Rants

Canada, the Wet West Coast, the Pacific NorthWest is the last place on earth with any “significant” tempered rain forest. The keyword word here is “rain.” This is what the rain forest looks like.

By now, you must have heard that Adobe will release Photoshop CS6 in the first week of May. One of the big new feature is the cloud! I see and read a lot of “misunderstanding / misinformation” about the cloud. People use the word “cloud” just like people used the “information super highway” expression in the years 1996-1997.

1. What's the cloud? When they talk about the cloud, they either mean that the data and/or some programs are on computers/servers that are accessed via the Internet. In the “good old days,” the data and/or the programs were stored on the local network. You could walk to the server room and see the computers, the lights, the cables and some techie that was looking after the whole “shebang.” The advantage and/or the problem with the cloud is that you do not know what's inside, how it's configured…

You know something bad is going to happen when somebody says: “Hey, watch this!” Lately have been hanging around with Jon (that's not a spelling mistake), he also has a Canon 7D. So we decided to do one of those “Hey, watch this!” We decided to exchange cameras for an hour. The rules were simple:

In October 2011, I wrote about the a photography store that advertised photography for weddings $149.99 at: $149 Wedding

In the blog post, I wrote:

The problem with a race to the bottom is that you might win

— Famous saying that too many people attributed to themselves

Those guys won the race, they are out of business. Gone!

The prism contains a lot of “stuff”. It's the top of the camera and houses the flash, the hot shoe for the external flash and inside, it contains the pentaprism which is according to Canon gives a vertical/horizontal coverage of approximately 100% (p253 of the manual). The prism also contains a lot of electronics and sensors like the AF sensors and the exposure control.

The pentaprism is designed so that the eye is 22mm away from the eyepiece.

I just had another request of:

It will be good exposure

Basically they want free work.

1. My standard policy is usually yes, if you are also working for free.
2. My standard policy is usually yes, if it is a cause that I really believe into.
3. My standard policy is always asking for credit…

And that got me thinking (these days, I need something to provoke into thinking.) What if we change the parameters just slightly:

“It will be good exposure” but the request comes from a huge for profit organization like CNN, NBC, BBC… with a 3 minutes interview.

I'm in the process of creating a new web site for my commercial photography. I have most of the content, the photography and much of the text. So I decided to look around. I'm not looking to steal anybody else's web site. I'm just looking to see how other commercial photographers integrate their photography with a blog. As I was looking around, I found that some commercial photographers do not want anybody to come to their web sites.

I was reading the February 2012 issue of a magazine for professional photographers. They had some lens write-ups. I'd like to quote some portions:

• Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM: “since it's an L lens, you know that it offers top-of-the-line optics with eight elements…”
• Canon 500mm f/4L IS II USM: “Though formally announced last February, … no estimated delivery date but this monster of a lens will certainly be an impressive upgrade…”

By now, you must have heard that Kodak has filed for bankruptcy. All the noise from the web is that Kodak is a bankrupt company because, although they invented many of the digital technology, they were not nimble enough… Those are mostly people that repeat what everybody else copied from the web. The problem is that these people don't have a “long enough” memory. Kodak's problems started long, long before the digital area.

What The Duck has this great cartoon about “Kodak's death”

Here are the 3 main events that caused “Kodak's death”:

A few weeks ago, Adobe announced that from now on, the upgrades will be only from the previous version of Photoshop and/or the Creative Suite. If people are a couple of version behind, that's too bad, you will have to do a buy a full version or get lost or…

Scott Kelby, of NPPA fame, wrote an open letter to Adobe to complaint about the upgrade policy.

I think that most people are missing the point.

1. The prices vary a lot depending on the country and the markets.

One of the standard advice to a blogger do a “Top 10 List”. I've never like either doing or reading top 10 lists.

I always find these lists as superficial. It's usually a title followed by one or two sentences that do not explain anything.

When was the last time that a top 10 lists gave you the information that you needed? I can't remember one occurrence.

As most of you know by now, Steve Jobs dies last week. I'd like to extend my condolences to his family (I would be extremely surprised if the read my lowly blog).

I want to rant, not about Steve Jobs himself, I've never met him. I don't even use Apple products. But about the blogosphere that went “gaga” after his death with:

• Why aren't you more like Steve Jobs?
• How to live like Steve Jobs
• Present like Steve Jobs
• Think like Steve Jobs
• Get things done like Steve Jobs
• Manage like Steve Jobs

and hundreds of other blog posts.

Dallas Cowboys Merchandising is seeking an experienced photographer with web/print graphic design skills who is enthusiastic, hard-working and dedicated. Primary focus will be to perform photography, web and print related graphical tasks to include but not be limited to (i) high volume digital photography; (ii) image cropping; (iii) web promo creation (secondary); (iv) print collateral creation (secondary); and (v) ecommerce related CSS skills (secondary). Ability to work across multiple projects, contributes in a team atmosphere, solve problems independently and meet rigid deadlines within our quality standards. Positive attitude is essential.

The Sony NEX-5n is one of the new mirrorless cameras from Sony. I was able to play with it for about 15 minutes! Yeap, that's ¼ of an hour. I'm not allowed to show the photos, “he” kept the sd card. I wasn't really allowed to try it, but some Starbucks, some “slick” talking and I spend 15 minutes with it.

The camera is nice, the focus is fast, almost as fast as a regular dSLR. It's not as fast as a Canon 7D but it's still darn fast. It feels lot faster than a Canon T3i or a Nikon 3100. The images on the back of camera looked very good, but it was JPEGs.

Last week, a “big” business marketing website had the following:

DIY Search Engine Optimization

With keywords and links… What a bunch of crock! In 2010, it would have been correct, 2011 onward is another story.

I wrote, in May 2011, that Google is Changing its Search Results by focusing on “high-quality” websites.