January 2014 - Digital Group - News

Meeting Notes March 2009 to 2018.
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spb
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Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:04 pm

January 2014 - Digital Group - News

Post by spb » Sat Jan 04, 2014 12:27 pm

A happy New Year to all…

CAMERA BUYING GUIDES
If you are thinking of spending your Christmas postal orders on a new camera, you should take a look at the excellent group tests done by dpReview. They always perform individual camera reviews in exquisite detail but have also rounded-up the best cameras of 2013 in a number of categories including;
- high end pocketable compacts
- enthusiast compacts
- entry-level mirrorless
- mid-range mirrorless
- consumer DSLRs
- enthusiast interchangeable lens
- best for beginners
- best for social photography
- best for travel
- best waterproof
- interchangeable lens cameras for under $1000
These can all be found under the Buying Guide header on the dpReview home page.

You may be tempted by the latest full-frame DSLR with the ability to take pictures on a moonless night but apart from the astronomical cost, do also bear in mind the significant size and weight of the body and lenses. More and more of us are coming to the conclusion that we don't want to lug all that kit around and we know that we can make superb A3 prints from a very small and light compact or mirrorless system camera, with very few compromises.

Successful RPS 'F' panels have been shot on a compact camera and even camera phones have produced successful distinctions. It’s a cliché but the person behind the camera is far more important than the equipment itself.

EPSON PRINTER
Epson have brought out an interesting new printer - the Expression Photo XP-950. This is a multipurpose inkjet printer capable of scanning, photocopying and photo printing. However,the most interesting aspect of this printer is that although it is fundamentally an A4 printer with a modest footprint, it can take single A3 sheets of paper as well. It has six dye ink cartridges so is suitable for photo printing, and the results were highly rated in a test by Amateur Photographer. It does not have any grey inks but tests of the monochrome prints were good - if profile dependent - and has small ink tanks. Nevertheless it could be a good choice for general use and occasional larger photo prints. The online price is around £300.

SMARTPHONE DEVELOPMENTS
Photography on smartphones has has come a long way in 2013. The list of improvements across many models is impressive; large sensors up to 1", optical image stabilisation, xenon flash, bigger screens of 5" or more and even 4K HD video and raw image capability. On top of this, most of the innovative software development seems to be in apps at the moment and there is an app for virtually everything. Sales of cheaper compact cameras have fallen off a cliff as a result of the improvement of cameras in phones and Nikon are reportedly looking at a move into a broader range of consumer electronic goods such as smartphones.

My big photographic trip to Polynesia in 2013 with an SLR and an iPad demonstrated that the tablet is 10 years behind the laptop and still totally unsuited for serious image management or manipulation. I mostly take raw images but these are too big for the tablet to cope with, so my initial problem was how to take raws but extract jpgs to view on the iPad. There is nothing as sophisticated as Explorer (!) available to identify the raw files and I only managed to solve this by setting my D7100 to save raws on one card, jpgs on the other and then only uploading the second card to the tablet. Although it did prove to be an excellent viewer, even organising the images into a few folders proved to be ridiculously cumbersome.

Cheers, Steve

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