If you work in Photoshop or Corel, hopefully you’ve discovered how much easier it is to work on a tablet with a Wacom Pen. If you haven’t, check out this very cool way to work right on a monitor screen. It’s the latest addition to the Cintiq family.

Remember: to watch this video bigger and higher quality, go to the VIDEO page and Reviews section. You can enlarge the video with a click of the button.

I know, the Cintiq is not cheap but you life may become a lot easier. Perhaps you want to start with a “Bamboo” tablet to get you on your way. Packs easy, and still gives you direct control over your image manipulation.

Back home in LA, and starting to edit all of material we shot in Las Vegas at the photography trade show, PMA.

First up we have a look at the Nikon D60, 10.2 megapixel DX-Format DSLR which will be shipping in March. Some of the features come from the learning on the new D300 and D3. And at a price of about $750 USD (is that about 50 Euro?- just kidding. USD in not in great shape right now. Actually it’s about 504 Euro.)
It’ll ship with an 18-55 VR Lens. With a Vibration Reduction lens you can add up to 4 stops to your lens and still be sharp.Nice.

I know. New cameras keep coming to market. Always will. As do computers. Technology is a bear. You don’t have to keep up. Depends on your needs.

I’ll tell you this though: the investment I have in lenses far outweighs whatever a new body may cost. And I still through my D70 in the bag as my backup. Great unit.

Remember this video is available on YouTube and the VIDEO page right here in a slightly higher quality.

We think you’ll dig the materials we shot in Vegas. A good sampling of gear and technology, some you can buy now, available now, and lots still to come.

Also, stay tuned this week for more photographer profiles. This time we’re going behind the scenes of Fashion Week in New York.

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view from the walk back to the hotel from the trade show floor.

And those dogs HAVE been rolling. Or Walking.
We are almost at that point of the show where our dogs are barking. Walking the length of a football field many times over in a day, can make you extra glad you have comfortable shoes. It helps, though, when you are checking out stuff that you love.
The best part are all of the folks in the booths. Very good crowd. A pleasure to speak with.
And we did a lot of it.

Lot’s of video to come, but here are some appetizers:

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We stopped by the WACOM booth to check out their new portable Cintiq tablet. Basically, you can work on your photos (or graphics) right on the image with the patented Wacom pen. Beats a mouse hands down for extreme control. This new unit is smaller, lighter and cheaper. Ok, cheaper is relative. Only about $1000.USD. Fits in a laptop case and once you try it, the mouse will just feel old school. If you’re not familiar with the Wacom system, why not start slow with their unit called Bamboo. You’ll be using the pen system and working on a tablet, but the image will be on your monitor. And it’s about $100. with bundled software. Sound like a plan?
Video on it’s way.

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Crumpler bags, the camera bags that don’t scream camera bag, have come up with their version of the roll-on with lots of style and versatility, it will feature a unique loopy, snakey, velcro system to secure your gear in a custom manner. This one is not shipping yet, but you’ll have to catch the video. Ben the spokesman is charming and shows off the product like no one else. Cheers to you, Ben. Great job.
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Oh they also have a new camera strap with a brilliant bit on the widest parts underside: to aid in grip, the name Crumpler has been applied with a gripping material so truly, the company is holding on to you.

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Now Lowepro also has some pretty cool new bags, especially one that has built on the functionality of one of our faves, the SlingShot Bag. The Fastpack Backpack is a backpack system with an advantage of a quick swing operation to the front of your body for full access to your gear. Love that.
Video on this and more.

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And one of our favorite companies for the way they think. The folks that make Purosol, have a family run business, that quite simply make the best lens cleaner that is not only environmentally safe, but cleans your lenses in a special, safe way. We’ve convinced them to tell you how in an upcoming article. Good folks here.

More goods tomorrow. A full wrap-up early in the week.

Cheers!
Damon Webster

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.
Continue Reading »

Yeah, so what is new ? Right, that’s why we’re here.

Day one at the photo show of the year. Just to be clear though, there are 2 shows of this type every year. PhotoPlus Expo held in NYC in the fall, invites the public in to see, try and sometimes buy the latest in photo goodies.
The PMA show, which is where we are now, is mainly a straight up trade show , geared more towards the buyers for all of the places you’ll end up buying your stuff from. For instance, B&H, Adorama, Samy’s, Ritz the general chains like Target, Wal-Mart, and so on, come here to see what’s coming up in the next few quarters of the year.
And every 2 years, the biggest show is Photokina in Cologne Germany. For all of it.

Simply put, the stuff we see here may not get to you for months.

That said, let’s take a look at what we saw at the Sneak Peak today. (lots more coming, with video.)

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Fotonation, the brilliant minds that are developing the software that gets put into ALL of the new cameras (face detection, smile detection,blink detection, etc.) had one of their execs, pictured above, demo’ing the new cognitive software. It mimics you facial movements. Don’t worry; we’ll get to the bottom of this.
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Did you always want a Swiss Bank account? Something about that sounds safe, right? Well a new company, has a service to store you photos for 30 years at about 3 cents a shot. In Switzerland. Guaranteed. The security that is, not the fact that’s it’s in Switzerland. Swiss Picture Bank is the name of this outfit. Only handles jpegs at this point, so not for the pro’s out there. Yet.
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Delkin has a new battery charger for travelers that will charge 2 batts at a time even if they are from different cameras!. Priced at about $55. USD., you can purchase extra battery type plates for $5. USD per set of 2. You can’t see from this photo but it is the same on the other side, with the charging plate.

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JOBO has finally revealed their entry into the geotagging world with this unit: Not available for a couple of months at least, here is what we know so far.
Uses a proprietary software which gives a great searchable database so your info is tagged with city, state,country and street address, (you can use it with other existing software such as Lightroom), low power consumption, works on any cameras hot shoe, plus other bits are available so no hot shoe is needed, java based so good for all operating systems, but……not ready yet for general consumption. As soon as it is and we can check it out, we’ll bring you the deets.

And new bags from Lowepro, Crumpler, lots of digital frames, (thanks for your feedback: gave us great insight into the person who may really use this.) and tons more to see in the next few days.

Anything you’ve been curious about? Something we can check for you? We have that hunter/ gatherer mentality and enjoy missions. Let us know.

And you know how we love food photos. Yeah, it’s pretty sweet at these press previews. Yum

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Cheers!
Damon Webster