Days of his Life in Polaroids

What started as a personal project, quickly became an obsession for New York photographer Jamie Livingston (above), who managed to take a Polaroid picture every day for 18 years.

His first photo was of his then girlfriend Mindy Goldstein and a friend on March 31, 1979.
His last, 6,000 shots later, on October 25, 1997 - his birthday was of Livingston on his deathbed, dying from cancer.

March 31, 1979

October 25, 1997

http://www.photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/

Social Media & A Muddy Camera

Markus Thompson was scuba diving recently in the waters of Deep Bay just outside of Vancouver when he discovered a Canon EOS Rebel XS half buried in the mud. Thompson retrieved the camera and the enclosed SD card. After a thorough cleaning and drying, Thompson found that he could recover the images, which revealed the camera had been sitting in the water for over a year.

And here's the beauty of social media.

Thompson posted to Google+, the story of the found camera with a few identifying details he was able to dig up from the photos. Within a day, he was able to track down and contact the owner, a firefighter in British Columbia. Just one day and camera and owner were reunited. Of course the camera is now just a paper weight - but one with a great story behind it.

What Were They Thinking?

Life magazine has published over 2,000 issues over the last 75 years. The cover photos are usually carefully picked by a number of editors however, every once in awhile, they make a mistake.

Check out their self-admitted 20 worst covers including surprisingly a cover image by Ansel Adams and another by Richard Avedon.

http://www.life.com/gallery/66721/lifes-20-worst-covers#index/19

Life's 75 best covers :

http://www.life.com/gallery/66711/the-75-best-life-covers-of-all-time?iid=yaml#index/0

New Firmware Update for the Canon 5D Mark II

Firmware v2.1.1 for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II corrects a bug where only a single image was captured in continuous shooting mode or AE bracketing continuous mode. Corrections have also been made to Dutch language menus.

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/slr_cameras/eos_5d_mark_ii#DriversAndSoftware

New Look for Photoshop

The new CS6 interface looks very similar to Apple's Aperture interface

While still in early beta stages, Adobe appears to be working on a new interface for the next version of Photoshop. In addition to the new appearance, Photoshop CS6 will feature new 3D tools, healing brush and red-eye reduction enhancements, and a perspective cropping tool. AppleInsider has more details and screenshots.  http://tinyurl.com/7ezks27

New Firmware for Nikon D7000, D5100

New "B" firmware for the Nikon D7000, v1.03, as well as firmware v1.01 for the D5100, corrects several bugs, most notably problems recognizing certain memory cards.

D7000 http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17542/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzIwOTQzMzcxL3NpZC8tRVAzKk1Jaw%3D%3D

D5100

http://support.nikonusa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17547/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzIwOTQzMzcxL3NpZC8tRVAzKk1Jaw%3D%3D

Important Adobe News

Adobe has just announced substantial changes in upgrade pricing and policies for their very popular Creative Suite software.

For several years, the company has offered a “three-versions-back” upgrade policy – meaning anyone who owned a prior CS product up to three major versions back would be eligible for discounted upgrade pricing when moving up to the latest release.

Adobe now says that will be ending.

Starting in 2012 when CS6 comes out, Adobe will be changing to a “one-version-back” policy – meaning to receive a price break when upgrading to CS6, you need to already be on either CS5 or CS5.5.

So, what does this mean for anybody still running CS2, CS3, or CS4?  Basically, if you want to upgrade later or have been waiting for CS6, it will cost you full price.

If you want to stay current and do not have CS5 or 5.5, Adobe is offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011, which will qualify you for upgrade pricing when CS6 is released.

http://www.adobe.com/special/offers.html?PID=2159997

A Four Million Dollar Snapshot

This image of the Rhine River became the world’s priciest picture on Tuesday when it was auctioned at Christie’s for a price of $4,338,500.

“Rhein II” was created in 1999 by German artist Andreas Gursky. The 140 x 81-inch print greatly exceeded Christie’s expectations of between $2.5 and $3.5 million and broke the previous record set by Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #9,” which sold for $3.89 million in May.

Lightroom Leads the Way

In a recent Digital Photography School.com poll, the readers were asked what post production software that they use most. The results, with over 22,000 responses are shown in the graph below.

Read more about the results : http://www.digital-photography-school.com/the-most-popular-post-production-software-poll-results#ixzz1dLSV7t1F

New Firmware Update For Leica M-9 Owners

Leica has just released a new firmware update, Version 1.174 which is now available for M9 and M9-P cameras. It fixes compatibility issues some M-9 owners had related to select types of new memory cards.

However until further notice, the following SD-Cards are still not recommended:

San Disk Extreme Pro SDHC I UHS-1 (all card sizes)
San Disk Extreme HD Video SDHC I (all card sizes)

You can download the firmware here :
http://us.leica-camera.com/service/downloads/rangefinder_cameras/m9_m9-p/index.html

New - Canon EOS C300

Canon has just announced their first truly professional cinema class camera - a super 35mm sized 4K sensor in a small, 3.6 lb body. The EOS C300 is available with either EOS or PL mounts and records to CF cards with an ISO range of 320 to 20,000.
 
With real timecode, XLR audio, built-in neutral density filters and other pro features, Canon has successfully bridged the gap between their still camera based HDSLR world and true professional video cameras.
 
Both the EOS C300 and EOS C300 PL are expected to be available at dealers in early 2012, at an estimated selling price of less than $20,000 - actual start of sales and pricing is TBA.

More info from Canon here  :

http://learn.usa.canon.com/resources/articles/2011/c300_for_cinematographers.shtml

Film maker Vincent Laforet has had the camera for a few months to review and shot this film using the new EOS C300. Check it out in full 1080p HD here :

http://vimeo.com/30215350  

Camera of the Year : Nikon D5100

Every year, Digital Camera Info.Com publishes scientific reviews of the latest cameras and at the end of the year picks their favorite. This year, they chose the Nikon D5100 as their 2011 Camera of the Year.

This is what they had to say about the camera :

While we enjoyed the additions of autofocus during video recording and Nikon's creative digital filters, the D5100 blew us away by getting the simple things right. Phenomenal color accuracy, expanded dynamic range, and above-average performance in nearly every category proved enough for this sub-$1000 DSLR to be our camera of the year for 2011.

http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/News/DigitalCameraInfo-2011-Select-Awards.htm