Today someone asked me to elaborate about my reference yesterday to the Canoscan’s 8800F “budget” characteristics … here’s a quick summary and a comparison with a Nikon Coolscan 5000.
As a very quick introduction, the Canoscan is a budget flatbed scanner from Canon. It has a high max DPI resolution and retails at the very low price of somewhere between $160 – $200. When I first got the scanner, I was amazed that it could support such a wide variety of film formats – from 35mm film to MF to regular …

Most people who use Photoshop will already be aware of plugins by NIK software, including Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, etc. I’m generally in two minds about their plugins – on one hand I’ve seen them put to fantastic use, with photographers creating wonderful post processed images… on the flip side, like some Photoshop techniques which are easy-to-use-but-hard-to-master, I’ve seen them horribly overused.
Well the other day I did a quick search for a free processing plugins for Photoshop and came across OptikVerve Lab’s virtualPhotographer, a free filter plugin for …

“The Holga is an inexpensive, medium format 120 film toy camera, made in China, appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic.”

Originally shot with a Olympus OM-4 + Olympus OM Zuiko 21mm f/2.0 lens on Fujicolor Pro 160s. Modified with a Photoshop Holga action
Holga’s really are remarkable cameras. Take everything that is valued in the digital photography world (edge to edge sharpness, contrast, accurate exposure, lack of vignetting, etc), look for the inverse of it, and you have a Holga. But despite the flaws, these are surprisingly popular cameras. What they have going …

I’m still new to the metering system of the Canon 5D (having been a Nikon user until about a month ago). While I usually get my exposure more or less right, sometimes I miss it coupled with the fact that…