Interesting new video capabilities in new cameras from Canon and Nikon

two recent cameras, the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D mk II have added high def video capabilities to DSLRs. The D90, a successor to the D80 but now with the image processor of the D300 and up, does 720p at 24 fps, while the full-frame 5D mk II adds 1080p at 30 fps. Here is a piece of video shot with the D90 I found online



Nikon also has lots of video on their D90 website.

On the Canon side, the 5DmkII has far higher resolution and better low-light performance than the D90 for almost 3x the price.

Vincent Laforet (from the obscene amount of gear) has shot a very interesting video showing off the capabilities of the 5D. See it here. The video very effectively shows off the capabilities of the camera. Beautiful stuff. Also superbly deep colors. There is not much story but that is not the point I guess.

These developments are very interesting as they allow very high quality but budget movie shooting with real lenses. Game changers indeed. I don;t think I would buy either of these cameras because of this feature though. On the other hand, I think the 5D mk II is very interesting as a camera for landscapes, but financially this is not a simple thing as I would need a whole new set of lenses too.

Dead trees

Some images of burned trees. I like the moodiness in these images. The links go to their flickr pages where you can find a slightly larger version. These were all taken in Mesa Verde National Park where a few years ago there were major destructive fires.

Lightroom 2.1 RC

Lightroom 2.1 was just released as a release candidate on the Adobe Labs website. Read about it on Tom Hogarty's blog. This release promises to fix a nasty bug I discovered a while ago and reported to Adobe where the resolution of images gets lowered dramatically when you print (also when printing to jpeg). We'll see if it actually does this. It also supposedly fixes the auto-white balance crash and other perfomance and crash bugs. Time to check it out!

Rockwell likes Lightroom 2

Check it out.
Quote from his review:
"Now, with Lightroom 2's ability to do local corrections, it's probably all that even serious photographers need."

Well said indeed!

Is Chrome color managed?

Google released a new very interesting-looking browser called Chrome. It sports some very intriguing features and is based on Apple's WebKit, the code behind Safari. Unfortunately, Chrome is only available for Windows (come on Google!). Also, Google has a very very poor record on the question of color management. Their (windows-only too) picture utility Picasa is not managed. Their web service even strips profiles (horrifying) when you upload images. It is therefore not surprising that Chrome appears to not be color managed, not even using a preference regardless of its WebKit roots. What is it Google? The Stone Age? No color management in a browser is getting ridiculous, especially when you basically get it for free and you're writing one from the ground up. It's even more important with the growing prevalence of wide-gamut LCDs and small-gamut laptop displays and more and more display manufacturers shipping not super correct but usable profiles in their windows drivers. I would be fine with a simple preference (preferably less hidden than that in Firefox). It would be great if somebody could check this out as I don't have a Windows machine.

Update: I checked it on a windows machine and there is no color management anywhere in Chrome. Giant leap backwards indeed. While some of the technology in Chrome is very cool and it does feel fast and I like WebKit being there, this is quite disappointing. But unfortunately, since Picasa is STILL not color managed (and there it really matters a lot even when nobody that uses it calibrates their monitors), I don't think Chrome will ever get color management. A little like Microsoft and their IE.

Something to remember in your photography

"It's a poem not a police report"

Don't know who said it first, but it is very applicable.