Alpenglow » Magazines

Fotomagazin, March 2009 issue

christof — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:13:18 +0000

Continuing to look at the paper magazines on my desk, here is a quick comment on the usefulness of the March issue of the German Fotomagazin, a publication I have been reading regularly for the past 4 years mostly for their extensive coverage of the lens market with technical reviews.

What did they have?

A rather lengthy and in my eyes unnecessary comparison of again the Canon and Nikon DSLR offerings. For anybody who is not up to a buy decision within the next 3 months there is not much of interest in there, and as PMA 2009 is approaching anyway it might even be outdated within weeks.
A test of third party ring-light flashes, of which the Metz mecablitz 15 MS-1 digital seemed to be a clear winner and with about 300€ also the most expensive one. This is an interesting item for those doing macro flash photography. Other devices tested were a ring light from B.I.G. and a Soligor/Dörr/Bilora/Marumi-marketed flash being the identical device from each vendor.
Dibond, Diasec, Kappa, and other methods of finishing printed photos are explained in a short article in the “practice” section, but honestly there is not nearly enough information in there to know where to start. Sorry guys, some more in-depth information would be required to get me started on this topic, this is not more than a teaser.
The art photography market is in flux according to another article, and they list as an example two different German online art galleries with two different concepts, namely Mygall from Leipzig offering any photographer to sell his art as large prints over their website, and the more restricted Hamburg-based ~~eyemos photo art~~ [Update: eyemos seems to be gone as of Feb 2011] who only offer art from a selected handful of photographers, with much higher prices. Worth a look by me, if I ever get around to product a portfolio I am satisfied enough with to expect money for
In the post production section, they have a lengthy Photoshop example by Calvin Hollywood turning a great studio portrait image to start with into an even greater image. Very cool images on his web site, by the way, make sure to have a look. He is offering DVDs with more photoshop tips as well as seminars in Germany.
Some interesting techniques in there to create a “fake HDR” look for an image that wasn’t HDR. Took a note on the referenced German-language forum Photoshopnonstop for this type of heavy-post production discussion.

Hmm. Overall rating of this issue worth being read: 2 out of 5 stars. This is a pure subjective expression of how much I got out of this issue for my own benefit, as of today. This might vary greatly if measured again in the future

Naturfoto, December 2008 issue

christof — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 13:39:03 +0000

In continuing to review also paper magazines I read, I’ll sum up what I got out of the December 2008 issue of the German language Naturfoto magazine. I think I will start rating the individual issues and later create a statistic of how interesting I found the read – because somewhere in the back of my head something is whispering that I do not get enough out of every read to justify the, well, time spent on buying and reading… maybe it’s better get out and make some photos myself…

There is an amazing photo of a griffon vulture sitting in the top of a tree, with two crows next to him being obviously annoyed by the presence of that large guy – and probably not used to him, because this photo was made on the German island of Neuwerk, near the mouth of the Elbe river. Griffon vultures are not common in northern Germany
This reminds me I should put Neuwerk on my places to visit list!
On meta data management, they have a sidebar on the commercial initiative of the Metadata Working Group including Adobe, Microsoft, and others. They have published a specification document (downloadable as PDF) on how to handle photo metadata using Exif, IPTC, and XMP. I’ll put that on my backlog to check out – my meta data management certainly is not up to industry standards yet…
German Internet FotoTV has made a program on sharpness in pictures and sharpening methods. This sounds interesting, but I am not a subscriber to FotoTV (yet?), and this is not pay per view. Too bad.
There is a long and very nice article about photographing cranes in spain – in the Laguna de Gallocanta. They even claim this is the best place in Europe to go photographing cranes. The article was written by Dieter Damschen, who is working for a photo tour organization Reisen In Die Natur, who – surprise – offer guided trips there. Hmm. Goes on my places list. (Yikes – the trip costs 1640€ for a week including flight).
In the ad section, Naturerlebnisse as a tour organizer struck me with an offer for a Helgoland trip in January. So I might be a bit late , but of course they have more offerings on their website. Noted.
Next to that, another company offers ~~trips to Greece~~. 800€ without flight for one week. Hmmm. Might be nice. They advertise bee-eaters and pelicans (Great White as well as Dalmatians).
While we’re at it, at the Hungarian National Park Kiskunsagi there is the offer of a nice accomodation called Somodi Tanya. (in their ad they say it’s in the National Park Fülöphaza. I have never been in Hungary, I think I have to check a map. And I have to do a bit more research to find out the right links for this.)

Overall rating? Well, some great photos, but the ads seemed to offer more take-away value than the articles. This gets a 3 out of 5 star rating.

Outdoor Photographer, November 08 issue

christof — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:01:43 +0000

This spring, I did subscribe to the US American Outdoor Photographer magazine. Not only does it cover many interesting topics about nature photography and has convinced me with an issue I bought at the airport somewhere that they have topics of interest for my passion, but also it is – compared to German language magazines – dirt cheap (when subscribed).

As I am an eager reader not only of Internet blogs, but also of old-school printed material, I decided to reflect more about the learnings from my lecture, and I will start today with a list of enlightments gained from the November 2008 edition of Outdoor Photographer:

There is an article about Digiscoping, which I find interesting because of the maybe affordable access to large magnifications. They list the need for using a Compact camera with at least a 3-4x zoom in order to avoid the vignetting caused by the circular image rendered by the scope.
Honestly, I would not consider using a compact camera for Digiscoping, being used to the image quality and speed of the SLR. They claim, and I didn’t knew that before, that using a DSLR with e.g. a specific adapter or a 50mm lens with the right filter thread provides less magnification than using the compact, but of course you retain the advantages of the faster camera.
What I also didn’t knew is that the fixed eyepieces of the scope have a larger field of view than the zoom eyepieces.
Interesting to note for all those Sony Alpha owners – they report that the in-camera stabilizer usually doesn’t work for Digiscoping. Too bad, *that* would have been a combo! As a Nikon guy, I just shrug
Rob Sheppard wrote he would prefer Lightroom plus Photoshop Elements over a new CS version. This is interesting, I am using Photoshop Elements and CS3 so far. Maybe I should indeed look at LR soon. [Adding LR to the Gear Wish List in the background]
In their Editor’s Picks they list the Ansmann Digicharger Vario. Looks like you cannot only charge all kings of Lithium-Ion batteries, but also standard AA. I sense an opportunity to reduce my travel bag – for the D300, the D40, and the SB800 I usually carry three different charges (sigh). This needs to go on my list as well. Luckily, we are approaching Xmas fast.
For home projection, there is a special wall paint from paintonscreen.com that can replace a dedicated projection screen. They even have a German version of their website, giving hope that I could actually get it in Germany. Now this is interesting! I have to research on this a bit more.
Of the 6 silver bullets for better landscape images from Guy Tal, I liked the “Get Out More” best, as I think this exactly hits my weak spot. Add “Be There Before Sunrise” and I pledge guilty. Looking at Guy’s homepage in the web, I was slightly disappointed that this article seems to have been published quite some times in slight variations, so if you are interested, visit his website!
I had always wondered about how “magnification” and “mm focal length” were interchangeable. For the Digiscopes, they listed 180x magnification as being equivalent to a 9000 mm tele lens (wow, by the way). And looking at these numbers again, I figure they are just based on the 50 mm “normal” lens, as 50 mm x 180 = 9000 mm. I wonder if this is physically correct… as far as I remember a real “normal” lens would be 43 mm, and not 50 mm. [Let me check Wikipedia].