This post is about the dynamic range of film – something film is famed for in photography.

Actually, I should be specific. It’s negative film, both black and white and colour, that has a highly regarded dynamic range – usually considered to surpass that of digital. For transparencies / slides (e.g. Velvia), this is actually the opposite as film of this type actually has a very narrow dynamic range. An example of that narrow dynamic range can be seen in this shot:

Olympus OM-4 + Zuiko lens on Fujichrome Velvia 100

See how the sky is exposed correctly but then as you hit the water and the areas not showing the reflection, the shadows take over and all highlights are lost. Well, that’s the effect of slide film. I actually like it in this shot and in several others I have since I started using Velvia – but it should be considered a limitation.

OK so moving past slide film, and onto regular colour negatives (C41 – the types you can get processed at a regular lab), this type of film has a great reputation for wide dynamic range. Here’s a shot I took the other day which was exposed using an in camera meter and followed by the direct sunlight. It was shot on Kodak Ektar:

Zeiss Ikon + Zeiss Glass on Kodak Ektar 100

The good news is that the sky is well exposed and despite shooting into direct sunlight, hasn’t resulted in a washed out / blown out sky.

But that’s normal – the result of underexposure. Look at the ground for example, which is way too dark.

So to test the ability of film to record details in these  darkened areas, I scanned the film again with curves applied into a TIFF file and dodged some of that area in photoshop to see what I could rescue. The result was:

(image following rescanning with curves applied and some photoshop dodging)

Certainly a lot of detail was recovered – impressively so. Kodak’s Ektar 100 performed well and it didn’t introduce an unbearable amount of noise in the process. And of course that sky colour was still retained. Hard to say how digital would have fared in this situation, maybe the attention deserves a side by side comparison. In the meantime, a fun test and a little anecdotal evidence to back up the claims of film’s DR.

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 print scans. For $200 it seemed like a steal. The general consensus on the web is that for the price, it gives great quality. Over time I started becoming a little frustrated with the extremely cheap film holders (they’re made of very flimsy plastic) as well as having to keep it clean. When you use the included software to process the images to reduce noise, etc – scan times take a long time also.

So, as I started to get more serious about film, I decided to get a dedicated high end scanner for my 35mm film. This was the Nikon Coolscan 5000. This scanner, unlike the Canon, is a dedicated 35mm scanner with a CCD, etc. There is no flatbed and so dust is more easily controlled. It also has a number of other high end features such as optional film loaders, etc. It retails at a significantly higher price however of about $1,000. It came with a great reputation and at the price tag, expectations were high.

Here’s a quick comparison of the two.

This was not a formal test so I’m using pretty much default settings for both scanners. I include some post processing too so to note invalidate the test as the process of scanning is notorious for having to tweak and refine (far more so than say shooting in JPG from a DSLR and moderately adjust the white balance).

To kick things off, here’s a quick overview of how images came straight of the scanner. The film here was Fujicolor Pro 160s, a high end colour negative film.

This is the scan that came off the Nikon. No processing or tweaking.

This is the Canon. Again no processing or tweaking, settings pretty much as default

The first thing that should strike you about these differences is that from a basic image quality perspective, they look remarkably similar (in terms of apparent sharpness, etc). The biggest difference however is the colour cast. The Canon produces a much warmer / more red cast across the image. In this case, it actually looks preferable due to the autumn scene but I can recall the specific scene quite clearly from memory and the Nikon is a much truer rendition.

An example of where this cast produces a poorer image is here:

My dog Sora, first with the Nikon. This looks great – I subsequently printed at 13″ x 19″ and the print is great

And now with the Canon

Here, the Canon scan is too warm (although again from a low res image quality perspective, it looks surprisingly good – more on quality later).

Now, if this were a proper fully fledged review, I’d be tweaking the Canon software to achieve a more realistic rendition of the image. However, I’m trying to do this write up without rescanning any old negatives and also, I’m trying to illustrate what can be reasonably expected rather than the ultimate potential of each device. However, it is important to look at what can be done with each image, so here’s an example with another shot on Fujichrome Velvia 100.

First, a shot of the Spaceneedle with the Canon. This is a perfect rendition of the scene at the time – beautiful blacks and yellows extracted from the slide

The same scene with the Canon. Here the reds are present again and the blacks don’t look as punchy

However, all is certainly not lost, using post processing (in this case Photoshop CS4), I applied some corrections using levels, colour balance, etc and within a couple of minutes:

Canon scanned image with processing in Photoshop CS4

There are still differences but this was a quick edit to show that it’s quick and relatively easy to make corrections in post (note that this was in JPG also).

As for resolution, here’s an example, using Fujicolour 160s again. First the Nikon;

Scan using Nikon at full resolution with ICE (dust / scratch removal ON) and noise reduction (GEM) set to 3 (medium – high).

100% crop of the Nikon Scan

Now the Canon:

Scan using Canon at 3200 DPI resolution with default settings.

100% crop of the Canon Scan

How do these compare? Well other than the fact that they’re at different resolutions, I’d say the Canoscan stands are surprisingly well. It’s noticeably softer but has not been sharpened so perceived sharpness could be significantly improved. I’d say it is resolving less detail than the Nikon but then at a fraction of the price you’d expect that (again, with the Nikon, the above scans print extremely well up to 13″ x 19″ which is the largest I can do at home right now).

Overall,  here’s my conclusion.

In the favour of the Canon:

• It’s dirt cheap (sub $200)
• It can scan both 35mm and medium format (120 film) and comes with film adapters
• It can also scan prints
• Resolution is good, and with tweaking (in post production or likely with better scan software), colour can be accurately captured

However, drawbacks are:

• Film holders are horribly flimsy
• It can be difficult to align the film correctly leaving to cropped images, etc
• It’s slow

At the other end of the spectrum, in favour of the Nikon:

• Dedicated 35mm scanner with useful adapters (by default it allows for scanning 6 negatives at a time but that can be increased with an adapter)
• Perfect colour reproduction, even out of the box
• Excellent quality / resolution
• Includes ICE for dust / scratch removal
• Pretty good performance in terms of speed

However, it’s drawbacks:

• Expensive
• Most of the useful adapters are add-on’s which you buy separately
• Not flexible, no MF capability (so you likely end up having to get a flatbed scanner anyway)

Since I started scanning film a few months ago, I’ve been astounded by just how many nuances and variables there are to film whether it be the type of film, the type of developer, its suitability for scanning and about a half dozen other factors. There is no simple answer to the number of questions around scanning and particularly the resulting resolution. What I will say is that the Canoscan is a great choice if any of the following is true:

• You’re on a budget
• Looking to start out with film / home scanning and don’t really know where to start (but willing to experiment and post process)
• Favour flexibility over quality

then the Canoscan remains a great buy. If you want the best for 35mm film however, the Nikon’s still the obvious choice.

So there you go…. A non perfect answer for the non perfect practice of scanning.

• Small Square (7″ x 7″)
• Standard Landscape (10″ x 8″)
• Standard Portrait (8″ x 10″)
• Large Landscape (13″ x 11″)
• Large Square (12″ x 12″)

Once you’ve selected a size, you then get to choose the type of book. For example, you opt for Portfolio or Photo Book where photos dominate the main pages. Or a cookbook with a layout specific to pictures with accompanying lists. Or even a yearbook with 9+ photos per page. Blurb offer a bunch of ready made templates on their site which is a great idea. Once you’ve selected the default template, you’re away. You have the freedom to change the layout of every page, selecting from either premade templates or adjusting them for your pictures. A handy indicator tells you whether your photos are in high enough resolution for the size you’re selecting also.

All in all it’s pretty good. In terms of downsides of the software, I’d say it was pretty good. Very easy to get up and running… Navigation could have been better, as could have been dragging / dropping images into the book (it’s more an “import and select” model). It appears that all your media (once imported) is baked into the Booksmart file so you can easily run into 1GB + sized files (as I did) It took me about 6 – 10 hours to complete the 100 page book of Ume (120+ photos, a bunch of text, etc). The result of course. Once you’re completed, you then proceed to uploading the book to blurb.com’s site where you can order it online. Their pricing can be seen here.

My book, which was a 90ish page Large Square format cost just under $100 including shipping. You get discounts for larger orders but this was a personal book so will only probably ever see a handful of copies made. The book took about a week for Blurb to put it together, after which it was shipped to my address.

Of course, the big and most important question is print quality. Overall I’d say it’s good. The format / layout is represented very accurately to what I saw in the Booksmart software. The quality itself is ok – I’d say roughly a 7/10 – 8/10. It’s certainly enough to impress friends / relatives / etc – but not something I’d feel comfortable putting on a bookshelf in a shop. I get noticeably higher quality out of my HP 8750 (a 13″ x 19″ printer at home) when printing on premium paper, mostly in the areas of sharpness. colour transition and noise or artifacts (particularly in areas like sky, etc).

Overall though, for what it is, it’s very good and a great example of the world of “custom automation” that we live in. The idea of being able to create a lasting memory like this with just a few hours of work is pretty much priceless. Akuri was overjoyed and I’ll definitely be doing something like this again.

I arguably prefer the shots in this format, which fits so well with my recent style and Horizons project – but there’s something about seeing the three shots sandwiched together that makes me want them presented in a triptych. I also think they’ll print well like that (which I’ll try tonight).

All three images were shot with an Olympus OM-4, Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 on Fujifilm Neopan 400. The shot came when I’d mentioned to Akuri that I wanted to shoot some trees on a horizon, and shortly after she noticed those two trees in the distance. I pulled over to the side of the road, changed lenses and started composing when suddenly out of nowhere a huge flock or birds started rapidly swirling around. I got about 5 shots off before they took off. A perfect combination of a great eye (thank you Akuri), having just enough of the right kit (and shorter than 135mm and it’d have been too small) and some good old fashioned blind luck. Isn’t that what all good photography is about ?

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 PS.

This will only be a quick write up – but over the past couple of weeks, I’ve really grown to like this tool. Although I enjoy carefully processing a handful of my best images, I tend to try to stick to a “60 second rule” where I spend no longer than that processing for most of my work. Because it has a a couple of hundred preset effects built in (and a good / fast preview tool), virtualPhotographer fits me perfectly for this. It’s very quick to scroll through the processing choices and apply filters and I’ve been very happy with the results. Processing speed on my dual core laptop on CS4 is fine – on my faster desktop it obviously moves v quickly. There is a bug in the software that requires you to rerun the plugin under certain circumstances to get a preview (which I wish they’d fix), but otherwise it’s extremely simple to use and very fun.

Here are a couple of examples on some random photos I pulled off my laptop tonight and then ran through a single virtualPhotographer filter.

Original (Olympus E-P1 + Switar 26mm):

virtualPhotographer version using a Cross Processing filter:

Original (Olympus OM-4 on Fuji 160s Pro):

virtualPhotographer version using a “Classic3″ B&W filter:

Original (Olympus E-P1 + Switar 26mm):

virtualPhotographer version using a “Fall Colors” built in filter (depending on your monitor this may look overcooked):

Original (Olympus OM-4 + Fuji Velvia 100):

virtualPhotographer version using “Hammer” BW filter:

Original (Olympus E-P1 + Switar 26mm)

virtualPhotographer version using a “Filmnoir” BW Filter

So – a few examples of what is possible very quickly using this handy free plugin. For me, it’s not a plugin I run all your images through, nor is it something that I’ll use when I want absolute / fine control over the output… however, when I’m looking for something fast and effective or for something unexpected, I regularly find myself using virtualPhotographer. For CS users, I recommend checking it out – it’s a great tool and lets not forget, it’s free !

You can download from OptikVerve’s site.

So we parked up, climbed in the back with the dogs and collapsed – staring up at the stars through the sunroof. Despite the cold, cramped space and general roughin’ it – the night went fine and a few hours later we were on the move again to Badwater (tomorrow’s pics). Here’s a quick photochronical of day 2.Shots from a combination of Olympus OM-1 / OM-4 and Zuiko lenses. Shots on Kodak Ektar 100 and Fujifilm’s Neopan 100 Acros. The first image is post processed – the rest are straight off the scanner (Nikon Coolscan 5000).

Originally shot on Ektar in colour but I couldn’t resist modifying in Photoshop.

Leaving the hotel in Reno

Parking lot, somewhere in Nevada

Akuri and our two dogs. That road in the background leads to Candelaria, an old ghost town (which we didn’t visit)

Akuri and Sora

Miles and miles of desert & straight road. You get used to that view driving through Nevada

There’s some background on the web regarding the making of this advert – for that 30s spot, Canon hired 10 photographers and over 70,000 shots were taken. Impressive.

The reason why I was pulled in was because the agency wanted to pitch a similar idea to their client (a corporate bank). They wanted me to shoot something based on the same concept with in a weekend. If the client then bought the idea, we’d go shoot the entire thing over another week. Never one to shirk from a challenge, we agreed our rate for the two days and hit the rugby fields (the chosen sport).

I shot a couple of thousand images in two intense 8 hours sessions. I had several hundred keepers from sequences that we pieced back together – enough for around 10 seconds or so. It looked cool. The agency went and pitched the idea based on the shots. Unfortunately, while the client loved the images – and the concept – it was a little too “edgy” for their conservative, corporate background. They went with some stock stills in the end to classical music! Oh well – can’t win ‘em all but was a lot of fun putting the pitch together. Attached are a few of the outtakes – and watch that ad:

“The Best Camera is the one that’s with you” is his latest initiative, a 256 page photography book featuring only images taken with his iPhone. The book was released in 2009, and also coincides with his online iPhone photo ecosystem via the website thebestcamera.com. I purchased my copy through Amazon a couple of weeks ago and just managed to get around to reviewing it.

(Copyright Chase Jarvis, published with permission from Chase Jarvis)

The book itself comes in a minimalist, small format (6 x 6 x 0.7 inches). There is little in the way of written work, consisting mostly of images and titles, with a few of Chase’s personal inspirational quotes scattered throughout. The photos are clearly the focus of the book, with each one attempting to underscore the statement that it’s “the photographer that matters”. Chase cover a wide range of both subjects and locations with images shot from plane windows, around the streets of Seattle, in bars and restaurants and by hotel pools. It’s clear that Jarvis’ iPhone goes pretty much everywhere he does. Many get a heavy dose of post processing, using a variety of filters. Several shots are black and white, others highly saturated mimicking a Holga or Lomo like effect. Others receive a lensbaby like finishing. The effects are wide and varied and it keeps things fresh. The quality of the shots themselves vary. A couple rank among my favourite images I’ve seen this year (irrespective of the camera used). Others are more slivers of insight into Jarvis’ daily life… immensely meaningful to the subjects and the photographer and inspirational examples to anyone else.

(Copyright Chase Jarvis, published with permission from Chase Jarvis)

Chase’s work in “The Best Camera…” reminds me somewhat of the groundbreaking photos from Hiromix (real name Hiromi Toshikawa), a female Japanese photographer who rocketed to fame in the mid 1990′s when she won a high profile Canon competition in Japan at age 19. Her original work could be characterised as the simple photo diary, and spawned a generation of female photographers who started seeing their every day lives around them a little differently. Chase’s promotion of the camera phone as a meaningful photographic tool could potentially do the same.

In addition to the images, the quotations found within are of particular interest. “Each photograph is a tiny invention” and “No longer do I tire of the lounge or the crappy food or the painfully lines at airports” are both statements that have lived with me long after my first reading. Chase’s quote about the gourmet chef who comes home and makes himself a grilled cheese sandwich is pure class. It’s the perfect example of “strong words, softly spoken” – a case brilliantly argued without a great deal of fuss or words. In doing so, “The Best Camera…” quietly and effectively goes about putting to shame anyone whose ever muttered “there’s nothing to shoot” or “if only I had a more expensive camera”.

(Copyright Chase Jarvis, published with permission from Chase Jarvis)

Undoubtedly with work like this, there will be some critiques who will pour scorn on the image quality found on some of the pages. The digital photography industry has given birth to a generation of “pixel peepers” and “The Best Camera” stares down and challenges that trend. The few who walk away from the book thinking “so what” are the ones who are are missing a bigger point when it comes to photography. Inspiration is often what you make of it.

(Copyright Chase Jarvis, published with permission from Chase Jarvis)

While the book benefits from a close association with the iPhone, it’s not about the iPhone as a photographic tool. They key aim of the book is simpler – a demonstration that you don’t need the latest or best equipment to produce great images. However, even with Jarvis’ status, the book will ultimately will live or die by the quality of the work found within. And on that basis, how does it rate? My verdict is that the book absolutely succeeds in what it sets out to do – to challenge, to lead by example and to inspire. While it’s a different experience than flipping through a commercial portfolio, the images are all about inspiring the reader to go out and shoot something different (or shoot something ordinary, but do it differently) and by this measure, “The Best Camera” triumphs in every way.

“The Best Camera is the one that’s with you” can be purchased from Amazon.com

Capture NX is Nikon’s flagship software product for RAW conversion and image processing, built on technology from their collaboration agreement with Nik Software (www.niksoftware.com). Capture NX replaces previous versions of Nikon Capture which while, generally regarded as the best RAW converter for Nikon’s proprietary NEF / RAW format, was also considered to be inflexible and slow.

So when Nikon released Capture NX, they promised it would contain a host of features that would make it far more advanced (and ease to use) for advanced image processing. The innovation they made the biggest noise about was U Point technology which promised to make advanced, selective editing of colours, brightness, contrast, etc far easier to the average user.

Following its announcement and availability for download, I immediately started using Capture NX and from day one until now, it has remained the first application I reach for when beginning my post processing work for Nikon files. Given I was using Photoshop CS2 as the primary raw converter / editor for NEF files until then, I think that says quite a lot about how much I liked the software.

The rest of this entry will give a quick round up of the general features / benefits of Capture NX, or rather – the ones that were significant to me (Note – this doesn’t cover the benefits of shooting RAW in the first place – I will prob do another entry for that later).

RAW Conversion.
When talking about Capture NX, I think this is the place to start – as the actual quality of the conversion is an often overlooked item. For quite some time I was using Photoshop CS2 to process Nikon NEF files and the first step I would always take was to modify the colour balance. There was something about the colours in Photoshop that never quite looked right when I’d convert an image and I found myself constantly referring back to the original image on the camera’s LCD Screen to use as a reference when processing. I know this issue did not just affect me – I had heard many mention it. Anyway, that changed with Capture NX – the colours following conversion look identical to the original that sits in your camear. I’ve attached an example below of a NEF file processed with both Photoshop CS2 (default settings) and Nikon Capture NX (default settings). No modifications were done following opening the image.

Nikon NEF RAW image converted using Photoshop CS2

Nikon NEF RAW image converted using Nikon Capture NX

The difference should be pretty clear (particularly when you click on the image to see a larger version). The orange from Capture NX is much more, well, orange. And the colours on my dog’s with Capture NX is much lifelike. While it is certainly possible, through colour balance / tone adjustment, to get the colours from CS2 the same as Capture NX, I generally considered that step to b quite a pain and am glad when it can be avoided.

FYI, some people have also spoken about resolution / noise differences between RAW converters in general, but I’ve not found there to be very different between these two applications.

U Point’s
Ok so this is the technology that Nikon was making a big fuss about upon Capture NX’s launch. A different approach to Dodge / Burn / Saturation brushes (predominant in CS2), you might ask what’s wrong with the normal approach. Well I guess that the main issue is that when you use brushes to selectively edit an image, you’re making changes that you can’t modify them after you perform them, they take plenty of practice, etc. So what Capture NX does is take a different approach through U Point’s. These are small modifiers that you can drag onto an image and then use sliders to modify their Brightness / Saturation / Contrast / Hue / Colour Balance / etc. They apply a “circle of influence” around the area where they are placed, meaning they’ll look for pixels of similar colour, etc and apply the changes to them.

So as an example, say you want to brighten someone’s face – all need to do is drag a U Point onto the face area, drag the brightness slider up and the face is more visible. Easier to do than dodging? Maybe / maybe not – but certainly a lot easier to see what you’ve done, go back and change, move the affected area around and so forth.

As an example, I show the process of using U Point’s (click on image to see a larger version).

Take the following original image.

It’s hard to tell but when I took this, I was convinced there was a great image in the data waiting to be seen. I realized the foreground colour was too harsh and distracts the eye from seeing the real subject.

There’d be a number of ways to reduce the saturation of the foreground in Photoshop CS2, but with Capture NX, you just need to drag a control point onto one of the blue areas of the image. Once there, you can apply changes (like desaturating the foreground) to like minded pixels. To see what pixels you’re selection is going to change, you need to select “Show selection”. Then the following image is revealed:

This image shows what parts of the image are going to be modified. Parts of the image in white means that changes will be applied to those areas. Parts in black mean they won’t be applied. And obviously all the shades of gray in between suggest the varying strength of application. OK so see the window to the top right? That’s a modifier. Just increase brightness and contrast and hit OK.

And voila – this image results – a funky abstract of a woman climbing up the stairs (and one of my favourite shots from 2006):

The image took a few minutes of fine tuning but the above step was less than 30 seconds.

Non destructive editing
So non destructive editing is something I mentioned above – and we know through layers, it can be done in photoshop as well. The problem I have with photoshop is that the files get up to 100MB in size which is pretty horrendous. For Capture NX, every change you perform is automatically non destructive (no need for layers). The biggest difference however is that when you save files, the file sizes are on the order of 10MB to 15MB (I’m talking about 10MB as a starting image size in the first place). This means I can now store all my images in this saved state – rather than with Photoshop where I selectively choose only a few to store in PSD format.

Camera settings
One thing I always thought was a shame with CS2 was the fact that it does not copy over camera settings. So you have modes like Vivid, Vivid+, custom settings, etc – In CS2, these are all ignored. In Capture NX not only are they used, you can also change them which becomes a great tool for learning about your camera.

OK – so that’s a quick whirlwind introduction. As you can probably see – even those four items are a fairly compelling case for looking in Capture NX if you shoot in Nikon RAW.

Issues

Before considering Capture NX, there are of course downsides to consider. These were:

• Memory hog (even more than photoshop). Peronsally I wouldn’t enjoy running this with anything less than 2 GB RAM (1GB is ok if you’re not doing much else with your PC at the time)
• Inconsistent GUI (User Interface), which requires you to click OK with the mouse sometimes, and other times allows you to use the Enter key or mouse
• Crashes every now and then. Probably 1 in every 20 photos – something like that
• U Points aren’t as effective as dodging / burning when very complex or very heavy selective editing is required
• Only can be used for Nikon formats (although JPG / TIFF supported also)
• Some actions are slower than photoshop (e.g. zooming / resizing can be sometimes)

For me however, the positives definitely outweighed the few downsides and slightly clunky UI. It can’t do everything by any means – but I use it for processing 90% of my NEF images and the use of U Points (and not having to fine tune colour as much) cuts down my processing time by about half I would estimate. The images that fall into that other 10%, which were too complex for U Points to handle, I would still use Capture NX for first to convert from RAW and apply levels / contrast, then save as JPG to be further modified in CS2. So it was, as a minimum, my RAW converter for all images.

OK that’s about it – hope that was useful. I’ll be covering similar software I use for Canon soon and also discussion of workflow in general.

For those interested, you can download a trial of Capture NX here:

You see I’ve always liked Apple hardware. Partly to do with the
design – which is the closest that IT has ever come to being cool, but also the
little ergonomic details and how well spec’ed their hardware is. What I have
not yet been a fan of to date is MacOS – the operating system that ships with
all Apple machines. Although it received a significant update with MacOS X and
subsequent releases, I think it’s been the years of slowly burning Windows shortcut
key combinations into my subconscious that makes working on a Windows machine more
efficient for me. So when Apple announced some time back that they were moving
to Intel processors which is much more akin to PC architecture, it was only a
matter of time before someone put Windows on a Mac.

And now that’s happened. All Intel Mac’s are now capable of
dual booting – meaning when you switch on the machine you can choose to load
MacOS or Windows XP, giving people like me the opportunity to run their apps of
choice in the environment they prefer, on something that looks much cooler than
a regular laptop.

So, with all the incentive I now needed, last week I went
and bought a 13” widescreen black MacBook. Pictured below:

After just a short afternoon of working with Apple’s Boot Camp (a download
which allows the whole dual boot thing to happen), I was up and running with all
my favourite applications. Was remarkably straightforward to setup and I now have
a laptop which I can use for work, personal and photo editing. The dual core 2 chips
that run inside the Apple hardware mean that it’s as fast as any other laptop
out there, battery life is excellent, screen is phenomenal. Every detail is
taken care of, even down to the power cable which inserts into the MacBook via
a magnetic connection so that if you trip over the cable, it just comes flying
out – without bringing your laptop along with it (something both me and my two
rotts have all been guilty of in the past).

Photoshop CS2 and all the other relevant applications for
photography are a breeze on this kind of hardware – I find a 13” screen easily sufficient
for the kind of post processing work I do also. Prices are available on Mac’s
website – I found them to be comparably to equivalently spec’d PC’s. FYI, rumors
are rife that Apple is announcing newer models in the coming weeks so it might
even be worth waiting if you are considering. If anyone is interesting in
getting one though and wants to know more about the transition or Boot Camp
software, just let me know.

So – that’s it really – just a quick kit update on something
that goes on outside of the camera. As I say, unashamedly geeky – but when we’re
capable of worrying about whether a UV filter lets in 97% vs 99% of available
light,
there’s no point apologizing anymore as no one would believe it anyway.