Also there is a new rumor that on the same day the new Canon TSi/500D will see the daylight. Although the first rumor said that this is going to be released at the PMA ( check this ), but it wasn’t released then. Anyway, we will wait an see.

Ohh and here is a list of specs for those of you who didn’t read the first post about this Canon TSi/500D:

• 15.1 Megapixels
• ISO: 100-3200
• Image procesor: DIGIC IV
• LCD: 3″ VGA LCD
• Crop: 1.6x
• FPS: 3 raw/3jpg
• AF: 9 Point AF
• AF: Face Detection
• LiveView
• Movie Mode (No AF)

Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 EX DC HSM

It seams that Sigma improved the popular ultra-wide lens 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM made for APS-C/DX sensors (Non Full Frame), making the new version with fixed a aperture of  f/3.5 through the focal range. It also has two Super-Low Dispersion and two Extraordinary-Low Dispersion glass elements for the correction of chromatic aberrations. It will be available with mounts for Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Sony and Pentax DSLRs. Hopefully this will at leas as good as it predecessor, we will see some future reviews, I would like an ultra wide lens for my cropped sensor 40D.

Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8-4.5 DC OS HSM

Sigma also has released a standard zoom lens featuring an optical stabilizer and a wide aperture at it’s shortest focal length. This is also having two Super-Low Dispersion glass elements for the correction of chromatic aberrations.  As the previous lens it has a Hyper Sonic Motor (HSM) for fast and silent focusing. Sigma also states that its OS it would work on Sony and Pentax bodies with in-body stabilization systems. This also will be available with mounts for Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Sony and Pentax DSLRs. Bottom line this is a good lens to replace the kit lenses, because this is faster.

Sigma 50-200mm f/4-5.6 DC OS HSM

Sigma also talked about it’s telephoto zoom lens. This lens has the same image stabilization as the 18-50mm f/2.8-4.5 and also has the Hyper Sonic Motor. Something to note, due to fact that is a low-budget lens, is the fact that it has internal focusing with a non-rotating front  element. Also the lens is treated for correction of chromatic aberrations.

The lens is the eye of the camera, and every photograph is recorded after the light come through the lens. Taking your DSLR without putting your lens on, and start taking photos, your see that the image processor records and extremely blurry photographs.

Lenses allows us to:

• get more light ( lenses with big aperture), even if your camera have high iso numbers, you’ll still need a fast lens to get  fast shutter speeds.
• get  close-up of your subject without actually being close ( telephoto lenses )
• get incredibly sharp photographs
• get sharp images of a mosquito’s eye ( macro lenses )
• isolate our subject with small depth of field
• capture sharp images of huge mountains and big fields of flowers ( wide lenses )
• make creative photographs with lens-baby

As you can see lenses are way more important that the camera.

In creating the ultimate lens is involved a lot of precision mechanics and optics science. Also there is use a high amount of very expensive glass materials, so you will need a lot of glass elements in building a zoom lens with fast aperture. Also every piece of glass is treated with other substances for durability, minimize chromatic aberrations, reduce flare, etc. Also raw optical glass costs around 1000$ per kilogram, as Discovery Channel points out in their “How it’s made” show.

All of this being said, you can easily explain why a good lens costs hundreds and even thousand of dollars.

Also please check this video created by Discovery Channel on how lenses are made.

“…Canon has a replacement for the 1D MKIII ready to launch during the second quarter of 2009. What’s holding Canon back is a decision from FIFA … to allow pro-cameras with video capability ( see 5D MKII) during sporting events. FIFA is currently looking into the legal implications with television rights and contracts with broadcasters. If FIFA give the green light then Canon will release the camera.”

But it’s not a huge dead, because Canon won’t delay the launch of the camera whatever the answer from FIFA will be. There isalso a rumor that the possible announcement date is May 19, 2009.

Today I will talk about Shutter Speed. Here is a list o things you should know about this:

1. What is Shutter Speed?

As the name says, it’s the speed of the shutter is opening and closing. In fact it is measured in the time the shutter stays open (from 1/8000 of a second to 30 seconds and more in the bulb mode). So if you take your photo with 1/250th of a second the shutter stays open for 0,004  (1/250) seconds, or if you take it with 1/25 of a second the shutter stays open for quarter of a second.

1/500 speed to freeze the action

2. Use it to freeze the action.

Almost all the time you will use the shutter speed to freeze the action so the your subject is captured on you photo tack sharp. So keep in mind that high shutter speed are useful to freeze the photo when your subject moves, or your hands is that you won’t obtain a blurry photograph.

3. Use it to blur action.

Silk river (1/2 second shutter speed)

Although you might think that blur is a negative thing to photography, you are wrong. You can use it to obtain a lot of interesting photographs. For example you can use it when photographing a river  or wave splashing on rock to obtain  a silky look of the water. To do this you must have a low shutter speed from1 second to even10 or 15 seconds. In bright day light try lowering you ISO to 100 or even 50 and Aperture to at least f/22. If still its to much and your photographs come out over exposed, then you can use a ND filter (Neutral Density Filter). Because you are working with such low shutter speeds, don;t forget your tripod.

4. Use it to create light trails.

By using low shutter speed you can create abstract photos by moving around the camera

pointed to some light sources. You can even draw with light by using a flash light and drawing in the air with it while camera it’s exposing for 30 seconds or more . This is beautiful to capture the movement of the cars on a road. Don’t forget that this can only be used at very low light.

5. Use it for panning.

You can capture moving subjects without freezing them and their background but by freezing the subject and the background having a movement blur giving you photo a sense of movement. You can do this by ushing a shutter speed between1/30 and 1 sec and then as you subject is passing by press the button and pann with the subject.

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.

2. Use online services to archive and back up your data.

There are a lot of services that cand provide you with space to back up your photos.

Some have a price tag on the services:

• Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)
• PhotoShelter – here you can also sell your prints
  
• Mozy Online Backup
• FlickR – the most useful and inexpensive. For 25$ a year you can store as many high resolution photographs as you want. (No Raw support though)

And other are completely free:

• Zapr – it oriented more on sharing, but putting the files to not be public it’s the way to go.
• And a lot of other web-sites that are oriented on file sharing but you can easily use it as a backup space.

3. Create your own Backup Server.

Building yourself a back up server it’s very easy an very inexpensive. A backup server doesn’t need a monitor, mouse, keyboard, it’ doesn’t need to have fast an expensive processor, it doesn’t need to have a graphic card or more than 256 RAM, but it only need a good motherboard. You can built it from scrap parts (we all have some PC parts lying around) or find cheap one around the net. With less than 200$ you have  your own server. But you have to invest in hard drives. You can put on your new mother board (there are motherboard that can sustain up to 8 SATA-II drives) up to 8 1TB hard drives. Each hard drive can cost you less than 100 dollars. Imagine yourself with 8000GB of space, almost 600 000 RAW photos of 15MB each and 2.7million 10megapixel JPEG photos. Impressive ha? But still hard drive can often fails so you can also (strongly recommended) set up a RAID system, which can mirror your files between you hard drives, meaning that every hard drive has twin which contains the exact files so if one fails you still have one (a lot of bad luck to fail both hard drives). Another cool thing is you can use it as storage as well, and you can install Linux on your system and set it up so you can access it over the Internet (FTP, web, etc).

4. Use spare hard drives.

You can use hard drives that lye around and back up photos on it, than store it somwhere safe and then never use it again. There are a lot of 100-200-300gb harddrives that are very inexpensive, somwhere near40-50$.

Notice: Something to consider is that keeping all the backed up data in the same place can be dangerous because a natural disaster of just a fire in your room can ruin all your data along with the backup. Always consider an online backup. My recomandation is FlickR.

The new Nikon D3x is a full-frame DSLR camera with a 24.5 megapixel 16-bit EXPEED image processor. Here are some more specifications:

• 24.5 megapixel the highest resolution seen in a Nikon DSLR to date
• 16 bit EXPEED image processor (35.9 x 24mm)
• 51 point autofocus system
• 5fps continuous shooting (or 7fps at 10 megapixel)
• ISO range 50-6200
• Extra High Active D-Lighting
• Live preview shooting mode
• 3 inch LCD screen with 922000 dots
• Extremely durable magnesium construction with economically optimized and weather-sealed
• Dual CF slots

According to cameraworld.co.uk the price of the D3X camera is expected to be around £5500 (they even take pre-order deposits of £20). And it is said that will be released  in December.

I wonder if it’s worth buying it. Beside the high megapixel number there is not much improvement compared to D3. I guess that this D3X it will be a relief for fashion/portrait/product/etc. photographer , but a disappointment for wedding and sports photographers photographers where they need speed and god image quality at very high ISO.  But we will wait and see how it will present itself.

You can read more here or here.