I is often quite difficult to find the user manual of a good SLR camera like the Canon EOS 550D (aka Canon T2i or Kiss X4). This is the reason why I decided to share with you the result of my searches. You will become able to evaluate correctly the features of the this nice SLR camera, the Canon EOS 550D.

• Canon EOS 550D PDF User Manual (Canon Europe)
• Books about the Canon EOS 550D (Amazon.com)
• Canon EOS 550D PDF User Manual (local download)
• Mode d’emploi du Canon EOS 550D (PDF de Canon Europe)

You can download them freely.

A major firmware update for the Pentax K-7, version 1.10. I think that K7 owners should have a look right now.

Download firmware for Pentax K-7, from Pentax Japan web site.

Features:

• Added Movie editing function on playback mode palette. You can divide a movie into multiple segments and erase unwanted segments from the movie.
• Added Electronic Level indication on the Monitor.
• When Mode dial is set M or X and Electronic Level is set to display, exposure meter is indicated both of them in the LCD panel and in the Viewfinder.
• Added [Reversal Film] mode on Custom Image function [PENTAX Digital Camera Utility 4] have been updated.
• When using Live View, auto focus activate by pressing shutter release button halfway.
• Improved focus speed.

Download updater for Windows.

Download updater for Mac OSX.

Canon just announced the availability of a new firmware (v1.2.2) for the Canon EOS 7D.

Main features:

• Fixes a phenomenon in which the set aperture moves when shooting movies in manual exposure mode using some Canon lenses (such as macro lenses).
• Fixes the AF point-selection behavior of the C.Fn III-7 (Manual AF pt. selec. pattern) custom function when set to [1].
• Fixes the AF point display for the viewfinder electronic level when shooting in the vertical position.
• Corrects misspellings in the Spanish and Thai menus for applicable products.

Firmware Downloads from the Canon (Japan) web site: Canon EOS 7D firmware.

photo credit: eirikso

Canon launches two new firmwares (surprisingly, both hold the same version number v1.0.8, but they are really two different firmwares split at birth for two different cameras).

For the Canon EOS 1D Mk-IV, this is the correction of a bug around the aperture management in video mode.
For the Canon EOS 550D, menus have to be corrected/updated.

As usual, the downloads will take place from the Canon Japanese web site:

• Download Firmware Update 1.0.8 pour Canon EOS 550D
• Download Firmware Update 1.0.8 pour Canon EOS 1D Mk-IV

The beta version of Camera Raw v6.1 is now available from Adobe. As usual, we can be pretty sure that this version is looking a lot like the final one. As complete as ever, this software program is more or less the reference in RAW format photo picture handling (the DxO Labs tools still have a better technical fame, but they need to catch up with the enormous notoriety of the Adobe brand).

This new version of Camera Raw, with its new improvements in digital noise management, brings new options of automatic lens defect correction (vignetting, distortion and chromatic aberrations) as shown in the presentation video from Downloadsquad just below. But the best is still to go and download the beta version (unless you would prefer to avoid testing a version which is not 100% debugged by Adobe).

IrfanView v4.27

The excellent images handling software program, IrfanView, has just been upgraded to version 4.27.

• Command line options to handle images with scripts (actions) or filters.
• Addition of a border or a frame.
• Addition of new filters and file formats.
• The screen copies options now allow to handle larger objects like a full web page (auto-scroll is included).

Even better, it stays free.

It is sometimes unpleasant to discover a little annoying problem like a defective pixel on the sensor of a digital photo camera. It produces a small colored pixel (often black or white, sometimes of some other color). On a RAW file, it could be worse if it produces a colored streak.

It is most visible when shooting long exposures and the strategy used by most photo cameras is simply to shoot an additional black picture(without opening the shutter) just after the photo you wanted to find the hot pixels and remove/subtract them from the original photo. This is observable as a relatively long computation after a long exposure photo.

Sample kindly provided by Dan Thorberg.

It takes time in the field and it uses up the camera electrical energy. So, here is a small tool that allow to transfer this operation toward the studio PC: PixelFixer.

The list of photo cameras this tool is compatible with contains a lot of cameras from Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Leica. No Sony I know of (they are left with the in-camera option that works well too).

Téléchargement gratuit de PixelFixer.

It is no longer possible to list all the web sites that offer you the possibility to assemble a photo collage in a form that is appreciated by so many photographers despite its simplicity. Many web sites are characterized by the needed payments they request, but the idea has come a long way and what could be easily done with scissors and a glue stick, is now available on a computer near you. So, here are just two ideas I liked.

• PhotoVisi offers about the usual services with the main difference that you can freely download the image file in 1600×1200 pixels.
• ShapeCollage is letting your imagination roam freely with its huge choice of templates taking the form of nearly anything and because it is a free download software.

If, after that, you do not have ideas for your next photos, I’ll resign…

Canon was fast on this one. A few hours only after announcing the removal of version 2.0.3, here is the new version 2.0.4 of the Canon EOS 5D MkII firmware. It corrects a bug in sound handling in 1080p video mode.

Firmware v2.0.4

It’s been quite some time that I wanted to mention the existence of a powerful HDR tool that is available for Mac: HDRtist is free and seems quite able. Unfortunately, it comes from the family of HDR tools which prefer to produce unrealistic images, but it can be tweaked.

The new version of HDRtist, v1.2, is available for free download.

Today, Canon announced that they will add 24 and 25 fps HD Movie recording to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II photo camera with firmware v2.0.3. It will be available as a free download from the middle of March.

GIMP is an excellent image edition software which could (should?) attract all those who do not want to pay the full price of Photoshop, while they work with Apple, Windows or Linux. the differences are real, but the most obvious one is certainly the interface (and Adobe clearly did a nice work on it). So, why not try to prep up your GIMP to make it look like a near-clone of Photoshop?

photo credit: See-ming Lee ��明 SML

Blair Mathis decided to reduce the distance between them by the installation of several plugins on GIMP. And the result is astonishingly interesting. All the more because the process is fully documented step-by-step, which makes it little more than a longer software installation.

1. PSPI
2. Layers
3. Separate+ from Yellowmagic
4. Liquid Rescale from Wikidot (for an image rescale without deformation as in CS4)
5. Additional brushes from Blendfu
6. GIMP Animation Package
7. Enable GEGL

But if this is not enough, there are also a few hacked versions of GIMP that have been already prepared for the Photoshop lovers. The most renowned are:

• GimpShop whose interface is specially good
• GimPhoto is slightly less convincing but is based on a more recent (and more powerful) GIMP version

Once again, here is how you can (nearly) download Photoshop for free, while being well on the right side of law.

The user manual for the Pentax K-x is now available for free download (at Pentax Japan).

• Pentax K-x User Manual

Following our previous article about online backup for the photographer’s files (which ended up with a recommendation of Mozy Backup), it could be noticed that Lifehacker published an article on a similar subject (but in more general terms) and recommends the following 5 tools:

• CrashPlan (Windows/Mac/Linux/Open Solaris, Basic [No online storage] Free, Premium [Unlimited] $4.50 per month)
• Mozy (Windows/Mac, Basic [2GB] Free, Home Premium [Unlimited] $4.95 per month)
• Dropbox (Windows/Mac/Linux, Basic [2GB] Free, Pro [50GB] $9.99 per month)
• Jungle Disk (Windows/Mac/Linux, Pricing: $2 per month + Per GB Fees)
• Carbonite (Windows/Mac, Unlimited Storage $4.58 per month)

Source: Five Best Online Backup Tools [Hive Five]

If you want to know everything about the technology included in the Canon 1D Mark IV, you can now download the White Paper published by Canon about this pro photo camera whose possibilities are clearly astonishing (as much as the price, by the way; But, who’s to prohibit dreaming a little?).

Canon White Paper for the EOS-1D Mark IV.

• US: $ 4,999, Europe: € 4,999, UK: £ 4,999
• Buy it from B&H (The Professional’s Source)
• Buy from Amazon.com
• Acheter sur Carrefour online

EXIF date changer

The EXIF data hold a lot of useful technical information about your photos. One of these is the date and hour of the snapshot. This is quite pleasant, useful and nice up to the moment when your camera internal clock fails or starts lagging. Or when you need very precise synchronization with another device (like a GPS geo-marker, for example). Here, you need to correct precisely the hour (or worse, the date) written in your photos and -generally- you have to do it on dozens of photos at once.

How to do this? Under Windows, ask to EXIF Date Changer from Relik Software. This utility program will allow to correct this information in a matter of seconds.

We may have to group them since the firmware updates sometimes happen nearly at the same time. The latest ones are:

• Sony Alpha series (A380, A330 & A230): Mac, Windows (Sony Europe)
• Canon EOS 7D v1.1.0 (to correct an issue where a previous image may partly superimpose itself on the next, in continuous shooting): Instructions and download link