Epson Stylus Photo R2880
The A3 prosumer photo printer I've been waiting for is officially on its way - the Epson Stylus Photo R2880. But, annoyingly, the press release fails to mention anything about addressing its predecessor's main drawback of being unable to carry glossy and matt black inks at the same time (mandating expensive flushing every time you change paper types). Argh...
Update: The printer does indeed still require you to flush expensive ink every time you swap blacks. On the positive side it sounds like this may be the best prosumer photo printer yet: Photo-i.co.uk review. With several baryta papers available for inkjets, maybe matt black vs photo black simply isn't an issue anymore?
Chase Jarvis Doesn’t Use a Light Meter
I am glad at least one pro agrees with me in that in the age of digital cameras and instant histograms, light meters are basically redundant. Also, check out this amazing Dubai shot (also via Chase's blog):
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 Beta Now Publically Available
It was only a matter of time - Adobe Systems has countered Apple's release of Aperture 2 by offering a beta version of its upcoming competitor for anyone to download. The original beta testing program leading up to the release of Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 was a huge success by gathering useful user feedback while introducing digital photographers to a new breed of image processing tools.
Although it carries the Photoshop branding, Lightroom is mostly clean-room a implementation borrowing some concepts from Adobe Bridge and reusing the Camera Raw engine. The original beta release of Photoshop Lightroom (called just Lightroom at the time) also trailed the first release of Apple's Aperture. Both have completely redefined the "digital darkroom" by offering a streamlined solution for digital photographers, although arguably Lightroom has had a bigger impact by reaching both Mac and Windows users.
Notably, the Lightroom 2.0 beta adds two much-requested capabilities: multi-monitor support and localized adjustments. The former has always been present in Apple's offering, while the latter was recently introduced in Aperture 2.1. Apple still has an important advantage in that it offers 3rd party plugin SDK which allows independent developers to offer their image processing add-ons. For virtually all photographers, this would mean that the need to occasionally switch to a more powerful program such as Adobe's Photoshop CS3 for a small subset of retouching features is now eliminated.
So have a look at the release notes, and get downloading! More impressions to follow soon.
Orange River Trip Album
I created a mini-gallery of my favourites from the Orange River canoe trip in Namibia, which is now up. I wish I had taken a few more pics on the water but it was a bit of a mission as it was very wet and my gear spent most of the time inside a water-proof camera case, strapped down with bungie cords - not exactly what you'd call "easily accessible". It would have been nice to have a water-proof camera like the Pentax Optio W30 or something with an underwater housing. Sadly, most of the camp sites weren't great photo locations either with sunrises/sunsets obscured by the tall mountains on either side of the river. In any case, I am quite happy with the ones that I did get 