• Chase Jarvis, one of the best supporters of other new and upcoming photographers, posts several great videos – 1 on his project workflow and another on a Seattle shoot/training. You can check them out here and here.
• If you’ve never visited the LifeHacker blog, you’re missing out. It is a great source for tips and tricks for your computer and life. Need to find the best backup software or desktop search? Need to know how to determine the solar potential of your roof? Check out LifeHacker – the variety and quality is amazing. Visit LifeHacker here.
• Generally, I’m a Canon shooter and as I reported previously, I love my G9. But, not to be outdone, Nikon has released its high-end point and shoot, the Coolpix P-6000. Generally, it looks to have similar features to the G9 – with one really notable feature that I wish the G9 had – a built in GPS. I enjoy GeoTagging my photos so that is a feature near and dear to my heart – if it works well. You can read more about the P-6000 here.
• Interested in Architectural Photography? If so, check out the intro tutorial over at Digital Photography School here. Or, you can check out the Photography for Real Estate blog here, which has some great information and shots.

I put the G9 on my trusty GorillaPod (more about it, here).

I then turned on time lapse and the camera spit out this fun movie. I didn’t add any music to it or any other effects, but you can definately get an idea for how this fun feature works.

I’ll be attending the Denver walk led by Timothy Tonge. If you live in the Denver area and would like to make sure we meet at the walk, drop me an e-mail or a comment. If you aren’t in the Denver area, check out the site and register for one of the other 200+ walks around the world!

• Scott Kelby and NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) is putting together a worldwide photowalk. Nearly 200 cities around the world are participating. Check out more here.
• Jason over at CanonBlogger recently moved to the greatest state in the country, IMO, Colorado! Welcome Jason. Also, if you haven’t checked out his blog yet, you can find it here. He has a great mix of posts, videocasts, contests and more.
• Digital Photography School always has quality, instructive posts. Check out this one on explanation of one of the most valuable, but potentially confusing options on your camera, EV Compensation. Click here for more.
• I really enjoy graphic design and typography and ran across about the best video on type I’ve ever seen. It is brief and extremely funny. Well worth a watch. You can view it here.
  

The biggest news since now that I’m back – for those that use Lightroom at least – is the release of version 2! I’ve purchased it and have some initial thoughts on what I like and what could still use some improvement. I’ll post those thoughts later today or tomorrow.

Thanks!

Brian

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know that I love reading other resources – blogs, books, newsletters. You name a free resource and I probably consume it. While I read a lot of blogs through my feed reader, I still receive a fair number of newsletters via e-mail.

Of all the newsletters I receive, only 1 photography one currently ranks highly enough for me to save each and every one. Photojojo is one of those e-mails that I really look forward to receiving. They are brief, well written and genuinely interesting and/or useful. Nothing is held back – they’ve sent everything from top father’s day gifts to putting your photos on M&Ms to tips on taking better pictures for eBay.

If you don’t currently subscribe to their twice-a-week newsletter, you should. Go and join today. (Oh, and they also sell some pretty interesting gear on their site – check that out while there).

I’m particularly grateful for the blessings I’ve received as part of living in this country – have a safe and fun weekend!

If you plan on going to see some fireworks, why not also take some pictures? If you’ve never taken any before, check out Scott Kelby’s brief how-to here. The one thing he didn’t mention that I found useful was to set my lens to Manual focus instead of automatic. If you open your shutter before the firework actually explodes, it won’t have anything to focus on. If you switch to manual focus and focus out to infinity, though, you should be good to go.

Click the image below for a gallery of my shots from a fireworks show I went to last night.

All shots are directly from the camera – I didn’t have the time to combine multiple fireworks into one collaged shot. I’ll try and do that in the near future and post it.

Click on the image for a larger view. Its specs are: Canon 40D, 24-70 2.8L lens at 70mm, 100 ISO, f14, 1/200 sec.

I’ll be posting more specifics on the photo (diagram, setup shot, etc.) in a series installment.

Well, last night The Fear struck! My computer stopped working (throwing crazy erros – I’m a PC users). I actually ended up trying to swap in a new hard drive to fix the problem. When that didn’t do the trick, I turned to the web and did some troubleshooting. I eventually found out that it was due to corrupted memory. After pulling one of my memory sticks, I was back up and running.

The downside (and why I can hate my computer sometimes)? Hours of wasted time – as a result, I won’t be posting anything major today.

Just a reminder, though! Always make sure you are backing up your data – don’t let The Fear become a reality.

Who Should Buy It?

Someone looking for a nice set of strobes (and all the other gear like stands and soft boxes) at a good value.

the Cost

$900 for the kit, $350/head

the Good

Great quality for the value, fits with other Elinchrom accessories

the Bad

Could always use more power (these have 400 w/s per unit). Missing some of the bells and whistles of the higher end units.

Welcome to the third installment in the Studio Strobes and Setup for Beginners series. Check out the intro here or the Choosing Your Strobes segment here.

My choice of studio strobes that provide a great balance of features and cost are the Elinchrom D-Lite 4’s.

The kit comes with 2 identical, 400 w/s studio strobe heads, with stands, 2 softboxes, cases and cords. The kit includes everything you need to begin your studio lighting setup.

After several months of use, the units work consistently, providing good color and durable use. The units are very easy to set up and use and are one of the best additions to my lighting setup.

The Specs

Each flash head has a power output of 400 w/s, replaceable flash tubes, power variability (ranging 5 stops), modeling light and an optical slave (one can see when the other fires and fires at the same time). They synch at 5V (that is the amount of voltage that runs along the synch cord from your camera to the flash – you can use wireless triggers as well, which is the topic for another installment in this Studio Strobes and Setup for Beginners series), which makes it safe to use with any digital camera.

The soft boxes that come with the kit work best for 1-2 person portraits (they aren’t huge – 1 is 21" and the other is 25.5").

The Good

Good value. You can purchase the entire kit for about the same price as a single professional-quality strobe head. I also really liked the decent range of features and the fact that all the other great Elinchrom accessories worked on the strobe heads. For example, I also purchased the Elinchrom Midi-Octa Bank soft box and it worked perfectly.

The Bad

Not too much to complain about, really. The biggest downside is the power. At 400 w/s, the strobes put out about 1/3 of the power of the high-end versions (400 w/s is still lots of light – the bigger ones will give you about 2 stops of light, though).

The Verdict

Looking for a nice combination of features/power and cost? The versatility, compatibility with other Elinchrom products and the ease of use make these a great studio strobe. You’ll probably also want to purchase some large soft boxes as the two that come in the kit are best for 1-2 person portraits.