The Digital Photography Show #48 (take 2): New contest, Canon updates and a lot of blather!
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: You may be wondering why this is called “take 2″. That’s because the original post that went out 12 hours ago was linked to an old episode. We’ve fixed the link and want to make sure everyone’s itunes picks up the correct version. Many apologies to those of you who got both in your feeds!
The Digital Photography Show #48: New contest, Canon updates and a lot of blather! (18.5MB, 52 mins)
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April 23, 2007: Welcome to the friendly forty eight episode of The Digital Photography Show!
Today’s show it’s just a couple of nerd-boys sitting around talking. After a busy five weeks of interviews from PMA and with the wonderful Bobbi Lane, Michael and I wanted to catch up with you and with each other.
- We talk about a of stuff tonight including
- Depth of Field: Check out how complicated it can get on Wikipedia
or better yet, here is an article from the Luminous Landscape called Understanding Depth of Field and their followup article Do Wide Angle Lenses Really Have Greater Depth of Field Than Telephotos? - The finalists are posted from our last photo contest. You can see them here
- Updated firmware for Canon DSLRs
- Scott Kelby’s new blog/homepage
- Debbie Grossman’s guide to editing JPEGs with masks
The winner of our next photo contest takes home the super-sexy Wacom Graphire 6×8 Bluetooth Tablet. Check out this wireless goodness and know what it is to experience true photo-editing comfort.
Photo Contest #4:
The Theme is the Natural World. That means: no buildings, no people, no artifacts made by people, and no animals (yes, insects are animals too!). By the way, we love people and animals even though they are indeed part of the natural word, however they are not part of the Natural World of DPS Photo Contest #4. So what is the Natural World? Just about everything else found in nature. The photograph should not just comply with the theme, but truly speak to the theme of the Natural World.
The Technique is to produce images with a very shallow depth of field. Your subject should be in sharp focus and everything in the foreground and background would be out of focus. The spirit of the shallow depth of field technique is that the image be captured in-camera, and not through post processing. We’ll be on the honor system for this.
If you are inclined to title your image (titles are optional), please append the title after the photographer’s name of the image file name.
Example file name: MichaelStein_ElbowStuckInEar.jpg
Thanks to our advertiser DXO (www.dxo.com) for the 20% discount they are only offering to listeners of this show. Try the program for free, and when you’re ready to buy, use the code DPSSHOW.
And don’t forget the fifty buck discount on Alien Skin’s Snap Art, and the 50% discount on Exposure. Just call and tell them you heard about it on The Digital Photography Show.
Thanks to everyone for listening and joining us here on the blog. You are the wind beneath our wings. Keep the emails and posts coming.
Scott
April 26th, 2007 at 3:25 am
And another great show. Also hats off to great topics like in Show #41: Your Legal Rights as a Photographer! Just good content all around! Thanks guys!
April 26th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Still waiting for iTunes to download this episode so maybe you already given said this. There is a nice littel page that lets you play with the aperture and shutter speed and simulates a photo camera taking the picture with those parameters. Really nice to watch the effects on Field of view and exposure. The page is SimCam:
http://www.photonhead.com/simcam/
April 26th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Too bad to see the errors now that I can’t edit the message. Forgive the ‘littel’ and other english inventions a may have done.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:43 am
I just wanted to chime in on your discussion of the ecological concerns regarding eating mass-produced meat. I’m a life-long vegetarian, and I take that seriously, but avoiding energy-hungry beef and other kinds of meat is not in itself necessarily good for the environment. The stuff we feed cows is also often the stuff we feed ourselves, and the way most of our vegetable food is grown, processed, packaged, and transported is just as bad as its meat counterpart, or sometimes worse.
For ecological purposes the movement to use local foods and “slow foods” has the strongest claim on the moral high ground, and locally grown meat is better for the environment, probably, than what most vegetarians eat most of the time. I include myself in that — unfortunately, it’s very hard to eat ecologically sound food — local, organic stuff — while working full time as a single person and trying to stay on a budget.
There’s a pretty funny Harper’s article that ran a couple years ago that addresses some of these issues:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/02/0079915
April 27th, 2007 at 2:53 am
Great podcasts. I enjoy them and learn a lot. The only thing I wonder is why contest winners are never announced (it would probably take 20 seconds to announce them). I am one of the people who have begun to doubt that prizes are actually given. The “contests”, I’m guessing, just drive people to the manufacturers websites.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Reavis,
As a winner of a contest on this podcast I can assure you that the contests are real and the prizes are awarded. Several other people have written in on the blog saying the same thing in the past as well.
If Scott and Micheal were to announce that “Jack Smith from Oklahoma won the Wacom tablet”, what would that mean to you anyways.
And as far as the idea of contests (or as you say “contests”) driving people to the manufacturer’s websites … DUH!!!! Why do you think they give away thier products?, becuase they are charities for starving digital photographers? I don’t think so. Wacom probably needs to sell at least 4 or 5 extra tablets to make up for the one they give away. Of course they need to drive traffic to thier websites, that’s the point of donating a prize for a contest.
April 27th, 2007 at 6:02 am
I am also a winner of a previous contest (a book from Rick Sammon), so I can testify that people actually do win the contests.
Michael and Scott, another great podcast. I, personally, love the banter, so please don’t stop! :-)
Thrilled, once again, to be one of the finalists in the “Food on the Move” contest. Looking forward to the results show to hear the comments on all the photos.
Holly
April 27th, 2007 at 11:49 am
I would like to add that I won a contest back in January, I think it was. BUT, and this is a big but, I have still never received the contest prize. I was supposed to be given a copy of Alien Skin’s Snap Art.
Now, while I’m guessing there was never any intention to not make good on the prize, that doesn’t change the fact that it still never happened. And yes, I have sent emails about this issue to Michael and Scott, so please don’t think I decided to make my first complaint here. But my hope is that by announcing this publicly here on the blog, it might light a fire under somebody’s butt to make it happen.
Scott and Michael: no ill-will here, I still enjoy the show, I would just really like to get my copy of Snap Art! And I totally recognize that this is likely not in any way your fault, that it probably just got lost in a stack of papers at Alien Skin. But I would be very grateful if this could get cleared up. My package address is in the previous emails I sent you long ago.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I would also like to add my 2 cents here.
I won the “Valentines” assignement with the black & white photo including the heart filled with rose petals.
I haven’t received my Wacom tablet yet, but there may be one big reason for this. The show is produced in US and I live in Germany. The tablet is not sent by Scott and Michael but by Wacom directly and I guess there is a long procedure inside the company to have such things going on.
I’m sure Scott & Michael do their very best to get things sent out. If one receives a prize earlier than any other contest winner who won a contest before, it is more likely that the shipping speed of the sender differs (e.g. Scott Kelby or Rick Sammon or whoever).
Don’t forget that this is not a company and people are spending their leisure time for these things here.
-Horst
April 27th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Dang; just read that insects aren’t allowed in the current contest… moments after submitting a photo that featured an insect. Note to self: learn to read.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Hey Kyle – I just searched our Gmail inbox and couldn’t find a note from you saying you never got the program. I did find some photo contest entries from you though, and they were pretty good. I can’t wait to see what you do with Snap Art.
I happen to have a copy of the program right here that I will PERSONALLY bring to the post office today and mail out to you. Sorry for the delay.
Horst, your saga is harder to solve. I know the people at Wacom USA sent a request to their European counterparts to get that tablet out to you – I sent them a note yesterday to see what’s up.
As someone in this chain wrote, we love doing the contests and giveaways, but finalizing them and doing all the follow up can get time consuming and tedious. Still, most everyone gets their items in a timely manner, and enjoys them. I do regret the mix-ups, and we try to correct them to our best ability.
Kyle, will you post a note when you get the program? And Horst – I’m hoping you can hand write on the computer soon when your tablet arrives.
Scott
April 29th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I won the Lens Baby in a contest about a year ago and recieved it within a week.
Great show guys. Keep up the good work.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Just a thought about the “Pict-Bridge” that prints directly from the camera
Often, people will shoot a polaroid on the set to evaluate the lighting before taking all the final shots… perhaps some people could do the same by printing a larger, physical test shot to evaluate the ligthing set up before proceeding to take 80 or 90 pictures.
I’ve never done this, but I was just trying to think of some applications.
Thanks for the great shows,
Stephen
May 3rd, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I submitted a file for Food on the Move and it doesn’t appear on the site. I also don’t see the link for the photos. I had to go back and listen to the podcast to find out what it is (http://dps.phanfare.com). I hope my next submission will make it!
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I tried and really liked DxO Optics, but using the promo code gives me a “Promotion expired”. Was the promo code period supposed to be that short?
May 4th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
Beatrice,
I am having trouble identifying your email and photo submission.
Please send an email (using the same email accout you sent the submission) to thedigitalphotographyshow@gmail.com with details about the entry, such as the image file name.
If you sent it using the same email account you identified yourself in this post, then I could not find it or any emails from you in our gmail account.
If I can find the entry in the email account, I’ll post it.
Thanks.
–Michael
May 4th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Johan,
The code should work. I just confirmed that it does not work at the moment and I contacted DxO to get this resolved. I will announce when it has been resolved. stay tuned…
–Michael
May 9th, 2007 at 7:27 am
I just wanted to note that the DxO promotion code “DPSSHOW” has been enabled. Sorry about that. Enjoy DxO!
–Michael
May 11th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Hi
Just a small comment here again from me. I shortly wanted to tell you that my prize for the Valentines Photo Contest, the great Wacom Intuos3 6×8, has finally arrived down here in the South of Germany in Europe.
Many many thanks again.
-Horst
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I also won a prize…the DXO Optics Pro to which I say a proper thank you. :)
June 1st, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Hi there, I have been shooting professionally for 35 years now. I have been watching this competition for a few weeks and I must say that there are many photographs that don’t belong on the finalist list. There are many shots that are 10 times better that have not been selected as finalists and I believe that a few photographers here are not receiving the respect as they should. I don’t think that I will be passing this competition on to my students to try. I know its just for fun, but when some of the best shots are not picked over the plain jane photographs, I think that is unfair. Thanks
Professor Lemmon