Posted by Constantin Chirila on Dec 29, 2008 in
Camera Gear Surfing through the net I came across some negative oppinions, and sadly, I have to agree, even if I am a Canon fan/owner.
For example the new Canon 5D Mark 2 has 2 major problems like Vertical Banding Noise and Black Dot. To this problems it’s added the promise that it will be launched by November and we almost get into yeah 2009 and still Canon hold back the 5D Mark II until it’s if fixed. Although sounds reassuring (they are working to make it better) a lot of people that have back-ordered the camera didn’t had the camera in their arms until the joyful Christmas. You can read more about this here: Canon EOS 5D Mark II: Barely worth it!.
But I have to say they did a lot of good things with the new 5D Mark II, and I still crave to buy it. The only problem is that they rushed to launch an still “beta” camera, without thoroughly testing it and fixing all the problems.
And about that 50D camera, well, it’s way overpriced and a lot of people still choose the 40D which is a bargain. You can read more here: Rebirth of the xxD?
Anyway, I wish Canon a bunch load of good luck, because they will need it, a lot of Canon users started to think that it would be a lot better with Nikon, including me. 
Tags: 50D, 5D Mark II, Camera Gear, Canon, DSLR
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Dec 28, 2008 in
Photoshop Hello guys/gals, long time no see. Hope you all had a good time this Christmas and Santa was kind and generous.
Today I would like show you a quick tutorial on how to create a Fujifilm Velvia film effect. This one it’s popular through landscape photographers, and gives to the photo a colorful look and having a slight over saturation.
Here is the photo, which in my opinion doesn’t put into value the beautiful colors of the Autumn season.
Tags: Color Management, Editing, Photoshop, Tutorials
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Dec 23, 2008 in
Personal 
Merry Christmas!
I would like to wish you all Merry Christmas. I hope that all of you will enjoy your holiday together with your family and friends. Take a lot of photos in this beautiful part of year.
I wish I had the time to write some tips for getting right your Christmas portraits, but unfortunately I was way to busy buying presents grocery, visiting friends, etc. I would like to apologise for this, and I promise to write it. Together with this I plan to talk about some basic things about camera and photography, and share some tips on how to use them efficiently, then as soon as it starts to snow around this parts I will share with you some photographs and some othe tips and tricks on photographing snow filled landscapes and maybe take a deep dive in composition.
By the way you can visit this page called “My way of saying Merry Christmas!” that i shared with my friends, here is the link: Merry Christmas! . I hope you like the idea.
Again Merry Christmas and see after the holidays. (Hopefully i will post something until the end of the year)
Tags: Christmas, Constantin Chirila, Holiday
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Dec 21, 2008 in
Photography,
Tips & Tricks 
Since a few days I’ve talked about ways of backing up your photos, I think it appropriate to talk about organizing your photographs, since keeping your photos organized helps to find your well organized photos.
First of all it’s very useful to use a software that helps keeping you organized and even helps you finding your images much faster. Since there are dozens of software packages for this kind of job it all comes down to personal preference and a few very important features that would help you a lot, like:
- Organize by Category, Calendar Date, Keyword, etc.
- Let’s you assign rating and tag
- Thumbnail view
- RAW support (in case you work a lot with RAW images)
- Helps you backing up your photos easily
- Easy E-mail sharing
I have compiled a list of software packages for your organizational need.
For professional users (has a lot of professional features) :
For regular users (has all the feature you need for our every day family photos) :
Although you have whatever software you need you still have to know some other things. To be more specific here is my work flow when I come from a shoot:
- Soon after I pop in my memory card into the card reader I create a new folder named like this: ” Year-Month-Day-Specific Number A specific name” (The specific number refers to the case where i have a couple of different shoots). Here is an example, let’s say today I had two portrait sessions with John Doe and Jane Doe, I have two different folders named: “2008-12-20 (1) John Doe portrait session” and “2008-12-20 (2) Jane Doe portrait session”.
- Copy the folder onto my external drive.
- I review the photos and delete the worst of them (Blurry, test shots, etc).
- I usually leave the default names of the photos.
- I import the photos into Adobe Lightroom.
- I tag and rate my photos (5* excellent, 4* good, 3*usable, and the rest receives 1*)
- I back up the photos on a CD/DVD.
- And after all of that I format my memory cards.
As you can see I am a little paranoid, having three different copies of the photos.
Bottom line is experiment, and use what is better for you and not time consuming. Happy organizing. 
Tags: Backup, Photography, Tips & Tricks
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Dec 18, 2008 in
Hardware,
Photography,
Tips & Tricks 
Photo by chadh
The worst nightmare of a photographer worst than get his equipment stolen, it’s to lose his photographs. Being in digitized era the risks of losing you photographs and even documents, it’s higher than in the film era. There are a bunch of risks, from accidental deletion to hardware failure, file corruption and the list goes on.
Losing a photograph it’s worst than loosing something you created, which can be recreated the only thing you’re going to lose it’s time. But a photograph, you cannot go back in time and nail the exact same shot (I also consider that a photograph is unique, there aren’t two photos that loo the same even if there where shot at the same time).
So I will try to give you some advices on how to protect your precious photographs.
1. Always backup your photos on a DVD.
Every time you copy you photograph from your camera to your hard drive the first this you have to remember to do is to back up onto a DVD or CD. There are so cheap compared to how much trouble can get you out from.
Tags: Gear, Hardware, Tips & Tricks, Web
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Dec 16, 2008 in
Camera Gear,
Photography Due to fact that I love shooting landscapes, I am in love of the new Canon 5D Mark II. Talking a lot about it a friend asked me what’s that special with this camera compared to my Canon 40D. And it all came to one major difference: the 5D Mark II has a full frame sensor and the 40D has a crop sensor. So in this article I will try to explain the “Crop factor” notion, and the difference between them.
Full frame notion. A full frame sensor has an area of 36 x 24 mm and it’s close to the area of a 35mm film camera, back in the film days.
Crop factor. Well many of the digital cameras, from compact to DSLR cameras, have different image sensors with different dimensions. Most of the sensors have sizes equal or smaller than 36 x 24 mm. Because of the smaller sensor, the camera tends to capture less than an image giving the effect of cropping. There are a lot of crop factors starting from 1x (the Full Frame) and going all the way to 2x (Olympus), for DSLR’s and going even further than 6x for compact cameras. A 2x crop factor refers to a sensor size 2 times smaller than the full frame meaning a roughly 18 x 12 mm sensor size.
Now let’s see how this translates in the actual size of the image:
Read more…
Tags: Camera Gear, Canon, Comparation, DSLR, Nikon, Photography
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Dec 13, 2008 in
Photography,
Releases 
A couple of weeks ago ShutterVoice was announced in a beta testing state where only a few were chosen to test it. Now it’s finally out for you to buy with a price tag of 30$.
For those of you who aren’t aware of what this software can do here’s a quick summary. Shutter voice enables you to control you camera (that’s connected to your computer) by voice, through the Canon EOS Utility. It allows you to change a whole bunch of settings just by telling that to your camera. Unfortunately it can be used only by Canon owners. Here’s more information and don’t forget to watch the video demonstration. This software is excellent when you are testing different light setups and the only model available is you.
I would like to add that among those few people chosen to test ShutterVoice I was chosen as well. Played a couple o hours with the software and I have to say that I was pretty amazed of what it can do. But, you must have a very goo microphone and you must be able to speak clearly so that the computer understands what you want. You might want to know if I was that impressed that I would want to buy it, the answer is YES, but I won’t for know until I upgrade my Canon 40D to a camera that can automatically focus in live view mode. That is because my 40D can’t automatically focus so still i have to go back an forward to my camera to focus.
Tags: Camera Gear, DSLR, Photography, Release, Software
Posted by Constantin Chirila on Dec 12, 2008 in
Camera Gear,
Rumor It seams that Nikon are releasing a bunch of new cameras. After announcing by mistake the new Nikon D3X, it seams that now news are traveling about Nikon are developing the upgrade of D300 the Nikon D400. But, for now stays at “just a rumor” state.
Here are the supposed specifications:
- New 14.8 megapixel DX format CMOS sensor effective 14.3 megapixel
- Self-cleaning sensor unit (low-pass filter vibration)
- ISO 100 – 6400 (with boost up to ISO 25600 and down to ISO 50)
- 14-bit A/D conversion
- Movie capture at up to 1080p 24 fps with stereo sound
- Nikon EXPEED Plus image processor 30% faster than previous EXPEED image processor
- Super fast operation (power-up 13 ms, shutter lag 40 ms, black-out 90 ms)
- Kevlar / carbon fibre composite shutter with 200,000 exposure durability
- Multi-CAM3500DX Auto Focus sensor (51-point, 15 cross-type, more vertical coverage)
- Auto-focus tracking by color (using information from 1005-pixel AE sensor)
- Auto-focus calibration (fine-tuning) now available (fixed body or up to 20 separate lens settings)
- Vignetting control in-camera
- Automatic chromatic aberration correction
- Custom image parameters now support brightness as well as contrast
- Seven frames per second continuous shooting (nine frames per second with battery pack)
- 3.0″ 922,000 pixel LCD monitor
- Live View with either phase detect (mirror up/down) or contrast-detect AF, face detection
- ‘Active D-Lighting’ (adjusts metering as well as applying D-Lighting curve)
- Detailed ‘Control Panel’ type display on LCD monitor, changes color in darkness
- Buttons sealed against moisture
- Same ultra-fast startup and shutter lag as D700
- Scene Recognition System (uses AE sensor, AF sensor)
- Picture Control image parameter presets
- UDMA compatible single CF card slot
- Virtual horizon indicates if camera is level (like an aircraft cockpit display)
- Extensive in-camera retouching
- HDMI HD video output
- Magnesium alloy body with connections and buttons sealed against moisture
Beside the fact that it isn’t Full Frame, with a lot of specs aproaches to the soon to be released Canon 5D Mark II. It’s rumored that the Nikon D400 will have a price tag of $2000. It’s also said that this will be release in February 2009. Since this is a rumor don’t take all of this as granted. Stay tuned for more info.
Tags: Camera Gear, DSLR, Nikon, Release, Rumor
