Scott's Photo Blog

Free Camera Strap? Hard to Believe.

I know it's hard to believe, but SmugMug really is giving away a free DSLR camera strap to all listeners of Digital Photography Life who ask for one. They're even paying for the shipping! Really! All you have to do is ask. It's insane. 

The strap is padded, it's comfortable, and it's a million times better than the instrument of decapitation that came with your DSLR. You even get the patented SmugMug smiley face on it, which will be sure to put a grin on your subject. 

So, if you have DSLR or a high-end point and shoot that takes a standard strap, and want to stop feeling as if your camera is conspiring to cut off the circulation at your neck, please do yourself a favor and fill out this form. Really. What could you be waiting for? I have no reason to think this offer will last forever, so don't delay. 

Why, you may ask, is SmugMug doing this? The free camera strap is normally only available to SmugMug members or members of a handful of photography forums. 

From talking to the people at SmugMug, I think its because they truly love the listeners of Digital Photography Life. They recognize what Scott Kelby has always said - that our listeners are really the kindest, coolest, most enthusiastic and motivated shooters out there. It's a community they consider themselves part of. They're glad to contribute, and we're glad to have them.

That's also why they're offering our listeners an astounding 50% off SmugMug service at any level (enter code "Flickr" at checkout). This is a fantastic discount that is not easily found from any company. I truly do believe they're offering it to you because you're the kind of person they want on SmugMug. You can sign up for a free trial here. See if you don't love it like Michael and I do. 

Speaking of which, have you seen our new Digital Photography Life SmugMug site? It's real new, but it's coming along nicely.

So, order you camera strap today. It's the best nothing you'll ever spend. 

PS: This is NOT me in the photo. I can't afford that lens! 

HDR on the Cheap

Interested in trying your hand at high dynamic range (HDR) imaging on the cheap? If so, and if you're on the Mac platform,Maczot is having a weekend half price sale on Bracketeer.

Bracketeer is a low-priced alternative to the more fully-featured and user-friendly leader in this field, Photomatix. I've used Photomatix and it rocks. It also costs $99 while, for the rest of today, you can get Bracketeer for only 15 bucks. If you're looking for an HDR bargain, you can't beat that price.

According to Maczot:

Bracketeer is a front-end GUI for Enfuse. Enfuse is a command-line freeware utility which uses multiple exposures of a scene (bracketed exposures) and merges them together to form a uniformly lit scene. It is similar to tonemapping with an HDR image except that no HDR image is ever created, and there is no ghosting. It works with any kind of bracketed image set, not just panoramic equirectangular images. Bracketeer can even auto-align hand-held shots! The results are almost always much better than anything that can be achieved with Photoshop's HDR Tone Mapping.

Apparently, the same serial number you get for Bracketeer can also be used for PanoPreviewer, so you get that Photoshop plug-in for free. What is PanoPreviewer? Damned if I know. Even after reading this explanation on their site, it's over my head:

PanoPreviewer is a Photoshop plug-in for Mac OS X that allows you to preview equirectangular images as VR panoramas. Normally when editing an equirectangular image you're constantly saving the file out and loading it into a utility like CubicConverter so that you can preview it and see what needs touching up. With PanoPreviewer the tedium of that process has been eliminated since you can now preview the pano right in Photoshop!

I'm for anything that eliminates tedium!

A Crazy-Cheap Camera, But is it a Good Deal?

I generally avoid cheap stuff, as you get what you pay for, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Buy.com has something called the Norcent DCS-1050 on sale for $79, from a list price of $299.

You can get other digicams for that price, but not with the specs on this one:

	10.0 Mega pixel Digital Camera
	Slim, elegant design
	Face Tracking Identifies faces within the frame and automatically adjusts for ideal focus and exposure
	Anti-Shake compensates for camera movement to deliver crisp, clean images
	Captures high-resolution images up to 3648 x 2736
	3.0" LTPS TFT LCD, scratch-resistant acrylic panel display
	3x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom
	Movie mode captures video clips with resolutions of 640 x 480, 320 x 240, and 160 x 120
	Built-in flash with auto, red-eye reduction, always on, slow sync, forced on and forced off modes
	Manual, daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent and custom white balance settings
	22 modes: Program, movie, voice REC, portrait, landscape, sunset, night scene, night scene portrait, text, back light, kids, snow, food, fireworks, building, quickmode, sport, soft skin, candle, party,building, soft flowing water

Those are some crazy-good features on a $79 camera. Of course, I have no idea if they actually work or if the camera explodes in your hands after you use it for a day. But customers seem to like it - all three reviews on Buy.com give it a perfect 5 out of 5 stars, and on Amazon, where it costs $130, it gets an average score of 4.5 stars.

Not bad for $80 bucks.