Yes, RAW vs. JPEG, the seemingly endless debate, almost as bad as Mac vs. PC or Film vs. Digital and people have been asking me to write up an article on this based on my opinion and experience and I have really put this article off for a long time as I wanted to be as unbiased in how I write this given that this is a very biased topic.

Oh Canon 5D Mk II, how doest I love thee, let me count the ways. That could pretty much sum up my impressions of the newest camera from the folks at Canon but it probably doesn’t tell you what you really need to know. I certainly don’t have the testing lab that DPReview or Popular Photography has to tell you all the little specs and test results, but as someone who is shooting all the time, I figured I would get my hands on one and see if it really is all that it is hyped up to be.

We have seen every imaginable type of light diffuser product you can imagine and have even built different ones yourself for specific purposes all in the name of finding just the right combination of bounce and diffusion. Every device we have seen will work great in some specific situations but will not be ideal in every situation. When we saw the VerteX for the first time, while it may have looked more like a gimmick at first glance, I soon realized the potential and just had to try one out.

2008 was certainly a banner year for photography enthusiasts when it comes to the number and quality of websites that you have to choose from. We certainly appreciate all the visitors here at cameradojo.com and hope we are doing a good job at bringing you good information and we are always thrilled to see our name on lists like this. Now it’s our turn to pay tribute to some of the best sites out there that we read on a regular basis.

Focal Point is OneOne Software’s newest Photoshop plug-in that allows you to create images with selective focus and edge vignette effects. Using these techniques you can guide the viewer’s eye to the spot in the image that you want them to look at. Using an easy to use “focus bug” you can control the sweet spot, the amount and kind of blur. These types of effects have only been possible with expensive specialty lenses before. Does Focal Point deliver on the goods? We decided to try it out for ourselves and see what we thought about it.

HDR Photography is a method of combining multiple exposures into a single image in order to achieve a greater dynamic range in an image. If that sounded a bit complex, let’s break that down a bit more. If I take a photo, the sensor only can capture a given range from light to dark, in a normally exposed image, you may lose some detail in the darkest areas and you may lose some detail in the brightest areas. But if we can take an normal exposure, an underexposed image (to get the detail in the highlights) and an overexposed image (to get the details in the shadows) and combine them into a single image, then we can get a new image that can be the best of all three.

David Hobby (http://strobist.com) has posted a thought provoking article today about whether or not you should consider doing work for free. This isn’t to say you should go on Craigslist and post that you will perform wedding photography worth thousands of dollars to everyone that emails you.

As part of our Photography Basics series we talked about Exposure already and this time we are going to cover the mystery of aperture. Aperture is probably the least understood setting of everything on your camera. While shutter settings are very easy to understand, to long of a shutter speed and you will get blurring, pretty simple stuff. Same with ISO, too high of ISO and you introduce digital noise. But learning how to use aperture properly can kill brain cells faster than a frat house kegger party.

MELVILLE, N.Y. (Nov. 30, 2008) – Nikon Inc. today announced the D3X, an FX-format digital SLR featuring extreme 24.5-megapixel resolution and superb low-noise capabilities, which provides professional photographers with commercial-quality image performance in a familiar and extraordinarily versatile D-SLR form factor. In conjunction with the groundbreaking Nikon FX-format D3, the D3X tops off a collection of flagship level, rugged, professional caliber digital single lens reflex cameras engineered to excel in all types of professional photographic disciplines from photojournalism and sideline sports, to commercial in-studio applications.

We are beginning a series we are going to call photography basics to help explore the basics of digital photography. While the focus is on digital photography, all of the concepts will apply whether you are shooting film or digital. In this first installment we are going to look at how to control exposure by manipulating the different settings on the camera such as ISO, Shutter, and Aperture. Upcoming installments will focus on other areas such as depth of field, motion control, and specific shooting scenarios.