World AIDS day.

Today, for those who may still be unaware, is World AIDS Day. 


Having been reminded of the small print at the top left of the "1st December" segment of my diary, I immediately thought of this picture:

Appropriate, is it not? This image was taken last year on the motorway (highway to those out of the UK). It was along with multiple other slow shutter speed shots but of all, only this came out with particular significance - the AIDS awareness symbol.


 Click on the image to view larger version or to view more "streaky lights" night shots.

Sigma SD1 46 Megapixels...but NO Video.

Some days ago, SIGMA announced their latest exploit, and as impressive and amazing as it was, it was almost equally as disappointing. Well, this may be a harsh and biased take on the matter but here are some facts:

"...46-megapixel Foveon sensor that uses 3 stacked sensors of 15.3 megapixels each to capture red, green, and blue light. The resulting images are 15.3 megapixels in size with color resolution that’s superior to traditional sensors.

The camera also has a rugged magnesium alloy build, a 3-inch LCD screen, 11 autofocus points, 98 percent and viewfinder coverage. It’ll arrive in February next year at a price that has yet to be announced. If you’re looking for a rugged DSLR and don’t care about things like Live View or video recording, then you might want to add the SD1 to your list..." (Source: PetaPixel.)

The question to ask is WHY these DSLR and photography gear giants and experts would make such a faux-pas? Actually, could this have simply been a deliberate omission? For some, it is a no-brainer and it perfectly makes sense. For one, as popular is it is amongst DSLR manufacturers today, Video is just video, and seeing that it is and has been out there for a while amongst competitors, perhaps SIGMA figured "why bother competing in such a saturated market?". 

Another reason may be that SIGMA are targeting a more precise market in the Photography sector, one which they will immediately have an upper hand in. 

Though, on the technical side of things, in regards to the Foveon sensor, real-time colour space conversion from Foveon to RGB is not realistic (at least not yet). Here's why; it requires immense CPU power and memory and the Foveon colour space is highly non-linear. Therefore, this "mistake" or "faux pas" was indeed utterly deliberate and even better, fully calculated.

Price:

Will it be cheap? We do not anticipate so. Its specs are simply not to be expected among the consumer-DSLR market. 

Will it be popular? Who knows. One thing is for sure however, it is very unlikely that non-photography enthusiasts be exposed to this beast of a machine. Simply because the high street shops are flooded with the likes of Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Sony, Panasonic Lumix etc.

We look forward to have a hands-on experience with the SIGMA DS1.

Snap It! Screen Capture tool for bloggers.

Having recently been introduced to Digeus' "Snap It" screen capture tool, I've found it to be a very useful tool. It is ideal for photographers blogging or posting tips about editing, photoshop captures, for marketers or basically any type of blogger. It is also useful for personal use such as emailing.


Now you may already be familiar with some form of screen capture tool, or even some keyboard shortcuts, but you will find that some of these may be "handy" to you simply because they are the only ones you have used. 
Perhaps you get the screen capture you want with these other tools but it takes too long.
Or perhaps it is quick enough but you have no control of which area of the screen you capture and end up wasting time cropping unwanted parts or borders (as in the picture below with a red border of the selection)

 

Snap It is a very convenient tool for bloggers. When you write posts on your blog and you need to capture and crop images from different sources - this tool is for you.


Snap It Features:
- It supports hotkeys, auto-saving, clipboard 
- Automatically copies screenshots to the clipboard
- Tracks capture history and auto-saves captured images
- Saves files in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG and TIFF formats
- Auto-names captured images


For those using windows' "Snipping Tool", you will find Snap It 3.7 to be perfect for you, saving you time and effort. It may not be as elaborate and as complete as Adobe Captivate is, but it certainly makes blogging and such tasks less complex.


Discover Snap It and Download Here