It’s kind of non-stop here and we keep sifting through to see what may make a difference to your photographic life.
Here we go:
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If you are considering scanning all of your old negs, so they can be on hard media, Nikon owns the field with their Coolscan line, but Microtek has a great alt solution for multiple strips of negs. If you set out your negs and do some every day,like exercise, you’ll get there. Then you can back it all up to where ever; a server, DVD’s, multiiple hard drives. If heaven forbid, you ever have to grab one thing of photos in the case of a fire or gulp,earthquake, it’s much easier to grab a box of DVD’s or a single server with all.

in a similar vein…
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HP has taken the whole backup conversation to another logical conclusion. DVD’s that software on each disc that automatically send a search on your hard drive for jpegs, and backs them up onto a DVD. Or more if you have a ton. The reason this is important is: you need to back up all of your digital media. At least in two places. The fact is that hard drives will crash. Not a matter of if, but when. Having a hard copy of your photos gives you the peace of mind of knowing that a DVD will never crash.
We’d like to think of this as a first step in this technology. Here’s what it doesn’t do; it doesn’t support RAW files, it is not double-sided, it is not Blu-Ray for greater capacity. But we think it will be all of those things.
This is a huge topic for us. And it will be for you too if you’ve ever lost some important photos.
$15. for 10,000 photos. (5 DVD’s in the package)

From Germany come a new Facebook type thing strictly with a photographic bent. It’s called fotocommunity.com for discerning amateurs photographers.
Currently in 5 languages, it may be a great way to meet people of like mind, all over the world to share and discuss their photos. There is a fee for uploading and VIP access.

Nikon is looking at making their VR II vibration reduction a standard in every zoom lens. Love that.
The new D60 is priced at $750 including an 18-55 VR II zoom lens. Nice.

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Tomorrow we’ll be looking at the PC-E (tilt/shift lens) from Nikon. It does the same thing as the Canon version we own, with a better shutter, if only because the Canon version has not been updated in many years. Whatever, that is our object of desire.

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see that bump at the top of the camera? That’s the GPS.

We also got a look at another geotagging entry. From Geotate This is a multi level solution, with some products coming market 2nd quarter of this year. A point and shoot from Altek (they make the cameras for many of the brands you know) with built in GPS tagging. We knew it was coming. And the same company has a device that will put a geotagger on any camera’s hot shoe at a very low cost. Under $50. You will have to download the data and merge it with the digital photo file via your computer.
Next week we’ll post a video on the whole deal.

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We met with the folks from Eye-Fi and as you may have heard, their SD card now uploads wirelessly to iPhoto. Very cool. And we’re going to be doing some testing of our own. Not sanctioned by Eye-fi but we’re going to put an SD card in a CF holder, shoot with a Nikon D300, and see if we can make a cheap serviceable version of a $1000 solution: Wireless load a computer while shooting.
True, we would prefer uploading to Lightroom. We can upload to a specified file on the computer though.
Not quite Mentos and Diet Coke, it should prove interesting on the video. Plus we’ll have some special news on the Nikon D60 being optimized for the eye-fi card. Oh wait…I guess that’s it.

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More discussion and research on the digital picture frame.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm…..
Yes, they have a set resolution at this point since this industry was born from LCD screen makers overproducing. The best resolution and size seems to be an 8″ frame. Bigger doesn’t mean better. Heck, you could buy an inexpensive large LDC TV and play your sd card in it, and get better resolution.
Seems that the digital frame is really a gift item. Wireless doesn’t seem to matter or downloading. The folks that are usually gifted with these frames, aren’t usually computer savvy anyway; the grandparents. The gifters intend to make life easier by auto download. Just send a loaded memory card. They are cheap enough anyway.

There are some better than others out there and we’ll try to steer you in the right direction. $150-200 USD appears to be the proper price point for a quality item.

Lot’s more to come in the next few days.

It’s cold and I’m thirsty so signing off for now.

Cheers!
Damon Webster