/dev/random

This one needs a caption badly. The best caption gets a promo code for ICHC Premium.

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After using the new iPhone 3G S for most of the day, I’m very impressed with the dramatic speed improvement as well as the much better camera. I probably won’t be carrying a point & shoot camera in addition to my D90 any more when I travel.
The new tap to focus feature makes it easy [...]

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I received my production model Eye-Fi Pro card today, after beta testing it for a few months.
Unlike earlier Eye-Fi cards, the Eye-Fi Pro supports RAW files as well as JPEGs and movies, which is great for anyone using a DSLR who likes to shoot RAW. Since it’ a 4GB card, it will hold 256 [...]

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Today Eye-Fi introduced their 4GB Pro wireless SD card, which I’ve been beta testing for the last few months.
The major enhancements in the Pro card are support for RAW files and ability to connect directly to a computer using an ad hoc network. It also lets you choose which images to upload by marking them [...]

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I wanted to take a picture of the two OWC Mercury On The Go drives connected to my iMac, which I thought looked kind of cool. I wasn’t too pleased with the automatic white balance (right image), so I used my White Balance Lens Cap to measure the white balance, which resulted in a much [...]

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I haven’t posted a photo of the day for a while, but I really like this one. This dove let me get very close, so I was able to take this picture with only a 105mm lens rather than the 70-300mm I usually have to use for birds.

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I have been using Hydra’s aperture plugin to create HDR images from 3 bracketed photos. It’s pretty basic but produces fairly good results without a lot of tweaking. Now HDR Software’s Photomatix is also available as an Aperture plugin. It offers many more options than Hydra, but takes a bit of tweaking to produce a [...]

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If you have a DSLR, you can easily spend more on lenses than the camera itself cost. Luckily there are a few great lenses you can buy for under $200. I will highlight two of my favorites here.
Everyone should own Nikon’s wonderful 50mm f/1.8D AF, which sells for under $140. This is one of the [...]

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I really love the D90, but sometimes it’s just too big to carry. For those times it’s nice to have a compact point & shoot camera that will fit in my pocket. As much as I love Nikon DSLRs, I don’t care much for their Coolpix point & shoot cameras, since the image quality isn’t [...]

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Earlier this week, Nikon introduced the D5000, which shares several features of the D90, but in a smaller & lighter camera that costs several hundred dollars less. It adds several compelling new features, most notably a 180-degree tilt/swivel screen and several new scene modes.
The D5000 uses the same sensor as the D90, so the image [...]

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I recorded a lot of hi-def video on my D90 at Oakland Park Youth Day. Here’s an unedited video straight from the camera. This is the only one that was small enough to upload to Flickr.
I find that it’s hard to keep the video in focus when the subject is moving, and it’s very difficult [...]

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I was lucky enough to catch the trail of the shuttle launch from my back yard tonight. Unfortunately I happened to have the wide angle lens on my D90 because I was shooting something else; I would have preferred to use a longer lens.

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Taken with my Sigma 70-30mm lens using spot metering at shutter priority of 1/320, without a tripod.

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Divvyshot is a very promising new photo sharing site, still in beta. It’s based on public events. Members can create an event such as Macworld Expo, and other people who attended the same event can add their pictures to the event.

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When I attempt to take a photo of the moon, it usually comes out as a featureless white blob, due to being overexposed. Thanks to a tip on Flickr, I discovered that the secret to taking a photo of the moon that doesn’t suck is to use spot metering rather than matrix.
With matrix metering, the [...]

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After using the lens for a few days, I’m very happy with it. For the price, it’s a great lens and a good addition for anyone who wants a higher zoom and macro capabilities. It does take some getting used to, but it’s possible to get some excellent results from it. In macro mode, you [...]

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Today is Flickr’s fifth birthday! To mark the occasion, here is the very first photo I uploaded to Flickr on June 30, 2004 (I actually took that picture in 2003 with my Canon A100).

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After trying iPhoto 09 for a few days, I’ve decided to go back to Aperture for several reasons. Although I like iPhoto’s faces & places feature, it’s still missing many of Apertures features. Hopefully faces & places will be added to Aperture 3.
Here are my favorite Aperture features that are missing from iPhoto:

Aperture lets [...]

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My copy of iLife 09 finally arrived today, two days later than it was supposed to arrive. I chose standard shipping, which turned out to be DHL via USPS. I don’t understand why Apple even bothers with DHL as the middleman. It would probably be easier, faster, and cheaper to just ship it directly via [...]

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Until now I’ve never considered a non-Nikon lens, but after seeing some of Jonathan Johnson’s sample photos, I’m considering getting this Sigma 70-300mm lens. The price is very appealing (around $150), it has a good zoom range & macro ability, and the reviews are fairly good.

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