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› archive for July, 2009

Sandisk Ultra, Sandisk Extremes Apparently Popular

American-based Sandisk’s cards (and I’m going on a limb and guessing particularly the Ultra and Extreme III / Extreme IV series cards from them), seem to be quite popular among the readership over at Digital Photography School, with them snagging a notable majority after 2 weeks on the poll.

Survey Results Captured on July 22, 2009

Survey Results Captured on July 22, 2009

And, while it doesn’t hurt our feelings any to see Sandisk doing well, they’re a wonderful company, Roberts should point out these polls shouldn’t dissuade you from Kingston (my card of choice right now, actually), or Lexar (very popular among pro users). All three of those companies produce very reliable cards these days and should be considered equally.



New ‘Women In Photography’ Highlights Beautiful Empty Spaces

<i>Untitled (Yellow Chairs)</i>, Lynne Cohen

Untitled (Yellow Chairs), Lynne Cohen

Women In Photography, one of those magical institutions the likes of which we need more of, has updated its bi-monthly online gallery. This month the works of Lynne Cohen are on display, and, personally, I find them quite gorgeous. Sure, they break Colin Pantall’s ‘How Not To Photograph’ principle by relying entirely on that ‘Dawn of the Dead’ post-apocalyptic no people in a public space aesthetic, but I would be a huge liar if I said I wasn’t into that.

By reducing the world to empty spaces, by leaving us with just the architecture and no story, the world takes on a surrealistic abstract atmosphere and the photo rely on colors, textures, and strict composition to rise above instead of subject or context, and I think Lynne’s work in this style is exemplary.

Check it out over here.



Roberts Cleans Up Its Error Messages

In an attempt to communicate more clearly with you all over at Roberts Imaging I cleaned up our various info dialogs and errors to use a new more Web 2.0 styled set of message boxes. So, when you’re over there, you might see the following:

Blue boxes like this one are used for bits of information and details that are important to note but not usually sources of conflict or confusion. They’re just a friendly way of telling you a bit more about what’s going on.
This is a warning box. It’s like the box above, but urgent. In these boxes we’re telling you information that is actually pretty important to what you’re doing. Things like shipping policies, billing practices, hour changes, and other important bits of info will show up in these.
These boxes, not quite an error but different from a warning, are to let you know when things involving data input from you had an issue. These are for when you don’t fill out a form properly, so you can tell very quickly that what went wrong was just a validation error and not something with the site or your order.
This is a standard-issue error. This means that whatever you were trying to do couldn’t be done. These’ll show up if you try to do something with your account while no longer logged in, for example. Usually it means that something went wrong, but it’s at least fixable
This is the opposite of an error, obviously. If you see a green box like this one, it’s to tell you that whatever you were trying to do was finished successfully and that you can now rest easy.
And then there’s this beastie. If you’re seeing this error message, then something has gone really quite wrong. If you see this during an order, then not only did your order not get to us, but it was incapable of even being completed, and you’ll have to try again from the beginning or give us a call and we’ll see what we can do. It should be rare to see one of these, but if you do then there is probably little we can do for the error other than look into it, in the more immediate sense things are just caput, dead, fin, expired, kicked the bucket. And we apologize in advance should you ever hit one of these.


DPR Tackles the Canon TS-E 24mm f3.5 L II, It Trounces

ts-e24II

DPReview’s pretty stellar lens review team hit up Canon’s not-so-long-ago revamped 24mm tilt-shift recently while I wasn’t looking. Backing up to glance over everything today, I have to say, it’s certainly worth that “L” in its name. Up there in the post header graphic you can see it’s sharpness stopped down about a half stop, two-thirds stop from wide open, and you can see that 2/3 of the frame are sharp-sharp-FRIGGIN’-SHARP, well exceeding the theoretical resolution limit of the rather demanding 5D Mark II,and the corners only dip down to about as soft as the kit lenses from Canon perform on a good day. For a full-frame lens, that’s stellar.

Fall-off (vigenetting) is soemwhat pronounced, but I think that’s what gives full frame that “oomph” in so many wide-open shots, so I have no complaints there, and either way it’s not so bad a moment in Lightroom couldn’t raise them back up admirably.

Read the whole thing, if you haven’t already, here, and then email us at info -at- robertsimaging.com to get on our backorder list, or hey! Just hit us up the comments, and we’ll get you added.



Nikon Issues Service Notice for Select D5000 Units

lol5000

Late last week Nikon issued a notice stating that it is preparing to recall and fix a select range of D5000′s which have been experiencing the delightful issue of not turning on. From Nikon:

While Nikon takes great measures to assure high quality in its imaging products, it has come to our attention that an electronic component related to power control in some Nikon D5000 digital SLR cameras does not meet factory specifications and may, in certain circumstances, prevent the camera from turning on, thus preventing operation of the camera.

I haven’t heard any of these issues coming back through here, so I’ll believe them when they say this is a fairly contained issue. They’ll have the list of affected serial numbers and how to send them in up Thursday, so we’ll follow up then. Go ahead and read their service notice, it does sound like they’ll get you fixed as straight-away as they can if you happen to be afflicted with this.

Nikon D5000 Service Notice



Being Blind Less and Less An Obstacle to Phtographers

So, I’ve been bogged down a lot at work these days, so I’m not quite as up-to-the-moment as I’m used to, so today will be a game of catch-up for news that’s really from last week, but, hey, what can you do?

Photo by Alex Dejong, Source: <a href=

Photo by Alex Dejong, Source: Gadget Lab

Getting started, first up is a fabulous and interesting article by Brian X Chen about how blind and visually impaired photographers are making use of modern technology (especially interesting is the iPhone 3GS and its uses) to overcome their handicaps and continue on making art. This has everything I approve of: cameras, art, technology, persevering and recreating paradigms and work-flow, and general brilliance.

It’s Wired’s scoop, and I won’t steal their thunder by summarizing it poorly, so click the link below and read it there. You really do owe it to yourself to do this.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/blind-photographers/



Invisible Flash Best Plan EVER For Concert Shooters

So, here’s the ARTICLE OF THE WEEK, as far as I’m concerned. Looks like some guys out at NYU have found a very clever hack that lets them fire a flash in the spectrums that we humans can’t see, then image stack it with a high ISO shot of how we do see to re-add color accuracy, getting a final shot that has both the advantages of flash and natural lighting without annoying fellow concert goers or musicians.

Really, you just need to click the link below and check this out:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17468-invisible-flash-takes-photos-without-the-glare.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news



Fear No Water

hair-flipSometimes the possibility of getting wet is the last thing on your mind. I mean dead last, not even occurring to you, stop afterward with the dripping wet shell of a formerly valuable electronic device in your hand and a sinking ball of regret infesting your stomach. You know what I mean? Sometimes there are just more important things in life. Like bikini girls. OK, or waterfalls, sue me for being particular to bikini girls though.

The point is, and it’s a recurring one here on RAW, there are cameras for those of you who prefer to not stand on the sidelines. For those of you who live near large pools of water, or near a pint glass for that matter. For those who want to shoot in the rain, pool, beach, nearest waterfall, hurricane (not recommended, all the same) and so-on and so-on.

And, these cameras are less and less niche every year. We now have 14 of them (OK, some of them are just different colors, but I know there are over a half dozen good, reliable models that fear not the presence dihydrogen monoxide anymore). We might soon have a couple more if we get some things going we want to. It used to be solely Olympus’ game, but now we see other notables like, oh, Canon, say, and somewhere out there a waterproof Fuji, fleshing out the ranks.

So, this post is for you, makers of fearless cameras. You enhance our beach experiences, and the next time I encounter a young and attractive person flipping hairfuls of water, I shall not stand aside, timid, afraid for my camera, but shall rush in–indeed where fools dare not go. And all shall be good.

read more



Canon Instant Rebates DO Now End August 8th

So, if you use a Canon, I’m quite sure you’re currently aware they’ve had an instant rebate promotion on quite a selection of lenses and all their flash units going for a few months now, yeah? And they got extended! We originally had them extended to August 8th, which is in fact correct. We had them for a day or two as September 13, which is incorrect and has been corrected. We apologize sincerely for this error and hope you’ll continue to turn to us for your instant savings needs through August 8th, which is the factual ending date.

That is all.




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