If you own a Digital SLR Camera read this!!

Hi everyone. This is a really quick blog post just to let you know that if you;

a. Own a Digital SLR camera

b. Love using it

c. Want to learn how to use it more effectively

d. Are trying to figure out how to use Photoshop (CS3 or CS4)

Then you HAVE to look at this new series of ongoing video podcasts called “D-Town TV” by Scott Kelby and Matt Koslowski. You can find their website here or alternatively they are on iTunes too.

These guys are two of the best known photo-education personalities on the internet at the moment. They have done lots of shows before including (the ongoing) Photoshop User TV and Lightroom Killer Tips series of video podcasts.

The first series of D-Town TV was Nikon-centric and an amazing resource for ALL things to do with your Nikon D-SLR. Over 24 episodes they covered far too many topics to list here. The name “D-Town” came from the fact that every Nikon D-SLR model name has a “D” prefix.

However, they are now on their second series and the “D” has been replaced to stand for “Digital”; i.e., the show is now about all things digital photography related. Cool. This means that they now cover a whole range of topics that are relevant no matter what your brand of camera is. They are also going to be covering a bunch of Photoshop and Lightroom tips as well as studio lighting tips, location lighting, gadgets and gizmos – the list goes on.

Go on, give them a go. You will not regret it!

PS- that is officially the most hyperlinks I have placed into a blog post to date… :o)

Things that make you go... ouch...

Hi everyone – I’m back… kinda. I decided to take some well deserved time off from everything over the Christmas / New Year break and also the first two weeks of January. Wow, I gotta tell you, it was great. Now when I said I took a break, I still had plenty of shoots, a couple of weddings and a swag of post production to do to boot. So what I should say is that over the last couple of weeks I haven’t gone out of my way to do anything other than what I had to!

One of the things that I have been doing however is getting ready to relocate my office here at home. We live in a humble little 3x1 with an attached granny-flat. The granny flat has for a long time now been renovated and is used as our studio space. It works really well. We have a reasonable but modest floor space for the studio, a storage room, a comfy client lounge area with a bathroom and a walk-in wardrobe/change room. In the main house I have been using one of the bedrooms as my office which has also worked really well.

However as my wife and I are expecting our second child in a few months, it was decided that I was getting evicted from my office and I had to relocate into the, wait for it, walk-in wardrobe in the studio. It is a fairly small space obviously but it isn’t that bad. In fact, I am typing this blog post from my little closet on my made-to-order desk; albeit on my laptop via the wireless network as the electrician isn’t due for a couple of days to install the 48 power points that I will need in here (ok, that’s an exaggeration; but not much of one!) and I have yet to re-route all of the network cables currently criss-crossing in our roof cavity. The studio has always had ducted evaporative air-conditioning from the main house but in honestly it has never really worked all that well. That’s why earlier this week we had two brand new Panasonic Inverter split system refrigerated air conditioning units installed down here in the studio. Cool… so very very cool!

Speaking of getting work done, the image in this blog post tells a bit of a story. This ladies and gentlemen is how not to clean your camera’s CCD. Those of you with a keen eye will have noticed the enormous scratch on the low-pass filter covering the CCD. Ouch. And that was the CCD in my Nikon D700. Again I say, OUCH!

I have cleaned the CCD’s in my old Fuji D-SLR’s dozens of times over the years, literally. I have never had a problem like this before. Just my luck I guess that when I attempt a clean on my Nikon that I stuff it up! Oh well, lessons have been learned and my D700 now has a sparkling new CCD assembly. Note to self – next time, take it to a Pro shop and let them clean it for you. Actually, I have to give kudos to all of the guys at Hartland Camera Repairs here in Perth, our authorised Nikon Repair Centre. Once they had the part from Nikon I had my D700 back in 48 hours, all good as new. Thanks guys!

Ok, that’s it for now, we will return to normal programming in a week to two!