The last few posts I've written have been about the fancy new cameras Nikon and Canon are producing. But Aaron Johnson of What the Duck fame has a pretty funny spin on the whole situation. He's not a professional photographer but most of his comic strips hits the nail on the head.

Have a good day and take time to laugh.

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I received new Elinchrom Skyports about a two weeks ago and I'm pretty impressed by tiny but powerful radio slaves. They don't have the distance or have as many channels as Pocket Wizards but they do provide a powerful bang for the buck. The price of on transmitter and two receivers cost me around $300. One PW transceiver would have cost me $200 It's a nice upgrade from the inconsistent ebay slaves I had.

You can get the Skyports at the Midwest Photo Exchange. They also a advertise on Strobist.com, a really good resource on learning how to do quality lighting without having to spending tons of cash.



Also, if you're in the Bay Area and are looking for a photographer/writer for your publication then checkout Joe Proudman and click the above image to see his portfolio.

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Looks like he tried to hide from me when he took off his shackles. This is very sneaky of him and blows his credibility

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Nikon has announced a recent addition to its pro camera line up, the D3. Itis almost full frame (.1 millimeter short), 12.7 megapixels and has a maximum ISO setting of 25,600!

The Rob Galbraith wrote:

But the D3 is so much more than a D2Xs with a 35mm-size sensor. The new model has a larger and much better viewfinder, 51-area autofocus (including 15 cross-type AF areas), a 3-inch (diagonal), 920,000-dot rear LCD whose clarity has to be seen to be believed, LiveView with autofocus, noticeably higher quality photos at the D3's upper ISO settings, HDMI video out, a nifty camera leveling feature and more. Nikon's engineers have been busy building a competitor to Canon's EOS-1D Mark III, and our initial impressions, after handling and shooting with the camera briefly, are really positive.

The two leading professional leading camera makers have really been taking it up a notch this past few weeks. This can only mean good things to come for consumers. We're going to get better digital quality and lower prices.

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WOW! I saw this on Rob Galbraith's web site. Canon has announced the new EOS-1D MarkIII which breaks the 20 megapixel barrier.

Canon has announced the EOS-1Ds Mark III, the first 35mm-style digital SLR to break the 20MP barrier. The new model combines a 21.03 million image pixel self-cleaning sensor and maximum 5 fps shooting rate in a body that's nearly identical in appearance to the EOS-1D Mark III, and shares most of that camera's features and specifications as well. The EOS-1Ds Mark III has a larger viewfinder than the EOS-1D Mark III, a narrower ISO range of ISO 100-1600 (plus 50 and 3200) and support for the UDMA protocol for quicker writing to an inserted CompactFlash card.

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This week the hills near Kings County were on fire. Over 5,600 acres at Tar Canyon near Avenal were scorched. It took 1,340 firefighters, 77 fire engines, 20 bulldozers and six helicopters to contain the blaze. This has been the largest wildefire the county has seen in some time.

On Thursday morning, I went out to cruise for wildart. Actually I went to shoot an assignment at the local YMCA but I didn't read the assignment sheet carefully enough and I found out I was two weeks early for the event. DOOOH! On the way there I noticed the sky had an yellow cast to it.

This made for an interesting picture. But it reminded me of how dirty the Central Valley air can get. Winds blow smog in from Los Angeles and the Bay Area. At the same time the Tar Canyon was burning there was a fire in Santa Barbara. Its smoke blew into the valley helping create the haze above.

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There is a link to a short BBC audio slideshow
at aphotoaday.org. Horst Faas, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner most famous for his work during the Vietnam War, Santiago Lyon, AP's current global director of photography, and Oded Balilty, an Israeli who won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography are featured. It's always inspirational to hear photographers of this caliber talk about their work.

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Last week the Hanford Sentinel unveiled its new multimedia player. There is now a permanent place on our Web site for audio slide show and video.

I'm pretty proud of this player. Not because I work there and help produce the content but because this shows that management gets it. They get that video is going to play an important part in newspaper sites and they aren't afraid to showcase it up front.

Davin McHenry, Web editor at The Bakersfield Californian, wrote about newspaper site hiding their local video.

But I think if you’re going to dedicate real resources to video you need to showcase it prominently — to begin building a reputation with viewers that you are a legitimate source of video news.

We aren't producing as many daily-fresh videos as the Californian. But for a small daily paper I think we're ahead of the curve and we will build that reputation with our readers.

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This is the first breaking news video I've ever made. It was shot with the Kodak camera I talked about in an earlier post.

The Acacia Street fire came on the heels of an apartment fire which killed five people in the same town. Luckily no one was hurt in this one.

Let me know what you think of the video.

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There has been much debate with multimedia journalists whether they should use expensive video equipment ranging in the thousands of dollars or cheap point-and-shoots costing a few hundred dollars.

The past few weeks I've been experimenting using my cheap $150 Kodak Easyshare point-and- shoot to make videos for HanfordSentinel.com. Partly because I've been too lazy to lug around my Canon GL, a very nice 3 CCD camera, with all the still photo equipment I have to carry. Also, for some reason I keep forgetting to bring tapes for the thing.

So far, I've been pleasantly surprised by my Kodak, which makes mpeg clips. Take a look at the two videos up top that I shot with the camera. The picture quality is better than I expected. And the mic picks up interviews nicely. Even though I would like to have more sound control like I do with my GL.

Yes, I would take my Canon to do more polished stories and when high quality is a factor. But when I'm expected to shoot still and video, having the point and shoot is very convenient.

Mindy McAdams had a post on her blog about using $300 video cameras and how Peter Read Miller's assistant, Max Morse, had filmed a shoot in Mexico with a point and shoot camera, which is posted on Sportshooter.com.

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