TWiP #240 – The Nikon D800, Facebook’s IPO, & new Canon Lenses

 

This week on TWiP: Nikon reveals the D800, Facebook reveals that 3,000 photos are uploaded to its site every second, a UK college offers iPhone photography course, new Canon lenses, and an interview with photographer Bambi Cantrell.

Hosts: Frederick Van Johnson, Nicole Young, Martin Bailey, and Syl Arena

Note: Martin will be leading some photography expeditions in 2012 to the European Arctica, Antarctica and the Russian Coast. Visit http://www.mbpworkshops.com/aurora/ for details and to sign up for these expeditions.

Nikon Announces the D800 & D800E

Nikonians everywhere rejoiced when word came down about the new D800 and D800E. This new body features the world's highest effective pixel count of 36.3-million pixels. Frederick is very excited to get his hands on this camera and will hopefully be replacing his D700 with it.

Syl would rather see good pixels rather than more pixels. For Nicole, she wouldn't mind the extra mega-pixels for her stock photography but now that she is so invested in Canon, the D800 isn't enough to lure her back. Martin would prefer more pixels as long as they are good quality.

In terms of the new video features, Syl thinks they've made some smart choices such as the ability to plug a headset in and control the sound levels and plug a monitor in without disabling the LCD screen. He thinks the changes Nikon has made will force Canon to up their game when it comes to the video capabilities of their dSLRs.

3,000 Photos Uploaded to Facebook Every Second

Facebook officially filed to become a publicly traded company last week and in doing so opened up the Kimono on some interesting facts and figures.

One of the more interesting stats that was revealed from a photography perspective, is that an average of 250 million photographs are uploaded to the service each day. If we break it down, that works out to 10.4 million per hour, 174,000 per minute, or 3,000 photographs per second.

In terms of storage, the photos and videos hosted by the service take up 100 petabytes, or 100 million gigabytes. Facebook has also been experimenting with how they display photographs on their site and recently rolled out a new lightbox feature for displaying images.

Tune in to the conversation as the panel discusses the importance of this news and if anyone thinks Facebook might venture into stock photography.

London College Plans to Offer iPhone Photography Course

Popular Photography reports that a college in London will be offering a course on iPhone photography. London's Kensington and Chelsea College is adding a class called ” iPhoneography,” teaching the next generation how to use their iPhone to take better photos.

The course will be a first of its kind, and will instruct students on using a range of apps to create images. The course tutor, Richard Gray, says he plans to teach the basic rules of composition, color and light, along with editing skills including blending, collage and cloning.

Frederick asks the panel if they think a course like this is necessary and if the iPhone warrants a a full-time photography instructor.

Canon Announces 3 New Lenses

On the heels of Nikon's D800 announcement, Canon announced three new lenses. Canon will be making a new version of the workhorse 24-70mm f2.8 lens. This latest version features ‘a completely redesigned optical system to provide improved image quality, with a minimum focusing distance of 0.38m across the zoom range.'

It also features a new full-time manual focusing ring allowing the photographer to focus manually without having to switch into manual focus mode. The new version is also shorter and lighter than it's predecessor but comes with a slightly higher price tag than the current model.

Canon also announced 2 new prime lenses – a 24mm f2.8 and a 28mm f2.8 – both with image stabilization and the new full-time manual focusing ring which will allow photographers to focus manually without having to flip a switch to go into manual focusing mode.

An Interview with Bambi Cantrell

This week, TWiP's Bruce Clarke sat down with wedding photographer Bambi Cantrell to learn how she got started in the business and how she made the move to high-end weddings.

Bruce also gets her thoughts on how photographers can stay current, and why the word “pose” shouldn't be considered a four-letter word. To learn more about Bambi and to view her work, be sure to visit her website at www.cantrellportrait.com.

You can also follow Bambi on Twitter.

Listener Questions

Question 1:

Listener “Ribshots” in the forums writes:

“I am strongly considering an Olympus E-P3 Pen as my carry everyday compact camera. But after listening to the TWIP podcast, I am concerned whether Olympus will be around to service a warranty need or anything else. If they fold, what happens?

Would you buy an Olympus product right now?”

Nicole: I've only had to use a warranty once so I wouldn't worry too much about that. I think if he wants the camera he should get it but she personally wouldn't buy one right now but she's also not in the market at the moment.

Syl: I wouldn't worry about it too much. Bankruptcies take a long time to work themselves out so if that camera sings to you, I would go for it.

Martin: I was recently looking at the Pen line and was very impressed with the line up so I wouldn't worry too much about the recent troubles they've been having. Look at Konica and Minolta who were bought by Sony and their lenses are compatible with Sony cameras.

Question 2:

“Listener Charles Hasser is headed to Lake Tahoe and is looking for some suggestions on where he can go to take some great landscape photos at sunrise and sunset.”

Martin: Whenever I go to places I haven't been before, the first thing I do is to use Google Earth to get the lay of the land. Search for images on Flickr and Google to find images shot in that area and that will give you some ideas on where the images where made.

For great sunrise or sunset photos, there are several great apps for the iPhone and iPad that will tell you when sunset and sunrise will happen.

Nicole: Check out Trey Ratcliff's iPad application called Stuck on Earth which pulls curated images from Flickr for a variety of locations around the world.

Picks of the Week!

Nicole: Magic Lantern

Martin: FoCal – Lens Calibration & Microadjustment Tool. Martin recently did a review on his Blog/Podcast.

Syl: Light and Lighting: From Snapshots to Great Shots

Frederick: Palm Springs Photo Festival and Mophie Juice Pack Plus

Wrap Up

Follow us on twitter.com/ThisWeekInPhoto. Join the Flickr critique group. You can also join our Facebook group and add us to your circles on Google+.

Martin Bailey: www.twitter.com/martinbailey or www.martinbaileyphotography.com or Google+

Nicole Young: www.twitter.com/nicolesy or www.nicolesyblog.com or www.nicolesyplus.com

Syl Arena: www.twitter.com/syl_arena or www.speedliting.com

Frederick Van Johnsonwww.frederickvan.com or www.mediabytes.com or fvj.me/plus

Credits

TWiP is brought to you by the following sponsors:

This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the Internet's leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature, including fiction, non-fiction and periodicals.  For a free audiobook of your choice, go to audiblepodcast.com/twip.

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Pre-Production and Show notes by Edmonton Wedding Photographer Bruce Clarke at www.momentsindigital.com or www.twitter.com/bruceclarke

Producers: Suzanne Llewellyn

Bandwidth provided by Cachefly

Intro Music by Scott Cannizzaro

Photo Credit: Nikon

11 Comments

  1. Hey guys! I’m the guy getting paid to run the iphone course! One thing only Nicole really picked up on was the processing involved with iphoneography. Not only are there 1,000s of apps that people need to be guided through and recommended, a lot of them are quite complex and so need instruction. Looking at your feed on IG, Fred, I don’t think you’ve really explored them as much as you could ; ) But you were also right in saying that the course will as as a new (much cheaper) point of access for photography generally. So yes we’ll also cover composition, light, colour, etc. Please let me know if you’d like to see how the course goes (I’m @rugfoot on IG and flickr). By the way, the first one is fully subscribed so we’re running it again in April! But thanks for your discussion, great that there’s so much interest! Richard

    1. Hi @087e439e8537f2ba5aac6bd7089a7b0a:disqus ,

      Thanks for listening (and commenting). You’re right – I admit, as evidenced by my Instagram feed (@frederickvan), haven’t fully explored a ton of photography-related iPhone apps. I generally stick to 4 or 5 at any given time. Any more than that and I start feeling like it’s more about “what photo can I take to use with this app” rather than “what app should I use to make this photo better”.The point I was trying to make in the show (likely unsuccessfully) was that tools evolve and change – but the constants in photography are technique, creativity, and the physics of light. If shooters master the constants, then they can generally apply them to shooting with most any tool.There’s clearly much more to discuss on this topic. So, I’d like to officially invite you to come on TWiP and discuss the course, iPhone photography, and your thoughts on why a course like this is needed. Let’s ensure the TWiP Army has the “complete picture” on iPhoneogaphy. :)Please send me your email via the Contact Us form and I’ll we’ll get things sorted.https://thisweekinphoto.com/contact-us/Regardless of the tool used, these are excellent times to be a photographer!Frederick.

    2. Why thanks Frederick, that’s very kind of you! Quite agree that the fundamentals are the same whatever camera you use. And we will cover some of them in the course. But iphoneography just gives a much bigger processing toolbox to work with and many more opportunities (due to lower cost, more available time to process photos and more opportunities to take photos). And a really important thing is that you get to share more with other photographers. So it’s a much faster moving community than traditional photography. Anyway, would love to come on TWiP and discuss! Richard ps that link doesn’t seem to work but my email is rnj.gray@gmail.com.

  2. Hi TWiP – 

    what was the iOS app. mentioned besides “The Photographer’s Ephemeris” – Martin said it too quickly / Skype was being temperamental during the podcast

    thanks

  3. Another great show, TWIP! I am consuming all the information I can on the Nikon D800. I’ve also been scratching my head about the 36 MP focus. I shoot with a D700, and I can’t remember ever saying “if I only had more megapixels this camera would be perfect!” I’ve thought that about having video, but I’m wondering who was crying out for more megapixels. What problem was Nikon trying to solve. 🙂

    The Facebook discussion was also interesting. I can’t see them becoming a stock site. Most of the photos there seem to be people documenting their lives rather than showcasing art. The other problem is you have to be friends to see other people’s pictures, unlike Flickr, where I can spend endless hours searching photos of strangers. I was hoping you’d take that discussion toward Google +. They seem like the kind of company that might try to venture into stock. 

    I always enjoy the shows…especially when they cover Nikon cameras. 🙂

  4. Super TWIP. I really liked what Bambi had to say.

    Quick question. With Mobile Me going away in July, do you have a recommendation for an online photo storage alternative. I’m looking for selective viewer access and a seamless (painless)  upload from a mac.

  5. Hi, be carefully with the magic lantern firmware override, your cam needs a specific firmware version!!! Read careful the manual!!
    and have fun with it!

  6. Though Magic Lantern is by all appearances a great app for those wishing more functions in their MKII, I found it strange that it will not work with Canon’s latest firmware 2.0.9. Is there a reason why Nicole has decided not to keep the latest firmware in her MKII? This point should’ve been mentioned as I’m certain that most MKII owners will have the latest firmware installed on their cameras and need to know that Magic Lantern will not work if so.