From “The Figital Revolution”

a MFT, digital PEN.  Oh Joy!

(that sound you hear is all the “digital rangefinder” folks squealing with anticipation!)

This piece is excellent – creative, well executed and quirky/funny.  worth a look:

Some might just consider them old snapshots, but I think they are wonderfully moving.

• Spatial Relationships and Distortion – a great post from Jeff over at Beyond Megapixels who gives a striking illustration of the effect of focal length on percieved spatial relationships.  Ever wondered what exactly photographers mean when they say a long lens “compresses” a scene?  or why longer focal lengths are preferred over shorter for portraiture?  All your rquestions answered here.
• Flickr add-ons and Mashups from Photojojo. I’m a big fan of flickr (see feed in the sidebar!) and have posted some great addons before, but here’s another nice roundup of tools and sites to make your flickr-ing even better.
• Also from Photojojo – 101 photoshop tips in 5 minutes. This will crack you up, and you’ll probably pick up a PS trick or two…
• Using lightroom & PS to quickly extract a subject from background in an image – from O’reilly.  There are any number of ways of doing extractions for composites or whathaveyou… Here’s a quick-and-dirty trick using lightroom and PS to “knock out your subject”!

• From the always-great “APhotoEditor” – an interview with Edward Weston’s wife and muse, Charis Wilson.   A really wonderful piece, I am a *huge* Weston fan and this was a nice peek into his life from someone close to him.

• Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs – a powerful and moving account of a man discovering a suitcase full of mysterious photographs, documenting a firshand account of the Hiroshima tradgedy and aftermath.
• Ever wondered what a focal plane shutter looks like in super slo-mo?  Check out this piece showing a D3 shutter release down to the millisecond, along with how it was done.
  
  
• What does it take to be great? – The inimitable David Ziser’s take on the age old question

That’s it for today, some more golden oldies coming soon.

I picked up a Holga a while back with the intention of just messing around, running some 120 film etc…  At the time, I still had access to a pro darkroom, and intended to do my own processing and printing… Of course, that never happened.  With 99% of my work being digital, my poor rolls of 120 sat un-developed for <ahem> quite some time.

Of course that was before I discovered Diafine.  (for those who don’t know, Diafine is what is known as a “Compensating developer”  It comes in 2 parts, solution A, and solution B.   You pour in A, the film absorbs as much as it’s emulsion can hold, you then pour it out, and pour in B.  B reacts with A, doing the developing until A is all used up – then it stops (as there is no more A left to react.) essentially it is a “self terminating” development process.   What this means in practice is that it is just about the fastest, easiest way to develop black and white film that I have ever seen.  No carefully controlling temperatures of solutions (it works just fine anywhere from 68-80F), no exact timing down to the second (because it is self terminating, it doesn’t matter how long your film in).   You can load your film, pour in A, walk away and eat a sandwich, come back pour in B, go grab a beer, come back a half hour later, and your film will be done.  Just like that.

There are a couple of other cool features as well (eg it gives an effective “speed boost” of a stop or more to many films – my preferred HP5+ becomes effectively 800ISO when souped in diafine) and a few downsides.  It’s definitely not the developer to choose if you demand exacting precision & control over each step of the development process.  But for a low-fi neg like the holga produces it’s a match made in heaven.

Say what you will about film v. digital.  I love them both, I think they both have their place, and I think that every photographer should use both to at least some extent.   Even if you are die-hard 100% “digital is superiour to film in every way”, the “creative experience” of film is very different than digital.  It makes you shoot in a different way, think in a different way, see in a different way.  Not better, not worse, just different.  And that in my opinion is one of the great “creativity juicers” that we get.   So if you are in a creative rut, try it out.  Grab a holga and a few rolls of black and white 120 film ($30-40 bucks) and some diafine, and shoot some blurry, light-leaky, distorted, streaky, vignetted, *beautiful* frames.   Guaranteed to cure what ails ya!

All shot with the holga,  Ilford HP5+ film, processed in Diafine:

(in my best TV pitchman voice): BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!!!  As a special offer for F/1.0 readers, David is offering 20 bucks off registration if you use the following code:   ZEZDWC09. what a guy!  Especially considering that just for walking in the door you get:

• Tour Handbook including: program notes, photography, marketing and more
• 2 Hour DVD with extended program content
• $100 Rebate from American Color Imaging
• 1 year membership to WPPI and Rangefinder magazine, a $99 value
• FREE 3 month membership to DigitalProTalkPlus.com, a $45 value
• FREE 3 month subscription to PPA Magazine, a $15 value
• FREE PPA Indemnification (no-fault) insurance for all new PPA members, a $50 value
• Over $2,500 in door prizes awarded each evening
• And a chance to win 1 of 4 Grand Prizes worth over $5,000

Still not satisfied? Ok, how about getting in *for free*.  Yup, that’s right – 1 lucky reader gets a free pass in whichever city you choose!   How?  Well, The digital WakeUp tour is all about Lighting, so how about an “Exciting Lighting” contest!   Here’s how it works:

1. Create a Flickr account (if you don’t already have one)
2. Join the newly created F/1.0 flickr group
3. upload your best photos using off-camera lighting to you flickr stream
4. Tag said photos with “F10DWC” (for f/1.0 digital wakup call)
5. Add them to the F/1.0 group
6. Please limit 3 entries per person – if you tag more than 3 images with “F10dwc” I will simply consider the first three tagged to be the entries!

That’s it!  The contest will run until noon (EST) on March 25th.  After the contest is closed, we will look over the entries and select what we consider to be the best image (based on overall style, composition, technical skill, and creative use of lighting).  The winner will be notified via flickrmail, and will have their winning entry featured on F/1.0, in addition to receiving the free pass to the Digital WakeUp Call tour!   Costs nothing to enter, so start submitting those shots!

‘Cuz Optimus Prime always keeps it real.

• Speaking of gear, Epson just relased their sucessor to the popular R2400 printer, the R2880. I personally use the 2200 for medium prints (8″x10″ to 13″x19″) and it’s a fantastic printer. I can only image the 2880 is even better! Scott kelby has a nice article on it HERE.

• The Inimitable Chase Jarvis has a thought provoking article on the creative process and originality of ideas called “Doing Stuff First. Or Not”
  

• Rob Haggart, AKA “A Photo Editor” has a really nice interview with Charis Wilson (Edward Weston’s wife)

• Finally, on the business end of things, dPS (digital photography school) talks about branding your photography business. Worth a read.

First on the “photographer’s rights” front we have some good news.

• Thomas Hawk reports that a Galveston Jury clears photographer who refused to stop photographing an arrest. score one for the good guys.
• and some not-so-good news

on a related note this is an oldie, but a goodie:

• The Photographers Right – a flyer explaining your rights when stopped or confronted for photography

Moving on to the business world, David Ziser of digitalprotalk has a nice article:

• 20 pointers for running your business out of your home – what you need to know.

And PDNonline has an some interesting numbers on the business of wedding photography:

• PDN’s 2008 Wedding Photographer Survey Results

Finally for some technical stuff:

• Nikon files a patent for a in-viewfinder digital display
• Ken Rockwell explains MTF charts
• TinEye service finds your photos on the web (cool!)

• David Tejada has done a great post on making a very professional looking beauty dish out of hardware store parts (for a speedlight/strobe). Awesome – I may just have to give it a shot myself
• http://davidtejada.blogspot.com/2008/04/beauty-dish-for-sb-800.html
• a *huge* pack of photoshop actions over at reynespho.com. I’ve only checked out a few, but they seem good!
• http://www.reynsphoto.com/articles/Post_Processing/extra/70_Photoshop_Actions_app.php#
• and finally: 44 random photo tips. definitely some useful stuff here:
• http://www.photoprotips.com/20080421/44-random-photo-tips/

that’s it for now! more to come soon.

Wednesday seems like as good a day as any to do it, so here are a few cool things I’ve come across recently

Wired has a nice dSLR roundup featuring the k20d, which fared well. I want one

• http://www.wired.com/gadgets/gadgetreviews/news/2008/03/gadgetreviews_prosumerDSLRs

The RadioPopper P1s are finally shipping, and they seem to be a huge hit. Some early testing experiences here:

• http://www.flashflavor.com/2008/03/18/276/radiopopper.html

On the subject of wireless flash triggering, here is a cool write up by Scott Kelby on the Elinchrom Skyports (so cool if you have elinchrom studio lights!)

• http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/1192

Random coolness: the combustion of a BMW engine cylinder filmed at 10,000FPS (actually filmed, *not* CGI). even cooler is how they did it.

• http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/07/video-cgi-be-damned-inside-the-bmw-m3s-v8/