Microsoft has released its new computer security program, Microsoft Security Essentials, and made it available for download starting on Tuesday. The free antivirus software has been available in a beta test version since June. The program updates “signatures” for the latest malicious programs daily, and Microsoft says it will be easy on computer resources.
This will not be good news for companies like McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp., which make popular antivirus programs, however, since their offerings are important sources of revenue while Microsoft’s is free, though with less features. Microsoft says it hopes the free program will appeal to people who don’t already run antivirus software.
The photographer, blogger, author and Photoshop guru, Scott Kelby, and his sidekick, Matt Kloskowski, offer a free podcast featuring Nikon gear. Each week, they bring us tips and tricks, news and accessories for Nikon’s Digital SLR cameras. The show is called DTown TV.
This is a first-rate video podcast series, which unfortunately only ran for 24 episodes. Taken together, however, the series provides a pretty comprehensive training program for new and intermediate Nikon users. Episodes 16 through 20 are a must-see roundup of Nikon lenses that even professionals could benefit from.
I’m a fan of both Kelby and Kloskowski so am a bit biased. Even then, I can virtually guarantee most Nikon users will benefit from the show.
Adobe Systems announced the release of Lightroom 2.5 and Camera Raw 5.5 on Tuesday. These updates to its photography and digital photo decoding software are available for download through Adobe’s Web site or through the update mechanisms in Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2.
Both releases update support for new digital camera models: Nikon’s D300s and D3000, Olympus E-P1 and Panasonic DMC-GF1 and DMC-FZ35 cameras. Adobe notes that in Europe and Japan, the DMC-FZ35 is sold as the DMC-FZ38, and has metadata differences that won’t be supported until the next revision.
SanDisk Corporation, the flash memory card manufacturer, today released a series of Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards with the super-fast read and write speeds of up to 90MB/sec. This line of high-capacity memory cards is designed for professional photographers and replaces the Extreme IV range. The new cards will start shipping this week in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities at a MSRP ranging from $300 to $800.
SanDisk has also released another line CF and SDHC cards called the Extreme series, replacing the Extreme III series. These offer up to to 60MB/s transfer speed and will be available from 8GB to 32GB with their price ranging from $130 to $375.
I use both SanDisk and Lexar cards and have been happy with both. My current favourite is the 8GB Lexar Professional UDMA CompactFlash. This card has a speed of 300x (45MB/sec), which I consider screamingly fast. The new SanDisk cards are twice that speed—impressive indeed.
Those of you who are relatively new to digital photography, might sometimes wonder about the little graph labeled “histogram” that shows up in your camera’s display after you take a photograph: What is it? How/when should I use it? you might ask. Experienced digital photographers use this helpful tool a great deal. Some use it after every shot—a practice known as “chimping.” I’ll try to explain why.
Many of you will remember using “Bell Curves” in school and will be familiar with the basic nature of histograms. In digital photography, histograms are used to display a summary of the range of light values, in 256 steps, recorded by your digital camera’s sensor—0 = pure black, and 255 = pure white.
Dark values are summarized on the left of the graph and white values are displayed on the right. The middle of the histogram contains the mid-range values that represent colors like grays, light browns and greens. A histogram with lots of dark pixels will be skewed to the left and one with lots of lighter tones will be skewed to the right. The values just above zero and just below 255 contain the details of your photograph.
The histogram graph often looks like a mountain peak, or a series of peaks—the statisticians among you will recognize these as bell curves. The more of a particular color, the taller the peak. At the extreme of either end of the histogram, the light values contain no detail at all—in your photograph, they will be either completely black, or completely white.
Try to avoid histograms with tall spikes to the extreme ends of either side of the graph. This we call “clipping.” Such graphs indicate that a lot of pixels are either pure black or pure white and that your image will be either over or under exposed.
The left (dark) to right (light) directions are important in evaluating your image. If the image is too dark, the histogram will show that by stacking up and “clipping” off the light values on the left, or, if too light, by “clipping” on the right.
The best way to correct clipping at the ends of your histogram is to increase or decrease the exposure compensation setting on your camera. Increase compensation to avoid clipping on the left and reduce compensation to avoid clipping on the right.
While there is really no perfect histogram, many photographs with the best exposures will have a histogram with values starting just above zero and ending just below 255 with most of the values in between in what might look like a mountain peak with slopes on both sides.
Most photographers expose for the highlights and accept shadows as normal. Images with sections that are so bright that all detail is lost are not usually pleasing to the eye. Experienced photographers will almost always expose the image so that the right side of the histogram graph just touches the right side of the histogram window—i.e., no clipping on the right. When this happens, the image will look more normal. Dark areas generally retain detail better than bright areas, and an under exposed image can usually be edited later to pull out details in the darker portions of the photo. In over exposed images, details in the really bright sections will be lost forever.
The histogram is a tool that gives you information about an image and to help you avoid or correct over/under exposure. Setting your camera to show histograms during the view process will tell you how well your images are exposed, and give you the opportunity to correct any clipping you see in the graph.
For those of us who use several Adobe software programs—in my case Photoshop, Lightroom and Dreamweaver—the Adobe TV Web site has been a useful resource for using these steep-learning-curve programs. This popular Web destination has recently been updated to make it even more useful.
The site has a new look and feel, and many new features, including:
• User-customizable homepage
• Improved navigation and search
• Save your favorite episodes to “My Library”
• Share videos on social networking sites
• Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite shows
• Pop-out video player to view videos at any size
• Commenting & Rating
• Tags
This terrific resource just got a whole lot better.
The Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedorum) in the photograph below was seen at Valley Inn Road on the border of Burlington and Hamilton in Ontario. The shot is not a really clear one, and I missed getting some catch-light in the eyes. However, it is good enough, I think, to serve as an illustration of this attractive bird, especially when viewed in combination with my previous post.
I have not seen many Waxwings in my time, or at least have not recognized them as such, but on this day there were a dozen or two flitting about in the trees. A real treat for me.
The Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedorum) is a favourite bird of mine, but this is the first reasonably clear photograph I’ve managed to date. The one pictured below is a member of a flock which has been at Valley Inn Road for several days now. They hang out in the trees that stand on the exact spot on which the old Valley Inn once stood.
The Valley Inn, on the border of Burlington and Hamilton, Ontario, was a landmark in the mid- to late-1800s and was a favourite spot for farmers to stop on their way to market. Grindstone Creek, which flows nearby, was an important transportation link in those days.
Here’s a beautiful bird on one of the most historical spots in the Burlington/Hamilton area.
A distant shot of a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), but it’s always a thrill to spot one of these fine birds. He was hunting in the eastern pond near Valley Inn Road in Burlington on the border with Hamilton.
Nikon D300 DSLR, Nikkor AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4 IF-ED + Nikon 1.7 X teleconverter 500mm, ISO 320, 1/400 sec. at f/7.1 – handheld
This is another Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) seen this morning at Valley Inn Road, Burlington/Hamilton, Ontario. At this time of year these elegant birds can be seen fishing along Grindstone Creek near the mouth to Lake Ontario.
A great morning for bird watching, but so so for photography: I saw Cardinals, Flickers, Cedar Waxwing, Canada Geese, Mallards, humming birds, a couple of kingfishers, Great Blue Heron, two egrets and the Osprey pictured below.
Nikon D300 DSLR, Nikkor AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4 IF-ED + Nikon 1.7 X teleconverter 500mm, ISO 200, 1/1000 sec. at f/7.1 – handheld
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