Nikon is celebrating its 90th Anniversary with a beautiful video resuming all these years as an imaging technology world-leader.

“Highlights include a recap of the world’s-firsts in terms of technological imaging advancements from Nikon Corporation as well as their desire to see the Earth; it’s most remote locations and capture the world’s greatest moments.

This video also features some of Nikon’s latest innovations on their newest products that all aim to make creating better images more fun and exciting.”

Simply enjoy!

If like me you have multiple drives and if like me you partition them to insure data integrity in case of problems, you’ll be extremely happy to learn that with Leopard you now can manage your partition without having to format your drive!

I used to use iPartition (tho I am sure Disk Utilities will never as powerful as iPartition) and I have to say, nothing like an Apple software to take care of the problem!

Simply open Disk Utilities and select Partition which is located in your Utilities folder…

You can add, modify existing partitions very easily.

You can even securely erase the remaining space without loosing any data.

iPartition is suddenly out of work

DataColor just released a new calibration tool, the Spyder3Elite. Spyder3 is a next generation device with its new sleek form factor, embedded ambient light detector and desktop cradle that doubles as a tripod mount.

At $279 on pre-order it’s actually a good deal since DataColor is a major player in the monitor calibration world.

I use the Eye One Display LT (which is at $139.99) but with 7 detector color engine and the largest light aperture sensor, the Spyder3 colorimeter is setting a new standard for state-of-the-art optical device.

Most calibration tools have 3 or 4 sensors only. The 7 sensors increase light sensitivity by 400%. It also features the largest screen sample area or aperture in the industry resulting in improved accuracy on LCD screens and a faster calibration time.

They designed it for Photographers and comes with a 2 years warranty!

It’s done!! I am writing this post running OS X 10.5 aka Leopard and it’s mind blowing… I won’t make a full review of Leopard but instead I’ll make a quick overview and give few tips to simply and efficiently switch to Leopard.

General requirements

Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor…

Minimum system requirements

• 512MB of memory (the more the better)
• DVD drive for installation (altho you could use another Mac to FireWire Install it
• 9GB of available disk space (definitely less is you Customize the install)
• Internet connection
• Some features require Apple’s .Mac service; fees apply.

First, how to install Leopard? Three options:

• Upgrade your system - Leopard is installed on top of your previous OS
• Archive and Install - moves your existing installation to a “Previous System” folder. You can still access all its content.
• Clean Install - erases the destination disk only and does a clean install. Very convinient if you have a partitioned HD and recommended option.

Then what?

Read more… »

For those who don’t know him, John Nack is an Adobe Photoshop Guru. So naturally, when John decided to publish a poll “Aperture vs. Lightroom: What do the pros use?” many will think it will be biased…

That’s why it’s a good think InfoTrends ran the poll!

They recently surveyed 1,026 professional photographers in North America to determine which software they used for raw file processing.

And the winner is…

• 66.5% using the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in
• 23.6% using Lightroom
• 5.5% using Aperture

John points out that photographers haven’t started to abandon Photoshop as a result of using tools such as Lightroom.

Photoshop usage overall remains in the 90% range and the vast majority of photographers seem to understand pretty clearly the different nature & roles of the apps, and they continue to view Photoshop as a must-have part of any serious arsenal.

These numbers include Windows users, so it’s not just a Mac Community trend.

I think that the reason why Lightroom is way ahead of Aperture comes from the great advantage that if you use Adobe Camera RAW to edit your photos, the changes are usable in Lightroom (if you are using CS3) and vice-versa.

And let’s face it, like John pointed out, many photographers didn’t drop Photoshop to use Lightroom.

So the question now is… what are YOU using??!!

With OS X 10.5 aka Leopard coming up in less than 7 hours, many of you must wonder if after upgrading Adobe Lightroom will still work properly?!

Well, I tested Lightroom on the 9A559 build and besides a small bug in the Print module, everything was working just fine.

The final release of Leopard being the 9A581, I’ll assume this bug will be fixed and if not, we won’t have to wait too long before a Software Update to deal with all the applications’ compatibility issues.

This being said, chances are Lightroom users will get this update way before the Aperture users will get the v2.0 update ah!

Tho it’s still “Pre-Order” only, the infamous keyboard where every key (113 instead of 103 last March) is a stand-alone display (48×48 Full Color OLED instead of 32×32) showing the function it is currently associated with is ALIVE almost a reality…

“Problem: Have a keyboard with displays in every button produce”

When Art. Lebedev Studio started this project few months years ago, the idea was simply brilliant! So brilliant, many must have thought “Why nobody ever did it sooner?!!“

Well, as usual, having a brilliant idea is one thing but delivering it is another one… And having a keyboard with mini-displays in every single button was the one and only problem.

So instead of focusing on the many mishaps, rumors, misfortune etc. I’d like to congratulate them for actually delivering this very cool and revolutionary keyboard.

Yes, it will be pricey… The Optimus Maximus will be available around $1,564.37 by the end of December. But what a trip!

The Optimus is equally good for any keyboard layouts—Cyrillic, Ancient Greek, Georgian, Arabic, Quenya, Hiragana—and so on to infinity: notes, numerals, special symbols, HTML codes, math functions, images etc.

Read more… »