September 2012 Newsletter from ATP
A Veritable Smörgåsbord of Digital Imaging News…
Well, the summer is clearly over as we in the UK suffer another bout of flooding. Water levels increased by as much as 5 metres in town. With winter coming, I recently decided to get back to basics and run a roll of Ilford FP4 Plus through my ancient film SLR. More details below.
It has also been a summer packed with new releases at Photokina 2012 in Cologne. This is one of the world's biggest imaging exhibitions.
For those interested, you can see a round up report from Photokina, and a list of new products released here. Well worth a look but your wallet or purse may start to twitch!
This month:
- 1Learning Film
- 2Photoshop Elements 11
- 3Photoshop Tutorial
- 4Insurance Cover for Indemnity, Pro or Not
- 5Canon 200-400 Super-telephoto
- 6Kindle Fire
Learning Film Photography
If you are new to photography or even a diehard digital photographer, if you have never experienced good old film photography, I strongly urge that you give it a try. Check out this article where I once again set the Satnav to "Memory Lane":
Photoshop Elements 11
When anyone just starting out in digital photography asks me this. Or those photographers that come on any of our courses ask me to recommend good editing software for beginners. I always turn to Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Photoshop Elements is a "watered down" version of the full Photoshop. Adobe have just announced version 11. I decided to take a closer look at what they are now offering and downloaded the trial.
Photoshop Tutorial
It's been a while since I posted a new Photoshop Tutorial so here is one on erasing unwanted objects using Photoshop. There are many ways to do this but in this tutorial, I use the healing brush, cloning tool and Content Aware (CS5/CS6 and later).
One reason for posting this tutorial is this. I wanted to show you that a lot of the things you can do in Photoshop, are readily available in Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 (reviewed above). This includes a version of the Content Aware tool in Photoshop CS5 and onwards. If you don't know what that is, it is worth watching the video just for that!
Insurance Cover for Third Parties
An interesting point was made when I posted an article on dangerous wedding photography over on our Wedding Photography Blueprint blog. It was regarding the couple's safety. Especially when shooting the more crazy wedding photographs that some photographers attempt these days.
Does your insurance cover you should one or both of the couple get injured during a risky shoot that you suggested? Are you to blame or are they of an age where they are responsible for their own actions regardless of what you suggest?
It is an interesting topic. Something you should check with your insurers before you go for any wild trash the dress shots or similarly dangerous wedding shoots. Please leave your thoughts at the end of this newsletter.
Canon 200-400 Super-Telephoto $10,999!
In the words of my 9 year old son…OMG!
How do you Canon shooters fancy a pro-grade, L-series Canon super-telephoto 200-400L f4? It's your for around $10k! It is an IS lens with built in 1.4x converter that turns it into a 280-560mm lens! The aperture is f5.6 with the converter activated.
Perfect for sports and wildlife photographers and matches the already released Nikon version (alas without 1.4 converter).
Canon expect to release this new lens either later this year or early 2013 and one would expect it to be a pretty hefty lens in both terms of its weight and price tag. More information from Canon’s press release and UK pages.
Kindle Fire: Hot Stuff?
I don't know if you have noticed but Moore's Law has been kicked into touch as of late. You know, the law that states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.
I did seem that new technology and new releases did come about every 18-24 months in the past. However, we are now inundated with new technology, gadgets, gizmos and upgrades every 12 months or less. Things are certainly speeding up.
Anyway, that has nothing really to do with the Kindle Fire HD. Other than to say this new piece of hardware from Amazon looks set to possibly give the Apple iPad 3 a run for its money.
I hope you found some of the above useful or interesting. Please feel free to add comments below and maybe let me know what you would like to see more of!
Have a great October!
Nick
All Things Photography
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