Archive for August, 2008

Autumn in the Utah, Zion National Park: A great location for photo and landscape photo lessons from Brett Higgins.

The DPreview forums are currently providing the latest bit of information about the Canon EOS 5D succession. The EOS 5D is dead, long live the… EOS 7D and EOS 5D MkII. The first would be for a low cost option (around $2000 – I told you that this low price point would be critical in the battle of the Full Frame cameras in 2008-09), the second would be staying up against the Nikon D700 and replace honorably the original Canon EOS 5D. Or it would be a set of Canon EOS 3D and Canon EOS 7D…

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Canon EOS 7D

Anyway, do not expect to get any reliable information now. Canon has put under NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) all press representative and has provided the pre-production cameras for the initial hands-on reviews to pop up everywhere when the embargo is lifted.

This is exactly the reason why  we no longer have any information about the upcoming Sony Alpha 900 which will be fighting in exactly the same market. Possibly with exactly the same weapons (two cameras to simultaneously cover both the $2000 and $3000 ranges).

Canon IFA 2008

Everybody expects it to happen, but here is a noticia (in Spanish) where the writer informs us that the Canon people at the IFA2008 exhibition confirmed that the Canon EOS 5D will be renewed with the arrival of a new D-SLR camera with a Full Frame sensor within the scope of the next Koln Photokina fair.

In parallel, it has been observed that a Flicker user published an image that appeared to be marked as coming from a Canon EOS 6D (in the EXIF part of the file). But the author quickly confirmed that this was only a quick an dirty modification of the JPG file while testing some unrelated part of the Flicker operation.

So, we are still left without precise information about which name will be held by this new camera from Canon. But the latest descriptive rumour says that the EOS 6D or Canon EOS 7D (or whatever) will have the following features:

• 21.1 M-pixel Full Frame
• DIGIC IV
• ISO 100-6400 (extension: 50 ISO & 12800 ISO)
• 5 fps
• 3.2″ High Resolution Screen (LCD)
• 19-point AF
• HDMI Out
• Liveview
• HD Movie Mode
• Viewfinder: 100% Coverage
• Full weather sealing
• EF Lenses only

Anyway, this 2008 edition of the Photokina will be very interesting. You’ll see plenty of people running in the alleys from the first day to have a look at all the new cameras and photo products to be presented there.

It is the last step before the publishing: The editor of Crysis Warhead decided to give the Gold stamp to the current development of this FPS PC game that is eagerly awaited (it’s tkaing into the footsteps of Crysis, the performance is expected to climb significantly, the images to be as beautiful as before and the synopsis will restart the story of Crysis from the point of view of another character).

Availability

• 12 September in Europe
• 16 September in North America

Images to wait patiently

• images (from VE3D)
• more des images (from VE3D)
• even more images (from VE3D)
• giant images (3200 by 1800 pixels!)

Videos

All the videos are below:
(more…)

Minor information about using WordPress v2.6 (the latest revison of this great blog/web-site-wrinting tool).

I had a few difficulties to ensure that images where correctly aligned and displayed after the improvements in their presentation in WP2.6. For those really interested, I ended up adding the following to my CSS file:

Thanks to the support of the WordPress.org forum.

We are nearing time for the Photokina fair in Koln, Germany. So, photo manufacturer companies areannouncing their new products right now. As expected, here comes the Nikon D90 aimed at the entry-level D-SLR market. It is supposed to replace the Nikon D80.

The first presentations and reviews are coming up now everywhere on the Internet (except in France where Nikon appears to have embargoed the news after an isolated incidents in this country):

• Nikon product page (USA)
• Nikon press release (USA)
• DPreview hands-on review/preview
• Ken Rockwell presentation (with comments on the movie mode)
• Hands-on preview from Nikon D40/D40x/D60 Photog by Simon Joinson
• Richard Kilpatrick
• Photography Blog
• PopPhoto
• ThinkCamera

And an advanced presentation video:

$999 should be quite a nice price for a completely new camera with 12.3-megapixel image (4.5fps bursts) and even a 24fps HD-Movie 1280×720 mode. Standard zoom lens offered in kit will be AF-S DX Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR. You can see it below with this lens and… a GPS unit (compatible with nearly all existing Nikon SLR cameras: D3, D300, D700, D2X, D2Hs, D2Xs and D200).

Nikon D90 with GPS unit attached

As I was expected, this announcement is not followed by one for the Nikon D3x. Just the entry-level Nikon D90.

The rock band Soulwax created an album with a nice optical illusion for its cover. You will have a move and squint your eyes a little to fully perceive the effect.

Source: Neatorama.

According to Chasseur d’Images news-bit announcing the Canon EOS 50D, we could have some information about the replacement of the “5D” at the Photokina fair.

Il faudra attendre la Photokina pour en savoir davantage sur le prochain “5D” à capteur 24×36. (we will have to wait for Photokina to know more about the next “5D” with a 35mm sensor).

Only a few days to wait now until we know more about Canon EOS 5D-MkII, Canon EOS 6D or Canon EOS 7D.

Burj Dubai is the name of a Dubai construction zone current being modelled. It will host the most surprising series of buildings of astonishing proportions. The most obvious one is the Burj Dubai tower aiming for world record in the middle of 2009.

But there will be also this huge fountain which will be dwarfing the water jets of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I saw them perosnnaly, they are impressive, but the idea is to lead the way to a wholly different scale. I guess the noise will be impressive, too.

Sources: LuxuryLaunches.com & BurjDubaiSkyScrapper.

We have been talking a lot about it lately. Now, the Canon EOS 50D is out in the open, announced by Canon itself. If you followed here, nothing will surprise you. Even the body-only price of $1,399/£1,199.99/1499€ is expected (we’ll wait for a little step down when the camera is really available, in October 2008).

Here is a list of articles on the Internet describing the  new camera (to replace the Canon EOS 40D):

• PopPhoto
• DPreview
• DPreview preview
• Chasseur d’Images (French)
• dPhoto Expert
• PopPhoto
• Photography Bay (only a copy of the Press Release)
• PhotographyBlog

The Canon EOS 50D looks like a very good camera. As usual in this part of the camera range at Canon, this is an improvement, but having 15MP, more than 6 frames per second bursts, and a good image quality (up to 12800 ISO) is going to make it definitely interesting for people coming from either the EOS 40D or the EOS 30D. I’d say, the Canon EOS 50D is going to be loved.

They were only briefly available, but the Internet is always on:

Nikon D90 (front)

Nikon D90 (side)

It is now official: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky will be available in our stores on September 5th (very soon, eh!)

This should be the reason to go through a last minute list of all the recent screenshots and videos displaying the best images of this FPS game coming from Russia.

• Interview videos (from VE3D)
• Screenshots (from VE3D)
• Trailer (from GameTrailers)
• Trailer in HD (from GameTrailers)

Last but not least, the official game web site essentially confirmed the specs of the game that we provided a few weeks ago already.

Project Origin is the name of the sequel to F.E.A.R. (a frightening FPS game from Monolith). However, because of licensing issues, it will not be named FEAR 2 or anything like it. Nevertheless, this filiation should attract a lot of attention (the story will start just 30 seconds before the explosive end of the previous opus).

But knowing that F.E.A.R. has had the dubious fame of being a major PC power hog, it is well worth checking what we will need to run such an FPS game. And it is definitely difficult to get some reliable information of that kind for Project Origin, while we are waiting for a realease at the end of the year 2008.

Minimum requirements

• Processor: Athlon 64 3000+ or Intel 2.8GHz
• Memory: 1 GB of SDRAM
• Graphics: DirectX 9.x on GeForce 66xx or Radeon X16xx

Recommended requirements

• Processor: Dual core CPU
• Memory: 2 GB of SDRAM
• Graphics: DirectX 9.x on GeForce 7800 GT or Radeon X1800 series (Shader model 3)

Trailer

And here is a trailer for the game:

Project Origin trailer (click to play the video)

From the same Japanese test web site for Canon, here are the high-resolution photos of the Canon EOS 50D (click on the thumbnails to enlarge them).

Canon EOS 50D - front

Canon EOS 50D - front

Canon EOS 50D - back

The Canon Japanese web site did it again. Now we get a neary full description of the new Canon EOS 50D. With all nice photos of the replacement for the Canon EOS 40D.

Canon EOS 50D

Seeing that this also presents a 15MP camera, I start to wonder whether Canon has really a replacement ready for the EOS 5D Full Frame SLR camera. Several of the features attributed (by the rumour) to the EOS 5D MkII seem to be appearing on the Canon EOS 50D. It could mean that the leaks were actually coming from the EOS 50D and not the EOS 7D (or whatever name it will have).

Of course, we will have to wait a little more to know if Canon is really ready to announce two major cameras at the Photokina fair (one Canon EOS 50D in mid-range and one Canon EOS 7D at the high-end). But it looks more and more like Nikon and Sony will have an empty field to compete with the aging Canon EOS 5D.

A few templates for documents you would want to use with OpenOffice 3.0 or MS-Office.

Microsoft Office 2007 Templates

Free legal download.

Indirect confirmation of what we told previously here about the future replacement for the Nikon D80.

This new photo camera was “seen” (more or less) on the Target.com web site where a single page is describing it as:

• Nikon D90 12.3MP Digital SLR w/ 18-105mm

No photo, no detailed technical features, but the title confirms the size of the sensor and the zoom that will be offered in the standard lens kit.