Listen NOW…

Doug Murdoch, Designer & President, Think Tank Photo joins host Scott Sheppard with some tips about traveling with your camera gear. Think Tank Photo develops a range of camera bags specifically to meet the needs of the professional photographer. Working closely with a team of working photojournalists, and other shooters for the past four years the feedback they’ve received from the field testing have been incorporated in their line of carriers and transporters.

Doug discusses their latest addition launched at Photokina, the Shape Shifter Backpack. Unlike other photo backpacks, the Shape Shifter actually changes it’s depth allowing you to expand or contract the bag to snugly fit your camera bodies and lenses without taking up extra unnecessary space. This is critical for traveling on location, and through airports. The backpack is soft and flexible, fully padded with air pockets on your back making it comfortable to wear while working. It includes extension flaps that work with the Speed Belt enabling quick access to lens changes while shooting, acting as a harness that provides additional stability to the backpack. All Think Tank modular products are designed to work together and help you configure a solution completely customized to carry your favorite gear.

Doug also describes their Skin line of carriers, that are thin, and lightweight without heavy padding developed for times when you don’t need the extra weight especially critical while traveling. Most photographers cringe at the idea of checking their camera or lenses at any point during their travels. Think Tank’s lightweight solutions allow for configurations that hold equipment securely to your body or fit easily under the seat or in the overhead compartment.

For more information on their full line of products visit: http://www.thinktankphoto.com/

The McNamara Report on Inside Digital Photo with Michael J. McNamara
This week’s topic: Still shooters: Are you ready for video?

Today’s DSLRs are starting to add live video capture modes to their Live View modes. For example, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II : a Full frame 21.1MP camera with full 1080p HD video and sound (mono from camera, or stereo with optional mike via input jack). The Nikon D90: an APS-C sized sensor that can capture 720p video (with mono sound) in Motion JPEG format with the professional smoothness of 24 frames per second.

On both cameras, the sensor is much larger than those found on typical pro or amateur camcorder, helping to deliver higher image quality and exceptional low-noise still images, as well as high ISO capture and dramatic depth of field control during movie shooting. Capturing creative movie clips or the drama of life’s moving moments is further enhanced by the wide selection of incredibly sharp Canon and NIKKOR interchangeable lenses that are available, from fisheye to wide-angle to super-telephoto (and image stabilization works in video mode!) But is video capture a great feature on a DSLR, or just one more tool that will rarely get used? Listen in on the McNamara Report segment.
Read more insights and analysis from Mike McNamara on: http://www.mcnamarareport.com

Listen NOW…

Diederik van Heyningan, Manager & Photographer, Lightworkx Studio joins host Scott Sheppard for a lively discussion on their commercial studio work based in Christchurch, New Zealand. Diederik discusses some of the challenges but also some of the amazing opportunities and variety of work they have mastered based in a fairly remote location on the South Island. Diederik explains they were one of the first digital production studios and have won numerous color awards for their work. Lightworkx is a studio and also do their post-production work in-house. Diederik shares some tips about how they were able to use a locally developed color proofing system called "AbsoluteProof" that has, in his opinion, solved their color management and contract/remote proofing problems.

For more information about Lightworkx and their work visit: http://www.lightworkx.com or to check out their proofing solution, AbsoluteProof, visit http://www.absolute-proof.com/

The McNamara Report on Inside Digital Photo with Michael J. McNamara
This week’s topic: Another RAW camera format? How are we going to handle it?

It happened again, just when most photographers had been lulled into thinking we had seen the last new RAW file format. But noooo! Nikon surprised us by giving birth to a new one called .NRW that’s found exclusively in the high-level COOLPIX P6000 (This hot $500 compact boasts a 13.5MP CCD, 28-112mm f/2.7-5.9 stabilized zoom lens, built-in GPS, and up to ISO 6400.)Unfortunately, the Nikon engineers forgot something when they created this new RAW format—and it’s called Mac compatibility! Guess we should have seen that coming with a file extension called .NRW (Nikon Raw Windows).
So while photographers with PC’s running Microsoft Vista (and nothing prior to Vista) will be able to open and adjust .NRW files, the rest of the world is out of luck—unless popular RAW workflow programs like Apple’s Aperture, Adobe RAW converter, and Adobe’s Lightroom come to the rescue as they have in the past.

Read more insights and analysis from Mike McNamara on: http://www.mcnamarareport.com

Oliver Breitenbach, CEO, Boinx Software joins Inside Digital Photo for an update on their latest release of FotoMagico 2.5, the digital storytelling applications built for photographers. Oliver explains that at it’s most basic level is to create slideshows, but in the hands of creatives, wedding photographers, and journalists FotoMagico quickly generates very compelling short clips that incorporate your images, high-end transitions, synchronizes them to audio, and other effects which can be exported in a range of formats from web video to high definition Blu-ray format. Winner of multiple Apple Design Awards, FotoMagico currently runs only on Apple Mac OS leveraging the best development tools available on the platform that deliver an intuitive drag-n-drop interface.

For more information and to download a demo version today visit: http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/

Subscribe in iTunes… Click HERE!