Your story of forgetting your camera strap made me recall a situation I had with my Nikon D40, when I brought it down to Florida within a week of buying it. I was brand new to digital SLR photography at the time, and made the mistake of changing lenses on beautiful Seagrove Beach, on the Florida panhandle. As a result, my sensor had dust all over it, and many of my gorgeous landscape shots of the sunset had that dreaded dark spot above the horizon. My retailer replaced the body after I returned.

A different scenario, but one that points out the fact that usually, when we have good intentions in using a brand new camera, something unforseen usually happens. Myself, I should have brought my “point and shoot’!

Love and enjoy your new 40D!

Arthur

I agree with your comment about the format ofr RAW files. Pentax has come up with a great system where you can choose whether you save in DNG or the native Pentax PEF format. The only downside is that the DNG file size is about double the size of the PEF file.

Also, I would like to know what happened to your foray into Istockphotos?

Great show, keep it up.

Ryan

Cheers,
Chris.

You are so correct about the beauty of the menus on the 3″ display. I am impressed by every aspect of the 40D and look forward to taking it out for a great deal of shooting this weekend. The top mounted secondary display is a bit strange for me being use to the dual screens on the back of the Rebel XT, but I think I will be able to survive.

OH! The brick oven pizza was pretty awesome for the spur of the moment craving. You also have to consider that I live around the corner from one of the nation’s top pizzerias and I have to place my order about a week in advance to get a pie. If I could wait more than a month for a Canon 40D how am I going to wait a week for a pizza.

Keep well,

Bill in Nashville

Another good show. I see that I was beaten to mentioning the Pentax and Samsung range proving Adobe DNG on their cameras. Sadly the Pentax K100D that I just bought sticks with its proprietary PEF format for RAW. Still I good camera so far.

Given Scott’s launch of another podscast, here’s a crossover idea for a show topic, namely ethical, sustainable or environmentally friendly photography. I did a post on my blog on this subject and there isn’t much commented on it yet. Great opportunity therefore! My post can be found at this URL: http://www.greenjellybean.org.uk/2007/08/sustainability-photography-and-3-ps.html.

Best wishes,
Chris.

Great meeting you at the show and thanks for my 15 seconds of fame so to speak on the interview. Family got a kick out of it. Anyway, I’m a huge fan of the show as I mentioned and just wanted to say Hi. The photo club here in Columbia MD that I mentioned is called In Between Baltimore and Washington and can be found on Meetup.com. For anyone out there that is looking to get together with others in your area on photography (or just about any other area of interest you may have) I would recommed checking it out. I was looking for a photo club but didn’t want want to do the long distance travel. I’m meeting a lot of great people and getting to share with like minded photo folks.

Look forward to every show.

Thanks,
Paul

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2007/archives/553

I just purchased a Canon 40D and really am enjoying it. I made the mistake of shooting only in RAW mode, out of habit. As you would have guessed I was disappointed when I found out that the current version of Aperture (1.5.4) does not support RAW conversion for this camara yet, much like Adobe Light Room does not at this point in time.

However, I found a RAW conversion program (Bibble Pro) and downloaded the trial version of software. BibblePro currently supports the new 40D Raw and SRaw formats. It worked like a champ and I converted abot 300 pics to Tiff format so that I could at least see how they turned out. Here’s the website link
http://www.bibblelabs.com

I don’ think I’ll purchase this software, because it is not as full featured as Aperture. Also, the user interface is not the greatest. But, I must say it got me out of jam, so it can’t be all bad!!!

Sorry you didn’t pull off the win at Lowes. :( Anyway, the canvas flower picture more than makes up for it, excellent photo!

Thanks for your review of the canvas print. Your print looks beautiful. I’m still working on making a photo worthy of large printing. enjoy!

–Michael

I was not sure where to post my review so everyone can see it - of the 24 x 30 canvas print I received from MPIX.com thanks to Scott Sherman and Joe from Mpix. I did post it on the show notes just in case.

http://thephotoenthusiast.com:80/archives/39

Cheers,
Laurel
The Photo Enthusiast
Queen of the DPS Contests!

And, it was great hearing the longtime host of the most popular podcast about digital photography talk about forgetting the basics, like a camera strap and a functional tripod!

Great show! And thanks for dumbing down the contest hint! Amy and I appreciate that!

Bibble has a recent update which features support for the 40D, plus tethered support. Shoot raw and enjoy!

–Michael

I loved hearing your weekend shooting horror story. These things happen to all of us.

I ordered my 40D (I like to call it the “1D Mark III Junior”) from Amazon.com and I’m still waiting for it :(

I had the same RAW file problem when I first got my Mark III, Apple released an update for Aperture a few weeks later.

BTW, I don’t think DNG will solve all our problems (although it may be the best solution we have for now), I’m pretty sure (someone correct me if I’m wrong) that a DNG file is just a container file (think .dll file) that contains the original RAW file inside it as well as a generated thumbnail.

I told you that you’d love the Modulus belt system … I don’t use my all the time but when I do, I love it.

1. Forgot the camera strap
2. Didn’t check gear so your tripod center column had no screw
3. Forgot to scout for next day on first day of shooting.
4. The old CF card reader not working with new CF card (not checked)
and…
5. You had no raw converter software installed to recognize the 40D.

Having been there and done that, I can’t help but wonder - why didn’t you just take the box with you? By doing that you could have eliminated 3 of the 5 problems (strap would have been there, the camera could have been connected to the computer directly (you would have had the driver on your CD), and you would have had conversion software on the CD to install for viewing the raw files.

All this is just part of a larger point though that I think you illustrated quite well, and that is to have a checklist. When you first start shooting, it’s a good idea to use a checklist before going out to shoot every time until it is rote, and you just do it automatically. I actually made a checklist and printed it, then laminated and included it in my kit so I could check it each time I left for and returned from a shoot, to make sure all gear is working and accounted for. In that sense, gear assembly for a shoot is just (for me anyway) another part of my work flow. It helps me keep some consistency from beginning to end, while always remembering that the beginning happens way before ever tripping the shutter. I think I even put together a post on it a while back at our local club’s photo blog. It’s linked at the end of this article, so feel free to check it out over there. (See links at end of this post.)

In other news, I actually started my own personal blog and photography site, as my own work efforts have taken most of my attention lately. While the photo clubs site does still factor in, the personal endeavors are at the forefront of my online efforts these days. As a fellow Canon shooter, I thought you might be interested in that, as I try to talk about Canon-specific things there, with more of a personal perspective than straight photo-journalism in mind. I’ve already gone off-topic on several events, but feel it’s been a fun read and hopefully a new perspective on things, so feel free to check those out.

Photo club’s blog:
http://blog.scphotogs.com/2006/07/29/got-it-check/

Personal blog:
http://www.canonblogger.com

Personal photography site:
http://www.jasons-photography.com

I have been a Member of the National Association of Photoshop Users for 2 years and it well pays for itself in discounts alone! The NAPP web site is in invaluable source of Photoshop information. Just a few things that NAPP Members get access to is online video tutorials…your own personal web gallery to showcase your work, FREE magazine subscription to Photoshop User Magazine (I think it is $10 a issue if you buy it at Borders - if you can even find it), loads of discounts include Apple! The Apple discount alone that I have used has already paid for my $99 yearly membership fee.

I was able to get a 5% discount to go to The Digital Landscape Workshop being offererd by Moose Peterson and Laurie Excell in Cape Cod this October (which ended up being the cost of a yearly membership to NAPP) - I am so excited about this workshop. Here is a link for more info http://www.digitallandscape.org/index.html

I found out about this workshop from Scott Kelby’s blog - he also said that he was going to be there and teach a little Lightroom! That’s all I needed to get the ball rolling! My best friend Aaron and I are both going and sharing a room. I will let you know about it when I go!

Anyway…If you have not already - I highly recommend that you get more info about being a member at http://www.photoshopuser.com - and tell them Laurel sent ya…like that’s going to make a difference!

Happy Shooting,
Laurel
The Photo Enthusiast

i’d be interested hearing in a couple of months your ongoing thoughts on the 40D. Its well within my sights, just gathering the $.

Thanks for another great, interesting show!

I don’t think the big guys are ever going to support DNG. Instead, I think its more likely that Microsofts HD-Photo (aka JPG-XR) will more likely be the format of the future.

Mauricio