Deke McLelland, the photoshop guru and self confessed geek has put together a hilarious video that anyone who uses photoshop will really enjoy. He gives out 101 photoshop tips and shortcuts in 5 mins set to a theme song while dancing like a monkey with a death wish. Hilarious!
Very educational, slightly eccentric but highly entertaining. Click on the blip.tv video above or go check out deke.com for more of his shennanigans and photoshop tips and tricks. He has some great podcasts and blog articles realted to all things Adobe!
Well it has come time to finally invest in a hard drive recorder or a combo HDD/DVD recorder. Our VCR has finally shat itself and we have no way of recording stuff from TV to watch later. I was originally going to just replace it, but why bother. I cant stand the quality of video now that I’ve had DVD for so long and I cant remember the last time I watched a video anyway. I dont want a standalone DVD recorder as I dont want 10,000 DVD’s that will never be watched again so I figure a HDD recorder is the way to go where you can delete stuff you dont want and burn off what you do.
My biggest problem is that I love my gadgets and I have been in a gadget black hole for some time now so I have got cravings for toys. The problem is that I have not been keeping up on my home entertainment technology like I used to so I dont know who or whats good anymore and thats where you guys come in. I need some help from people in the know or other people who like their home theatres as well.
What brands are currently the better ones, which major features are MUST HAVES in HDD recorders, which features really make life easy and which recorder is the easiest for my wife to use but has the flexibility for me to really get in amongst its nitty gritty’s?
Thats the start of it I guess so come on peoples let me know.
In the mean time for those of you in the same situation I have compiled a small list of starting resources for you:
I have now had a few weeks to play with the Olympus u 1030 SW point and shoot digital camera I recently bought. To sum it up in a few short words I would have to say easy to use, mostly sharp, clear and definitely bulletproof. I took the approach of just being a general user of the camera, I tried to put my SLR brain aside and look at this as any untrained general user of the camera would. Thats said I also tried to pick it apart as much as I could and throw some difficult shooting situations at it to really see what it can do.
Apart from getting my wife to take mountains of happy snaps all around home and out and about, my first big test of the camera was when I went to the Snow for the opening of the ski season. I had grand plans to take heaps of test pictures with it while in the snow, but I had too much fun partying and taking photos was the last thing on my mind. I did manage to get a few macro and super macro shots though. The first big test for it was when I accidentally left it in the car overnight. The temperature got down to -7°c and everything was covered in ice in the morning - including the camera. I wasnt too concerned as it was mainly on the LCD which was left screen up on the seat, so I fired it up and it turned straight on and started taking pictures so I was really impressed with that. My mates Nikon Coolpix didnt fair so good and had troubles turning on, so I couldn’t take a picture of the ice for you. After about an hour, the Nikon thawed out enough and was fine.
Overall the Olympus 1030 is a very capable camera. In full auto mode it looks after everything for you from flash to ISO and in most situations I couldnt find any major flaws. Mixed white balance scenes confuses the sensor a bit, but any camera will do that, and it chose the dominant white balance every time which you would expect it to do. If you need more manual white balance control it is available through the camera menu when in P mode as well as manual ISO control too. For the purposes of this review I mainly used the camera in auto or scene modes as that is what the majority of people will want to do.
Auto ISO can be a bit annoying as noise is a real problem when light levels start to drop. The ISO compensation introduces a nasty amount of noise and colour aberations at anything above 400, and is even worse if you have shadow adjust turned on. I don’t think this is something that really goes against that camera as noise is a problem for my Nikon D200 SLR at anything above 800, so comparitively for a much smaller sensor and lense of a much lesser quality it doesn’t do too bad. I haven’t come across a compact camera yet that manages noise well at elevated ISO’s.
I have noticed though that Jpeg compression may be a bit harsh in some conditions. I first noticed it in the images from the Hugh Jackman Wolverine photos I took. The day was overcast but very glary, but it was also a low contrast scene. I was using normal jpeg compression so why it made the image soft and washed out the detail so much I dont know. If I had have noticed it on the day I may have tried fine compression to see if that fixed it. I havent been able to recreate it since. In most situation the images are great, producing sharp images with accurate saturation. Indoors can be hit and miss in auto mode with funny White balance selections, but the majority of the time it is fine. I would expect that as well, especially in a house like ours where we have a mixture of light sources from tungstent to flourescent and any number of combinations of the two. Using the scene modes can improve the images quality dramatically and give you a little bit more control with out having to know what it is doing in the background.
With my big fingers I sometimes have troubles with the small buttons and dials on compact point and shoot cameras, I have had no dramas with the olympus 1030 sw. Buttons are laid out well and fairly logical to my thinking. It can take a little bit of time to find all the functions at first but once you know what does what in which mode everything is pretty well accessible at the touch of a button. The immediate access to macro and flash controls, either side of the OK button, is brilliant for my style of shooting. It gives fast control for modes that sometimes you need immediate and fast access to. I love that you dont have to ferret around in the menus looking for commonly used controls, as the menus in the Olympus can be confusing at times as they vary wildly between shooting modes and arent always that easy to understand.
Overall I think the Olympus 1030sw is a brilliant compact camera. It is easy to use, fast to learn and powerful enough for those who want a little extra control over their images. In auto mode I almost cant fault the cameras selections, but the minor things that bug me, like noise at high ISO, would not even be noticed by the majority of users. Although a little dearer than an equivalent model probably with better features, it is a tough and ideal choice for families with small children, divers or snorkellers, surfers, adventurers and tradespeople who need a camera that will take the abuse and not fail at a crucial moment. I highly recommend the Olympus 1030 SW as tough, almost bulletproof camera.
Had a day off work today so decided to go down to Blacksmith’s Beach to check out the filming of Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman. I mainly wanted to go down to check out the movie pyrotechnic special effects, and my wife wanted to perve on Hugh. I got to see my pyro but we were too far away to see Hugh. I only took my Olympus 1030 SW point and shoot camera after I heard about the dramas other photographers were having with their long lenses and managed to get this photo, but as you can see we were so far away you cant make much out.
The crew has been on the Wolverine set for two days now, with locals getting really excited about the action. Apparently Hugh Jackman made a special appearance for fans yesterday signing autographs and taking photos.
The setup is quite impressive with the whole of the Blacksmiths Surf life saving club carpark taken over by trucks and camper trailers. The beach appears to have been setup like a world war II beach landing scene, I think it was the Normandy beach landing. After waiting for an hour we managed to see a live run of the soldiers taking the beach with bombs going off everywhere including in the water and gunfire fights as well.
I cant wait until Wolverine comes out in cinemas. I am keen to see how what we saw translates onto the big screen. Rumours say it should be out next year some time.
