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Welcome to Photo Geek News

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27 April 2010

tr_a_mediumWelcome to Photo Geek News, your source for reviews and articles about new and unique photo products. Check out our new Daily News page with information about gear and gadgets of interest to photo geeks everywhere.

Our mission is to seek out and test camera gadgets from small manufacturers far and near. Our scope includes products like lightning triggers, wireless removes, storage, field gear, software, and other new and noteworthy products.

We will focus on products for digital SLRs and high end point-and-shoot digital cameras and our reviews will be aimed at pros and sophisticated amateurs. We are always on the look out for lower cost alternatives to higher priced products. There are some very good (and some very bad) knock-offs coming out of the Far East and we'll let you know how they stack up.geek

We'll also rate the vendors and give you links to their sites. Our Photo Geek Test Lab guys have set-up a Gallery where they display photos taken using the products we review. Check out the recent macro shots.

We will also be blogging about our experiences in purchasing and testing these products and offering advice and insights into their use.

We hope you enjoy the site and will participate by adding your comments to our reviews and recommending products to test. If you purchase any of the items reviewed on this site, we'd appreciate your comments about the product.

Please visit our fourm to post you views on PhotoGeek stuff or join the discussion about a particular product.

Adobe Releases Creative Cloud

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13 May 2012

Two New Touch Apps for iOS and Adobe Muse Also Shipping

SAN JOSE, Calif. — May 11, 2012 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the immediate availability of Adobe® Creative Cloud™, a radical new way of providing tools and services* for creatives. A subscription-based offering, Adobe Creative Cloud is a hub for making, sharing and delivering creative work and it is centered around a powerful release of Adobe Creative Suite® 6 software, packed with innovation across its industry-defining design, Web, video and digital imaging tools. The CS6 product line includes new releases of Photoshop®, InDesign®, Illustrator®, Dreamweaver®, Adobe Premiere® Pro, After Effects®, Flash® Professional and other products.

In addition, two new Touch Apps† – Adobe Proto and Adobe Collage – are now available for iOS devices, as are new features and additional language support in both Photoshop Touch and Adobe Ideas. Emerging from a successful beta program, that saw over 700,000 downloads, Adobe Muse software also became available today to Creative Cloud members and individual subscribers.  Muse is a stunning new tool that enables designers to create HTML5-based websites without writing code (see separate release).

Visit the Adobe Web site for more information.

CameraTrace Emails You If Your Stolen Camera is Detected On The Internet

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30 December 2011

Looking for a lost camera on the web by searching for its serial number in uploaded photos is nothing new (see Stolen Camera Finder), but GadgetTrak’s new CameraTrace service takes it one step further. For a fee of $10 per camera, the service will actively monitor the Internet for your camera’s serial number. If it ever pops up in a photo uploaded to popular photo sharing services, you’ll get an email notification. Back in August, GadgetTrak’s manual Serial Search helped a photographer recover $9000 in stolen gear.

CameraTrace (via TechCrunch)

Active Image Monitoring & Recovery

CameraTrace utilizes a specialized search technology that looks for images that were taken by a camera. The database currently contains over 11,000,000 cameras and is growing fast.

The company partnered with CPUsage to create a special search "spider" that scans photos on popular photo sharing sites (like Flickr and 500px) and extracts the serial numbers from them if available. This serial number data is stored in Exchangeable Image Format (EXIF) tags in the photo file itself. The process requires considerable computer resources to keep up with the large number of photos uploaded to these sites, they have leveraged a distributed computing model that allows us to spread this workload across hundreds of computer systems, with more being added daily.

Featured Product Reviews

Frontpage Slideshow | Copyright © 2006-2010 JoomlaWorks, a business unit of Nuevvo Webware Ltd.

Featured Product

The LensAlign MkII Focus Calibration System uses the patent pending TPA Sighting System to perfectly align the lens on your camera for very accurate focusing. This MkII is the smaller and lighter version of the PRO model and easily disassembles for storage or transport. A standard 1/4-20 mount allows easy attachment to a tripod.

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GoPro Video Helmet Cam
  

The GoPro HD HERO2 Outdoor Edition is specifically designed for shooting HD video while you're outdoors riding, playing, skiing, boarding and so much more. You can capture 1080p at 30 frames per second (fps), 960p at 48 or 30 fps, and 720p video at 30 or 60 fps, as well as 5, 8 or 11 megapixel digital still photos. The HD HERO2 Outdoor Edition comes with a head strap, helmet strap, curved adhesive mounts and flat adhesive mounts. This makes the HD HERO2 Outdoor Edition the easiest action camera to use and mount. Plus, plenty of optional accessories can be used with the camera for shooting in a variety of other settings.

The HD HERO2 gives you shooting capabilities almost anywhere. It comes with a clear housing that's waterproof up to 197 feet. Plus, the Outdoor Edition features an integrated battery warmer for longer battery life in colder temperatures, Wi-Fi BacPac / Wi-Fi Remote compatibility, and an easy-to-use LCD interface. Plus, the camera has LED lights viewable from any angle and can support shooting bursts of 10 photos per second. You can recharge the battery while you record via USB cable and enjoy time-lapse photography every 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 30 or 60 seconds. The HD HERO2 Outdoor Edition even supports live streaming from the web and Wi-Fi video preview and playback on your smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer.

Designed for Multi-Use Outdoor Recording
The HD HERO2 Outdoor Edition provides you with a polycarbonate housing that's waterproof up to 197 ft (60m). It also comes with the mounts you'll need to record in any conditions. The waterproof, polycarbonate housing is removable, and in the event of extreme destruction can be replaced easily with an optional housing. Plus, the camera comes with a head strap, vented helmet strap, two curved adhesive mounts, two flat adhesive mounts and a three-way pivot arm

Other Features

Simple language-based user interface
2X sharper professional glass lens
2x faster image processor
11MP, 1/2.3" CMOS image sensor
Full wide 170°, medium 127° and narrow 90° FOV (Field of View) in 1080p and 720p
Professional low light performance
11MP, 8MP and 5MP photos with full 170° and medium 127° FOV
Shoot stills in 10 photo per second bursts
Shoot one photo every 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 30 or 60 seconds with Time-Lapse photo mode
Natural and high wind audio modes
3.5mm Stereo external microphone input
Wi-Fi BacPac and Wi-Fi Remote Control compatibility
Long range remote control of multiple cameras
Integrated battery warmer enables long battery life in cold temperatures
Wi-Fi Video Preview + Playback on Smartphone / Tablet / Computer
Live streaming to the web

Product in the News

Canon 50mm f/1.4 vs. f/1.8

There's a very interesting article on Adorama's Web site about Canon's 50mm f/1.8 lens vs. its f/1.4. It seems the people at DxO labs put both lens through their paces and the f/1.8 came out on top, even though it's a lot less money than the f/1.4 

Here's the article:

Experienced photographers know that the humble, inexpensive 50 is a little powerhouse. But should you get the faster f/1.4 or the less expensive f/1.8? Lab test results reveal interesting surprises and practical advice.

All lab test results courtesy DxOMark.com; used with permission.

50mm lenses get a bum rap. They’re not as versatile as zoom lenses and, because many lower-end cameras are bundled with kit zoom lenses that cover the 50mm focal length, are overlooked. And yet…they’re fast, cheap, and can produce some of the sharpest shots you can get. Hey, Henri Cartier-Bresson used a 50mm lens almost exclusively for over 50 years. That worked out pretty well for him!

In the digital age, a 50mm lens on a DSLR with an APS-sized sensor will deliver 35mm equivalent angle of coverage of a 75mm lens, making it well-suited for portraits. A 50mm fixed focal length (“prime”) lens will deliver better image quality than a zoom lens set at 50mm. A 28-70mm lens set at 50mm, for example, will produce more linear distortion, lower resolution (measured as lines per millimeter), and have more optical anomalies than a 50mm prime.

Read the whole article

If after reading the article you want to purchase a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens from Adorama, you can click here. Adorama is one of the sponsors of this Web site and we need all the loose change we can get to keep the site going.