In the end of June, Apple dropped a bomb that many could see coming for a while, and a few refused to even consider such a thing:

“With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture. When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X.“

From the little that is known about Photos it looks like an ok product, but many are unwilling to stick around to find out how good or how bad it really is, and the upgrades of little relevancy that Aperture has suffered in the past years left many faithful users disgruntled. And with all the good press Lightroom has been getting, who can blame them.

These are the users that Adobe want to grab.

Migration made easy?

For photographers with libraries composed of thousands and thousands of images, easy migration of the library needs to be a major concern if changing software is even to be considered. Apple mentioned that Aperture libraries will be compatible with Photos – nothing else to expect. But if you do want to switch to Lightroom, Adobe mentioned that it is developing a tool to help migrating libraries from Aperture to Lightroom. But this is not without difficulties since both programs use different processing engines, and thus any adjustment made in Aperture will not be visible in Lightroom. Best option? Export the image as a tif file – not a great solution though.

Until the migration tool is ready, and without knowing exactly what will be migrated and what won’t, Adobe released a quick guide on the best process for those not willing to wait.

Does this affect you? Are you an Aperture user thinking about switching to Lightroom? How will you approach the migration? Let us know in the comments.

“Rediscover the magic of analog film”

While I still think that to discover the magic of analog film, one has to actually use film, the FilmPack software by DxO is famed for doing a very good job emulating the image characteristics of a multitude of film stock.

If you want to give it a try, until August 15, DxO has made available it’s FilmPack 3 for free. And while FilmPack 4 might have a few additional features, you can’y go wrong for the price.

Interesting announcement today over on Flickr’s blog - Curated Connections: A new Flickr licensing experience.

If I understand the announcement correctly, Yahoo is trying to capitalise on the huge photo library that is Flickr by marking themselves as the middle man (or more politely, providers of “assistance, outreach and connectivity”) between the creators and typical photo agency consumers. Call me cynic, but saying that “…we will look for ways to showcase your photos on the Flickr blog and across other Yahoo properties like News and Travel” also reads a lot like, oh and we’ll get all these great images for our online properties for free… yes, call me cynic.

Could they have done this before? Yes, years and years ago. After all, 500px has done it with a much smaller library. And if done correctly, it could actually change the market.

Difficulties

Well, the obvious one – where does the Curated come in “Curated Connections”. Obviously they can’t allow every single image access to the platform or it would scare off any potential buyer. A premise of any photo agency needs to be quality across the collection, and Flickr, although with a vast amount of amazing work, also has a lot of rubbish (500px has the upper point here). It does need to be curated, and preferably by humans.

They have a head start already in the process based on their partnership with Getty Images. The Flickr collection on Getty is not immensely shabby. However, how much effort Yahoo chooses to put into this may dictate the success or failure of the whole thing.

Pricing Models

No details. 500px opted for making participants agree in licensing their images royalty free (the main reason I have not paid much attention to the idea). The Getty/Flickr partnership allows both royalty free and rights-managed licenses, albeit at ridiculous low percentages for photographers. It will be interesting to see how this will work, as soon as more details are available.

And the final question?

What about the Getty/Flickr partnership? The big names that Yahoo is using to illustrate their Marketplace are prime targets for Getty, so I’m quite curious to see how they are going to approach this… Interesting times.

It seems more and more likely that the rumours regarding a Canon 7D replacement are going to be proven right. A friend of mine mentioned an announcement on September 5. However, he doesn’t want to risk the wrath of the embargo gods so I got no more details from him.

Photokina in Cologne, Germany, starts on September 10, so it would fit with a pre show announcement.

Also, it seems that Amazon.com had marked the current 7D as Discontinued. I certainly did not see this on the UK site and a quick look on Amazon US shows it marked as Discontinued on the search page, but not on the product page.

Great time to buy a 7D

Of course, it all depends on your intended use for a 7D – and note that it has not been publicly announced any specs for the replacement (the so called 7D Mark II) – but heading up to an expected announcement or just after it is usually the time  retailers want to get rid of old stock, which in turn means lower prices.

I’ve shot with a 7D and it is an absolutely great camera and will fit most needs if you prefer a cropped sensor.

So, if you are in the market for a main camera, I would say wait for the 7D replacement announcement. If you want a backup, keep your eyes open for the deals ahead and if it sounds good, go for it.

Quick heads-up that, if this rocks your boat, MIT are now offering online courses in photography, both at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Basically, it’s the support material for their courses made available – no, it won’t give you a diploma in the end.

A quick look at the courses available shows an interesting list with definitely a few that have attracted my eye. However, some of the material may be quite dated and not so relevant any more.

In any case, it’s something to look at on a rainy cold day…

Some time ago, and after a series of conversations with like-minded people, I was included on the Editorial board of a new magazine…

After a long time in planning and then some more for execution, I have the pleasure of introducing to you Aksgar Magazine.

In a sentence, Aksgar (Urdu for photographer) is a new magazine dedicated to the publication of documentary and narrative photography from around the world, in the form of photo essays.

Our aim with Aksgar is to provide a platform to publish work that has normally “less space” in traditional media, whether due to it’s alternative content or because the authors are not well known, but still deserves to be seen.

Besides the online presence, Aksgar will periodically be distributed electronically (pdf, app, etc)and in print. And as a sort of welcoming treat, if you subscribe to the newsletter, you’ll receive the first issue of Aksgar in pdf for free. Want different ways to connect with Aksgar? Follow us also on twitter.

We are currently accepting submissions. If you think your work is suitable to be featured in Aksgar, read the submission guidelines and click that submit button.

This is going to be quite a ride and, I expect, way out of my comfort zone, but I’m sure it will also be a rewarding one.

Take a look at some of the essays already published and tell me what you think…

Emergency by Anne Holmes	The Chenchus by Anil Cherukupalli	Land of a Thousand Struggles by Sohrab Hura

As you probably know, I’m a Lightroom 3 user and I’ve been recommending it both here on the blog as well as on PhotoNetCast.

So, if you still don’t have Lightroom 3, this is a great opportunity to get it at a very good price. Since Amazon had a Black Friday deal on LR3 and it sold out VERY quickly, you might want to think really fast on this one.

Although not so much as Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS5 is also slightly discounted.

Flickr Stats

 

Just a small reminder that from today, June 1, Flickr will stop delivering historical statistics data (hits, refferers, etc) for photos and videos and allow access only to the previous 28 days.

If you’re interested in keeping thesa data, and if for nothing else at least for historical reasons you should, relevant files can be downloaded either in CSV or Excel format for each month up to May 2010. I still can’t understand why files have to be downloaded one at a time and there is no option for bulk download (at least that I could find), but ok, better than nothing.

But you have to act fast, the files are only available until today, June 1, 12pm PDT (8pm GMT).

 

As I was writing this small post, I stumbled upon a video demonstrating the capacity of the SprintCam v3 HD by i-movix, a full HD camera capable of capturing up to 1000fps directed at the sports broadcasting and advertising markets. This video was made for the NAB 2009 exhibit by David Coiffier, and you just have to see it.

The biggest Photography Trade Fair in the world is about to open doors. It started already today with a few events for the press, but tomorrow is the official opening date of the event, and it will go on until Sunday September 28.

Many rumors about what’s to be unveiled (and a few announcements already) have started to pop up here and there. A great place to follow what’s going on is the Photokina 2008 special page at 1001 noisy cameras.

Due to schedule constrains I won’t be able to visit the opening days, but I’ll be around there on Friday and Saturday.

If you’re visiting Cologne, make sure to send me a message. It would be my pleasure to meet with a few of my usual readers.

While the most recent releases from Canon and Nikon weren’t so exciting to get me talking about them, although bringing some new features into the dSLR game, with the newest Sony a900 it’s a different story. But hey, I’m a Sony shooter…

The long awaited full frame camera from Sony is here, and at a significant lower price than any of the comparable competition’s cameras, it’s sure to shake the scene a bit.

I’m not seeing the hardcore Canon and Nikon fans jumping the boat on this one, but for someone wanting to move to the full frame format, the a900 is a camera to consider, and at least keeps Sony on par with the competition.

Less than 24 hours after the initial press release, specs and reviews are all over the place so I won’t go into it. I’ll tell you what I feel about it after I have the opportunity to have one in my hands at Photokina.

In any case, there are a few promo videos out that are worth watching. And no, I don’t find the camera ugly at all…

DPReview.com is a benchmark in the world of photography. By delivering the most up-to-date news on photography related products, extensive and well documented reviews and of course a well maintained and immaculate forum, DPReview.com as been for years the “must visit” site for all those looking for information on photography products and seeking knowledge in photography.

According to the site developer Phill Askey, this acquisition by Amazon.com will allow for DPReview.com to focus more on developing more features as well as increase product coverage.

How this will reflect on the quality of information I still don’t know. DPReview.com has been branded with an image for delivering unbiased content and if Amazon.com is smart will allow it to keep it that way.

No numbers have been released for the acquisition but I’m imagining Phill and his team are now celebrating what must have been a dream come true.

From the DPReview.com site:

“We’re proud and excited to announce that Dpreview has been acquired by the worlds leading online retailer, Amazon.com. Started as hobby site in 1998, dpreview.com has grown to be the number one destination for anyone interested in digital cameras and digital photography. Each month dpreview.com has seven million unique visitors (over 22 million sessions) who read over 120 million pages. “We’ve worked very hard over the last eight years to deliver consistently high quality content to our readers”, founder Phil Askey said. “It will be fantastic to be able to expand and build on that without compromising our quality or independence. With the support and resources of Amazon we can achieve this.”

Phil: Today marks an exciting milestone in the history of dpreview.com, everyone here is very much looking forward to being able to do more with Amazon’s help. We’re aiming to expand our product coverage and deliver new site features for our readers and our daily community.”

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For more information and the press release visit DPReview.com.

I’m talking about the new Sigma lens (as of this date still not for sale): the Sigma APO 200-500mm f/2.8 EX DG.

Ok, let’s face it. It’s an amazing piece of photographic technology. It offers a maximum aperture of f2.8 through the whole range, as it’s own LCD displaying subject distance and focal length and is constructed to minimize image degradation typical of Ultra-Telephoto Zooms. As an added feature, comes with a 2x Tele converter turning this monster into a f5.6 400-1000mm. For more info and technical details go here.

Now, let’s start thinking of possible uses. No, this is not a lens that you’ll probably find between the gear of a hobby photographer so it must find its niche amongst highly specialized photographers (wildlife maybe?). For me, the only use I can think about giving it is offering a personalized service of facial hair counting at a 100m distance. You think I’d be successful? Either that or debt collecting. Anyone seeing something like that pointed at them is bound to drop everything to the last cent they might be carrying, and will do so without being asked.

Anyone interested in acquiring this canon (yes, probably can also be used as a RPG launcher in disguise) must prepare for a huge investment. No final prices are known but a popular site for photographic material is pre-selling it for something like €15.000,00. Hmm, new car or new lens? Of course the car might also come in handy as the weight of this thing is probably higher than what is safe to hike with. Also, you don’t need a tripod for it, you need a castle tower just to assemble it.

If you are still not quite visualizing the size, look at the right of the picture. Yes, that is a normal dSLR camera attached to it.

A somewhat funny approach to this lens can be read here (read also the comments section of that post).