The first ever PhotographyBLOG Competition starts on November 1st, which is just a couple of days away from now!

This is a monthly photography competition with a specific theme and prizes for the top 3 photos. The winning entries will be decided by a panel of judges. You just have to submit a single photograph to the Competition Gallery that best interprets November’s theme, which is “Autumn Colour”.

Please make sure that you read the Monthly Competition Rules before submitting your entry. The competition is worldwide and open to everyone.

PhotographyBLOG is about to move servers from the US to the UK.

Please do not add any comments / pictures etc for the next couple of hours :-)

UPDATE 09:05 29/10/03
The server move is now complete! If you encounter any problems then please let me know…

I’ve been working behind the scenes during the last month on a lot of new features for PhotographyBLOG, and at last they’re ready to share with you :-) So without any further delay, here’s a quick explanation of each one:

Gallery -:- PhotographyBLOG now has its very own Gallery where you can submit your photographs. There are several themed galleries in which you can share your photographs with everyone and get constructive feedback. Every member is automatically given 5Mbs of free storage space and there is a file size limit of 100Kb, which means that you can upload at least 50 photos.

Competition -:- A monthly photography competition with a specific theme and prizes for the top 3 photos! The winning entries will be decided by a panel of judges. You can only submit 1 photograph that best interprets the theme Autumn Colour, so choose wisely. Competition #1 starts on 1st November 2003 and ends on 30th November 2003. Please read the Monthly Competition Rules before entering.

Photo of the Week -:- A weekly photography challenge where you decide who the winner is by voting for your favourite photos. The photo with the most votes wins the coveted PhotographyBLOG Photo of the Week award. You can submit any photograph into the Photo of the Week competition. Competition #1 starts on 3rd November 2003 and ends on 9th November 2003. Please read the Photo of the Week Rules before entering.

User Reviews -:- Submit your own reviews of cameras, lenses, printers, scanners and lots more. Don’t agree with what PhotographyBLOG or some other website says about your camera equipment? Write your own review, good or bad. The User Reviews section is still being developed, so if the product that you want to review isn’t available, let me konw and I’ll add it asap.

Forums -:- The rather limited old forums have been replaced by some shiny new ones with a lot more features. You can still access the content of the old forums via this link, but you can no longer post new entries there.

PhotographyBLOG Membership -:- The membership of the site as a whole has changed. There is no longer any login required to add your comments to the weblog entries. You are only required to register as a member or login if you want to use the Gallery.

*If you are already a member of PhotographyBLOG, you have already been converted to the new membership scheme and you can use your existing username and password to login to the Forums / Gallery / Competition / Photo of the Week / User Reviews.

As these are all new features, there may be some initial teething problems, so if you experience anything strange then please let me know by emailing:

[email protected]

Many thanks to Sue for helping out with the coding :-)

It seems that multiple copies of today’s Newsletter (issue 37) were inadvertently sent out to everyone on the subscriber list. Please accept my apologies for this and rest assured that it won’t happen again!

Mark Goldstein

I’ve just posted my review of the Epson Stylus Photo 950 Printer, a 6 colour, 2880 x 1440 dpi model that currently sits at the top of Epson’s range of A4 photo printers. I was especially interested in testing the Stylus Photo 950 because I own an older Epson model, the Stylus Photo 890, and I wanted to find out what improvements Epson had made to their latest model. Would I be impressed enough to consider upgrading? Read on to find out.

Website: Epson Stylus Photo 950 Printer Review

The Olympus ?[mju:]-III Wide 100 is an advanced compact camera with a wide 28mm-100mm zoom lens, autofocus system with 11 autofocus-points, 3-way Auto Exposure (AE) system for accurate exposure of images and six different flash modes. With a retail price of ?169.99, the Olympus ?[mju:]-III Wide 100 is positioned at the more expensive end of the compact camera market. Do all those features justify that cost? Read my review to find out.

Website: Olympus ?[mju:]-III Wide 100 Review

PhotographyBLOG reader Shaun has recently had a bad experience with the popular online print service Ofoto, which is owned by Kodak. Shaun has allowed PhotographyBLOG to publish the full details of the whole sorry saga, including the email exchange, so without further ado here is Shaun’s review of Ofoto…

Website: Ofoto Reader Review

Website: Ofoto

I’ve just posted my review of the Vosonic X’S-Drive portable storage device. Storage is one of the main problems that digital photographers face. Memory cards quickly fill up and are relatively expensive to buy. Find out why I bought a Vosonic X’S-Drive and what I think about this portable storage solution.

Website: Vosonic X’S-Drive Review

The Olympus IS-500 is an all-in-one SLR camera with a recommended price of ?219.99. It looks and acts like a traditional 35mm SLR, but the lens is built-in and cannot be detached, which for some people may be more convenient than carrying around a bag full of lenses. So can the IS-500 offer the best of both worlds - convenience and quality? Read my review to find out.

Website: Olympus IS-500 Review

After 3 weeks and 1,165 total votes, Digital Compact has just pipped 35mm Film SLR as the most popular camera type that you own in the PhotographyBLOG Poll, but only by the narrow margin of 340 to 325 votes.

The new PhotographyBLOG Poll asks the question: “How do you print out your photographs?”. Do you send them off to a photo-lab, print them at home, or venture into the darkroom? Or do you find that you never print them out at all?

The 4-megapixel Olympus ?[mju:] 400 Digital is the top-of-the-range camera in what Olympus call their “Stylish” category. It’s also the first ever product that I’ve reviewed on PhotographyBLOG that I haven’t actually purchased for myself. Read this review to find out if I was impressed by the Olympus ?[mju:] 400 Digital camera.

Website: Olympus ?[mju:] 400 Digital Review

I’ve updated PhotographyBLOG’s newest feature, the “Public Poll”, with a new question. The current question is now “What kind of cameras do you currently own?”. Select as many camera options as you own, then click Vote.

The Canon EOS 300D is the new digital camera that you are most excited about, after it won the first ever PhotographyBLOG Public Poll with 284 votes. The Sony Cybershot DSC-F828 was well-beaten in second place with 147 votes, with the Fuji Finepix S7000 third with 119 votes.

On the 10th September I received this email from the Managing Director of BonusPrint, Anthony Ward:

“Hi Mark,

I enjoyed reading your photography blog review of online printing services. We have made an alteration to the colour database of our d-labs, and I would be very grateful if you would have another look at us. Please let me know what you think!

Agfa have made a change to the image database of the d-lab that only one of their top boffins would be able to explain. The practical effect of this is to remove some yellow!

Thanks
Anthony Ward
MD, Bonusprint”

So I submitted the same images again to try and find out if there was any noticeable difference in the print quality from BonusPrint. I’ve now received the prints, so read on to find out if the quality has improved or not…

Online Print Services Review - Part 5 - Bonusprint

I’ve updated my Online Print Services Review with a new contender. I’ve taken a look today at Colab, who charge just ?0.12 for a 6x4 inch print. Find out whether the quality matched up to the price and if Peak Imaging and Photobox have anything to worry about…

Online Print Services Review - Part 8 - Colab

As a reminder, in this 8 part Review, I’ve taken a look at some online print services that operate in the United Kingdom and let you know what I think about the service and print quality that I received from each one.

Just to let you all know that I’m away all of this weekend - a Wedding on Friday, Engagement Party on Saturday, then a Curry Festival (!) on Sunday. So I won’t be repsonding to email and site updates will be at best sporadic.

Quite a few people who use Safari on the Macintosh operating system have reported a problem with my photographs. When they click on the thumbnail image to view the enlarged photo, the pop-up window opens instantly as expected, but the image never loads. Suffice to say that wasn’t quite what I intended.

The javascript that I’ve been using on my blog was written before Safari was a twinkle in Apple’s eye. Unfortunately it wasn’t written by me, so I’m not sure how to fix it. And it hasn’t been updated recently.

I’ve just decided (this afternoon in fact) to stop using that script and use a more friendly way of linking to my photos. In the post below this one, I’ve added some photos from the Notting Hill Carnival. Clicking on the thumbnail opens the larger version in a new window. The large version is now stored on my personal photography website, http://www.markgoldstein.co.uk.

I’ve found that I’ve been posting a lot of the images in 2 places - PhotographyBLOG and markgoldstein.co.uk - so this will prevent replication and stop filling-up my web server :-)

This change will affect all future entries - I don’t have the time to go through all of the existing photos on PhotographyBLOG and change them (not at the moment anyway…).

I’ve added a brand new feature to PhotographyBLOG. There is now a “Public Poll” running in the right-hand column of the site. The current question is “Which of these new digital cameras are you most excited about?” - is it the Canon EOS 300D, the Sony DSC-F828, or one of the other cameras listed? The Poll question will be changed every now and again to keep things interesting.

I’ve had several emails recently complaining that the layout of my blog is not what it should be in certain browsers (Internet Explorer 5 and Safari). In addition the old 2-column layout was inflexible and resulted in a long right-hand column which contained all things navigation-based. So I’ve decided to kill 2 birds with one stone and redesign the whole site so that it works in all modern browsers and so that there is a more adaptable 3-column structure.

As the redesign only went live about 10 minutes ago, there are bound to be some initial teething problems. If you spot anything that looks strange in any way, please send an email to:

[email protected]

You can also use that address if you have any further suggestions for improving the site layout, or more generally to let me know what you think of the new design.

Thanks,
Mark Goldstein

The Conclusion to my Online Print Services Review has just been posted.

Online Print Services Review - Conclusion

I’m planning to test more online print services in the near future, so if there are any others that you think should be part of the Review, let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

Part 7 of my Online Print Services Review has just been posted. I’ve taken a look today at the Epson Stylus 890 inkjet printer, assessing price and print quality, then awarding an overall rating.

Online Print Services Review - Part 7 - Epson Stylus 890

As a reminder, in this new 7 part Review, I’m taking a look at some online print services that operate in the United Kingdom and letting you know what I think about the service and print quality that I’ve received from each one.

I will be posting the overall Conclusion of the Review tomorrow.