Digital Outback Photo have added another brand new feature to their website; the Outback Photo Review.

“Each month the well known fine art photographer Alain Briot and Uwe Steinmueller write an independent review about one photo that was selected for the review of that month. The review is about learning and opening the artists (of course our readers and ours too) perspective. As important as the reviews by Alain and Uwe are reader comments. We will add them to the review if we feel they add a new perspective.”

Website: Outback Photo Review - Rules

I sat my City & Guilds Photography - Level 2 exam last night; 45 multiple-choice questions in 1 hour, with only 40% required to pass. The questions ranged from the straightforward to the ridiculous, with my favourite being:

Why does a tripod only have 3 legs?

a) it costs less to make
b) it’s easier to level and adjust
c) it’s lighter
d) it’s easy to adjust

I nearly spluttered out loud when I read the question, then I saw the answers…Who wrote this thing?! For your information, I opted for answer b) it’s easier to level and adjust. I’ve still got no idea if that’s right or wrong…

Canon have announced 2 new inkjet printers, the Bubble Jet i250 and i350, which will be available from July 2003 for around ?49 and ?69 respectively, inc VAT.

“Replacing Canon?s S200x and i320 respectively, the Bubble Jet i250 and i350 offer 4800 x 1200dpi * printing - the highest resolution of any entry level printers.

The Bubble Jet i350 features 4 x 6? as well as new 5 x 7? borderless printing to allow full bleed photographs with no white border, indistinguishable from traditional photos.”

Website: Canon Bubblejet Printers

ePhotoZine have reported that Microtek are launching a new 2700 dpi film scanner, the FilmScan 2700, which will retail for an RRP of just ?180. This will allow prints up to 20” x 12.7” in size at 200 dpi. The Filmscan 2700 has the same optical resolution as Nikon’s Coolscan IV (RRP ?500), but lacks some of the more advanced options such as Digital Ice. Still, it does only cost ?180…

Website: ePhotoZine - Microtek FilmScan 2700

Steve’s Digicams have some interesting news about 2 new digital cameras from Toshiba, which both boast 10x optical zoom lenses and 2.5-inch LCDs. The PDR-M500 2.0 megapixel camera ($349) and the PDR-M700 3.2 megapixel camera ($449) will ship in early July. They certainly look like an attractive alternative to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1…

Website: Steve’s Digicams - Toshiba Press Release

Photoxels are reporting that Canon France have admitted that the focusing issue that many new Canon 10D owners have complained about is a real problem. I’ll see what everyone’s saying on the DPReview Canon DSLR forum…

“French photography magazine Chasseur d’Images made a similar request to Canon France and received an official acknowledgement of the autofocus problem. (They’re still maintaining it affects only a small percentage of owners, though.) The good news is that it is easily fixed with a simple firmware adjustment by Canon.”

Website: Photoxels

Luminous Landscape have just launched a pretty amazing special promotion. If you choose to subscribe to the Luminous Landscape Video Journal and buy the $185 Promotional Package, you will be entered into a prize draw worth $5,000! The prizes are:

-  A digital SLR of the user’s choice; either a Canon 10D, Nikon D100 or Fuji S2 Pro, and a lens of the winner’s choice - to a total maximum value of U.S. $2,500.
- A 4-day field workshop with Michael Reichmann. This will be a completely private workshop with no other participants.
- Included are all expenses, plus air fare from anywhere in the U.S. or Canada to the selected location, as well as transportation, food and lodging. The value of this is U.S. $2,500.

Website: Luminous Landscape Promotion

Digital Outback Photo’s series of articles looking at the more technical aspects of digital photography continues with Number 2 in the series, “Pixel Size”. Dick Merrill from Foveon looks at the importance of pixel size and the impact that it has.

“A smaller pixel size allows more pixels to fit in a given field size, increasing resolution. However as the pixel size becomes smaller, fundamental physical limits become increasingly important, placing a practical lower limit on pixel size.”

Website: Digital Outback Photo - “Pixel Size”

Jeff Keller, who runs the popular website Digital Camera Resource Page, has set up his own weblog.

“After spending the last year or two saying “blogs are dumb, who cares what Joe Schmoe has to say”, I’m sold out and set up my own. I don’t really know if I’ll have time to post tons of stuff here, as I’ve got two busy websites plus a magazine column, but we’ll see how it goes.”

Website: Everyone else is doing it…

Just as I leave the M1 at Junction 8 on the way to work, there’s an amazing field ablaze with poppies, which I’ve been meaning to photograph for the last couple of weeks. On Friday of last week I made a quick visit during my lunch hour; all of these photos were taken using my 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens.

Double Poppy	New Wheat	Single Poppy

I learnt a few valuable lessons during this brief shoot:




1. Taking close-up photographs of wild-flowers is enough to make the air turn blue (with my swearing), as even the slightest breeze is enough to ruin your composition and focusing. I can understand now why a lot of flower photography takes place indoors!




2. Depth-of-field is all-important in macro photography. If you take a close look at the “New Wheat” photo, you will notice that the top and the bottom of the wheat is less in focus than the middle, which is where I focused. I think the aperture was f/2.8 for this shot - it should really have been around f/5.6 to ensure that all of the wheat was sharp, whilst keeping the background out-of-focus. Next time I’ll use the DoF button on the Canon 10D and take a selection of shots of the same subject at different apertures.




3. Attention to detail is all-important in macro photography. The “Double Poppies” photo has some annoying elements in it that should have been removed; I completely failed to notice them!




4. You need a lot longer than 1 hour to do justice to your subject and yourself. I was literally running round the field at one point, desperate to realise the next great idea that I’d had, before having to go back to the office.




5. Always wear a hat when exposed to 28 degrees sunshine in the middle of the day…

Photoxels have just published an interesting and comprehensive article about noise; what is it, why does it happen, and how can you avoid it or remove it from your photographs.

“One of the major difference between a consumer digital camera and a digital Single Lens Reflex (dSLR) is that the former produces images with a lot of noise when using high ISOs and long exposure times, and the latter is practically noise-free.

Just what is noise and how can we eliminate or minimize it? This article tries to explain all of this in as a non-technical way as possible.”

Website: Photoxels - What Is… Noise?

The latest article from Michael Reichmann on his website Luminous Landscape explores the role of luck in photography, using one of his recent photographs to illustrate that you need to be well-prepared to be lucky.

Website: Luminous Landscape - Luck?

Imaging Resource are reporting some news that could drastically change the DSLR market-place. The latest Contaxinfo.com newsletter has spilled the beans on a new lens mount system from Nikon which will accomodate full-frame CCDs. This is obviously still unconfirmed rumour which will apparently happen “later this year”, so we’ll just have to wait and see…

Website: Imaging Resource - Nikon Lens Mount

Bettina & Uwe Steinmueller of Digital Outback Photo fame have just visited Yosemite in the US with a Canon 10 and 1Ds. They’ve posted a selection of black and white and colour photographs from their trip.

Website: Digital Outback Photo - Yosemite

Here are a couple of recent Canon EOS 10D user reports/reviews for you (found via digicamera.net), which join a long line of articles and reviews in praising Canon’s latest DSLR.

Website: macdevcenter.com

Website: Photographic.com

Mike Johnston’s “Sunday Morning Photographer” column this week is all about his new book:

“The book is called The Empirical Photographer. It consists of a careful selection of fourteen of the best of my articles and essays about photography written between 1984 and the year I became Editor of PHOTO Techniques, 1994. Several have been published before, and several are seeing print here for the first time.”

Website: Luminous Landscape - Sunday Morning Photographer

DCResource have just reviewed the newest addition to Canon’s digital camera line-up, the Powershot G5:

“I have posted a rather lengthy (by my standards, at least) review of the Canon PowerShot G5. While overall, the G5 is a very nice 5 Megapixel camera, I was disappointed with the level of purple fringing in my test photos. It also has the same redeye and “view of the lens barrel through the optical viewfinder” problems as the G3. Still, it’s well worth a look.”

Website: DCResource - Canon Powershot G5 Review

Steve’s Digicams have reviewed Casio’s EXILIM EX-S3, a 3-megapixel digital camera that is less than 1/2 inch thick! If you’re looking for a camera that is the same size as a credit card, then look no further…

“Casio set the standard for “thin” cameras when they came out with the first Exilim EX-S1 and did it again with the EX-S2. Well, they’re back again, this time with the 3-megapixel EX-S3. This is definitely a pocket size camera and is much thinner than your wallet by far, in fact it’s only 11.7mm thick. It’s just amazing that there’s a high resolution imager, optical lens, rechargeable battery and a large 2-inch color all packed in this credit card-sized, stylish and durable metal body.”

Website: Steve’s Digicams - Casio EXILIM EX-S3 Review

We spent the final day of our visit to Belgium in the town of Bruges, about 1 hours journey from Brussels on the impeccably clean and quiet Belgian trains. Bruges is apparently the most-visited place in Belgium, being particularly popular with the British, who like its antiquated, medieval feel - the centre of the city hasn’t changed very much during the last few centuries, at least according to the guidebooks anyway (I’m sure Bruges residents would probably disagree).




Anyway, we had a few short hours during the heat of the middle of the day to quickly walk around, and obviously take a few photos. The Brug and the Markt in the centre are the obvious places to visit, but the outskirts of the city centre have a much more peaceful feel, some interesting sights and far less tourists. Here is a small selection of my favourite photos from the day.

Bruges #1	Bruges #2	Bruges #3
Bruges #4	Bruges #5	Bruges #6
Bruges #7	Bruges #8	Bruges #9
Bruges #10	Bruges #11	Bruges #12

I’ve now finished adding the best images from my recent trip to Brussels and Bruges to the Travel section of my other personal website, www.markgoldstein.co.uk. There are 18 new albums and 264 new photographs in total.

Website: Travel Gallery