Digital Shutters

Photographers and graphic artists have always loved Apple Macs since Day One. It used to be a badge of artistry and exclusivity (not to mention geekness). Now that Apple is sporting the more mass-based and more powerful Intel processors they find out, hey, it’s not bad at all!

Last Tuesday, Apple quietly announced their fastest Macbook Pros ever, sporting Intel’s newest Core 2 Duo (Merom) processors and touting 39% increases in performance. Without much fanfare from His Steveness, we are suddenly gifted with more powerful 15� and 17’ Macbooks with 2.33 GHz of computing puissance.

Under the hood, the Macbook Pro has 4MB of shared L2 cache, 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and PCI Express-based ATI Mobility Radeon X 1600 with 256MB GDDR3 memory. It is also packed with a slot-loading SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) optical drive.

These are actually the first Macbook Pros to be fitted with the new Core 2 Duo speed demons. Several months ago, in Apple’s initial outing with Intel, it geared up the 13-inch Macbook (simply Macbook, without the Pro) with Intel’s Core Duo processors. Quite confusing, no? But there’s a difference between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo, says my geek friend Jason.

And although it took a long time coming, industry observers welcomed the arrival of the suddenly more-powerful, quietly-announced Macbook Pros. Pricing? For the 15-inch 2.16 GHz model it’s $2,000, the 2.33 GHz 15-inch sets you back $2,500. The 17-inch MacBook Pro, which is available starting next week is priced at $2,800.

Tip for PC users who have been itching to try out the Mac: now’s a good time to do it, and when you do take a look at previous models. They are now suddenly much cheaper with the arrival of the new ones. Bonus if you get the previously released 13-inch Macbook with Core Duo: they run Windows too, natively.

Now, isn’t life wonderful?

[Site: Apple]

Since its debut last August 9, the Nikon D80 has earned praise after praise from hard-nosed professional photographers and rave reviews from online photography publications.

The latest to gush at its performance is Imaging Resource, who says the D80 is a superb photographic tool. Dave Etchells and Shawn Barnett of Imaging Resource have just posted their own thorough review of the Nikon D80, where they reported that the camera is “solidly built, well-balanced in the hand, highly responsive, and delivers excellent image quality.”

The included 18-135mm kit lens of the Nikon D80 offers unprecedented versatility with its 7.5x zoom. This zoom range, equivalent to a 27-202.5mm lens on a 35mm camera, used to require two zoom lenses.

“Having now thoroughly tested a production sample of the Nikon D80, all our initial impressions have been confirmed, and we can give it our wholehearted endorsement.” they said.

Of course the Imaging Resource folks were not the only ones who gave the thumbs-up to the D80.

Canada’s Megapixel.net gave it near-perfect scores in functionality and photographic qualities in their review. DPreview, while examining the Canon EOS 400D, could not help but compare the Rebel XTi to the better qualities of the Nikon camera. In its own review of the D80, DPreview “established that the D80 is a great photographer’s camera.”

Indeed, the distinguished “Class of 2006″, that bunch of excellent 10MP digital SLR’s that came out this quarter – Canon EOS 400D, Sony Alpha 100 and the Nikon D80 – clearly now has a valedictorian.

But wait. There’s a belated entrant to the “Class of 2006″. The Pentax K10D promises to be excellent too with its feature set. Aside from the usual 10MP, 2.5-inch LCD, etc., the K10D touts a waterproof body and 22-bit analog-to-digital conversion (ADC). Will it make a difference? Well, we’ll know when it comes out in November.

[Via: Imaging Resource]

Photographers will want this too: a nice little compact PC named Little Lluon+ (don’t forget the Plus), pictured above, on the right, side by side with a laptop for comparison.

It’s only 4.4cm thin, and 3kg light, yet it packs a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200, a 320GB SATA hard disk (or you can also choose a Core Duo T2250 with a 250GB SATA hard disk), 512MB of RAM, and WinXP Media Center Edition.

The Little Lluon+ comes from Trigem Computer of Korea.

[Via: AkihabaraNews]

The Meizu M6 MiniPlayer is coming soon to a store near you…or maybe at you. Boy, this thing is hot!

Never mind that it’s from China (your Nike is from China; heck, even your iPod is from China), Meizu is making inroads to the US of A after an initial mild success in some European countries. But seeing that people liked their product, Meizu tweaked it a little bit more and then went a-marching toward US shores.

The M6 MiniPlayer is positioned as an iPod nano killer (well, it might not kill it; but it will pretty damn scare them a bit), with an attractive build and a feature set that surpasses the Nano by a mile. And get this: it is even cheaper.

The Meizu M6 started life as a DAP but has now grown to be a full-fledged PMP, not only playing music very well but also showing movies and displaying photos.

OK, let’s go over the specs:
· 512MB to 4GB capacities of flash memory
· 2.4″ 260K-color QVGA (320×240) large and vibrant TFT-LCD screen.
· Plays MP3, WMA (DRM), OGG, WAV
· Supports photo viewing (BMP, JPG, GIF) and video playback (AVI)
· FM radio/recorder, voice recorder; includes games, calculator, stopwatch
· 20 hours of audio battery life
· Size: Approx. 79 x 48.2 x 10mm
· Weight: 55g
· Aluminum alloy body
· Price: $88 to $164

This feature set comes in a smart-looking package, with emphasis on slimness and elegance. It’s not as paper-thin as the nano, but the additional heft actually gives it a more solid feel in your hand.

There were a few issues beforehand, such as a track numbering error, which has since been fixed by a firmware update (v1.009). Then there’s this matter about DRM, quite a sensitive issue in the US but, hey, this little guy is Asian, and many people are quite vocal against DRM.

Overall, the Meizu M6 MiniPlayer looks set to become a winner, a sure hit wherever in the planet. With its great-looking body, marvelous screen, a craftily familiar GUI and a good battery life to boot, this little thing just might be the next big thing.

[Via: engadget.com]

Granny: I see you now have that very expensive camera, Antonio. You know how to use it?

Tony: Yes, grandmama, Grandpa Joe bought this for me so I can take really good pictures.

Granny: But you’re just a point-and-shooter, how can you take really good pictures?

Tony: No hay problema, grand mama. I can have Ken Milburn’s book “Digital Photography Expert Techniques”. I can be an expert too in just a few days.

With it I can learn how to use my digital SLR, choose the right accessories, set up a digital darkroom, organize a workflow sequence, and apply advanced editing techniques.

I can also learn how to make reversible adjustments, use camera RAW for creating effects, use lighting effects and lens flare filters,and organize professional images for albums, exhibits, websites, or publications.

Granny: You read books now, Antonio? I didn’t know you loved books.

Tony: Only this one, grand mama, because it’ll really teach me a lot. Now may I have $45, mamita please, so I can buy the book?

[Via: CameraTown.com]

Adobe has released its Lightroom Beta 4.1 update designed to fix a few minor bugs in the digital photography workflow and editing application.

Among the bugs that were addressed: relative path error of the preview cache, an issue with the metadata field, database update feature and a few others.

In its present iteration, Lightroom Beta 4.1 is already a very capable application. And if you are a talented point-and-shoot photographer who edits pictures in Photoshop, but has now bought a more capable digital SLR camera, you will do well to familiarize yourself with a workflow software like Lightroom Beta. That’s what Aperture has been doing all along over at the Apple crowd.

With Lightroom, Adobe is developing a workflow and editing application which takes all of the useful photography-related stuff from Photoshop and combines these with a sophisticated importation, browsing and organizational front-end.

You can download it for free before the Beta 4.1 build expires on February 28, 2007. Use it to process your RAW files or enhance digital images. And note down its fine features as well as its shortcomings, kick the tires around and tell them what you think; Adobe says it is giving you the opportunity to shape its feature set. (In other words, “we can’t do this alone guys, we need your input.�)

[Site: AdobeLabs]

[Via: PhotoshopNews.com]

The gunmen who kidnapped Italian photojournalist Kash Gabriel Torsello, pictured on the left, are making another demand for his release. They said Italy should pull out its troops from Afghanistan. However, the Italian government is rejecting the demand.

Earlier, the kidnappers demanded the expatriation of Afghani national Abdul Rahman who has converted to Christianity and fled to Italy for asylum. Conversion to Christianity is punishable by death in Afghanistan.

Some local Afghan newsmen were able to interview Torsello in captivity. They said five armed men kidnapped Torsello last October 12 while traveling by bus from Lashkargah to Kandahar. “The kidnappers frequently tell me that I am a spy and that British troops bombed Musa Qala and Nawzad districts on my intelligence,” Torsello was quoted as saying by the local journalists.

They said Torsello did not know where he was kept because he was blindfolded. The Italian captive said he was under constant threat and extreme pressure from his abductors, according to the reporters.

The Italian is a London-based photographer had been covering war-ravaged Afghanistan for more than a month when he was abducted.

[Via: PDNonline.com]
[Photo courtesy of Dan Sumption & Zuma Press]

“Moonrise,� a rare 1948 print of Ansel Adams’ work has sold for a record $609,000 at Sotheby’s New York. A London art dealer paid the amount in behalf of a private client. It was owned by Adams’ friend and former assistant Pirkle Jones, who got it directly from the photography legend.

“Moonriseâ€? is one of Adams’ most famous photographs. He was driving past Hernandez, Mexico late in the day on November 1, 1941 when he took the picture. “Adams managed to set up his camera and grab the image just as the daylight was disappearing,â€? according to Sotheby’s catalog notes.

There were only a few prints made of “Moonrise�. In 1948 Adams reprocessed it to increase the density of the foreground to make it easier to print.

There was another “Moonrise� print in 2002 which sold for $136,000. The previous auction record for any Adams photograph was set earlier this year with a series called “Surf Sequence, San Mateo Coast, California. It sold for $352,000.

[Via: PDNonline.com]
[Photo courtesy of The Ansel Adams Gallery]

CNET has released its reviews of the Nikon S9 ultracompact and the S10 swivel-body cameras. The online tech magazine found the S9 wanting in image quality and feature set, while the S10 passed with its solid and fast 10x zoom and sensor-shift image stabilization.

The higher-priced ($350) Nikon S10, right, took nice photos with lots of fine details at its lower ISOs, well-saturated colors, and very little in the way of JPEG artifacts or colored fringing. However, it took noisy pictures at ISO 400 and above. Video buffs will like the S10’s very capable movie mode. More interesting though is its ability to take time-lapse pictures of, say, a flower blooming.

The S9 however is a bit disappointing. Although lower priced ($250), and could take pleasing images with accurate-looking and adequately saturated colors, its image quality left much to be desired; it showed considerable noise even at a low ISO 200. Its LCD screen is also sub-par.

[Read CNET’s reviews of the S9 and S10]

The British Broadcasting Corporation has launched a photography contest for young people below 19 years of age as part of a new BBC season called Generation Next.

“We want to see your pictures of how you spend your leisure time: sport, music, you name it, just grab your camera and take a snap,� the BBC said.

The photo contest is divided into two sets: one for those 13 years or younger and the other for 14 to 18 years old as of November 30, 2006 which is also the last day for submission of entries.

The BBC will choose the 12 best photos of each group and post them in the picture gallery of the BBC News website in early December. Readers will then have 48 hours in which to vote for their favorite.

The two top winners in both age groups will each get a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera while the second placers will win a Nikon S9 Coolpix camera.

Details are available at the BBC News. (chrismalinao)

[Photo courtesy of BBC and Magnum Photos]