TWiP #154 – Hey, You Got Your Getty in My Flickr!

Getty and Flickr sitting in a tree, the 5D Mark II flies over BP's oil mess, and Lexar's Jeff Cable joins us to talk storage.

Hosts: Frederick VanJohnson, Alex Lindsay, Rick Sammon, Ray Maxwell, and special guest Jeff Cable.

NEWS & DISCUSSION

Getty Images Opens Up to Flickr Users
Last year, Getty Images started tapping selected Flickr users for their photos. They've now opened it up so that Flickr users can be more proactive and request to have their photos included in their collection. This leads into a great discussion on stock photography. Rick Sammon suggests checking out the site ImageRights.com for more information if people are thinking about getting into stock photography.

Photographer Creates Gnarly All-Terrain Mobile Workstation
A photographer has created an all terrain mobile workstation that can travel through rough terrain and provide a portable workstation for photographers out in the field. The rover is called the D8 and will be available for sale on his website at http://digitalcapturerover.com/.

Canon 5D Mark II Attached to an RC Helicopter Photographs BP Oil Spill
Perspective Aerials has released footage of a custom RC helicopter equipped with a Canon 5D Mark II which was used to obtain aerial photos of the BP oil spill in the gulf of Mexico. Ray mentions the Parrot RC helicopter which is coming soon and comes equipped with cameras and can be controlled with your iPhone.

INTERVIEW WITH JEFF CABLE

This week, Jeff Cable from Lexar joined us on the show to chat about storage solutions for photographers including strategies on how to properly store and backup your images.

LISTENER QUESTIONS

Question #1: John Hays writes: I know HDR is the rage these days and I really enjoy panos however CS5 reallys seems to crawl when I'm stitching panos together on my MacBook Pro. What are your recommendations in terms of workflow from image capture through to stitching. What applications would you recommend?

Rick: I've tried the new HDR pro in CS5 but I haven't been able to get the same results that I seem to get with Photomatix. If you're going to shoot a pano, hold your camera vertically and take enough exposures to capture the full range in the scene. Leave the WB and exposure the same. Once I'm focused I turn the focus off. Overlap a 1/3rd and then I'll merge each section together in Photomatix without making any adjustments. Then I combine those merged photos in CS5 to create the panorama. One other tip is to shoot at the lowest ISO possible as chromatic abborrations tend to be an issue when shooting HDRs.

Question #2: Jim Hermer writes: I normally use my dSLR but my wife bought a point and shoot with too many megapixels for the tiny sensor. Consequently, the noise is unbearable at high ISOs. If I reduce the image quality on the camera to a medium quality, will that improve the noise performance or will the camera still capture the image as normal and then just throw away some of the pixels to reduce the image size?

Ray: This varies from camera to camera. I would recommend shooting at full resolution and then controlling that from Photoshop or another program. You can read more about this topic in an article Ray wrote which is up on The Luminous Landscape.

Question #3: Mike Sheppard writes: I've noticed that you recommend everyone with a dSLR to go out and get a fast 50mm lens. I was wondering if you made the suggestion regardless if someone has a cropped sensor camera or not? I have a Nikon D90 and bought a 35mm f1.8 and figured that with the crop sensor I was esentially getting the equivalent of a 50mm lens. Would you still recommend a 50mm lens in this case?

Alex: I'd say this is not really necessary if you have the 35mm. The real point is just having a fast lens and the reason I often recommend the 50mm is because it's the cheapest.

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Alex – BeachTek DXA-SLR – allows you to get big good microphones into your 5D Mark II

Ray – filters for Photoshop from TopazLabs.com

Rick – H4n Handy Zoom recorder

Fred – iPhone OS 4 and the new iPhone 4

WRAP UP

Join the Flickr critique group. You can also join our Facebook group.

Alex Lindsay – www.pixelcorps.tv or www.twitter.com/alexlindsay

Ray Maxwell – www.twit.tv/mh

Rick Sammon – www.ricksammon.com or www.twitter.com/ricksammon

Frederick Van Johnson – www.frederickvan.com or www.twitter.com/frederickvan

CREDITS

TWiP is sponsored by Audible.com, the leading provider in spoken word entertainment. Audible has over 75,000 titles to choose from to be downloaded and played back anywhere. Visit Audiblepodcast.com/twip for a free audiobook of your choice.

Show notes by Bruce Clarke at www.momentsindigital.com or www.twitter.com/bruceclarke

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