I'm looking forward to showing you my end to end studio photography workflow. See how I use the Spiderlite TD5, tips on working with models and lastly my Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 workflows including retouching, web gallery creation and delivery of the final images.
Save $20 when you register with code TPT9195. Register here
There is a reason why photokina is only once every two years, it is a huge place to visit and get around. Have you been to Photoshop World? PhotoPlus Expo? To sum it up you would be able to fill these expos into the bottom floor of one hall. There are seven halls at Photokina and four of them are two floored! Imagine an entire floor filled with china, japan and hong kong companies, many of which are just copies of other vendors! It is crazy! Here are some highlights for me:
Yes, there are vendors…
There might be a reason as to why the show needs to have see seven halls, everyone wand I mean everyone is at photokina. While vendors like Canon, Nikon, Olympus etc. have almost an entire floor to themselves, smaller ones still have good sized booths and as you can guess, there are a lot of the small ones here! One of the main reasons to visit the show is to chat with vendors and get up to date on all the new gear that ends up being released in connection to Photokina, maybe even more so getting to chat with all the smaller vendors and finding new companies that you haven't heard about before that might stock your next favorite gadget.
Seeing the news!
Inevitably there are a bunch of new cameras being released before Photokina and this year was no exception. For me, the Nikon D7000 is a true highlight and a camera that is high up on my wishlist now that I got around to playing with it! It just kills, even the D300s is pretty much beaten by the D7000. Sure there were a lot more of the news from the show but you can find that on sites that are all about covering them (like 1001 Noisy Cameras) instead of me even trying to list it all here in a wrap-up.
Animoto
I caught up with the good guys over at Animoto and got a good demo of their software which makes it very easy to design a slick video slideshow to music. The photo slideshow that you can see above is all made by the animoto slideshow interface. Check them out!
Seminars
Even though photokina really is about the vendors that are exhibiting, there are a bunch of different seminars going on in the different booths. Big names such as Joe McNally and Vincent Versace were there and a special shoutout to Rufus Deuchler who did a great job presenting the CS5 news specific to what photographers can do with them, especially within InDesign. What can you say, the crowd loved what you can do in CS5.
Adobe's Worldwide Evangelist for Video and Audio, Jason Levine is back once again to give us his fourth installment on Getting Started With DSLR Video for Photographers.
F.J. Westcott just put out a new promo video featuring their NEW Modern Vintage Backdrops and I was honored that they asked me to be able to feature one of my shots taken at Photoshop World Vegas. Check out the video here:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjF37IoTGT0
These backdrops are awesome and I will definitely be adding one or two to my studio. See the rest of my shots from that shoot here.
I have really been enjoying using FaceTime to make FREE video calls back home while traveling abroad. Of course you need either an iPhone 4 or 4th generation iPod touch on either end and a Wi-Fi connection on both ends and you can talk and see as much as you want for FREE. It's been working extremely well! The one thing that I find to be a bit of a pain is actually holding the device. When just talking on the phone for long periods of time you can just lay it down and use speakerphone or a bluetooth headset as you roam around the room/multitask. However, with FaceTime you're going to not only want to hold the device, but you're also going to want to hold it up fairly high. Holding it down at a natural stomach level will probably yield some unflattering up the nose angles for your video.
Then I got an idea
One evening while sitting and working at the desk in my hotel room I realized that not only was there a better way to do this, but I even had the necessary pieces with me to make it work. Ideally you want some sort of vertical stand for the iPhone 4 that lifts it up higher than the desk/table itself. I realized that I had both an iPhone 4 tripod holder AND a Gorillamobile in my computer bag. It took me all of 15 seconds to put the two together and I had an instant FaceTime stand that could be tilted and even attached to something higher if need be. It worked GREAT!
Here are the two pieces you need:
G-Design makes the iPhone 4 tripod holder. Unfortunately it's not designed for the iPod touch, but as long as you don't turn it upside down it should just hold it in place.
It fits the iPhone 4 very snuggly and you CAN turn it upside down or sideways if you need to.
While the Tripod holder will go on just about any standard tripod, I find the Gorillamobile to be the smallest and most flexible in terms of standing it up or wrapping it around objects. It's so small in fact that I forgot that it was in my bag. So it's GREAT for travelers.
Yes you can use FaceTime with a 4th Gen iPod touch too!
In case you missed it, you don't have to have an iPhone (and contract) to enjoy FaceTime. You can have this FREE video call goodness now with a 4th Generation iPod touch. It has the necessary front facing camera and can make the same FREE video calls over WiFi to other 4th gen iPod touch devices OR iPhone 4's. FaceTime on an iPod touch uses your registered email address to receive FaceTime calls as long as your on WiFi. You can make FaceTime calls to an iPhone 4 as long as you know their phone number or another 4th gen iPod touch as long as you have their "registered" email address. Get the 32GB (don't waste your time with an 8GB model) iPod touch here.
Adobe just took the wraps of the NEW Photoshop Elements 9 and Premiere Elements 9. Aside from the usual great new features this is the first release of Premiere Elements on the Mac! Woohoo! Here are the highlights:
Adobe's Worldwide Evangelist for Video and Audio, Jason Levine is back once again to give us his second installment on Getting Started With DSLR Video for Photographers.
