Hi guys, this is a short post from the road. This week we kicked off the worldwide Adobe CS 5 Evolution Tour in Sweden. We had a great day in Gothenburg yesterday and looking forward to the Stockholm crowd today. It was also great seeing my good friend Erik Bernskiold (designer of this blog and bestappsite.com) in his home town. Looking forward to seeing you all on the tour!
Adobe Ships Creative Suite 5.5 Today!
CS5.5 SHIPS TODAY! You can even get your hands on it now by ordering and downloading it here. Or, explore everything that's new by trying it out first.
That's right! You can get your hands on all of it's mobile authoring goodness today!
Gothenburg yesterday:
They really are happy on the inside 🙂 Those are expressions of excitement in Sweden.
Erik & Tommi manning the video switcher. Thanks guys!
I reviewed Apple's Camera Connection Kit when it first came out. The Apple kit is two adapters. One is an SD reader and the other is a USB port designed to connect your camera directly to your iPad for image import. The one glaring omission is the lack of a way to bring in images directly from a Compact Flash (CF) card. During my review, I showed how you could attach a standard (San Disk) reader to the Camera Connection Kit and bring images in directly from your CF Cards. However, shortly after I did the review Apple released an iPad software update that basically reduced the amount of power that the dock connector outputs making it virtually impossible to power a card reader. I guess they didn't like people plugging in all the things (keyboard, drives, etc.) they were plugging in to the Camera Connection Kit on their magical devices. That left us with the only option being to use a USB cable and connect the camera directly to the iPad. While this works, it's slow and will drain the cameras battery during long transfers.
Problem Solved by M.I.C
This Hong Kong based company has developed a CF Reader that attaches directly to your iPad and allows you to import your CF cards (up to 400x speed cards) right into your iPad. Of course I ordered a couple of these immediately and mine just arrived this past Friday. I was hopeful and doubtful at the same time. I just couldn't figure out how they would get around the power problem. Well, they did! I plugged in my standard SanDisk 8GB Extreme IV card and it showed up just like the Apple Camera Connection Kit does. I imported my RAW (.NEF) files with no problems.
Hallelujah!
You can order the M.I.C CF Reader here. They are back logged (as you might expect), so give it a couple of weeks.
Show me!
I would normally do a video of such a gadget in action. However, they already had a video that shows it in action and I concur with the results shown. So here it is:
You might remember my rant from a few weeks back on the unnecessary LEDs on many consumer electronics that keep me up at night. While some of these devices allow you to turn off their annoying LEDs, there are many more that do not! In the past I've used everything from electrical tape to gaffer's tape to cover up these LEDs. While an inexpensive tape solution certainly gets the job done there are two problems with it. The first is that black tape doesn't look great over your expensive gear. The second is that sometimes you do actually need to see these status lights. For example, I have tape over the VERY BRIGHT LED on my AirPort Express. However, if I plug it into a connection in a hotel room I sometimes need to see the status light to see what's going on. Yep, I've just been peeling back the tape to take a peek.
LightDims are better
When I wrote my rant, one of my readers chimed and suggested that I take a look at LightDims. I did. I ordered both versions. These "stickers" come in two flavors. You can get the set that simply cut down on the brightness, effectively dimming the LEDs or you can get the total blackout set. There are situations where I would want to use one or the other.
I gotta say it. I'm in love with these! I've replaced the unsightly tape on most of my gear and used the nicely precut LightDims instead. They really work! My bedroom is now completely dark at night just the way I like it.
Join me, Jason Levine (Video Evangelist), Greg Rewis (Web Evangelist) and Paul Trani (Flash Evangelist) for a another LIVE Creative Suite Q&A session Today!
We will show our Top 10 Favorite Features of Adobe Creative Suite 5 and 5.5
I had the great pleasure of attending the Flash Bus Tour put on by none other than Joe McNally and David Hobby aka The Strobist. I couldn't pass up an opportunity to learn from these "flash" experts! The day was packed with different lighting setups and live examples.
David Hobby almost never wears long pants 🙂
David Hobby took the morning and started off by deconstructing a couple of his recent shots.
Joe McNally aka Numnuts
Joe McNally took the afternoon and showed how much POWER there is in shooting with speed lights. Drew, I think it's a little close 😉
So that's how they do that Justin Bieber look!
Amazing what you can do with 3 Nikon Speedlights and shooting in TTL.
Audience participation
Great Q&A at the end.
My take-aways
While I own 3 speedlights, I always looked at them as the lights I would use when I travel and don't have the ability to take my "big lights". However, after watching Joe and David I'm really starting to think about using my speedlights more often. As a matter of fact in a recent shoot I did, I decided to use a Nikon SB 900 to augment my natural light setup. I'm having a blast with the possibilities and want to thank Joe and David for not only putting on a great show, but also for bringing the tour to Michigan!
If you have a Nikon D7000 (Yippie!), Canon EOS 60D or 550D and you're a Lightroom user you'll be happy to know that the 3.4 update is here and provides built-in Tethering support for your camera.
First off I want to thank everyone that participated online in yesterday's The Grid LIVE show! The response was amazing! We mentioned quite a few products yesterday and I've gotten questions from people as to what they where so here's my list:
FlilterStorm Pro
The App that Scott showed that gives you Photoshop Like editing capabilities on your iPad
The NEW Photosmith App (Lightroom features on the iPad)
This is the App that Scott mentioned that will let you rate, sort, manage Collections, add metadata to images on your iPad and then SYNC via WiFi back to your Lightroom Catalog on your computer!
Just came out Today! Get it here from the
Catch the replay
If you missed yesterday's LIVE broadcast you'll be able to catch the replay that should be posted later today on the site as well as on iTunes as a downloadable podcast to watch offline here:
Hey guys, today I'll be LIVE on The Grid at 12 Noon EDT (GMT -4). We have a couple of fun topics to discuss and I'm really looking forward to it. Be sure to tune in LIVE if you can!
I’m liking Eye-Fi on a whole new level these days. This company and their products  have come a long way since I tested/reviewed the first card back in 2007. They’ve delivered on their promise to enable Direct Mode transfers from their X2 cards and they’ve released Mobile Apps for both iOS and Android platforms. This is great news for photographers as it gives you a way to shoot wirelessly from your camera to your tablet device or even your smartphone. Although I was quite content with the testing I had done thus far with the Pro X2 card going through my MiFi mobile hotspot, I’m even happier that I wont need it (the MiFi) anymore to shoot to my iPad 2.
Upgrade your Firmware
The first thing you’ll need to do is download the new Eye-Fi Center Application from their site and upgrade the Firmware of your Eye-Fi X2 card. I and others had problems doing the upgrade as it would immediately fail no matter what. The work around seems to be delete your existing Eye-Fi account (back up your photos first of course) and then create a new account and you should then be able to successfully upgrade your card.
Enable Direct Mode on your Card
Once your firmware is up to date you should then be able to Enable Direct Mode on your X2 card. You will see the SSID (network name) of the card as well as the password for the card’s network. To save time you can turn on Direct Mode while the card is in your computer and then connect your devices to its network. This is what I did with my iPad 2 to enable me to easily see the password while I was keying it in on the iPad.
Download their App
If you have an iOS or Android device you can download their FREE App for your device and log into your Eye-Fi Account. Once you log in you can then enable your card to transfer to the App directly.
A Tip
By default your images will just import and show in the grid. I want to see my images full screen and have them auto advance as i shoot. This is not really called out in the preferences. However if you go to Application Preferences and turn on “Full Screen”, your images will not only go to full screen as they come in, but they will also auto advance! YAY!
See more about the Eye-Fi App
I did a more complete review of the Eye-Fi App here.
How fast is it?
In my testing I used my Nikon D7000 (a 16.2 MP Camera) and I used the first card slot to shoot RAW to my regular 16GB SD card and I put the Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card in the second slot. I set the camera to shoot BASIC JPG to the second slot. This means that it’s transferring a 16.2 MP Basic JPG image to the iPad.
See the speed for yourself here:
The Bottom Line
Before you can say it, yes I wish there was a Compact Flash option (adapters aren’t supported with the X2 cards). However, if you’ve got a camera that shoots to an SD card, this solution totally rocks! If you got a camera with two card slots, then it gets even better as you’ll be able to shoot RAW to one card and your smallest JPG to the Eye-Fi card. I’m loving my D7000 even more now!
You can get the NEW 8GB Eye-Fi Mobile X2 Card here for $79
