AuroraHDR is now shipping and holy moley it's awesome

AuroraHDR is now shipping and holy moley it's awesome

Regular readers know that I am sometimes overly cautious about HDR. It can be a highly subjective effort in terms of outcome and drives a wide range of responses.  I don't personally subscribe to the "HDR Must Die" school of thought, but I personally prefer more realistic uses of dynamic range extension over the glow in the dark nuclear waste look that some folks love.  The outcome is your art, how you get there determines the ease, flexibility and customization available to you as you make your art.  I wasn't blown away to hear of another HDR software tool but I have been very pleased with everything I have used from the folks at Macphun so gave them the benefit of the doubt.  I did so because they write excellent software, limited only by its availability only on the Macintosh.  The acclaimed photographer, Trey Ratcliff, was heavily involved in the development, and that in itself will draw many buyers.  What really matters is how incredibly good this product is!

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Nikon makes it official, the D5 is coming

Nikon makes it official, the D5 is coming

It’s official.  Nikon has announced that the D5 is coming.  The D5 will be the follow-on to the professional grade D4S.  Nikon also announced the pending release of the SB-5000 Speedlight and the WT-6 wireless transmitter.  The release is included at the bottom of this article and I find it very Rumsfeldian.  We don’t know when, we don’t know where and we don’t know how much, but it’s coming.  Regardless, the announcement is absolutely necessary.

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Polarr - The BEST Photo Editor for your tablet and smartphone - and anything with a web browser!

Polarr - The BEST Photo Editor for your tablet and smartphone - and anything with a web browser!

Editing images on your smartphone or your tablet doesn't have to be limited to picking from a limited group of presets that make your work look just like everybody else's work.  It also doesn't have to be ugly or limited in functionality.  How can I say this?  Because I use Polarr!

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REVIEW : Cameron W700HS Flash and Cameron HSS240 Radio Triggers

REVIEW : Cameron W700HS Flash and Cameron HSS240 Radio Triggers

My dear friend and fellow tenured photographer, the incredible Joseph Leduc, introduces me as Mister Flash.  Sounds great, and potentially creepy but he's right that I love using flash to make better images.  Sometimes other photographers find flash frustrating and often very expensive.  I recently had a chance to use in production some new Cameron products available exclusively from Henry's, Canada's largest independent photo-video retailer.

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New from the folks at Macphun - Aurora HDR developed with Trey Ratcliff

New from the folks at Macphun - Aurora HDR developed with Trey Ratcliff

Photographers everywhere place the words HDR and the photographer Trey Ratcliff in the same wheelhouse, because Trey's work is synonymous with HDR.  Coming November 19, 2015 is a brand new application from the great people at Macphun called Aurora HDR and it was built in conjunction with Mr. HDR himself, Trey Ratcliff.

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REVIEW : Nikon's D5500 - Is This Your Best Choice for Your First DSLR?

REVIEW : Nikon's D5500 - Is This Your Best Choice for Your First DSLR?

You want a camera.  Or you want to give someone a gift of a camera.  The decision is to go with a DSLR and now it's time to shop.  Then you go to the big box store, or the dedicated photo shop, or you sit in the kitchen shopping online, but in the end you come away frustrated because there are so many choices and when you find something that looks decent, you immediately find a review from someone who hates the thing.  Arrgghhh!   I cannot promise that this article will make your life easier, but if you are seeking a DSLR for the starting or growing photographer, you should take a look at the D5500 from Nikon.

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Lightroom Tip - Dealing with Sensor Dust Spots

Lightroom Tip - Dealing with Sensor Dust Spots

One of the banes of digital photographers who have to change lenses in less than ideal field conditions is the potential to collect dust on the sensor.  This dust turns to dark spots on your image and if you have a lot of images shot at the same time, you have a lot of spots to deal with.

In this tip, I'm going to show you a tip using a basic Lightroom function to find and clean spots on a single image and then remove the same spots in all the images shot at that event.

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Canon and Mirrorless : Two Roads Seemingly Doomed Not to Meet

Canon and Mirrorless : Two Roads Seemingly Doomed Not to Meet

The saga of Canon mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras is a sad one.  The M1 was not successful.  The M2 never came to North America.  The M3 made it here after long delays.  On October 13th, Canon announced the M10.  After looking at the specifications, and Canon's state target market, I really think that they have to stop dropping acid.

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An Open Letter to the Adobe Lightroom Team

An Open Letter to the Adobe Lightroom Team

I've been an Adobe Lightroom customer since the first release.  Every release since then has been evolutionary, some stronger and richer than others but steps forward.  Having spent a large part of my professional life in software, I became nervous when Adobe adopted a subscription delivery model, and I fear that very model is what is hurting Lightroom today.

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Portrait Perfect with Lindsay Adler - A Review

Portrait Perfect with Lindsay Adler  - A Review

I spent today, September 12th with a group of interested photographers including my friends Isabel, Laurie and Joseph.  We had all signed up independently for the Portrait Perfect session put on by Henry's Learning Lab featuring renowned New York City based fashion photographer Lindsay Adler.  It was a most informative and interesting day.

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ON1 PHOTO 10 is Announced!

ON1 PHOTO 10 is Announced!

The good folks at ON1 have announced the October availability of their new software suite called PHOTO 10.  It's an update to the current Perfect Photo Suite 9.5 that boasts much faster performance and increased functionality.  You can preorder by clicking on the graphic above or the one in the sidebar.  There are some cool bonuses for those who preorder including getting the complete Perfect Photo Suite 9.5 to use while you wait for PHOTO 10.

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A Fast and Powerful RAW Viewer

A Fast and Powerful RAW Viewer

How many times have you heard that Lightroom is a great tool except that its RAW rendering is glacially slow, and it takes a long time to import files only to go through the culling process and end up discarding the ones you don't like and that didn't work out.  For the last few years, I have been using Photo Mechanic to do the fast view and cull process.  I'm hardly getting the full benefit of that amazing software but it does this particular job with speed and power.  Not everyone is willing to pay the price for Photo Mechanic though and I am asked very frequently for an alternative.  I couldn't recommend one until now.

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Get a Head Start When It Comes to Shooting Portraits

Get a Head Start When It Comes to Shooting Portraits

For many photographers, shooting people is where it's at, or at least where we'd like to be.  Even if we prefer nature, or landscapes or wildlife, we all need to be able to make great portraits of people, even if only our friends and family.  After all, we do have a really good camera, right?

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A Superior Tool for Cutting Masks

I recently taught an Introductory workshop for Photoshop on Layers and Masks.  While most of the attendees found the workshop very useful, the general consensus was that making selections for masking would take a lot of practice and that while Photoshop does a good job, the user interface can be complicated and some of the tools cumbersome.  I tend to use a third party tool for this myself and was reminded of its efficacy by a webinar delivered by my fellow educator #BlakeRudis.  The tool I advocate is called Remask and until recently was available only as a plugin for editing applications from the folks at Topaz Labs.  That changed with the recent update to Remask 5.

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REVIEW : Limelite Mosaic LED Panel by Bowens

REVIEW : Limelite Mosaic LED Panel by Bowens

Over the last couple of years, some peers have started referring to me as the Light Whisperer.  I choose to take it as a compliment because I love working with light, be it the big source in the sky, flash or continuous light.  I started doing this stuff back when continuous light meant tungsten bulbs that were hot and somewhat unwieldy.  Later came fluorescents, either in the form of the big curlicue bulbs such as those used by Westcott in their excellent Spiderlite systems or the non-flickering perfectly balanced tubes in my beloved Kino Flo lights.  LED panels were initially super expensive and fairly dim so you needed a lot to get a little.  That's changed and a killer offering in the LED space comes from Bowens in the Limelite Mosaic.

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Quick Look : Canon 5DS - Current Megapixel King (35mm Full Frame at Least)

Quick Look : Canon 5DS - Current Megapixel King (35mm Full Frame at Least)

Despite reasonable arguments to the contrary, there's still a very strong perception that more megapixels are better, even when comparing on the same size sensor.  It means that each individual photo receptor is smaller, and that means less light sensitive but the theory is that this is balanced out by increased detail and sharpness.  Canon, as of this article, currently rules the megapixel roost in 35mm full frame with the Canon 5Ds and Canon 5Dsr cameras.  The questions to ask are what does 50 megapixels bring you, and what do you give up?

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