I am very, very pleased to relay the good news that one of the premiere conferences focused on the topic(s) of standards based web design, @media 2007, is going to get about as close as it could possibly get to Hawaii this year without actually being here. It’ll be in San Francisco on May 24th-25th, 2007 and wild horses couldn’t keep me away (well, OK - maybe a herd of Clydesdales might have a fighting chance at making me a few minutes late)! (more…)

Have you ever had the experience of a shot looking great on your camera’s LCD monitor and then looking shockingly bad when you take a look at it on your computer monitor? I certainly have. Depending on how mobile your shooting setup needs to be, tethered shooting might be a good way to make sure you get the exposure you are trying for. Tethered shooting refers to having your camera connected to your computer while you shoot. The nice thing about tethered shooting is that it allows you to see a much higher resolution and color correct (provided your monitor is calibrated) version of an image than you would ever dream of seeing on your camera’s LCD monitor. Generally what you need in order to try tethered shooting are the following: a camera and computer which can be connected (via USB, Firewire, or otherwise), a utility to import photos directly from your camera to your computer, and an image viewing application. Tethered shooting setups vary a bit depending on what equipment is being used, but the general idea is the same. In a nutshell, the big idea is to get your freshly snapped image from your camera into a watched folder on your computer and then displayed in a viewing application. In the following tutorial, I’ll demonstrate how to get set up for tethered shooting using the following equipment: a Canon Digital Rebel XTi camera, a USB cable, an Apple PowerBook G4 computer running OSX 10.4.8, Canon EOS Utility 1.1.0.8 for image import, and Adobe Lightroom 4.1 Beta for image viewing. Here’s the step-by-step. (more…)

I recently had the chance to try out this ultra compact Canon EF 70-300mm zoom telephoto lens featuring Diffractive Optics (DO), Image Stabilization (IS), and Ultrasonic Motors (USM), (pictured at right with both front and back lens dust caps in place) on my Canon Digital Rebel XTi body and was really impressed with the performance.

Image sharpness and color are very good overall. However, I did notice that when shooting outdoors in bright afternoon sunlight that there was a fairly pronounced false gradient which was very noticeable in the cloudless sky when shooting with the sun in any location other than directly behind me. The good news is that this was easily taken care of by attaching a hood to the end of the lens. (more…)

I stopped by B&H while I was in New York City over the holidays and picked up a Canon Digital Rebel XTi 10.1 Megapixel SLR camera with an EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM lens and a 2GB CF card (pictured right). This is my first digital SLR and I must say I am very impressed.

The unit fires up from a cold start really quickly. I find that by the time I have flipped the power switch to the on position and gotten my eye to the view finder, the camera is ready to shoot. The auto focus is very fast and quiet and there is no significant shutter lag to speak of. Another pleasant surprise is how quickly the camera writes image data to the CF card. Even shooting in RAW+JPG it happens very quickly. (more…)