Microsoft launch's Photosynth

Microsoft launched Photsynth last week and it seems to be getting a bit of applause from the tech fanboys. It is actually very clever. You upload a bunch of photos from different angles of the same scene and it creates a 3D navigable image. This is very early technology but you can see in the future, this could be very powerful (imagine all the images of Flickr, meshed together!!)

Apart from the obvious:

It could also be used to explore smaller objects in great detail:

Unfortunately you need to install software (windows only) to make it work, but it is worth it to see the future.

I haven’t made one myself yet but I am looking forward to it.

Thomas Hawk posts his workflow

Want to take hundreds of photos a day and upload 20+ photos each day to Flickr/Zooomr but don’t have the time.  Thomas manages it somehow.

Have a look at his post where Thomas Hawk talks about his workflow and how he manages to fit this into a normal day:

1. Capture the image
2. Transfer image to the computer
3. sort photos
4. first pass processing using Adobe Camera Raw
5. 2nd pas processing
6. Keywording
7. Geotagging
8. Sort into A or B to be uploaded folders
9. Publish

Check out the post for details on each step.

Zooomr announces new features

I have to announce that I was wrong.  In my previous post I said Zooomr were focusing on mobile features and moving away from being a true photography site.  Kris (founder and CTO) even posted a comment to say I was wrong.  Little did I know that 2 weeks later, they would release 3 new features aimed at the photographers.

The new features are:

New Navigation from new header bar: This makes it much easier to navigate around the site.

Discover and Undiscovered: Discovered in now paged so you can see more of the best stuff.  Already seen all the best stuff … then go to undiscovered.  This shows the best photos from people who you don’t follow and those that you haven’t faved.  This is a great way to see new stuff while ignoring all the noise of the photos you have already seen and faved!

Awards: Sick and tired of adding the fav10 keyword when your photos get recognised.  Now it will happen automatically.  And they are looking at adding new awards like highest views in a day etc.  A bit of fun but a great initiative for a true online photography community.

Take a look at the video of new features:

Other blog posts on the new features:

Zooomr Blog, Thomas Hawk, Photographr, Jeremy Brooks

Zooomr vs Flickr

I currently use Zooomr as my photo sharing site.  It has some very good features.  However, I am thinking of moving my photos over to Flickr and using that site instead.

Zooomr started off as a Flickr clone but with a lot of good ideas.  It offers unlimited uploads and unlimited storage.  It has a pro account but this has very few benefits other than supporting the site (I think non pros have ads on their pages whereas Pro accounts get a cleaner interface).  However, it was coded by a single person and features always took longer to come than promised.  Then money ran out and a move to Japan was made which resulted in a change in focus.  It became more mobile friendly – they always had what they called a Zipline (a 140 character mini blog like twitter) but the latest version has a whole range of new mobile features that I have never used and am unlikely to.  With this as their focus, the development of photo related features seems to have slowed.  In addition, because it doesn’t have as large a following as Flickr, the development of thrid party applications is slow.  As a final blow to Zooomr, Thomas Hawk, “Evangelist and CEO for the photo sharing Site Zooomr”, seems to prefer Flickr.[EDIT: Thomas Hawk apparently uploads full resolution images to Zooomr and lower resolution images to Flickr. However, the majority of his interaction appears to be at Flickr (he links his flickr photos, not his Zooomr photos)]

Flickr on the other hand limits features to its users unless they have a pro account – ie. limited uploads and only the last 200 photos can be viewed.  At $25 a year, a pro account isn’t that much (plus I get a free account due to my parents Internet account).  It also has a lot of third party applications which I like.  My favourite is Piclens, a firefox add on.  Piclens is probably one of the best way to view photos on the web.  Go to its homepage and look at the demo video, it really is the fast and that smooth.  While Piclens works on Zooomr, it works a lot better on Flickr.  It also has search support so if you want to view photos on a particular item, just search for it and all the photos come up, which you can then glide through quickly and effortlessly.

The other option is Picassa, but unlike its Googles Gmail account, Picassa is currenlty limited to just 1GB.  In addititon, it doesn’t have the same community feel to it that Zooomr and Flickr have.

If I decide to change, it will be a big effort to transfer all my photos across.  There are tools to do it like “Migratr” but that will eat through my data plan which I will have to investigate first (I dont have unlimited data anymore).

Is it worth moving my photos?  What is the best site?

TV commercial shot with Canon EOS-1D Mark III

Follow the link to see an ad for the Canon 450D (rebel XTi) which was shot with the canon 1D mIII.

Interestingly it wasn't shot with the 450D. Even in HD, the 450D resolution is more than enough for TV and the 1D is just overkill (23mp compared to less than 2mp for HD)

TV commercial shot with Canon EOS-1D Mark III

Rafting the Zambezi

When we were at Victoria Falls, a group of us from our tour rafted the Zambezi, a 30km streach of river with, from memory, four grade 5 rapids and a handful of grade 4 rapids - over 20 rapids in total.

Obvouisly as I was on the raft, I couldn't take photos but the good folks at Saf Par got one of their Kayakers to take photos which I bought. A few of the guys who did the rafting with me have been asking for the photos so I have put them on line. Click on the photo to view (thats me in the blue holding on for dear life and taking a huge gasp of air):



The tag for that photo set is Africa so other shots of africa will end up in there as I get around to uploadig them. For the moment it is just the rafting photos and a random photo of the red pyramid in Egypt.

Scandinavia Photos

I have finally got around to putting some photos from my travels online. These are just the photos from the trip to Scandinavia that we did in August 2007.

I took a few thosand photos but cut it done to a hundred odd. The site I use is pretty quick though and it shows thumbnails so you only have to enlarge the photos that take your fancy. I had issues uploading them so unfortunately they are not in order, or tagged very well.

Link to Scandinavia Photos or click on the photos below:



link to mosaic above