obscure ones that we know will interest LuLa readers.
"Awesome video presentation.
I have learnt so much more after looking through this on the weekend. The tip about pushing blacks and fill light in the Basic Module was worth the price alone. My images of a recent trip to the Australian Outback are popping and punching with delight!
Thanks Michael and Jeff – I really appreciate you taking the considerable time to share your in-depth knowledge and insights."
Add a dual-color gradient to title or header cells in an Excel 2010 worksheet; several styles are available.
It’s easy to color the background of a cell in a Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet. Just click the “Home” tab of the Ribbon, then in the “Font” section click the “Fill Color” button (the paint bucket icon).
However, what if you want to grab more attention than with a drab mono-color fill? Here’s how to add a dual-color gradient fill to a selected cell or group of cells in your worksheet. Note that this looks best on only the title and/or header text and not for cells containing actual data, though if you really want to, you can……
Read more at MalekTips.
New Computer and Technology Help and Tips – MalekTips.Com
Photokina opens Tuesday, and our Contributor Mark Dubovoy will be there filing daily reports from the show floor.
Due to a scheduling conflict Michael will not be attending this year, but will be filling in Mark’s reports with fresh press announcements and observations.
If you’re interested in the world of speciality cameras, medium format, large format, image processing, lenses, printers, papers and other pro gear this will be the place to find out about what’s new and what’s coming.
Mark’s Photokina Blog is now online.
Most Recent Update was at 11:15 am EDT
"Awesome video presentation.
I have learnt so much more after looking through this on the weekend. The tip about pushing blacks and fill light in the Basic Module was worth the price alone. My images of a recent trip to the Australian Outback are popping and punching with delight!
Thanks Michael and Jeff – I really appreciate you taking the considerable time to share your in-depth knowledge and insights."
