According to TechCrunch a version of Picasa for Apple Macs will be coming along later:

I managed to pick the Google employee with the least amount of media training and immediately put her on the spot. Her response: Picasa for Mac is under-development and will be launched later this year.

This is great news, one of the applications I miss from the PC is Picasa. I had really gotten into the workflow and nothing I have found since works the same way. While iPhoto and Aperture are well loved by many, and I have Photoshop Elements which kinda does the job, Picasa was what I had gotten used to.

And it is free, which shouldn’t be overlooked!

You might say I am looking forward to this. Let’s hope they do a good job integrating into the mac experience rather than just port over a subset of the functionality.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Viewfinder is a project from the University of Southern California that promises to allow you to see your pictures in context within a 3D Google Earth scene. It’s not ready to try out but the demos are very impressive.

Here is what they say about it:

“Viewfinder” is a novel method for users to spatially situate, or “find the pose,” of their photographs, and then to view these photographs, along with others, as perfectly aligned overlays in a 3D world model such as Google Earth

That doesn’t really make much sense until you watch the video and then it becomes much more exciting!

Popularity: 18% [?]

The eagle-eyed readers at DSLR User have spotted a possible slip of the keys as Olympus may have outed the E-520 by accident!

“So that you don’t need to carry a heavy tripod or invest extra money into every single stabilised lens, Olympus integrated a built-in image stabiliser into the camera body of the E-3, E-510 and E-520. It stabilises up to 5 EV steps (up to 4 EV steps with the E-510 and E-520), making it the most effective solution on the market.”

The site has been changed but a cached version of the page can be seen by clicking here

Popularity: 35% [?]

I spotted whispers on Northlight-Images site that Canon’s EOS 5D DSLR is about to get an update.

There are also specs posted on DP Review forums for a second generation 5D with the following changes:

A gain to 15.3MP up from 12.8MP, a 2 stop hike in light sensitivity to 25600 ISO.

The new snapper will also supposedly shoot at 6fps instead of 3 and will have dual Digic III processors instead of a single Digic II cpu.

The AF system will use 29 points instead of 9 and it will share the same weather sealing as the topline 1Ds Mark III, as well as live view.

Lets see if this turns into a reality.

The present 5D retails at £1,860 - Canon 5D

Popularity: 27% [?]

The 10 mp touting E-3 is a friendly little critter.

Most of the shooting options rely on the front and rear dials to control.  These control aperture and shutter speed - until you press a modifier button and then they control other shooting options.  These are pretty easy to get to grips with without doing the non-blokey thing of actually reading the instructions!

Olympus is continuing to show the worth of the ‘Live-View’ system for those photographers who may not have been convinced by the compact-like ability to compose images on an LCD screen.  But then, they would wouldn’t they as they were the pioneering force of this in the DSLR market………..

The E-3’s screen is the smallest manufacturers can get away nowadays at 2.5″ (64mm) but it can get all twisty-turny like that of a camcorder.

The LCD previews depth-of-field, exposure and image stabilisation settings so you know what you see is what you’re going to get.

You can get your sticky mits on the Olympus E-3 for under a grand right now (just the body).  Slap a 14-54mm lens on it and add another £500.

Olympus E-3 (uk) Site

Popularity: 27% [?]

An issue that often confounds photographers is the amount of compensation they should pay a model upon the sale of a stock photograph. It’s a situation that arises when you want to shoot a spec shot, but, you don’t have the financial resources to pay for the model’s time.

Most models, especially friends, are happy to work with you in exchange for prints. Adding the incentive of sharing some of the profit from the stock sale of the image is good business and usually makes it easier to get a signature on a model release. It also enhances your reputation, and, puts you in a better position to solicit more modeling favors in the future.

The best and easiest way to calculate fair compensation for a model who poses in spec image for you is the 25/10 rule. For every 2500.00 dollars you make with the image, allocate ten percent to your model. So if you have an image that yields a 750.00 stock sale, keep all the money for yourself. But, as soon as that image accumulates 2500.00 in total sales, write your model a check for 250.00.

The same rule applies at the high end as well. If you sell an image for 11,000.00 write your model a check for 1,000.00 which takes into account the first four occurrences of 2500.00 - but does not include the additional 1000.00 which is considered part of the 5th iteration of the 2500.00 mark.

Every time that I present a check to a model I get a million thanks. Even if the amount is only 250.00, the models truly appreciate the consideration. But more than anything else, having a reputation as a photographer that takes care of their talent is worth a hundred times more than the ten percent check you write.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Now, what usually happens when you want to take a bunch of snaps in quick succession is you have to drop from RAW to JPEG.

JPEGs lose quite a bit of info and tends to be a bit like an audiophile listening to a Costco stereo!

Microsoft’s JPEG XR (it used to be called HD Photo) have Canon and Casio agreeing that this might be a middle-ground solution; praps more for the cheaper DSLRs.

It has a wider colour palette and can show finer gradations than regular JPEG and it’s also got a better compression algorithm. This means that even with the extra info it wont suck all the power out of the camera.

Granted - if you’re wanting professional high-def, RAW is always going to win. For the rest of us it might help out when we need it.

Here’s what Wikipedia says.

Popularity: 31% [?]

There is a shop that has a lens that makes the Sigma one that featured on this very site look positively weedy!

It is a Canon 1200mm, F5.6 USM lens. They’ve been around since 1993, but are made to order at the rate of about 2 a year - There is less than 20 out in the wild!

The world’s largest interchangeable SLR AF lens, in terms of both focal length and maximum aperture. Two large fluorite elements eliminate secondary spectrum, resulting in extremely sharp, high-quality images. With Extender EF 1.4x or 2x. a whopping focal length of 1700mm f/8 or 2400mm f/11 can be obtained respectively.

The price? Well run along and snap one up at $99,000 secondhand!

You got the cash (and the muscles) go here - B&H

Or buy new here - but have £70,000 ready but that does include vat.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Those of you that have been into this kinda thing for more than a year will probably recognise this thing.

It was shown off at last year’s PMA and it’s here again.

It’s designed to attach to your camera’s flash hot shoe and record the GPS information as you shoot. It will then shove all that info onto your images’ EXIF metadata (or XML file in the case of RAW images) when you sync it up - pic tagged, job done.
After a year of touting this thing they say that it is going to find its way into stores by the middle of this year.

It’s likely to be going for around the $160 mark.

Check it out at Jobo’s site

Popularity: 30% [?]

A while ago I wrote some PHP code to download your Flickr photograph sets using the Flickr API and the PHPFlickr wrapper. Since the Microsoft Yahoo! takeover rumors there has been renewed interest in the code as people want to protect their picture libraries in case they need to bail on their Flickr accounts.

Unfortunately in the time since I wrote it there have been changes that broke my code. This morning I spent some time bringing it up to date. Mostly the problem was around Flickr not returning the original sized image in the same way they used to, and it refused to work even with the most recent PHPFlickr update. It looks like I managed to sort that but it is slower than it used to be. I have a folder full of pictures anyway!

Right now it will only download one set that you specify in the code. While this sounds like a poor limitation, remember you can create a set containing every photograph you ever uploaded if you wanted. Having it download one set allows you to download into neatly organized folders and not spend a month wondering if it is working or not. You can alter the code quite easily if this is not what you need

I updated the original post rather than submit the code as a new article in case anyone had the old version bookmarked. Let me know how it works out for you but I am sure you understand I can’t offer any support.

Popularity: 28% [?]