• Windows Explorer (thumbs and gallery)
• Windows Live Photo Gallery

The new Microsoft codec brings new compatibility with the following impressive list of cameras:

• Canon: EOS 1000D (EOS Kiss F in Japan and the EOS Rebel XS in North America), EOS 10D, EOS 1D Mk2, EOS 1D Mk3, EOS 1D Mk4, EOS 1D Mk2 N, EOS 1Ds Mk2, EOS 1Ds Mk3, EOS 20D, EOS 300D (the Kiss Digital in Japan and the Digital Rebel in North America) , EOS 30D, EOS 350D (the Canon EOS Kiss Digital N in Japan and EOS Digital Rebel XT in North America), EOS 400D (the Kiss Digital X in Japan and the Digital Rebel XTi in North America), EOS 40D, EOS 450D (EOS Kiss X2 in Japan and the EOS Rebel XSi in North America), EOS 500D (EOS Kiss X3 in Japan and the EOS Rebel T1i in North America), EOS 550D (EOS Kiss X4 in Japan, and as the EOS Rebel T2i in North America), EOS 50D, EOS 5D, EOS 5D Mk2, EOS 7D, EOS D30, EOS D60, G2, G3, G5, G6, G9, G10, G11, Pro1, S90
• Nikon: D100, D1H, D200, D2H, D2Hs, D2X, D2Xs, D3, D3s, D300, D3000, D300s, D3X, D40, D40x, D50, D5000, D60, D70, D700, D70s, D80, D90, P6000
• Sony: A100, A200, A230, A300, A330, A350, A380, A700, A850, A900, DSC-R1
• Olympus: C7070, C8080, E1, E10, E20, E3, E30, E300, E330, E400, E410, E420, E450, E500, E510, E520, E620, EP1
• Pentax (PEF formats only): K100D, K100D Super, K10D, K110D, K200D, K20D, K7, K-x, *ist D, *ist DL, *ist DS
• Leica: Digilux 3, D-LUX4, M8, M9
• Minolta: DiMage A1, DiMage A2, Maxxum 7D (Dynax 7D in Europe, α-7 Digital in Japan)
• Epson: RD1
• Panasonic: G1, GH1, GF1, LX3

If you want to download immediately the English version of the codec pack, just go to the special Microsoft download web site: Microsoft Camera Codec Pack (16.0.0652.0621).

Source: Roumazeilles.net

It is the right time to prepare your Christmas gifts and the coming new year with my photographic prints or my posters (or even the new year’s cards). And it will help me maintain the YLovePhoto web site. But, I want to extend this to a gift for you. You will be able to use the special code that will unlock a special magic voucher:

15% of discount
with the code:

Yves Roumazeilles – The catalog of photos and prints

Métro, collages, déchirures by Yves Roumazeilles	Big cats of Africa by Yves Roumazeilles

RedBubble is an online art gallery and arts community. Browse the growing collection of art at http://www.redbubble.com

photo credit: irrezolut

A few years ago, the only destination we could think of for our photos was the paper used for most family snapshots. A few photographers were also making large format printouts, but nothing more.

With the advent of digital photography, it is now common not to print at all and to look at the pictures on the LCD screen, on the computer or on the mobile phone used to grab the image.

Print a lot

But, thanks to Internet, we also added the possibility to use printing services to nearly any kind of substrate. Think about it: In most cases, the printing services include at least the options to have your best images printed on:

• Posters
• Cards
• T-shirts, shorts and other cloth
• Mugs
• Caps
• etc.

Print on everything

But is this all? No! I found a series of surprising ways you can use your photos. The imagination seems to be the only limit. Let’s find the list of things I liked (after the jump…).

Shower curtains

Yes! You can have your personalized shower curtain. You can add your own photos to improve the shower. The imagination is definitely the limit.

For $150-200, PhotoShowerCurtain.com will put your pictures on a plastified shower curtain using dye sublimation.

Sample PhotoShowerCurtain.com print out

Photo books

Many a print company offers the possibility to print a book (or a booklet) of your photos. I will not recommend one, but I would suggest that you follow the advice from Neil and Naomi Creek in Show your photos like a Pro with a Photo eBook (even if this is targeted at eBooks, a good part of the advice is applicable in print too).

I would also suggest that you take time to check great photo books by photographers like Scott Kelby. I love his work on “The colors of… Tuscany“. Take free inspiration. Try and reproduce the best of his presentation; Your book will be great.

Copyright (c) Scott Kelby

Puzzle blocks

PhotoJojo also suggest that you may be printing your photo on puzzle blocks. A kind of high-quality kids game that is involving your own photography work.

Photo-printed puzzle blocks

I admit that this could become a nice Christmas present for your kids (or the kid inside your friends). And it is something that you can do by yourself: Make your own puzzle block.

Hand-painted portraits

At the extreme, you can send the photo portrait of your loved ones to Send Me Your Head and receive a 3″ x 3″ painting from artist Karen Schmidt.

This artistic project may sound weird, but I think it’s kind of cool, too.

Copyright (c) Karen Schmidt

Last idea

If you think that this was not enough, you can have a moment of fun and think about what it could be to print your photo directly on a plane.

Your photo here?

Great Crested Grebe, backlit	Great Crested Grebe in the sunrise	Duck, flying, backlit
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge them

If you want to only watch the photographs, you can merely ask for a large format print on RedBubble (or a simple card).

But I think that the story of these three photos is a good example of what I (sometimes) succeed in doing in photography. Let me tell you this story.

The location

The Lake Der-Chantecoq is located in France between Troyes and Saint Dizier, at the gates of the Champagne vineyards. It is a man-made volume created to be hold the high waters of the River Marne to reduce the risk of flooding Paris. Several villages have be drowned in its waters when it was built between 1967 and 1974. Water fauna and migratory birds adopted its 48 km² (the largest artificial lake in France) in their long journeys and its being classified Réserve Nationale de Chasse et de Faune Sauvage provides good protection. So, this became a common meeting point for amateur ornithologists (with or without a photo camera).

Tip: If the specialists go there, follow in their steps.

The time

I wanted to go there for a long time, but only a little whim (“why not go and watch sunrise there? I don’t have anything better planned for the day”) in order to have me moving. Let’s remember that early and late hours provide these lights often named the “golden hour” for they offer richer lights, quieter moments (less tourists). You may have to make some little effort, though (African safaris are not the only time to wake up early).

But, I have to admit that this was a little over my usual limit: Up at 3:30 to drive from Paris in time for sunrise…

Tip: Wake up early (or stay late).

The weather

I should have been checking the Weather Channel before leaving: Heavy fog on the last 60km.

Tip: Check the weather before.

What could I do when light is lacking and colours are gone? (Usually, colours are easier for me and my eye) Let’s choose something completely different: Monochrome. If I had checked the weather, I may have hesitated to wake up early and I would only had had the grey afternoon of that same day.

Tip: Don’t check the weather and use whatever happens to be at hand.

The frame

This is no random chance if those three pictures are framed vertically. Many a photo would look better (would look more “pro”) once in a frame favoring their height. Quite a large number of my best photos are vertical (I have to fill the frame adequately, but it’s often more dynamic).

Tip: Always check if a vertical frame “would be better”.

Great Crested Grebe in the sunrise

The composition

Advice is made to be forgotten, but for composition millenia-old rules are to stay. One of them, “the rule of thirds”, requires to cut the image in three identical parts, locating the subject(s) adequately in the frame.

In the picture here on the right, I think I had a little success. The grebe is in the lower third, the bush in the upper third. Let’s not get technical though: I introduced a slight imbalance to compensate for the relative masses of both subjects.

In the case of the backlit grebe, composition is using 1/3 plus 2/3. In the upper part, there could be another object (like the bush in the previous photo), but I chose to leave this space empty in order to let the sun fill it. The rule o fthirds is here… with a twist.

Duck, flying, backlit

for the duck picture, I wanted to take advantage of the mirror effect in the lake water. I could have built a perfectly symetric image composition, but “it didn’t fly”. So, I reframed it slightly to give a little more space over both silhouettes and let the duck take off.

Here is a centered composition. Out of center.

Tip: Choose your composition before pressing the shutter release.

The final steps

Once the photo shot, it is possible to reach the image development stage (like for a chemical silver picture, but with computer-based techniques). This is not the easier part, but I like it and the computer is forginving: You don’t have to pay your errors and trials with expensive chemical baths and photo paper.

Great Crested Grebe, backlit

Here, the sky is the limit. The first thing to do, maybe the easiest, is to reframe the image. The grebe on the right was not framed like that on the original image. As a matter of fact, the enormous light contrasts made the autofocus a bit imprecise. So, I chose to focus on the bird with the most sensitive AF sensor (center one for most SLR cameras) and not to reframe immediately but only later. I also used the computer to perfect centering of the glimmer (the bird was always moving around, diving down, and I did not want to risk missing the right moment; I kept some finishing steps for a later stage).

But this image also had its inherent difficulties. It’s not too visible in the Internet-sized picture, but it was critical to maintain a perfect quality on large prints and posters; Two dangers loomed in the original file:

• I wanted to keep the extraordinary structure and shape of the glimmering sun: Seen from a very short distance, it looks a lot like hundreds of white-hot metal slabs.
• The violent backlight on the bird created a slight reddish aura that I did not want.

This is one situation where I drop the JPEG file in favor of its Raw counter-part. Thanks to Adobe Camera Raw for its ability to simultaneously work on optical defects like this aura (with a lovely choice of settings), image accentuation and colour balance (it is critical even if the photo seems to be made of only five impressionnist coloured oils).

Raw was also the only way to keep the soft pink colour of the other grebe.

Even if it was simpler for the flying duck, it was worth a small correction using Photoshop curves to bring colours back.

In the end, both monochrome images received intensive care to clean up little details: Each water reflection was checked and evaluated individually and in the context of the overall photograph. Some were promtply removed. Many have simply been tweaked a bit. For example, the future owners of a large print of the duck’s flight will notice a few water droplets flying around the bird and their reflection on the lake surface.

Tip: Never stop before image editing.

But I worked only on these three images. 80 shutter clicks, sorting done by a fanatic. I don’t want to spend my energy on images that would not be worth it. I slowly teached myself that it’s no use trying to control images in the field and that I must drop anything less than perfect. Even with this, all my images are far from perfection and those who are obviously not will never leave Adobe Bridge.

Tip: Remove anything less than perfect. Only keep the best.

It’s easier if you had a clear idea of the photo you wanted to get while releasing the shutter. Your pictures are linked by this common initial aim.

Tip: Decide what photo you want. Do not just press the shutter release.

Luck

Once you have all aces in your game, luck is welcome too. On each of these images, there is a bit of luck.

• I expected a nice light in the glimmering sun, but I did not know that it would happen in long strokes like that.
• The near-perfect monochrome of the “pink grebe” would not have been possible without the 30 or 40 minutes when the sun was masked in the softening fog.
• The duck’s reflection is only a product of the very slight wind agitating the lake’s surface. A little more, a little less, and the picture would have been totally different. I think I would not have liked it.

Tip: Have luck. After all this, you earned it.

Now, if you were not disappointed by the detailled explanation, you may still buy a large format print on RedBubble.

I found two calibration solutions/offers that are easily accessible (and free):

Screen Check presents a screen that will support you while you play with the screen settings (brightness and contrast).

Calibrize offers you a small software application to download to allow more precise settings (preferably if your graphics card includes color settings).

Canon EOS 500D / Rebel T1i / Kiss X3

After a second half of 2009 where Nikon has been putting a lot of competitive pressure on Canon, here comes the new Canon dSLR photo camera: Canon EOS 500D (also known as Canon Rebel T1i) and, boy! did they react well.

The Canon EOS 500D is definitely a great step forward where Canon is redefining many features that will be included in entry-level SLR cameras. Essentially, the EOS 500D is including many features that were previously only expected from the models at EOS 50D level or similar mid-range models.

Canon felt the pressure from the Nikon D90; They answer with a camera which has been improved in many different aspects, starting with:

• Video capture up to 1080p
• Improved LCD screen, totally orientable
• More than 15MP sensor, a lot of pixels in a low-cost camera

This is so high an expectation, that you feel surprised not to find such features as per-lens micro-adjustments.

You may not be interested in switching to Canon from your current preferred brand, but all this is good news: All SLR cameras are going to be better just because the Canon EOS 500D is obviously an excellent product.

All the features of the Canon EOS 500D.

Also to be noticed: Canon is simultaneously introducing other related products: two photo printers PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II & PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II printing up to A3+ and a compact flash, Speedlite 270EX.

So, try now to do large prints. You’ll start thinking about your work. You’ll start seeing things differently. You’ll start to notice that your photo work improves itself by this exercice of printing. Don’t limit yourself to A4/Letter-size. Go full poster-size with a print shop or borrow an A3 printer from a friend or a photo club.

Start by evaluating the image sizes using the Megapixels Chart from D40 Photog, and learn how to crop large prints.

Then, print your best image. Hang it to a wall. Step back and look at it.

First, you’ll be pleased.
Second, people around you will be pleased, too.
Third, you’ll find a few little things to improve and you will already be a better photographer.