One of my favorite shots at a wedding is the ring shot or close-up shots of specific details. For these shots I love to use a Lensbaby Composer. With many DSLR’s it can be pretty tricky because of the warping action of the Lensbaby lens along with the small viewfinder and when using the super wide angle lens it just compounds the issue on macro shots. In the past, the best I could do was to get the focus as close as possible and then take a series of shots making slight changes to the focus each time.

Kerry and David spent some time with Dane Sanders, author of Fast Track Photographer, to talk about ways in managing your tasks and to-do lists better so that you can effectively manage your time better.

Adam Mason asked us how aperture can affect your shot. To answer the question Kerry explains what aperture is and then demonstrates how it can be used to alter the look of the image you are trying to create. By learning how to use your aperture to control light and depth of field you can dramatically change the look of your photographs.

With the recent articles we have done on portrait lighting and the use of light meters we have had a bunch of requests to do an actual demonstration of how to use a meter in an actual real-world environment.

In this video Kerry demonstrates using a simple light meter in a product shoot.

Canon 500D, Nikon D5000, Sony A200, Sony A300, Pentax K-m, Pentax K200, and Fuji S100Fs now supported by DxO Optics Pro
DxO Labs has just announced availability of the new version 5.3.4, supporting 7 new cameras and with 150 additional optics correction modules.
The Canon EOS 500D (Digital Rebel T1i) and the Nikon D5000, two recently-released flagship products, are supported in combination with numerous lenses. The Sony Alpha range is now fully covered, with the addition of the A200 and A300 models. From Pentax, the K-m and K200 are now covered – …

Over the past few weeks Kerry has upgraded from a 30D to a 50D and David upgraded from a 40D to a 5D Mk II. In this episode the guys discuss the new cameras and some of the features that they are really digging about the new gear.

Adobe has just pushed updates to Camera Raw and Lightroom. The main changes are support for new cameras.
Camera Raw 5.4
update June 24, 2009
This new version of the Camera Raw plug-in replaces the original one that was installed with Adobe® Photoshop® CS4; Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0; and Adobe Premiere® Elements 7.0 software. Visit the Camera Raw page for a complete list of supported cameras.
English: Windows | Macintosh
Lightroom 2.4
update June 24, 2009
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom® 2.4 update includes these enhancements: * Additional camera support for several new camera models including the …

While the Canon EOS 5D Mark II has been getting all the hype since it’s release. However, the 50D which came out about the same time has been getting virtually zero publicity because of it’s bigger brothers full-frame sensor and video capabilities. So let’s take a good look at the EOS 50D and see if it is really worth an upgrade or if its just a minor refresh of the previous 40D.

With several hundred entries we sure were glad that we had tons of things to give away. Just to explain briefly how the names where chosen. The entries were numbered in reverse order of how they came in, then for each prize we used the random number generator at http://random.org and asked if you return a number between 1 and 302 (number of valid entries). Then we matched the number with the info of the winner and viola!

While leaks have been making their way around the web for the past few weeks, Olympus has finally announced their new Micro Four Thirds camera, the E-P1 “Pen” camera. The E-P1 is basically somewhere in between a Point and Shoot and DSLR, or more like a Compact with interchangeable lenses. Combining the still image quality of a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) with the A/V quality of both a High Definition camcorder and high-end audio recorder, the E-P1 is a virtual full-service imaging studio in one ultra-portable and stylishly retro body.