Part of the reason for Flickr’s enormous popularity is their open API that supports a large number of so-called Apps, which are third party software that make your flickr experience more fun and useful.
In the past, there was no centralized location for Flickr Apps. Users had to look for them on the web. Developers had to promote their apps using their own websites. It all changed yesterday. Flickr has made a home for these third-party apps called App Garden.
The App Garden does not automatically list all the apps created using Flickr API. Developers have to submit them. There aren’t many apps there yet one day after its launch but we can be certain it will change soon. You may want to check out the five cool apps picked by ReadWriteWeb.
More about Flickr App Garden
The popular Apple iPhone has a very crude camera application and there is no way to edit the photos on the phone after you take them without third party applications. There are quite a few good photo editing applications available at Apple App Store that are not very expensive. But why not use a free application from the big name software company Adobe if you have only the most common editing needs? It gets even better than just editing: by signing up for a free photoshop.com account, you get 2GB of free storage for online photo sharing and storage. Read More…
Have you ever wondered why wide angle lenses such as Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
Well, this is a reasonable question if your understanding of optics is not much beyond the simple thin lens model you learned in high school. Photographic lenses are not thin lenses. Even the simplest prime lenses are constructed with multiple lenses in multiple groups. These are called “thick lenses”. The effective focal length of the thick lenses are no longer the distance between the last optical element to the rear focal point (called back focal length). To make the wide angle length work on SLR cameras, the back focal length of the lens needs to be longer than the effective focal length so the mirror doesn’t hit the lens when the shutter is release. On the opposite, for telephoto lenses the back focal length needs to be shorter than the effective focal length. This is typically achieved by putting a concave lens (or negative lens group) or convex (or positive lens group) at the front for wide angle and telephoto lenses, respectively.
The modern day wide angle lenses were mostly inspired by the old but clever design called retrofocus lens design pioneered by a French engineer (a little more history can be found here). If you compare the original retrofocus lens and the aforementioned Sigma wide angle lens, you can notice the similarity. The Sigma lens used a group of concave lenses instead of single concave lens for the front element in the original design.
If you are interested in digging into lens design, there are many good books, for example, Applied Photographic Optics by Sidney Ray. However you can learn quite a lot without spending a dime from free online resources by using search engines.
Nikon conducted research by polling people and found out that consumers love to share photos (Is that really a surprise?). In the digital age, the smallest scale of sharing is perhaps crowding around the camera’s LCD screen. The 2nd scale is sharing photos on a TV screen or on any appropriate surface using the Nikon Coolpix S1000pj
Due to the nature of online sharing, it potentially has more impact. They are really nothing more than common senses, but the five rules for sharing photos online (Photo Netiquette) published by Nikon are good reminders.
- Don’t post embarrassing pictures of other people without their permission
- Ensure that you are happy for the pictures you choose to be on the web for all to see
- Remember that your boss, family and friends may look at your pictures, so don’t post any inappropriate images
- Don’t endlessly post picture of yourself – you’ll come across as self-obsessed, rather than interesting
- Think about the impact your photos will have on other people before you share or project them
[via Amateur Photographer]
There is just a hint of Autumn here but we can expect to see the colors of the Fall at full display soon. It is a great time for photographers, not just for landscape but also for outdoor portrait.
- Fall foliage shooting tips – The post is two years old but should still be relevant. Also check out the polarizer tip.
- Fall foliage status – Check out the status of fall foliages across the United States.
- Nikon Coolpix S1000pj with Built-in Projector
- The free PhotographyBB Online Magazine has published its 20th issue. The September 2009 issue features many post-processing related articles and other great tips. It will be a fun read for your weekend.
- Ansel Adams Meets Apple: The Camera Phone Craze in Photography – Have fun with your iPhone using the $2.99 Best Camera application.
- Quick Tips for Capturing the Perfect Dusk Photo – A video tutorial on how to take photos at dusk. Learn what exposure mode, focus mode, white balance, ISO, file format to use for the best results.
- Follow us on twitter – We send out tweet when a new post is published.
Google has released an updated version of the free photo editing software Picasa. Version 3.5 adds a great new feature called Name Tags that was originally only available in Picasa Web Albums. The new version has also improved tagging , import/export, and enhanced geo-tagging with integration of Google Maps. Check out the following video to find out what’s new in Picasa 3.5. Read More…
Many people have been frustrated by the lack of Nikon’s support for 64-bit Windows operating systems. Nikon Capture NX 2 works in 64bit Vista but it is not officially supported. Their NEF Codec doesn’t work on 64-bit OS so people who need the functionality have to use a commercial third party codec.
Axel Rietschin Software Developments, the company behind the FastPictureViewer software has release a codec pack that supports 19 raw image formats from more than 12 camera manufacturers, covering about 300 camera models. All formats and features are supported for both 32 and 64-bit editions of Windows. The package also ships with a Windows XP thumbnail provider, enabling thumbnail view support in Windows XP SP3 Explorer for all image formats handled by the codecs included in pack and any other existing WIC-enabled codecs. In addition, the codec pack also supports the TGA raster image format. Read More…
Our friend totographe was kind to stop by and let us know that his signature tool NXSignature (original post in French) for Capture NX is now version V1.1. The new version allows you to specify the color of the selection for the ‘Colorize’ step so you don’t need to use Capture NX to change the color of the signature. This makes it more efficient for batch processing.
