The Digital Photography Show #62: A Pop Photo Quiz and Our Favorite Non-Photography Programs
The Digital Photography Show #62: A Pop Photo Quiz and Our Favorite Non-Photography Programs (23Mb, 65mins)
July 27, 2007: Welcome to the “We’re On Our Knees and Begging You” episode of The Digital Photography Show!
Today, we shill again for your votes in The Podcast Awards. But we keep it mercifully short.
Remember: You can vote every day. And given the size and popularity of the shows we’re against, we’re going to need you to.
You might get a confirmation email from the folks at The Podcast Awards to ascertain that your vote was real. Please check your junk email folder if it doesn’t arrive in your inbox.
Today, it’s just me and my best buddy Michael as we talk about what’s in the news, included the new JPEX XR format from Microsoft and this article from the Popular Photography website on how to shoot insects. With your camera.
I also give Michael a surprise photo quiz based on the this article from the May 2007 Pop Photo magazine. Don’t read it before you listen to the show or you won’t be able to play along!
Michael and I then talk about some of our favorite productivity or playful program for Windows and Mac computers:
- Skype
- Photobooth
- Activewords
- Anagram
- Snag it and Skitch
- Photopresenter
- Mindmanger
- Earthdesk
- BitsDuJour
Please remember to sign up for email notifications from our show! We will pick one subscriber at random to win either a copy of onOne’s Plug-In Suite 3 for Adobe Photoshop, Alien Skin’s Snap Art or Rick Sammon’s DVD “Rick Sammon Live.” You get to choose.
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We’d love to hear what you thought of the show either here on the blog or at TheDigitalPhotographyShow@gmail.com.
You can read Scott’s personal blog on politics, technology and why he’s feeling like Sally Fields these days here.
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 (http://www.alienskin.com/snapart/index.html) and the 50% discount on Exposure (http://www.alienskin.com/exposure/index.html) . 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. AND THANKS FOR THE NOMINATIONS!
Now, go take great pictures. And vote!
Scott
August 5th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I’m not sure where Michael get his information about DNG filesize and but it’s very unlikely that a 8 mb nikon RAW become a 20mb. Maybe he decided to embed the original raw into the new DNG (an option that the converter allows)
In my case, my Canon Raw files are usually 9mb and once converted to DNG, they are around 6mb and that’s good!
Then again, I’m a canon shooter and I could be totally wrong here.
August 5th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I have not listened to the show yet (probably later this morning), but I notice your mention of Skitch (above) has no live link. Here is the link:
http://plasq.com/
August 6th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
D.T.,
I was wondering why our experiences with DNG were so different. I used Adobe Camera Raw to convert an 8mb (6mp) file to various DNG files.
I first saved as an uncompressed with Medium sized jpg. That yielded a 19.8mb file; with a Full Sized jpg it yielded a 20.6mb file.
Of course my problem was whenever I made DNG files I did not compress them. When I compressed this file it went down to 1.3mb. This seems like great news. Maybe a little too great news. If it is truly lossless, I could save a lot of space.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, and if anyone can add some information about the compressed DNGs, I’d love to hear it. It seems tempting to import as DNG’s, but I am hesitant to touch the original files.
–Michael
August 7th, 2007 at 1:22 am
I would love to guest host the show!!! In the spirit of Michael!!
Cheers,
Laurel
Queen of all Photo Contests
August 7th, 2007 at 5:42 am
This seems to have been the “Give Michael a hard time” episode!
In defense of the Canon 500D: there are two kinds of close-up diopter lenses, one element and two element. The single element lenses are relatively inexpensive, and all reviews I’ve read say that they perform poorly. Two element lenses on the other hand perform much better, and of course are *not* inexpensive. The 500D is the biggest, most expensive dual element diopter around.
I use a 500D on both my 70-200VR and 18-200VR Nikon lenses with a great deal of success. I imagine I’m doing this exactly when Michael is talking about using his; situations where I don’t have room to lug a dedicated macro lens around. However, you may not save as much weight as you expect, the 500D is a monster!
For more information on close-up lenses you can read this article on the always useful “Earthbound Light” website:
http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/closeup-diopters.html
August 7th, 2007 at 6:49 am
Tim - I did give Michael a hard time, didn’t I? But I think he was asking for it. It’s younger-brother syndrome.
Great inforrmation about the 500D.
Laurel, I sent you an email. Start thinking of topics.
Landya, thanks for the link. You were right - I couldn’t find the link! You’re wonderful!
August 7th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
File Formats: we only ever work in RAW, Jpg and Tif. we shoot in raw and our samples go out as jpg, clients get tif, it’s what they always ask for.
Web Sites: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com is a website I love, I watch the RSS feed in my email client and every day it lets me know what the days software is, they give away for one day a fully working non-time-limited non-demo copy of software and it could be anything, I’ve got utilities to look after my computer and slideshow software, image effects creators and much more and all free. definitely one to watch out for.
Mark.
http://www.MarkVarleyPhoto.co.uk
http://www.TwistedPhotography.co.uk
London, England.
August 9th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Scott, Michael,
I just wanted to let know how much I enjoy your show and how addicted the show has become for me. I am now listening to episode 40 and counting, I don’t want to miss any of the action. Today I will be downloading to my phone shows 41 to 62 I hopefully I will be all caught up next week.
Thank you very much for keeping us udated on all that we need to know about digital photography, the best part is that “it is all free”.
Keep up the good work and please keep giving up prices. I love prices.
Scott,
Everytime I listen to you it seems like I am listening a very good old friend that I never had.
Regards
Luis Perez
August 9th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Guys, I love the show but if I want to listen to non-photography software reviews I’ll subscribe to a software review podcast. Please stick to photography.
August 9th, 2007 at 2:57 am
Great show, as always! I have found an excellent screen capture utility that also does desktop flash video… http://jingproject.com
August 9th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Hey, it would not let me vote today. I will try again later today; maybe it logged me in incorrectly yesterday?
August 10th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Great show keep up the good work.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Landya, you have to wait at least 24 hours between votes.
August 11th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Scott & Michael & any other Skype users:
I need to know about Skype. My husband and I are considering dropping our grounded phone service (we pay about $79 per month) and trying something like Skype. But we are scared to do for fear of reliability problems and the unknowns involved.
The price for Skype (even the high end price) is outrageously good. We would save buckets each year.
Is Skype reliable? We would buy a Skype phone and use it just like a grounded/regular phone.
Is this viable or would you recommend against it for any reason as a primary phone?
August 11th, 2007 at 6:14 am
Skype is great, but not perfect. The call quality can be dodgy. You can access 911 services. And if your power - or just your internet service - goes out, you have no phone service.
Now, is that all worth $1,000 a year?
August 13th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Michael,
Tim had already noted that the Canon 500D is a high quality close up filter that works extremely well with the Nikon 70-200 2.8 VR lens except for situations that require a perfectly flat field with outstanding corner sharpness such as doing a macro of a coin or a stamp. Of course the crop factor with a digital camera helps here too. I have no personal experience using it on the less sharp, more distortion prone 18-200 but running any of the pictures should DxO should help.
Scott, As for the right and left brain question. The left brain controls speech and is generally considered the more logical side especially in right handed people (left brain controls the right side of the body) while the right brain is considered more artsy.
Eliot
August 18th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Landya, given that Skype has been down for the past two days I’d be hesitant to depend on it for phone service.
August 25th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Since you’ve already licensed it, it doesn’t matter, but you should have checked out FreeMind. As far as I know, it offers all the functionality of FreeMind but is infinitely less expensive.
FreeMind