South Carolina Photography Guild

Midnight struck the hour upon which Adobe decided to release the first Windows beta version of their new file management software Lightroom. The product is allegedly a response to the Aperture software that had recently also been released in beta for the Apple platform. After taking it for a trial spin, there are some kinks to be worked out, but they have some good ideas in place here, and it appears that this could also be a possible replacement application for the Adobe Bridge, which is the current file manager Adobe has that comes with Photoshop. A few screenshots from the beta version follow.

More information on Lightroom, Aperture, and the Adobe Press release can be obtained from the following web resources:

Apple Aperture

Adobe Lightroom Download
Adobe Press Release

CNN reported today that the Discovery mission was a success as the return home was safe and uneventful.  After looking at the weather right before the expected return, NASA deemed it safe for the re-entry.  The full story can be read here:  Discovery Returns

NASA, in cooperation with the AP, also had some great photo footage to share, which are linked off the story page.  Here are lower res images from the CNN article:

Congratulations to NASA and our fearless astronauts for their ongoing efforts to push the envelope!

Breaking news in the photography world! An old empty hangar (I am assuming they mean an airplane hangar) was converted into a camera and after drilling a gumball sized hole in one wall. Six photographers then positioned a 28 foot x 108 foot canvas on the opposite wall. The hole was then opened and light was allowed to expose the gigantic sheet for roughly 35 minutes. Apparently, the job of developing the shot wasn’t easy either as 30 additional volunteers were needed to move the huge canvas into an equally huge tray for developing the black and white image. All this was done in an effort to memorialize the El Toro Marine Corp Base in Irvine, CA, which was decommissioned in 1999, utilizing a principle called camera obscura (Latin for dark room!).

This practice is often used in pinhole cameras to view an eclipse so you don’t hurt your eyes. While fairly large building-sized pinhole cameras have been assembled from time to time (one even exists as close as UNC Chapel Hill in NC), this is the first time an airplane hanger has been put into use in such a fashion. To read about pinhole cameras and the principle of camera obscura, follow this link here: Camera Obscura Explained

Sorry no image to post, but the Fox News article that reported the story, is available here: World’s Largest Photo

I have a friend that has a medium format camera, and another who has a large format camera, but I know of no one that has a camera the size of an airplane hangar! I wonder how much a DSLR that size would cost?

After a very enjoyable session with the rest of the group Saturday, I felt ready to try applying some of the techniques, only no pictures to try them with. So….while having dinner with our neighbors on Sunday, I took my camera over and just started taking a few shots during and afterward of their daughter. Just to look at her makes your heart melt, but don’t take my word for it, here’s a shot I worked up in PS for the POTD:

At the meeting earlier today, we discussed our next photo shoot, and the 3rd Saturday in August, (the 19th) is our next outing.  Time and place is still to be determined, but mark your calendars now and feel free to join us.  We usually depart in the earlier part of the morning in order to catch the “golden” or good lighting of the day, so take comfort that we won’t be out sweating during the hottest time of day.  If anyone has ideas for locales, please feel free to suggest as we are always open to new ideas.  Places we have been to in the past include Cypress Gardens, Magnolia Gardens, Mepkin Abbey (over in Monck’s Corner), Middleton Plantations, Boone Hall, Isle of Palms, Folly Beach, and I am sure many others that I am forgetting.  We also have done a fair number of “walkabouts” in downtown Charleston near and through the Market Street area.  It’s always a great deal of fun, and there’s something for every skill level - heck we’ve even had budding photogs show up who don’t even own a camera, just to share in the camraderie, so come out and join the fun!

A decision should be made on location in the not too distant future, so check back to get the latest!  As always, happy surfing and Happy Shooting!

The Photo club had a great get-together this morning at the Summerville library. The more advanced photogs showed us some of the features available in Photoshop including the use of Lab color as opposed to RGB to get really amazing colors, fixing sheen on portraits, and lots of other cool stuff. Plus, it was good to see the crew as we’d not gotten together collectively in a while. The only downside is that more people did not bring shots to share for editing so the fwe of us that did had some pretty wild effects done on them. Perhaps that’s why the others didnt bring any….they knew what would happen! LOL

For any that read this on a regular basis, (since the guild does have almost 30 members) you should notice a link on the right panel to the Low Country Blogs. This is a group of people throughout South Carolina (but mostly the Charleston and surrounding area) that have various interests ranging from photography (go figure) to knitting, to Mustangs, and everything in between. Many of these bloggers just enjoy sharing their daily thoughts, views and perspectives on the cornucopia of what could be called A Day in the Life of America (great book by the way).

They held their 2nd get-together yesterday and I went to find out more about them and to meet the people that share the common interest of blogging to share thoughts, perspectives, pictures and ideas. A very universal theme that is very much in keeping with the overall goals of the South Carolina Photography Guild.

While I did not get a chance to really talk in great detail with everybody, here is a smattering of several of the attendees I got the opportunity to speak with:

Another photographer named Jason (very confusing) who actually does it for a living

A fellow former military man named Chuck who also has a career history in photography, (He explained to me how he processed all the film shots that AP sent through his base and he had the pleasure of developing.)

Joan, who organized the whole thing (and has some great shots on her blog “Walk This Way” too by the way, which takes you on a pleasant stroll through her view of Charleston)

Heather from Monck’s Corner Moments, who shares the same camera as I do…(and thanks for the gallery link idea, that has now been implemented if you look to the right!)
Lisa, whose blog Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness imho epitomizes the essence of each of these concepts in her posts (and whose daughter is just a peach and fun to talk to!)

A fellow named Mike who didn’t stop smiling the entire time (who as it turns out, goes by the moniker Notoriously Nice Mike on his blog)

April, who like tech friend Jared (see dedicated link to right) is from sunny California, but has traded coasts and shares her thoughts with us at her blog “Once Upon a Time“. I can’t speak too much of her though, as her camera is nicer than mine!
The amazing Knitting Vera, who despite what she tells you, is knitting with FOUR needles (she claims that since two were sometimes inactive, somehow they don’t count!)
Janet Lee and her now CBS acclaimed Kittens on the Keyboard (and congrats on your novel request news!)
and rounding it out with the now evidently famous Windviel with his blog, Mustang Rolling

All in all, it was a really good time, and I look forward to the next Blogger Party. I’d be interested in one back by the Aquarium again since I missed the first one and am a huge devotee of the water and sunrises and sunsets (just ask my photog friends). And who knows…maybe some of the bloggers will join up with us photoggers on our next shoot in August!
(Oh, by the way, if some of these links don’t match my editorials, please let me know as this was a lot to link up on one post!)

In a letter to it’s former customers, Pixmantic has announced that anyone who had purchased their raw conversion software, Rawshooter Premium, is eligible for a free version of Adobe Lightroom 1.0, provided you made the purchase before July 12, 2006 (yesterday).  A very generous and benevolent gesture, but my question is:  what about those that purchased Pixmantic for Windows (Lightroom is only available for Macintosh computers)?  The full text of the email they sent follows:

Dear RawShooter!

As you may have noticed, Adobe Systems Inc. recently acquired the technology assets of Pixmantec. Pixmantec’s technology and expertise will be incorporated into Adobe’s products. Specifically, some of Pixmantec’s raw processing technology will be incorporated into Adobe’s raw processing engine which is shared by Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom. We, the founders of Pixmantec, will join the Adobe team, integrating our expertise into their products, and continuing to be able to serve the photographic community.

As the founders of Pixmantec, we’d like to express how gratifying it has been to see the level of support and praise we have managed to gain through the introduction of the RawShooter product line to the market. We had a vision of making top-notch raw processing capabilities truly accessible to a wide audience of photographers, and the number of devoted users that developed tells us that we made significant progress towards that goal.

Nevertheless, we also saw that we were not the only company recognizing the need for specialized photography workflow software. Specifically, Adobe a company we have always admired had for some time been working on their own workflow solution, which was announced as the Lightroom public beta program in January of this year. When we met with the folks from Adobe, we found that the admiration was mutual, and that our visions for the customer were very well aligned. Ultimately, we saw the opportunity to make a bigger impact by joining Adobe, and lending our own best ideas and expertise to the ongoing Camera Raw and Lightroom efforts.

As we work to integrate Pixmantec technology and expertise into Adobe’s raw processing pipeline, we will no longer be working on new versions of the RawShooter | premium product, and have stopped selling this product. Of course, your RawShooter | premium product will continue to work and serve you well, but we also know that many of you will eventually want a software solution that you know will continue to evolve, remaining up-to-date as raw workflows and processing continues to improve. Adobe Lightroom is a product targeted at solving these evolving workflows and up to the minute raw processing. Currently in public beta format for the Macintosh platform Adobe Lightroom will be released as public beta for Windows this summer.

Lightroom is being built from the ground up to address the unique challenges of a photography-centric workflow. Not only will it offer what we believe will be second-to-none raw processing, but it is designed to provide a start-to-finish workflow solution for photographers. We encourage you to learn about Adobe Lightroom: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom

For those concerned about the transition to Lightroom or the acquisition in general please visit this FAQ that addresses many of the topics discussed in the Pixmantec forums recently. Please continue to let us know how we can ease this product transition for you.

Now that we’ve joined the Adobe family, we must emphasize that RawShooter users also are now Adobe customers, regardless of whether you ever purchase another Adobe product. Your satisfaction matters to us. Specifically, Adobe will do the following:

	Offer a free download version of Lightroom 1.0 for customers who bought RawShooter | premium prior to July 12th 2006, 12 noon European Standard Time. Given that Lightroom 1.0 will serve a much broader range of functionality and will be priced at a higher price point than RawShooter | premium, we believe this represents a great value for our customers.
	Adobe will investigate to what extent your image corrections made within RawShooter can be transferred to Lightroom.
	We will deliver support for Canon EOS 30D In RawShooter | essentials this summer.

We are deeply thankful for the support you have offered Pixmantec and we thank you in advance for your understanding and continued support.

The best is yet to come!

Sincerely yours,

Kenneth Laerke and Michael Jonsson

Canon announced the debut of four new Pixma “All-in-one” printers the other day. The new members of the Pixma family include a PixmA MP460 (retail price of $129.99), the Pixma MP180 ($99), the Pixma MP160 ($89), and the Pixma MP530 ($199.99). The press release covers brief bios for each model and can be found here:
Canon Press Release

While improvements in ink usage and lower cost per page are always welcome for photographers, none of these add the larger print functionality, with each maxing out at 8.5×11. This is somewhat disappointing as advances in other areas of technology (building computers, setting up home networks, music recording, video recording, web publishing, etc., etc., etc.) are allowing the consumer to venture into new areas, the area of large printing capabilities are still somewhat restrictive. Epson has made some strides with their Epson 1280, which can be found retail for $399 with rebates knocking it down under $300, but this is the exception rather than the norm. The comparable Canon is the i9900, retails for $499 and does not have the same recognition in the print world. Canon has always been known as a camera manufacturer and is what they’ve built their name on. While adding the printer field into their product line does make sense, it would be nice to see them make their product more affordable, especially when the leader (Epson) has comparables that sell for lower costs.

Additionally, for new prosumers who have already dropped a bundle on their camera gear, price becomes a very limiting factor in new gear unless one is independantly wealthy or can instantly begin generating revenue from their endeavors. Ultimately what this comes down to is a question of whether photographers wish to take control of their printing and dig deep to spring for the higher end printers, or…do we continue to outsource our printing solutions to local and online print labs? For the time being, it seems larger sized printing shall remain within the confines of dedicated print labs both of the online and brick-and-mortar venues for entry level prosumers.

Somehow I missed this, but the AP reported a few days ago that Catherine Leroy, a famous war photojournalist from the Vietnam era has passed away after a bout with cancer in Santa Monica, CA. Their story on it can be found here:

AP News Wire - Catherine Leroy