Show Links

Gadget Infinity
http://gadgetinfinity.com

Flash Zebra
http://flashzebra.com

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com

Jason Anderson
http://canonblogger.com

Curt’s background in film and photography have combined to put him into the perfect position to take advantage of not just both mediums, but also to enable him to fuse the two together using current equipment and software.

Curt gives some tips of getting started with video and how best to use video to compliment your photography.

Check out Curt’s work at:

http://curtapanovich.com
http://engagingfilms.com

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison (http://kerrygarrison.com)
David Esquire (http://esquirephotography.com)

You can listen to this podcast now using our player widget in the right hand sidebar

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

Jason gives some great tips for wedding photographers for getting to know all of the people personally that will generate the most sales for you.

Jason is also giving away a 1 year membership (or extension to existing members) to a lucky listener. To enter the contest, you have to go to http://pictage.com/blog and find the post about photographer Joanne Bartone, find the song she listens to the most on her iPod. Send your answer in an email to podcast@cameradojo.com with the subject “Pictage Contest”. All entries must be in by Feb. 21 2009.

Pictage: http://pictage.com

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison (http://kerrygarrison.com)
David Esquire (http://esquirephotography.com)

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

• Camera Dojo
  We have free and paid sets of Lightroom Presets available Our most popular are our Camera Tools and Dojo Essentials.
• Adobe Exchange
  There are a growing number of presets available on the official Adobe Exchange website
• Lightroom Killer Tips
  About once a week Matt posts a new Lightroom preset for free. There are quite a few there now.
• Wonderland
  Over at Wonderland they have two really nice set of free Lightroom presets
• OnOne Software
  OneOne Software has 85 free Lightroom Presets designed by Jack Davis
• Presets Heaven
  Presets Heaven is trying to be the ultimate list of free Lightroom presets
• Inside Lightroom
  Inside Lightroom has a nice collection of free Lightroom presets organized into different categories
• Digital Freak
  The folks over at Digital Freak have a file with over 600 free Lightroom presets in it
• Gantico
  Very nice selection of free Lightroom presets that is added to on a regular basis
• Mathias Blix
  Mathias created some really creative Lightroom presets and now offers them up for free
• X-Equals
  Bandon Oelling has created some really nice presets that he has made available
• Laconic Stockpile
  Really nice sets of B&W and Vinage presets
• Gavin Seim
  Gavin sells several preset packs but has some free samplers that are really good as well.
• Lightroom Presetting Group
  This Flickr group has collected over 180 Free Lightroom Presets
• Life In Digital Film
  free film emulation presets

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison (http://kerrygarrison.com)
David Esquire (http://esquirephotography.com)

This podcast is also available on iTunes.
]

Links from the show

Roberto’s website (http://www.robertovalenzuelaphotography.com)
WPPI Master Class (http://www.wppionline.com/tradeshow/show2009/speakers.taf?pgm=master)
WPPI Article (http://www.wppionline.com/newsletter/Dec08/member-month.tml)

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison (http://kerrygarrison.com)
David Esquire (http://esquirephotography.com)

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

1. DIY Photography
   (http://www.diyphotography.net)
   Udi does a terrific job at bringing alternative ways of lighting, shooting, and creating light modifiers to people without unlimited budgets.
2. John Nack’s Blog
   (http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/)
   John is the product manager for Photoshop and almost every day has a new blog entry with something interesting or cool to look at.
3. Photo Business News
   (http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/)
   John Harrington writes several times a week with news and information relevant to the business of photography. This is one of my must-read blogs every week.
4. Strobist
   (http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/)
   David Hobby has several posts a week that specialize in talking about working with small accessory flash units and getting the most out of them. This is definitely one of the best sites if you are into lighting.
5. Lightroom Journal
   (http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/)
   This is the official blog from Adobe for Photoshop Lightroom. All official Lightroom news is posted here.
6. Lightroom Killer Tips
   (http://lightroomkillertips.com)
   Matt Kloskowski posts excellent tips and presets several times a week for Lightroom users.
7. Digital Pro Talk
   (http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/)
   This is the home of David Ziser, one of the top wedding photographers in the world. David is one of the most prolific bloggers around and posts awesome shooting and lighting tips virtually every day. He posts so much that its hard to keep up with all of his posts. This is another must-read site.
8. Flash Flavor
   (http://flashflavor.com/)
   Matt Adcock takes some of the most amazing photos you will see anywhere and is simply an inspiration to go through and see what he is doing and how he does it.
9. Digital Photography School
   (http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/)
   This site from Darren Rowse is chock full of good tips and tutorials with new content on a regular basis.
10. Rob Galbraith DPI
    (http://www.robgalbraith.com)
    Rob always has good information and is often the first with breaking news.
11. TWIP
    (http://twipphoto.com/)
    Although known more for their podcast than their blog, the This Week in Photography blog has a new post every day. Maybe someday CameraDojo will get mentioned on their show (hint hint) – wow, CameraDojo got mentioned on their site today!
12. Photoshop Insider
    (http://scottkelby.com)
    Another site with several new posts every week from Scott as well as regular guest bloggers.
13. 1001 Noisy Cameras
    (http://www.1001noisycameras.com)
    With new info more often than you change your underwear, 1001 Noisy Cameras may never win a design excellence award but certainly is at the top of most lists of useful and informative sites.
14. Pro Photo Life
    (http://www.prophotolife.com)
    This site from Jim Talkington amazes me that I don’t see it on most “top sites” lists like this. Jim does regular video tutorials and the wealth of content on his site is awesome. If you aren’t visiting this site every week, you are missing out on some fantastic stuff.
15. PhotoJojo
    (http://photojojo.com)
    You don’t even have to remember to go to PhotoJojo, this is a twice a week newsletter that is emailed to you with cool stuff in every email. Sign up and never miss it.
16. Photo Walk Pro
    (http://www.revellphotography.com/blog/)
    Jeff Revell’s site is another often-0verlooked site since many people think it is just about photo walking. Jeff also does a good amount of tips and tutorials for shooting and for working with Photoshop.
17. The Pioneer Woman
    (http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/)
    Ree Drummond must be the most amazing woman on the planet, with multiple blogs about her life including photography, cooking, home and garden, and more she is a non-stop blogging phenomenon. While her sites appeal mostly to women, her photography stuff appeals to everyone.
18. Lighting Essentials
    (http://www.lighting-essentials.com)
    This is another excellent site for tutorials on lighting. Don Giannatti is an awesome photographer and is bringing his knowledge and experience into this website.
19. DPReview
    (http://dpreview.com)
    If you just have to know everything there is to know about camera bodies and lenses, DPReview is the encyclopedia of all camera knowledge when it comes to specs and unbiased technical reviews.
20. AllTop
    (http://photography.alltop.com/)
    Alltop.com is the brainchild of Guy Kawasaki and the photography section is filling up with a great list of photography sites. Bookmark this page there and never have a lack of reading material.

While there are dozens of other sites out there that are all worthy of being on any list like this, I decided I was going to stick to the top 20 sites that I personally use. Please add your own favorites into the comments.

While there are a number of other programs available to do HDR with, we are going to look at the three most common ones mentioned in most posts and blogs, these are:

• Adobe Photoshop CS4 – Merge to HDR Function
• Photomatix
• Enfuse

Photoshop CS4

To be completely fair, I am using the different HDR tools here with their default settings and am not doing any additional tweaking afterwards to make the images look better. That being said, the Photoshop result is certainly the worst of the batch. The dark areas are too dark, the bright areas are too bright and it just didn’t do anything to really impress me. I also cannot find any noticeable difference between Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS4 in the final output. Even though you could tweak this image in Photoshop, it would be quit a bit of work because you really need to darken the sky and brighten up the building and parking lot. There may be a particular type of image that Photoshop likes better, of perhaps it doesn’t like that the images covered a 4 stop range. If someone has some tips on working with the Photoshop HDR merge, please post them in the comments.

Photomatix

Photomatix is another commercial tool (http://www.hdrsoft.com) that many people consider to be the best HDR tool available. Comparing the images, the Photomatix output most certainly gave the most dynamic range, so much range that it is actually easy to get an image that doesn’t actually look natural. The way Photomatix works is a complete mystery as even in the overexposed image, you can’t see the detail in the windows and doorways of the building the way you can in this Photomatix output. From a “wow” perspective, it is most certainly the most vivid image and has an amazing amount of range, there is almost nothing in the image that is too bright or too dark. While this may be good for some images, if you are trying to replicate what you are seeing with your eye, this isn’t quite accurate. Is it stunning in it’s range? Absolutely, no question there, it wins hands down in that area.

Enfuse

Enfuse is a different type of tool that compares multiple images and chooses to keep the pixels it feels are the best exposed. Using Enfuse by itself can also be an exercise in frustration. To simply using Enfuse, I use LR/Enfuse from Timothy Armes (http://timothyarmes.com/lrenfuse.php) which integrates into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Using just the default settings, the result is an image that is much more natural and is truer to what you would see with your eye. A big advantage of using Enfuse (especially with LR/Enfuse) is that it is significantly faster than Photomatix, the downside is that you don’t get the amazing results that you can get from Photomatix. Enfuse is going to give you a far more natural look.

Summary

It’s not entirely clear if these is a real no-brainer choice between Photomatix and Enfuse as it is really dependant on what you are trying to accomplish with the final image. Photomatix can certainly deliver outstanding images that are virtually impossible to achieve any other way and can also create more natural looking results by toning down the resulting image making it a more versatile tool overall. Enfuse has its advantage in being fast and easy to use when integrated into Lightroom and will create very nice, natural looking results, and if that is your goal then sending a few bucks to Timothy for LR/Enfuse is well worth it. Personally, I have both installed and will choose when to use each tool based on what result I am looking for, and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each option will make it easier for me to decide when to use which tool.

Author: Kerry Garrison

Real and fake SanDisk Ultra II CF cards

The first fake CF card I came across was pretty obvious, visually. I received it with a used camera I bought, so I really couldn’t complain. It was basically free and I was thrilled at the time (2006) to have a 2GB card thrown in with a camera. But it was the performance of the cart that tipped me off to the real problem. The card was significantly slower in the writes than my other SanDisk Ultra II cards; about half the write speed or worse. Here is a look at the fake card next to the real card (right):

Back of 2GB SanDisk Elite CF cards

It is pretty obvious here which is the fake card. Come on, counterfeiters, can’t you do a better fake label than that? As I read up more, it seems that the early cards were easier to detect. Not only were the front stickers obvious, but the rear stickers were missing a lot of telling information. There were no serial numbers on the fake card. This was the first give-away. There was really not much of anything specifically identifying the card on the back label of the fake card. Notice that the real card on the left had the SDCFH identifier, as well as the patent numbers. This would be easy enough to fake too, if they weren’t so lazy. (right):

Close-up of real & fake SanDisk Ultra II CF cards

When you zoom in close (these images were made on a cheapo flatbed scanner at 1200DPI), you can also see the difference in the grain of the plastic. The fake card has a rougher texture and surface on it than the real SanDisk card. On closer inspection, you can see that the grain in the printing is finer on the real SanDisk card also. But these differences alone are harder to distinguish with the naked eye. If the labels were better duplicated overall, you might not even notice such small details as those. You can click to enlarge the photos to the right and get a better, more detailed blow-up of these differences. (right):

Sides of SanDisk Ultra CF cards

But here is one place that they did get clever… the serial numbering. Notice how close the printing is on both of the cards? Without contacting SanDisk, there is no way to tell which one is real and which one is a fake. (right):

So, recently I decided that it was time to buy me a new, 8GB SanDisk Ultra IV compact Flash card as my Canon 1DS Mark III burns through a lot of space at around 25MB per image. 2GB and 4GB cards were just not enough for events. I decided again to test my luck with a new SanDisk Ultra Card, and thought I would try to save a few bucks on ebay. What the heck… if the owner says it comes new in the box, that’s a pretty good sign, right? And sellers in Hong Kong can have real product once in a while too, right? Especially if it is in the new, retail box? And since it is not from the U.S., it could be cheaper, right? Like half price?

O.K., I have to say that right off the bat the first signs of trouble are right here. Half price, easily duplicated product from Hong Kong is a sure sign of fake product on ebay these days. However, for $29.97 shipped, it was worth it to see how good they really are.

Fake SanDisk Extreme package

Here is what I received, in a padded envelope from Hong Kong, partially crushed (right). Surprisingly, the box looks very very real. The gold foils are vibrant and shiny, the texture of the box is identical. And inside the box was the card in a plastic holder, a SanDisk keychain card holder and an SanDIsk RescuePRO 4.0″ installation CD. Pretty much every detail of the real box and contents was duplicated here with extreme care, and with only minor differences. At first glance, I was fairly convinced that this was actually real, or was it just a really damn good knock-off. After closer inspection, it seems that the later was the case. How could someone afford to go to all of this trouble?  Was there really that much profit in selling a $70 card for $30 on eBay with all of these production costs?

Real and fake SanDisk Extreme CF boxes

Looking at the box itself side by side with the real thing, it is hard to see many differences. The boxes look identical from the front, outside of the print color being a little off at the bottom (which is much more apparent in these photos and to the eye). Producing boxes like this with the gold embossing is not cheap process. Either these are the real thing, or someone is mass producing these to keep the costs down. I fear at this point that the compact flash counterfeiting business is not a small one. Someone is investing a lot of money into fake product and fake packaging here.

Back of SanDisk boxes

The back of the box is a bit different too. That would be the next clue on first, unopened inspection of the box. The real SanDisk IV box is the one on the left with a lot more text on it.  I only have 4 SanDisk Extreme IV boxes in my office (real ones).  The boxes for my SanDisk Extreme III cards are in storage, so I cannot see how much the back of the boxes changed from the III series to the IV series, but I assume that all boxes of series IV cards are pretty much the same.  This makes these changes on the back of the card more suspicious.

Real SanDisk Exreme Box

Fake SanDisk Extreme box

Now let’s look at a real box and content next to the fake box and content. They both have the same sleeve and slide-out insert format. They both have the same inside plastic housing and clear cover. They both have manuals, a CF hard plastic case and mini CD with software on them. They even both have a keychain CF card holder, although the real one has red text on it and the fake one white text.  The only piece missing from the fake packaging is a small advertising insert.

Real and fake SanDisk manuals

The manuals/documentation are slightly different.  The fake manual (on the right) is printed on cheaper paper with a much yellower cast to it.  The print quality is slightly lower than the original, real documentation pamphlet.  Interestingly, my real documentation is in Spanish, even though it was bought right here in the U.S. from an authorized SanDisk dealer (samys.com),   Notice the difference in phone numbers? I tried calling the number on the fake document and it rings SanDisk.  The phone number on the real pamphlet… wrong number/disconnected.  Now that’s funny.

Bottom of SanDisk boxes

On closer look at the bottom of the boxes you can see a numeric difference with the 8.0GB box. The real 2.0GB box has a part number of SDCFX4-2048-901. I assume that the 2048 is for 2,048MB, or 2GB. The 8.0GB fake box has a part number of SDCFX4-4096-904. Would that not be the part number of a 4,096MB card, or a 4GB? In an internet search for SDCFX4-4096, it seems it is the part number for the SanDisk Ultra IV 4.0GB compact flash card. There is our first clue.

8GB Fake SanDisk Ultra IV CF card

But, once we take out the CF card and begin to examine it, the details start to appear. The first thing I noticed was that it looked very close in all aspects to a real card. “Hmmm… maybe this is a real SanDisk Extreme IV.” Even the bottom edge of the card has a full serial number and ‘Made in China’ perfectly stenciled onto the case.

In further examination, I started to notice that the label was on crooked. But hey, that could be an issue in assembly that could randomly happen, right? Then, as the light caught it right, I also noticed two bubbles in the front label sticker. “Hmmm… this is getting more suspicious. SanDisk usually doesn’t let these kind of flaws through. This must be a hand-applied label.” Also notice that the corners of the label are square and not slightly rounded. This is another sign of a shortcut in the die cutting process of the fake label. On even further examination, you can see that the outer plastic edged of the card is different – different plastic to metal widths in the edges of the card.

8GB real vs fake SanDisk Extreme IV CF cards

The next thing I noticed is an issue which began to appear in several other articles, is that the holographic background to the lettering scans as a blue tint, and not gold like all of my other SanDisk Extreme cards. In this image (right), you will see that the fake card on the right has a blue tint to the lettering and the real card on the left appears more gold. Some of the elements are a little different size (like the E.S.P. logo), but overall it’s a pretty decent copy label sticker copy.

8GB real vs fake SanDisk Ultra IV CF cards

Next, lets look at the back of the cards. Again, the card on the left is the real card and the one on the right is the fake. Notice how it is a little dingy looking? That’s about the only difference on the back side. Even the corners of this dingy white label are rounded. It is hard to tell from the back side what makes this one fake, outside of the off-white paper used in making the label.  Again, a lot of work to make a fake card.  We are almost seeing efforts on the level of paper money counterfeiting here with all of the attention to detail in the print work.  Isn’t that another scary issue we have been reading about these past few years coming from China?

6 different CF cards

O.K., looks aside, its time to get down to the real meat of this.  How does the fake card perform in comparison to the real SanDisk Extreme IV cards?  To start, I do not have a real 8GB SanDisk Extreme IV card to test against, but I do have many 2.0GB Extreme IV cards that I bought from an authorized dealer.  This should be fine for our tests as the complete series of SanDisk Extreme IV cards are expected to perform similar to each other, within a small margin of error.  I also decided to throw in a few other generic and non-generic cards for comparison, and I included 2 separate SanDisk Extreme IV 2.0GB cards in the test to make sure that the real SanDisk IV cards perform equally in all aspects. You can see all of the cards (except for a 4.0GB PhotoFast Super card that looks identical to the 2.0GB Fotofast Super card) all in the image to the right.  The results are absolutely fascinating.

The test machine is a Mac Pro tower, 8 Core 3.0GHz Intel Xenon processors, 12GB RAM, Seagate 750GB SATA drive, Mac OS X v10.5.5 and a DELL 30″ monitor with 9in1 USB2 card reader built into it.  These specs are really irrelevant as every read and write was done with the same hardware and data.  That part is equal throughout the test.

The read/write copies were done with a folder containing ~1,000 jpg image files, 500k to 4.5MB each in size, 1.83GB (1,949,350,680 kbytes) total in size. 2 identical reads and writes were performed with this folder of images on each cards to insure consistency. All results were rounded to the nearest second. Margin of error is +/- 1.0 second.

Sandisk cards compared

This first chart is of read and write times for this folder of information to just the SanDisk cards, both real and fake. Notice how the read times are all pretty close, with the real SanDisk Extreme III and IV cards being almost identical, and how far off the 8.0GB fake card is from the others.  This is your first solid confirmation that you did not get what you paid for.  When you buy a card of this class and price, you are paying for speed, quality of build and the reputation of the company standing behind it.  This card is dropping the ball on all of those factors.  Below are the actual numbers from the tests.

All CF cards compared

Now, let’s throw some other cheapo cards into the mix.  The first is a Kingston Elite Pro 50X CF card (not necessarily a cheapo) and the other two are FastFoto Super CF cards, 2.0GB and 4.0GB.  These cards were bought 2 years ago off of an online discount house having a sale.  The interesting thing here is that these cards are really out of whack when it comes to write speeds, but their read speeds are good.  These were really cheap at the time I purchased them, and now you can see why.  However, the fake SanDisk 8.0GB cards are not terrible by comparison to the 2 year old generic CF cards. Below are the actual numbers from the tests.

SanDisk and fake CF cards

So, taking the data from the test and calculating MB/sec, we can see the relative performance each of these cards attains.  Let’s start with just the SanDisk cards and the fake SanDisk card.  Below are the actual numbers from the tests.

Transfer rate of all cards

Here is a comparison of all of the cards for transfer rate in MB/sec.  Below are the actual numbers from the tests.

A note to SanDisk:  Please forgive me for straying from authorized dealers just this one time.  The economy is rough, especially for those of us in photography.  The price was just too tempting.  I have purchased over 10 authentic cards from authorized SanDisk dealers in the past.  I promise not to stray again.  I offer this article to help others not stray either as a peace offering to you.

Maurice Naragon
Digital Creations
Website Development and Marketing
Professional Photography in Orange County, CA

Discussion Topics

The Moment it Clicks by Joe McNalley -[ Amazon Store Link ]
Using the Black Rapid R-Strap – [ http://blackrapid.com ]

Tips of The Week
David – Go with your gut
Kerry – Keep your calendar updated with Google Apps
Maurice – Don’t ever give out unedited photos

Hosts
Kerry Garrison – http://kerrygarrison.com
David Esquire – http://esquirephotography.com
Maurice Naragon – http://headcheese.com http://webscience.com

You can listen to this podcast now using our player widget in the right hand sidebar

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

Do your homework
Before the day of the shoot, go to the locations at the same times the ceremony and reception will take place to make sure you know where all the best photo locations are around the property. It is important to do this at the same time as the time you will be there is to make sure the lighting will be the same. Obviously you don’t want to do this six months in advance as the sun will be in a totally different position come the day of the shoot.

Be prepared
We have talked about having checklists for both weddings and equipment in the past so make sure you review those articles as well. Make SURE you batteries are charged, your flash cards are formatted, you have spare batteries, your lenses and sensors are clean, your bags are organized, you have your printouts of the schedules and maps to the locations done, your clothes cleaned and ready to go, gas in your car. You cannot be overly prepared when shooting a wedding.

Arrive Early
It stands to reason you cannot be late when shooting a wedding but how early should you be? Regardless of how far away the wedding is from you, or even if it across the street, plan your trip to arrive an hour early. If the location is normally 60-90 minutes away this ensures that you will make it even some really bad traffic occurs. If you do make it an hour early then you have plenty of time to scout the location, take some detail shots around the venue, if the ceremony or reception areas are decorated then you can get the detail shots in those areas as well. Arriving an hour early shouldn’t be an hour of sitting around, make use of the time to your advantage.

Have an agenda
Before the ceremony, preferably way before the ceremony you have already worked out the agenda for the day with times and schedules of each major event during the day. This assures that you, the DJ, and the people in the wedding know what is happening when and where they need to be.

Run the show!
This is a critical part of the entire process. The photographer is in the best position to run the entire show during the day. Nothing moves until you say so. If there is a wedding coordinator, they almost always understand this and will be there to support you. While this may sound surprising that the wedding coordinator will help you to run the agenda, their goal is to make it the best day possible for the bride and groom and help you to get the best possible shots.