Category: photography

Nikon D70 — New Cheap DSLR King?

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I’m a member of the Dallas Camera Club and, even if I neglect to read up on the latest digital camera news, I generally hear about the latest cameras just from other members of the club. And, I learned of the Nikon D70 when the club's former president and his wife each bought one (though they’ve only received one so far since there’s a waiting list).

The D70 is Nikon’s foray into the sub-$1000 DSLR market. And, from reading over this D70 review at DPReview, it more than holds its own against its chief competitor, the Digital Rebel from Canon:

Nikon have achieved three major improvements with the D70 (compared to the competition / the D100): (1) They have improved the performance of the camera, with its instant on availability, very fast shutter release, superb continuous shooting and image processing speed and smart use of its buffer. (2) They have maintained build quality while still delivering a smaller and lighter camera, the D70 doesn't feel much less well built than the D100 but is lighter, it certainly feels much more like $1000 worth of camera than the EOS 300D could. (3) They have improved image sharpness and detail, while we could niggle about moiré the compromise between artifacts and sharpness is worth it, in many instances the D70 delivering more detail than our previous benchmark, the EOS 300D / EOS 10D CMOS sensor. […]

Though the review’s comparison section focuses primarily on the (Nikon) D100 and the (Canon) Digital Rebel, I was hoping for a comparison against Canon’s EOS-10D as well (which costs more, but the comparison would be interesting nonetheless).

In any case, I’m not particularly in the market for a new camera. I bought a Nikon Coolpix 5700 last spring and I’m still pleased with it. Granted, it doesn’t have through-the-lens metering which annoys me a bit and makes the camera less useful in low-light situations, but I think I can live without that for the time being.

Customizing Gallery Footers

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I posted some Thanksgiving photos on Friday and I was trying to figure out how to add footers to my Gallery pages to signfy my Creative Commons licensing — under the license I chose, you can “copy, distribute, display, and perform” the photographs as long as you give me credit (commercial use requires separate permission).

Writing some HTML & CSS wouldn’t be hard, but I wasn’t sure which Gallery files I needed to modify. After some searching, I soon found EclecticPixels’ Gallery customization tutorials (the Gallery forums can also be handy for this kind of thing). And the part that applied to me was the second part on headers and footers. But, you only want to add a header or footer, then you may find the steps here easier (for one thing, EclecticPixels’ tutorials create extra nested tables, which isn’t necessary).

I’ve only tested these directions with Gallery 1.4.1, but they should work for Gallery versions from 1.4.1 to 1.9x (Gallery 2.x may be completely different).

  1. If it’s a Creative Commons license that you’re adding, you’ll need to go through their license selection wizard if you haven’t already. That will then take you to a “Mark Content” page which has some pre-built HTML code which you can either use as-is or as a starting point.

  2. In any case, the Gallery files you’ll need to modify are in the “html_wrap” directory which branches off your main Gallery directory. You’ll need to grab “wrapper.footer.default” if you’re adding a footer (or “wrapper.header.default” if you’re adding a header). If you’re downloading these from your web host, remember to set your ftp client to ASCII mode.

  3. Before making any changes to the file(s), save them without the “.default” extension (as “wrapper.footer” and “wrapper.header”, respectively) to ensure that the original files stay intact (the customized files need to have these new filenames anyway). And, if you’re only adding a footer, you don’t need to bother with wrapper.header.* (and vice-versa if you’re only adding a header).

  4. Open up the file in a text editor and, if your editor has syntax highlighting, you can set it to PHP highlighting mode (this will make the file easier to read, but there’s no consequence if your editor doesn’t have syntax highlighting for PHP files). Then, scroll to the bottom of the file and add any HTML code that you want in your footers. (Here’s my finished wrapper.footer for an example.)

  5. If you need to add any CSS to accompany your HTML, you can add that to the bottom of your Gallery skin’s CSS file (which can be found at http://yourdomain/path/to/gallery/skins/skin-name/css/embedded_style.css). And, for an easy back-up path in case your changes are overwritten when you next upgrade Gallery, you may want to make a note of your CSS changes in a separate file as well.

  6. That’s it :). Just upload your new wrapper.footer (and/or wrapper.header) into “html_wrap” and the updated embedded_style.css (if you even changed that) on top of your old CSS.

(You can see my new footer on any of my Gallery pages.)

Thanksgiving Pictures 2003

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

Yeah, I realize that it’s well past Christmas, but my Thanksgiving pictures are now online — I posted 18 of the 23 pictures that I shot over those four days. And, if you create a Gallery account, you’ll be able to vote on images (Excellent, Good, Average, and so on). For whatever reason, the Register link appears on the Gallery main page but not on any of the subalbum pages.

I’ve had them processed and ready for several weeks, but my hosting provider had reconfigured a couple PHP options under my feet and broke my Gallery in the process; it took a few persistent e-mails to get them to change the options back, but it should be fine now. (I’ll post more about that later.)

In any case, we visited my brother in Menlo Park for Thanksgiving this year and we also went into San Franciso for some touristy bits on Friday (see also a QuickTime montage that my brother created). As usual, we cooked & smoked our turkey on the grill over several hours (mmm, smoked turkey!).

And, here’re a couple quick notes on the photos, just as with my photos from Greece:

  • You’ll see that each filename ends with “_smaller”. This is because I resized each image to 1024x768 before uploading it. I did this out of disk space concerns; for instance, the full-size Menlo Park pictures are 13.6 MB but 2.7 MB in their smaller form. Besides, it can be tough to get your head around a 2560x1920 image ;0.

  • Though I resized the images for upload purposes, I’ve kept the full-size versions of each image as well (which are all 5 MPixels). So if you want a full-size copy of any image, just let me know.

  • And, all images are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. In short, I give everyone the right to “copy, distribute, display, and perform the work”. In return, you must give me credit if you use an image and commercial use is not allowed unless I separately give permission. But, be a chum and go to the link yourself — the page linked is a “Commons Deed” and has no legalese :).

And if anyone is savvy with customizing Gallery, I’d like to add the Creative Commons icon and some explanation text to each of my Gallery pages. I’m sure this is a fairly straightforward template change, but I’m not sure which files need to be modified.

Sam’s Club for Digital Prints

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I was chatting with my friend Paul at the Dallas Camera Club meeting this evening. And, we got to talking about digital prints since both he and I have digital cameras (a Nikon Coolpix 5700 in my case and a Canon EOS-D10 in his).

And since it’s a digital camera, I haven’t had much need for prints. But, I have had some prints made for some of my better shots. In those cases, I went to dotPhoto. They’re an online store with reasonable prices and — unlike some other online print shops — they also offer matte prints (which I prefer).

In any case, Paul mentioned that Sam's Club actually does digital prints as well (I was aware of their film processing, but it didn’t occur to me that they might do digital). Apparently, you can just bring in a CDR or even a memory card (including CompactFlash) and they’ll make prints. Paul mentioned that they have a self-serve kiosk but that it can actually be faster sometimes to just go up to the counter — either way, it only takes about an hour or less.

dotPhoto’s prices were some of the best that I could find online (such as $2 8x10s, if they’re running a special), so I had a general idea of what Sam’s prices should be. So, I was pleased to hear that their 8x10s are regularly just $2 — and that’s especially tempting considering that it’s only an hour for processing (as opposed to at least a few days with online print shops).

Paul also mentioned Dry Creek Photo which has professional-printer “profiles”. As I understand it, you can download a profile specific to the digital printer that Sam’s Club or other processors use. Then, you can adjust your image on your screen at home, “print to” the profile (I’m guessing that it’s a faux printer driver) and then take that file to Sam’s Club. And, since all color correction was done on your local box, you can decline color correction on their end.

Being that Sam’s Club takes pride in their low prices, I do have my doubts about all this ;). But, at $2 per 8x10, I think ’ll give it a try. And, if it doesn’t turn out how I’d like, I’ll just go back to dotPhoto.

New DSLR from Canon — EOS Digital Rebel

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I learned from the DPReview Newsletter that Canon has announced a consumer digital SLR based on their existing EOS 10D — the EOS Digital Rebel The body-only kit wiill retail for $899, while a bundle with an EF-S 18-55mm lens only sets you back $999 (!). It includes a 6.3 Megapixel CMOS (just like the EOS 10D and D60) and DCResource lists these differences with the 10D (which doesn’t seem that bad).

Differences between this camera and the EOS-10D:

  • No PC flash sync port [of the differences, this may be the most significant]
  • No ISO 3200 option
  • LCD info display on back of camera (versus the top on 10D/D60)
  • White balance can’t be set by color temperature
  • Plastic body vs. (mostly) metal body
  • Burst rate is superior on the 10D

Back when I was shopping around for my digital camera, I did consider the Canon EOS 10D for a little while since it was very reasonably priced for a digital SLR ($1499 list). However, I didn't have any SLR lenses (Canon or otherwise), so that would have added even more to the price of the camera. And, all together, it was just out of my reach.

However, with the Digital Rebel’s body & lens kit going for $999, the prospect of a digital SLR is becoming more and more affordable. I’m very happy with the camera I have now, so I don’t think I’ll be upgrading to a digital SLR anytime soon. But when I do make the upgrade, I’m pleased that it may cost only a little more than the camera I have now.