ATCP, LLC

I got a nice email from PacSafe, and thought I’d share it with you all:

personal stuff to me mercifully removed

We are developing a whole range of products only dedicated to photography. The Camera Shoulder Bag (handy camera bag) easily accommodates your SLR camera, and the multiple pockets ensure all your small and delicate accessories are well protected and organized. I’ve attached a picture of it.

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I think that in photography how you carry your precious gear is a complex, personal, and probably hotly debated topic. My solution to a good in all cases need was the straps from PacSafe. Their Photography section has two products in particular that I’ll talk about today:

-CarrySafe 100 – For cameras
-CarrySafe 200 – for camera bags

The 300 is to lock the bag to a pole, chair, etc.

One of the nice things about these straps is that they are made of steel cables. Not the heavy kind, but light, flexible stranded cable that cannot be cut. They appear completely normal and unimportant on the outside. The other significant thing about their design is that they each have a way that prevents the strap from being disconnected from the camera or bag. In the 100 it is a nifty block for the D ring, and the 200 is literally bolted on.
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I’m usually a brand name shopper, so it was uncommon for me to order an Asian no-name IP camera from geeks.com. Ends up it came from Taipei from a company called Edimax. But the mystery is just starting.

The phone is referred to by several confusing models:

-gcj51w (alleged manufacturer’s model number, per geeks.com
-MJPEG Internet Camera (on the app/doc CDROM)
-IC 1500 (in the on-board web configurator)
-IC-3010WG (from the company website picture, not features)
-IC-1500WG (from the website features, not picture)

So what is this thing? It appears to be a scaled back version of the IC-1500WG in that it doesn’t have all the bells & whistles, such as 2-way audio, etc. Check out the features pages above to see what I mean.
I got this one as it was the cheapest 802.11b/g self-contained camera I could find. I surprisingly am not disappointed.
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A post in dpreview I responded to:

my brother has a soon to be 2 yr old son and he asked me to come photograph his 2nd Bday,, I do alot of Macro and Landscapes, rarely do things like this,, I’m looking for camera settings on this one,, I know what Kind of shots I want,, just settings,, I will have my 40D and a 430EX flash,, might mount it on my off camera Flash bracket and diffuse the flash with a Lumiquest Softbox,, then using manual settings use something like 1/200 with F13 at ISO 100 setting white balance to Florescent since this will probably be mostly inside,, might bounce flash off ceiling too if that looks better,, what would you do ???

Firstly, I’ll tell you that you’ll be doing a lot of eyes, so the flash should be as far away from the lens as is practical. A flash bracket is not a bad idea at all. I use the Fong diffuser, which is indestructible and can be used on the camera with no compromises (lighter, too!).

Settings…

Don’t shoot solely in JPEG, for all the normal reasons. But another reason is that you can later do some fantastic cropping of kids caught in pictures that be set aside as individual prints. You know, 6 kids in a picture, all are going to have different looks on them (the hams!)…

Setup your custom modes ahead of time, and include flash programming (if your flash allows this. my 580EXII does). I guess that is a ’setting’, but moreover you will have no time to look down and do anything, as kids move fast.

I am a big fan of only the center AF point, and therefore P mode doesn’t apply. P mode will apply if you are shooting with all 9.

Have a C setting for outdoor fill, so that when they run outside you can simply change modes and not have to fuss. I find that I almost always have to work the 580 EX II manually (vs ETTL) when outside-especially if imperfect lighting conditions! Also, a diffuser won’t do its thing outside as there’s nothing to bounce off except the subject.

I would say that if I had my C progs entered and tested, I’d be free to concentrate on the subjects and the party without worrying about checking proofs as I shot (as much).

Sounds like fun! Don’t have too much ice cream-you’ll get a tummy ache! :)

Bogus Exception 8100000A

See the end of this post for the actual RAW file used in this tutorial so you can edit it along with me in the post.

In the previous tutorial, we saw how the controls work in Adobe Camera RAW, or ACR. This time we’ll be dealing with something that only RAW can deal with-bad pictures. Adobe Photoshop is fine when the picture is good, or you want to take artistic license, but is useless when it comes to saving an image.

When would this happen? Well, it happens all the time, really. Every time I hand my camera to someone to take a picture with, the shot is inevitably bad. The problem is, I can’t sit there and teach them how to take pictures, compensate for lighting, etc., so I’m screwed, right? Wrong! I had a waiter at Giogio’s Table in Virgin Gorda, BVI take a picture of my wife & I on our 10th anniversary in April, and he took it with the ocean outside behind us. We came out as black sillouettes.
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