Boing Boing fills us in on a small slide scanner that does 5 mega-pixel scans in one second.

Uses for the Depth of Field Preview Button

First Micro Four-Thirds Camera Revealed!

It looks like the first micro four-thirds sensor camera is going to be the Panasonic Lumix G1

"Combining a downsized body and advanced camera features that realize the operational comfort even as easy as that of compact cameras, the super-mobile G1 shatters the old notion that all digital SLRs are bulky, heavy and hard to use. This, plus the superior picture quality made possible by a 4/3-type image sensor, draws a clear line between the new-generation Lumix G1 and all conventional digital SLR cameras."

We're entering a new age.

This is so true, A DSLR Catechism

Chase Jarvis has a first hand look at Nikon's D90.

I've got one thing to say about it: "ISO 200 - 6400 (with boost up to ISO 25600 and down to ISO 100)." Preview at DPReview.com

Shootsac

The Shootsac is designed to hold your gear but stay out of the way. It's not designed for transport; instead it's designed for quick access to lenses and anything else you might need in the field. It's inspired by a Prada handbag, and is designed for women, though I don't see why a man couldn't use it (aside from the girly covers). But, if it's functional, why not?

There also giving away some awesome Canon lenses in the month of May, to those lucky enough to order a bag and be selected.

Gear Safety While Traveling

Matt Mullenweg, a founding developer of WordPress (this blog being one of the only in the world not powered by it), and photo hobbyist, has recently been a victim of camera theft from checked baggage.

CameraPorn has a bunch of tips for keeping your equipment safe while traveling.

Some Words About the Pentax K20D

Unleash the Power of Your PowerShot

CHDK is a firmware enhancement for many digital point and shoot cameras made by Canon. After loading CHDK, you get access to a ton of features your PowerShot normally wouldn't have.

1. Enhanced ways of recording images: RAW, JPEG, increased video recording times, different compression options
2. Information Displays: live histograms, always on battery life indicator, depth of focus
3. Photographic Settings: longer exposure times (up to 65 seconds), faster shutter speeds (1/25,000 sec, and faster in some cases), automatic bracketing of exposure
4. Scripts: programmable through scripting for creating new features (i.e. trigger shot when movement sensed, change in brightness, automatic bracketing, games)
5. Tethered Shooting

The possibilities are seemingly endless. This is definitely a great hack and most importantly, it's non destructive to your camera. You aren't ever replacing the original firmware—just loading more things into memory on demand.

Ritz Camera Earth Day Special

Ritz Camera, yesterday launched a Special Edition Nikon Coolpix S52 (which isn't even out yet), for Earth Day (Happy belated Earth Day!). The camera is green and for each purchase, Ritz will purchase enough carbon credits to offset 1.91 tons of carbon dioxide from Carbon Fund. Check out the eco-friendly details.

Most Extreme Photography Equipment.

Polaroid 2.0

Polaroid might be doing away with it's line of instant films, but it looks like we might see a new offering—a small digital printer.

Nikon D3 Drop Test [YouTube Video]—allegedly it survived. I wouldn't recommend trying it

Sony's relentless SLR tinkering brings a big twist

I'll be honest, I haven't actually read any reviews of live-preview SLRs, but according to the International Herald Tribune, Sony's new technology, which is not much more than adding a second sensor dedicated to live-preview, blows them all out of the water.

Wedding Photography Equipment

Photo.net has a comprehensive guide about what you really need to photograph a wedding. If you're a serious photog you probably already have at least some of it. But this of course isn't all that you need to be a successful wedding photographer—you still need to learn some skills.

DIY Photography.net is seeking help to create a DIY Ring Light out of disposable camera flashes. If you have any ideas discuss them.

Your Awesome New Camera Bag

Aside from a few buttons and some pocket holes, sewing and I have not crossed paths since I was in seventh grade. The stuffed electric guitar made for an excellent "axe," even though the dowel rod supporting the neck snapped well within the first imaginary stage performance. One or two times since (I'm 25 now), I've thought about the things I could make if I only had access to a sewing machine.

I've always thought that the fleecelike blankets they used to give you on flights would have made an excellent liner for a laptop sleeve, and now that I've found plans for a wicked cool Camera Bag (I'd use different fabric, but it's super simple and doesn't look stupid!), the desire to make my own reminds me of the Crumpler 7-Million Dollar Home that I own, love and could never replace (it fits a ton, is comfortable and looks great). So, despite the urge to create something great and useful, I'll have to defer that pleasure to you.

If you've created one of these bags contact me; I'd love to hear your experiences (and see pictures).

ePHOTOzine

ePHOTOzine, apparently the UK's largest and friendliest on-line photography magazine, looks like a hit. There are tons of articles, tips, reviews and techniques. Check it out, even if you live in France—they won't mind.

D3 Jealousy

Have a look at the ISO these were shot at. There's almost no real noise at ISO 1600, and it's only minor at 3200. ISO 6400, is the new ISO 800 it seems.

Nikon D300 (Updated)

Engadget is predicting that a new set of professional grade DSLRs are expected from Nikon perhaps as soon as tomorrow. The new bodies, D300 and D3, presumably replace the D200, and D2 series, and add new features such as the potentially battery sucking live LCD display, and up to 11 FPS on the D3 (8 possible on the D300).

EDIT: It appears that Nikon has infact released two new cameras and a bunch of new lenses. The D3 and the D300 have been introduced and look incredible. Also introduced (in the D3), is a new full frame sensor, which is capable of adapting to the DX style lenses seemlessly. Those users who have invested a ton to outfit their D2's with DX lenses aren't out of luck, but you will only get 5.1 megapixels instead of the 12.1 of the full size FX sensor. Great to see that Nikon didn't render the DX lenses entirely useless though.

Top Photography Blogs

If you're just learning about digital photography (or film) in your spare time, as I am, or are a full time studio shooter, traveler, or other paid camera-slinger you undoubtably subscribe to some photography magazines. I for one keep getting Outdoor Photographer even though my subscription ran out; thanks! I also subscribe to ShutterBug. I find that ShutterBug is insightful for thinking about new techniques and equipment to buy, whilst Outdoor Photographer is mostly just inspiring with some sprinkles of technique. Both magazines, I think are geared more towards learning than say, American Photo or any of those artsy or journalism ones. (Note: I love "artsy" photography, I just don't subscribe.)

However, the purpose of this blog isn't necessarily to point out good magazines that you can get in print, although I guess that might not be a bad idea for a future article about off-screen learning, but in fact it is about the numerous resources of the World Wide Web. There are many great blogs out there that update their content much more regularly than I, and in fact with much more insightful and useful tips and articles. That isn't to say that you should stop reading Photub of course. If you've been a reader of Photub for any length of time, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The blogs that I am listing in this post, are blogs that I consider great additions to your RSS subscriptions—those blogs that probably have enough new content for books or bi-monthly magazines in themselves:

In no particular order...

1. The Online Photographer: The Online Photographer packs a wallop of new commentary, reviews, techniques and personal adventures into a blog that is updated fairly frequently.
2. Photocritic: Perhaps one of my favorite blogs, is this one. The authors always have something interesting to share, and do a good job presenting it. The critiques that are occassionally done are quite helpful to new and upcoming photographers, and the DIY attitude helps create some really useful and fun tools. Of note is the DIY Pringles can macro lens, that I have been wanting to try out.
3. Strobist: Everything you'd ever want or need to know about effective flash photography is right here in this blog. Literally courses of information are contained on the pages of this blog. It's also not all about flash photography. Consider the recent series about Flickr and what it can do for your photography career. Insightful articles, interesting topics and amazing techniques make this truely one of the best photography blogs on the internet.
4. Photojojo: While not really a blog per se, Photojojo's unique style and unique media (email newsletter), make it in a class of it's own. I include it in this list because they do have an RSS feed, making it "blog like." I have just one complaint about Photojojo and that is that they often seem to post stuff late, after it's already been posted elsewhere. Nevertheless, Photojojo has knocked my socks off more than a few times with interesting ideas, it's creative writing style and overall growth.
5. Digital Photography School: Anyone looking for tips can always find something at DPS. Choose a "Random Tip" or read them all. It's easily becoming an encyclopedia of techniques, buying tips, etc. for the beginner, casual student and the advanced amateur.
6. Andy Frazer's Night Photography Blog: Taking pictures at night can yeild some extremely interesting results, but not many will give you insight on creating breathtaking images at night without the flash. Andy Frazer does. You'll see lots of examples of compelling night imagery, if nothing else.
7. After Capture: The only site listed here, that actually is a monthly publication, actually has a decent blog. The blog talks, interestingly enough, about post production of your images. Becomming a "post production prince" might not happen overnight, but it'll probably happen faster with the reading of some of the articles here.
8. DIYPhotography.net: Face it, photography equipment is expensive, and we see time and time again, that a cheap light tent provides excellent results. DIYPhotography.net is all about creating cheap equipment to aide in the creation of great photographs. It's a wonderful collection and continues to grow.

The web is full of great content, and with RSS being used by nearly everyone, there certainly isn't any reason (other than time) that you can't be informed of the latest photography happenings, techniques and ideas every 15 or 20 minutes. Surely there are other great blogs out there that I did not address, but these are the ones I read on a semi-daily basis. If you think your blog should be on this list, please submit it for review, and I'll take a look.

DIY Infrared Filter and Underwater Housing

Sam Noyoun has written two instructables dealing with camera modifications.

The first would have been useful for me last week—a cheap underwater camera housing. The system using "special" Navy SEALS technology (two condoms), provides the seal and a dessicant bag helps keep the moisture out.

The second recently won second prize in a recent instructables.com science contest. (For his efforts he won $10 and a get out of jail free card— Sorry, for some reason I found it necessary to make a Monopoly joke.) This cheap infrared filter can be made in 10 minutes and uses pretty common items.

Thanks Sam for the great tutorials!

Edit: broken link fixed.

Credit Card SD Holder

Photojojo points us to Credit Card SD Holder on Instructables. The idea is simple— never be without an extra SD card again. Now if only compact flash was similar in size, I'd be happy.

Buy Not From Shopping Search Engines

DSLRBlog explains to us why we shouldn't buy photography gear from online shopping search engines. To summarize, he mentions the "If it's too good to be true" rule as well as discusses how some of the scammy online stores work. He then offers three tips for buying camera gear, which I think are pretty good.

1. Buy from brick and mortar stores. You can test (usually), hold and get a feel for what you're actually buying.
2. Talk to others who you trust for recommendations about buying through online stores.
3. Credit cards offer you a bit of protection, so pay with them if at all possible.

These tips are great in the realm of photography, but I think these are generally good rules to follow.

Camera Compare

DPReview Side-by-Side: "It's like diff(1) for cameras." Ok, UNIX nerdism aside, DPReview.com has a really cool comparison tool that I just found. Select one of the many camera models that they have stats for, and then select a bunch more to compare stats with. I've seen other tools like this in the past for various other items, but with DPReview's reputation and insanely large library of reviews, this one is probably the best camera comparison tool available. I'm not currently in the market for a camera, but when I was buying a small point and shoot for my mom, this would have been great.

Printable Lens Hoods

Lens hoods are a good way to get rid of nonimageforming light, which can cause glare in your photos. Lenshoods.co.uk has a ton of Google ads scattered throughout, and if you can navigate without clicking an ad, you can download some free templates for creating lens hoods for many different lenses.

alspix has an excellent tutorial on creating a pinhole camera out of a matchbox.

Not really instructions, but a visual howto for building a remote for a Canon 300D.