Rosario Tech

Ben Long, over at Complete Digital Photography, has posted an extensive comparison between the Nikon D200 and the Canon 30D. Which camera should you get? Ben says:

“The simple answer to the question “Should you buy a Canon 30D or Nikon D200″ is “yes, you should.” Both cameras are excellent photographic tools that yield beautiful images, have deep feature sets, and are compatible with a huge range of lenses. You’ll be able to use either of these cameras for years.

Since neither camera has a clear technical advantage - the resolution difference is really not significant, there are no significant performance or image quality differences unless you shoot a lot at high ISO - your final decision will probably be based on two factors: personal preference for the cameras feel and interface, and price.”

Go read the review for yourself.

My quick opinion is that you should stick to the system you have already bought into. I’m a Nikon guy and I’ll buy Nikon until the pigs come home (whatever that means). While I’m a fan of the Nikon bodies, I’m a bigger fan for the Nikon glass. In my experience, Nikon optics are far superior to any other brand.

As usual, your milage may vary.

Mark Goldstein, over at the Photography Blog has reviewed “The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers” by Peter Krogh. Here’s an excerpt:

“Peter Krogh’s book is an unashamedly personal affair, in that it is based upon Krogh’s own digital archiving system. “The DAM Book” is not at all theoretical, instead it has been written by a professional photographer who uses the techniques described in his daily work. This approach makes the book immediate and most importantly trustworthy - after all, if the system works well for Peter Krogh, it should also work for you.”

I have this book on order (maybe I’ll get it today) and I’ll try to post my opinion about it after I read it. You can download a sample chapter here (PDF link).

Luminous Landscape have reviewed the 22 megapixel Mamiya ZD digital SLR camera.

“The real question that remains is of course that of the image quality. My impression is that it is quite good, but it is not equal to that of the competition. An H1D with either a Hasselblad, Leaf, Sinar or PhaseOne digital back costs quite a bit more, but the images are of a higher quality.”

Forbes Online is reporting today that Adobe will not be releasing its new version of the Creative Suite (CS3) until the middle of next year.

In the article, Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe said, “Acrobat is coming in the fourth quarter of 2006. [Design software package] Creative Suite 3 will be introduced in the second quarter of 2007. Acrobat will take advantage of the Macromedia assets. And you’ll see a lot of activity in the CS3 launch. There will be a lot of integration between [Macromedia] products and [Adobe] products as part of those offerings. By the time we launch CS3, the value of the two companies will be clear.”

So, the bad part of this is that we may have to wait until June of 2007 for the next version of Photoshop. That sucks. The good news is that Adobe will be releasing LightRoom sometime in the Fall. This program should keep us digital photographers busy until CS3 comes out next year. The cry-baby part of this is…. Why do we have to wait so long!? I want CS3 NOW!!!!!

Anyway, there have been rumors that Adobe would be releasing a version of CS2 that will work on the Intel Macs around the time LightRoom is released. This is just a rumor, but it’s something to hope for.

I was just reminded that today is OS X’s 5th birthday. Five years ago today, OS X was released to the masses, and oh what a day it was. I think I remember going to TechServe here in NYC and waiting in line to pick up at least 2 copies of the disks; I still have one in its original packaging.

Take a look here to see what that first version looked like. And yes, the Apple menu icon was in the middle of the top menu bar. As I remember, there was no Apple Menu like there is today. Here’s a nice stroll down memory lane from ArsTechnica.com, and the original OS X press release.

It’s funny how dated the first version of OS X looks today.

Just in case you did not get the memo….

Back in 2002, employees of AOL were having so many issues with AOL’s email program (you know, the one you get when you have an AOL account), that management finally caved and let them use whatever email client program they wanted to use.

From an article at theage.com.au webite:

“Flummoxed by rampant glitches, the various corporate arms of AOL Time Warner have been given license to stop using America Online’s e-mail software….. The directive apparently stemmed from Time Inc.’s editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine, who fielded complaints about overweening — and frequently malfunctioning — identity software, along with problems sending attached files…… The AOL-mandated corporate e-mail client, Netscape 6.2e, ‘is hardly stable’ and ’seems to choke on large attachments like PDFs and graphic files,’ the executive said.”

From another article at Computerworld.com:

“Since it was deployed after the merger, however, complaints have been rolling in from unhappy users at AOL Time Warner’s nine divisions, which include AOL, Warner Bros., Warner Music Group, Home Box Office and Time Warner Books…. ‘Unfortunately, there were some problems with it,’ Primrose said. ‘It didn’t exactly meet their needs.’ Among the problems were difficulties receiving and sending large attachments that held graphics or other data-intensive files.”

So, I’ve been telling people for a while now to stop using AOL for email as it causes more headaches than it’s worth. I mean, keep it to use as a dial-up connection to the Internet if you need to, but for email and web browsing, join the modern world and dump AOL email, get a Gmail or Yahoo mail account. Be free of the pain in the ass that is AOL.

You’ll thank me for it.

You saw it here first, folks!

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GMail is one of the best free email services on the web, brought to you by those fine folks over at Google. If you need an extra email account to use when signing up at websites so that you can avoid getting spam on your regular day-to-day email account, GMail is the service to use.

I have about a dozen different GMail accounts and I can use either Apple’s Mail program or Microsoft Entourage to check them whenever I want. GMail has a pretty decent SPAM filter to keep your inbox from getting clogged with crap. Also, you can set up GMail to check your other email accounts as well; great for on-the-road email checking. You also get nearly 3 GBs of online storage. Wow!

If you want a GMail account, email me at amrtechblog (at) Gmail (dot) com and I’ll send you an invite. Soon you can enjoy GMail goodness too.

Those of you who have decided to use Onyx, rather than Cocktail to maintain your Mac, go to VersionTracker.com and download the updated version, released today. Or, download it here.

Only the Tiger version of Onyx has been updated.

Thom Hogan has another review up: the AF-S Zoom-Nikkor ED 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF DX VR (phew, that’s a mouthful). Another thorough review and a good read. Short version: 4 1/2 stars. Has some issues but good lens.

I own it and maybe I’ll do my review a little later on. I like the lens, and plan on shooting with it today, but I have some issues with it. Not for use on jobs that are paying you money, but great to have in the bag in case you have to shoot without flash.