Rosario Tech

Apple released version 2 of Aperture this past Tuesday. Finally! They are touting “over 100+ new features,” which seems about right.

I’ve been playing with it for the past few days and it appears that Apple is serious about supporting this program (there have been recent doubts since they have been taking so very long to support the newest digital SLRs). Aperture is now on par with the feature set of Adobe’s LightRoom.

If you’re already an Aperture user, get this upgrade right away. It’s faster, and it’s faster.

Did I mention that it’s faster?

Oh, and if you have not already committed to either Aperture or Lightroom, Apple dropped the price to $199, which is $100 less than Lightroom.

What do you have, punk?

Read more about Sigma’s monstrous APO 200-500 F2.8 lens at Engadget.

Over at the Luminous Landscape, there is a very nice “review” of the newest Nikon DSLRs. Very casual read and very informative.

Camera RAW files need love too, you know. Here are some links to Apple and Adobe documents stating exactly which camera raw formats Aperture and Lightroom/ACR are supported.

Apple supported raw formats
Adobe supported raw formats

Helpful to determine which camera is supported by which program. Important because of the new Leopard update.

From CNet:

Nikon to expand full-frame SLR line

Posted by Stephen Shankland

SAN FRANCISCO–It looks like Nikon, having followed Canon into the market for high-end SLRs with full-frame image sensors, will continue the effort by offering lower-end models as well.

Nikon’s $5,000 D3 camera, announced in August and due to go on sale in November, employs a sensor the size of a full frame of 35mm film. These FX-sized sensors offer higher sensitivity and a broader field of view than the smaller DX sensors Nikon has used in its SLRs until now. Nikon will develop new DX-based cameras, but the company will flesh out its FX line as well, said Steve Heiner, senior technical manager of Nikon SLR marketing.

“I think you’ll see other FX products. It’s a sensor size we’re committed to,” Heiner said at a meeting here with reporters.

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Read the full article here.

All I can say is w00t!!!!!! and it’s about f–king time!

Mamiya is bringing out their new 645ZD Digital Camera System for $9,999. It comes with the Mamiya 645AFD II camera body, an 80mm f/2.8 AF lens, and the ZD22 digital back. All in all, it sounds like a great deal to me. They are also throwing in a copy of Adobe’s Lightroom, just to sweeten the deal a bit.

Read the full product release here.

Oh, and I wouldn’t worry about that noise about Mamiya throwing in the towel. Just read this.

This would go well with my favorite black light Bruce Lee poster.

From Photopreneur Blog.

Here’s a page that contains six more sample shots from the new Nikon D3 taken by photographers Dave Black, Mike Corrado and Joe McNally. They are all jpeg images and, so, that means they’ve been processed either by the camera or Nikon’s Capture software. This means we are probably not seeing the full range of the raw image presented to us - for instance, the background in the McNally image is showing some banding. I hope that we won’t see that in the final production camera.

Otherwise, I’m pretty impressed with the overall quality. Noise levels are low enough in the high ISO images to be quite usable, and probably acceptable to places like Getty Images and other stock houses (my benchmark for acceptable imagery).

So you go around boasting to others about your 22 megapixel camera and the stunning images that it can take - unfortunately, that megapixel count pales in comparison to the efforts of big-brained researchers at Carnegie Melon University and NASA Ames’ Research Center, who developed an image that contains more than a billion pixels. They found a method to capture multiple images of a single landscape, combining them into one gigantic panoramic photo that you can view in total or zoom all the way into in perfect clarity. All you need is a standard digital camera and a robotics tripod, and you can begin snapping across the entire landscape while stitching them together later. Neat!

Go here to read their hands-on preview of Nikon’s first full frame DSLR.

It’s a thing of beauty, no?