My recommendation to all beginners are to start off from a cheap tripod before finding your way to the ultimate tripod that fits you the best. There are plenty of standard size tripods for new/used for around $20. Get yourself one for sack of having one: don’t worry picking the ‘right’ tripod… As long as its a standard sized, aluminum tripod that should serve you well.

Learn to love it, feel what’s like to own a tripod and do things you cannot do without one. Learn to hate it, attempt to carry it everywhere sensible, try setting it up differently, push to its limit (feature wise) and gently abuse it (strength wise).

Now you are an experienced tripod user with plenty of comments toward your tripod. Before you start thinking about hunting for your next tripod, look at your tripod now: how’s its condition?

• If its in similar condition to when you purchased it, then you are either not using it enough, this tripod fits your light usage, or you are simply not a tripod person. Please get rid of that thought “we’ll, if I have a better tripod, I…” That’s just GAS. Either way congratulation, you’ve saved yourself a premium on spending money on tripod that you may better invest into something else;
• If your tripod took the beat, well… lucky this poor fellow isn’t your $800 tripod (because that can happen too if you not using it correctly). Find yourself asking new tripod that fits your usage.

Reason why you don’t jump to a high end tripod as your first tripod is that there isn’t such thing as ‘the ultimate tripod’. All high end tripods has their distinct features and prices can get ridiculously high. You need to first figure out what kind of tripod fits you the best and narrow down your choice that way: you not going to know what you need until you been out with one.

Here is a shortlist of features you may consider. Remember, there’s no one tripod that can fits them all:

• Price
• Storage size and base weight: for traveler and everyday photography
• Material (wood, aluminum, carbon fiber, titanium): for weight, durability and stability
• Stability: important for long exposure and landscape
• Maximum height: for versatile and everyday but affects stability
• Price: tripod can get really expensive an don’t forget different heads, plates and fancy accessories you may desire
• Speed: as in how fast can you deploy a tripod from its folding position
• Environment capable: temperature, sand dust, humidity and salt…
• Specialty: detachable pipe leg for macro, 2 sections bendable center pipe, triangle legs for better minimal storage space
• Did I mention Price? some may go with videography tripod for super stability, or Gitzo’s special weather sealed tripod. those are not sub $1000.

I don’t want to go into tripod heads and plates as they are different topic and can be specialized. That’s leave that till another day…

Couple of things you may not already know:

• Tripod doesn’t retain resell value the way lens does. Material will age and new models will replace yours completely (unlike lens were some old optics are actually sharper than successors)
• Carbon fiber is considered as premium material, but it’s actually fragile and may crack upon heavy drop.
• Not even the top end tripod able to deal with portrait mode perfectly. You are bound to get L-plate or gimbals head, or just stick with landscape mode.

Summary

It is important that you start shooting and start using one. Because it is the experience that will take you to the next level. Same applies to your equipment usage, you will have to learn to love it and hate it in good to be good at using it.

 So, why eBook reader when these are so many different pads to choose from?

I’m iPad’less and never found a reason why I should own one. I obviously understand that you have store and display eBooks with iPad (or other pads/tablets), but I cannot read for long with an LCD screen and don’t think that’ll do good to my eye sight. Another justification is that I am seeking for an device to read my eBooks with, full stop. I know with iPads, I’ll have more than enough trouble fighting a ‘fun device’ with my love one and while I’m reading, there will always be the temptation to ‘op out’ and next thing you know I’m addicting to Candy Crash.

 That been said, I want to stick my options to e-ink technology at the same time, I desire my device to be self-lit providing I will be reading before sleep. I am lucky the market is current offering 2 main choices fits my description plus couple off brand variations.

Another interesting observation while I’m doing my price research, is that LCD versions of eBook readers (Kindle Fire, Kobo Vox) seems to be dropping their price quite heavily. In fact, as today Kobo Vox dropped from RRP AU$249.99 to AU$129.99 retail store, while the Kobo Glo I picked has always been around AU$150~$160.

 So, why Kobo?

I could easily choose Kindle and lack of .epub format support doesn’t seems bug me as I can use Calibre to convert my existing eBooks to any other popular formats. It’s really the availability: It’s very hard to find Kindle Paperwhite in retail shops in Australia, otherwise I will give it a fair try out and see how that felt. Otherwise, according to netizen, Kobo Glo and Kindle Paperwhite are really similar in terms of quality, performance, ergonomic and price. Some may tilt to one other the other, but there are no strong opinion to any of the two.

So, how is it?

It’s too early to tell, I’ll give it couple of weeks before I feedback to this shinny toy. One thing I know for sure, things will only go better from here if I read more book and play less toys (that’s you iPhone, iPad and your demonic, pointless apps!)

• Original Article

For example:

JPEG straight out of camera. Setting: ISO200, f11, 30 seconds.

My first suspect was my B+W ND110 filter (10 stops) causing uneven exposure. Some suggest possibility of sticky shutter curtain. Another asked me whether I shut my ‘Viewfinder Curtain’ because that can be a source of light leak, which is a hard knock on my head. I’m doing long exposures in broad daylight, there’s a ‘Viewfinder Curtain’ available to my camera body (D800) and I did not think of using it.

I did a test to confirm that is exactly the cause. I took the following shots

•  ISO 100, f8, 30 seconds
• Using B+W ND110 filter
• JPEG straight out of camera, resized from 3680×2456 to 900x601px

Photo taken with ‘Viewfinder Curtain’ shut.

Photo taken with ‘Viewfinder Curtain’ open shooting to East with Sun above me (early afternoon). You can see a subtle horizontal white ghosting about 70% down the photograph.

Photo taken with ‘Viewfinder Curtain’ open and shinning a touch into the viewfinder for 30 seconds. Photo is now badly polluted by light leak through viewfinder.

This may be obvious to some landscape photographers but when this unwanted effect hits me, I could not pin point the cause. I hope this post is somehow helpful and can be quickly realised when occurred to new photographers.

• Direct Link

New Features in Photoshop CS2 from CS1

Released in May 2005.

1. Vanishing Point: Groundbreaking ability to clone, paint and transform in the perspective of your images.
2. Image Warp: Warp any object, with customisable presets and adjustable control points.
3. Noise Reduction: Advanced correction of noise created in high-ISO shooting, plus JPEG artifact reduction.
4. 32-bit HDR: Create and edit 32-bit, High Dynamic Range images, for the widest range and richest detail.
5. Spot Healing Brush: Fast, efficient one-click retouching of dust, scratches and other image flaws.
6. One-Click Red Eye Correction: Instantly eradicate this common photo flaw.
7. Optical Lens Correction: Correct common lens issues like barrel and pincushion distortion.
8. Animation: Easily create animated Web graphics directly in Photoshop CS2.
9. Smart Sharpen: Intelligently counteract common photo blurring with advanced control.
10. Shadow/Highlight: Simple discrete adjustment of shadows and highlights, now also for CMYK images.
11. Enhanced 16-bit Editing: Additional filters, such as Liquify, are now available for use in 16-bit images.
12. Smart Objects: Non-destructive editing and transformations, including Illustrator CS2 integration.
13. Video Preview: Send an instant preview of video-destined images to an external monitor.

New Features in Photoshop CS3 (10.0.0) from CS2

Released in April 2007.

1. Non-destructive Smart Filters: Filters can be applied non-destructively, and remain live and re-editable. That gives you the flexibility to experiment with different filters and settings, without having to back up and start over with the original image.
2. Vanishing Point with adjustable angle: Paste graphics in perspective to create packaging mock-ups and effortlessly edit in perspective.
3. Black and White conversion: Quickly remap the colors in your image to monochrome, and improvements to the Channel Mixer.
4. Improved Curves Adjustment: Curves now features a larger, improved display incorporating an integrated histogram and simultaneous display of multiple color channels.
5. Enhanced Merge to 32-bit HDR: Merge to HDR lets you use your digital camera to capture bracketed exposures that together cover the dynamic range of the scene.
6. Quick Selection tool: Paint the general area with the Quick Selection tool to select the region you need to work on.
7. Refine Edge: Final touch to any image selection.
8. Photomerge with advanced alignment and blending: Provides a fast, easy way to convert a series of images into a panorama.

Released a year apart, they share more similarities than difference, hence making the mark 2 version a revision to its presessor. A summary of their similarity as following:

• Color Temperature: 5600K
• RRP (at release time): US$75
• Full Power Recharge Time: approx. 3 seconds
• Zoom: 24-105mm
• Power Level: 1 to 1/128
• Acoustic Signal: Yes
• External Power Connector: Yes
• PC Sync Port: Yes
• Overheat Protection: Yes
• Flash Duration (at Full Power): 1/200 seconds

Besides the build quality and an obvious LCD user interface, there are some minor spec variations:

New Features in Photoshop CS4 (11.0.0) from CS3 (10.0.1)

Released in October 2008.

1. Smoother panning and zooming and fluid canvas rotation: Navigate to any area of an image with new, ultra-smooth zooming and panning. Maintain clarity as you zoom to individual pixels and easily edit at the highest magnification with the new Pixel Grid. And use the revolutionary new Rotate View tool to smoothly turn your canvas for distortion-free viewing at any angle.
2. Adjustments panel: Simplify image adjustment by easily accessing every tool you need to non-destructively adjust and enhance the color and tone of your images; on-image controls and a wide variety of presets are also included in the new live and dynamic Adjustments panel.
3. Masks panel: Quickly create and edit masks from the new Masks panel. This panel offers all the tools you need to create editable pixel- and vector-based masks, adjust mask density and feathering, easily select non-contiguous objects, and more.
4. Content-Aware Scaling: Use the new and revolutionary Content-Aware Scaling feature to automatically recompose an image as you resize it, smartly preserving vital areas as the image adapts to the new dimensions. Get the perfect image in one step without time-intensive cropping and retouching.
5. Extended depth of field: Easily create a single image from a series of shots that have different focal points with the enhanced Auto-Blend Layers command, which smoothly blends color and shading and now extends your depth of field, automatically correcting vignettes and lens distortion.
6. Auto-blending of images: Combine a range of images, each with a different exposure, color, and focal point — with options to preserve tones and colors — into a single color-corrected image.
7. Industry-leading color correction: Enjoy dramatically enhanced color correction with re-engineered Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools that now intelligently preserve color and tone details.
8. Improvements on printing options: Get outstanding prints with superior color management, tighter integration with leading printer models, and the ability to preview out-of-gamut image areas. Support for 16-bit printing on Mac OS offers increased color depth and clarity.

Credit goes to SoftPedia.com for compiled such an easy bite.

Few has mentioned whether I have database of different varieties  and fact is I do have databases of other information such as Canon lenses, DSLR bodies, price research etc. However, it is much easier to commit to a smaller data set and maintain the quality, rather than going for quantity. In time I will sort out Canon lenses and made them available too.

Thanks for everyone’s participation.

• Nikon Lenses Database as Google Doc
• Nikon Lenses Database as HTML Page