The launch of the controversial Canon EOS 7D has generated a huge amount of forum buzz as to where it fits in to the Canon product lines. Marketing departments seems to make abrupt shifts in naming conventions leaving consumers to guess their strategy if they even have one. In Canon’s case, we are left to ponder such inconsistencies such as why there was no Powershot G4? Or, why the PowerShot SD980 IS is called the Digital IXUS 200 IS outside the USA?

Along comes the Canon EOS 7D with an 18MP APS-C size sensor, new viewfinder, improved body construction, new AF system with a dedicated processor, dual Digic 4 processors and new shutter mechanism to allow 8fps continuous shooting. The size and appearance of the EOS 7D are clearly those of the EOS 50D. However, the feature set puts it outside the EOS 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D product line.

Without a full-frame sensor, you could argue that it’s not a successor of the EOS 5D. Of course, there never was an EOS 6D. Instead, photographers got a EOS 5D Mark II. Now, I am really confused!

The price of the Canon EOS 7D (body-only) at Amazon is US$1,899 (MSRP) which is about 2X the price of an EOS 50D body but well below the US$2,749 it will cost you for the EOS 5D Mark II.

Perhaps, we found the answer to the naming mystery! The Canon EOS 7D is a new price point rather than a new product line. It gives advanced amateurs and professionals alike another choice without detracting from existing models. It will help Canon prevent marketshare loss from the likes of Sony’s A700 and Nikon’s D300.

New 0.5x WIDE ANGLE Lens Titanium version For Canon EOS 7D Digital Rebel T1i USA

US $31.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Wednesday Feb-08-2012 16:39:11 PST Bid now | Add to watch list

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I have been using Exposure Manager (aka ExposureManager) for several years and have written positively about them earlier. There service has grown to become an effective business partner for freelance photographers.

For a yearly membership fee and commission on each sale, they host galleries, print and ship photos, and perform order processing. Exposure Manager is located in the USA, however, they ship worldwide in damage-proof packaging.

Exposure Manager has added quite a few enhancements recently that are worth mentioning.

Product Templates

A new shopping cart module allows for real-time photo personalization using built-in templates. This makes it very easy for customers to create greeting cards, as well as trading cards and magazine covers. Currently they have the following templates available:

1. Photo card templates for the holidays: They have 4×8″, 4×6″, and 5×7″ photo card templates available to make custom Christmas cards.

2. Trading cards: You can use one of their pre-defined templates, or make your own template using a product questionnaire. (Example shown above.)

3. Magazine covers: They have added sixteen different magazine covers for almost every sport available.

Request Email Address

By enabling “require email address” in your gallery settings, your visitor will be requested to enter their e-mail address prior to viewing the gallery. You can also make this an optional request, which can be bypassed. You can see a list of who visited your galleries by visiting the reporting screen in the sales management area.

Favorites & Saved Cart

Favorites allow the customer to make an initial selection of preferred photos before adding them to the shopping cart. The shopping cart is then saved automatically if an e-mail address is present. This makes it easier for a customer to continue an interrupted shopping process at a later time.

Share This!

Another new option makes it easier for your customers to spread the word about your photos. By enabling “Share This!” in your gallery settings (under the “Protect tab”), your customers will be able to add a link to your gallery to Facebook, MySpace, blog or send it by email.

Sign-up Deal!

Exposure Manager has graciously allowed us to continue to offer a coupon for 2+ years.

Use the coupon to the right and get a $5.00 discount coupon on a yearly account, or the 2nd month free on a monthly account. The discount will be automatically applied.

If you wander around the site, make sure to come back through the link if you choose to sign-up. For convenience, I have also put the link on the sidebar.

What’s up with price of Canon lenses in Singapore? With the strengthening of the Singapore dollar, they should be getting cheaper.

A photographer friend of mine here in Singapore just purchased a Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 IS lens from B&H Photo Video in the USA. He was able to place the order online with a follow-up phone call to verify credit. B&H then shipped it to Singapore via UPS. The money he saved by ordering from the USA was a whopping S$2,126!

Here’s the comparison

Alan Photo price: S$8,300 (US$6,103) includes GST

B&H price: S$5,576 (US$4,100)
UPS: S$197
GST: S$401 (at delivery)
Total: S$6,174

Savings: S$2,126 (US$1,563)

What about the warranty? The lens from B&H came with a USA Only Warranty Card and a Canon International Warranty Card.

The price of the lens at Amazon is nearly identical to the price at B&H. Amazon doesn’t ship lenses internationally? That’s correct. However, Singaporeans can use vPost.

If you are living in Singapore, is it worth ordering lenses from the USA? For Canon L-series telephoto lens it certainly is worth the trouble.

Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L IS II USM PRO Lens USA Warr Canon Auth Dlr Cat# 4411b002

US $7,297.75 End Date: Thursday Feb-09-2012 11:06:52 PST Buy It Now for only: US $7,297.75 Buy it now | Add to watch list

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Any photographer worth his salt knows how to save photos with and without the metadata. A leaked version of the latest Harry Potter novel was painstakingly photographed page-by-page and and circulated on the internet via BitTorrent before the book’s worldwide release last Friday. The somewhat blurry photos showed each pair of facing pages of the book laid out on a beige red-and-green flecked looped carpet and held open by someone’s fingers. Some of the pages are difficult to read. But the ending, the subject of feverish speculation for months, is completely readable.

Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) data has already revealed that the camera used to take the photos was a Canon EOS 350D. Also present were the serial number and camera settings. The photos were most likely taken in Europe as the camera is sold under the name Rebel XT in the USA. The owner can only be traced if the camera had been registered when it was bought or if it had been taken to a Canon Service Center for repair.

The perpetrator is lucky as Canon said they would not attempt to track down the camera’s owner because of data protection issues. It is uncertain whether Bloomsbury Publishing PLC plans to take out a copyright claim over the images or pursue further action.

The Characters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Stained Glass Art…

US $3.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Wednesday Feb-08-2012 16:38:26 PST Buy It Now for only: US $6.99 Bid now | Buy it now | Add to watch list

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Pretty Harry Potter Dumbledore Magical Wand Led Light Up @

US $0.02 (0 Bid) End Date: Wednesday Feb-08-2012 16:38:48 PST Bid now | Add to watch list

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Deluxe Harry Potter Ron Weasley Magical Wand New In Box

US $0.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Wednesday Feb-08-2012 16:38:49 PST Bid now | Add to watch list

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In a surprising press release today, Amazon.com announced that it has acquired www.dpreview.com. Here is an excerpt: “Dpreview.com is by far the most authoritative source anywhere for straight talk about new digital cameras” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “We at Amazon.com have been their fans for a long time, and we extend a big welcome to the dpreview.com team.”

DPreview.com has in excess of 7 million unique viewers* monthly and the most popular photography forums in the world. The value of the deal was not disclosed. Site founder Phil Askey said that the sites acquisition by Amazon would allow him to devote more time to expanding and improving features on the site.

How will this change in ownership affect photographers? Will the site stay the same? For sure, competitive advertising will disappear. Some bloggers worry about the impartiality of future reviews perhaps skewed to promote higher margin cameras. Only time will tell. However, I have full faith that the high standards set by Phil will remain intact. It is certainly in Amazon’s best interest.

*includes over 22 million sessions with over 120 million pagesviews.

Photography has already gone through one mega trend already in the last 10 years. – the rapid adoption of digital SLRs, digicams, digital camcorders, and the explosive evolution of photo-editing software. The speed of the digital revolution left many experience amateurs and pros struggling to catch up. Is the shift to video another photography tsunami?

Video used to be distinct from still photography. Either the bailiwick of the professional news media or consumers looking for a gimmicky camera to make home movies usually to document the lives of their children. YouTube and it’s subsequent acquisition by Google changed everything for the foreseeable future.

As Dirck Halstead points out in the The Digital Journalist, newspaper photographers are increasingly being asked to shoot video for web sites. He goes on to point out that video cameras now all feature a 16:9 “wide-screen” aspect ratio, the old 4:3 box that we used to associate with movies will be gone. This will force still photos to be shot in horizontal format in order to fit into media layouts designed for videos.

What about me? After 20+ years of doing only still digital photography, I am expanding into video. Not the pro stuff – just good enough to supplement my event coverage with a few YouTube videos. I have not decided on a camcorder yet. However, I am looking at the recently introduced AVCHD high-definition camcorders available from Canon, Panasonic, and Sony.

Will my videos be any good? Don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.

Reference Links
The Coming Earthquake in Photography
The Status of Still Pictures

The Thai government has banned access to Google’s YouTube website after it broadcast material critical of the country’s King… reports the BBC.

Thailand is everyone’s favorite destination for shopping, nightlife, beaches, etc. Easy-going Thais tolerate a wide-range of behavior from visitors arriving from all parts of the globe. There are exceptions, however, and the monarchy is one of them. The current King has achieved near cult status after nearly 57 years on the throne. Minor indiscretions such as putting your beer glass down on a Thai banknote will get you a quick reprimand. More egregious offenses will land you in the hoosegow.

Evidently, the Thai government asked Google to remove the offensive material and they declined. The ban in Thailand follows recent bans in Turkey, Brazil, and Iran …for separate issues.

Update June 25th, 2007: The ban has been lifted.

SINGHA BEER BREWERY WHITE MENS T-SHIRT FROM THAILAND SIZE XXL

US $19.99 End Date: Wednesday Feb-08-2012 17:45:48 PST Buy It Now for only: US $19.99 Buy it now | Add to watch list

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Gray T-Shirt Thailand Chiang Mai Chinese Script sz XS

GBP 8.84 End Date: Friday Feb-10-2012 2:05:20 PST Buy It Now for only: GBP 8.84 Buy it now | Add to watch list

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Deviantart.com has posted a very interesting article that calculates the megapixel rating, or amount of image data the average human eye can collect. It’s a lot – somewhere around 576 megapixels. Wow!

The average human retina has five million cone receptors and also a hundred million rods that detect monochrome contrast, which plays an important role in the sharpness of the image you see. The article points out that this 105MP is an underestimate because the eye is not a still camera.

Your two eyes are continually flicking around to cover a much larger area than your field of view and the composite image is assembled in the brain – not unlike stitching together a panoramic photo. In good light, you can distinguish two fine lines if they are seperate by at least 0.6 arc-minutes (0.01 degrees).

This gives an equivilant pixel size of 0.3 arc-minutes. If you take a conservative 120 degrees as your horizontal field of view and 60 degrees in the vertical plane, this translates to 576MP of available image data.

Interestingly, as a counterpoint to this, the author points out that most people cannot distinguish the difference in quality between a 300dpi and a 150dpi photo when printed at 6×4″, when viewed at normal viewing distances. Keep this in mind before running out and buying a new high-resolution printer to please your eyes.

Once, they performed for thousands. Now, only a handful show up. … … … The Electric Paper

Kim Eng (which means ‘Golden Eagle’ in Teochew) Teochew Opera, is one of Singapore’s most established troupes. A feast of sights and sounds, the Teochew Opera tells age-old stories and legends in dramatic form, with actors garishly made up and dressed in lavish costumes. A colorful spectacle, the troupe generally performs on makeshift stages in open fields. In the troupe’s heyday in the 80s, they performed in front of thousands. But due to declining popularity and a lack of young talent, they now perform to a meager number of audiences. Much to the regret of the performers, who are in their 50s, the troupe is disbanded in February 2007 as this local culture will soon become a lost trade and art*.

*Text and photo are courtesy, Jonathan Yeap.

It was truly sad to learn about the demise the Kim Eng Teochew Opera Troupe. In less than 10 years, Singapore will resemble ‘any city’ in California – full of Starbucks, Pizza Kitchens, and Carl’s Juniors (they are all here already).

Take a few minutes to view Jonathan’s excellent Flickr gallery.

The 2007 IT Show here in [tag]Singapore[/tag] is over and it broke all standing records. Both Saturday and Sunday saw roads and parking garages jammed in the Suntec City area. The crowds were so thick that at one point on Sunday that upward escalators in the convention centre were reversed to prevent more people from entering the exhibit halls. In spite of the new 4-meter wide aisles, walking became a tedious bump-athon on weekend afternoons.

This year, crowds snapped up S$40M in tech bargains. By the time the 4-day show was over, more than 718,000 visitors had passed through the exhibition halls. This was the highest attendance in the 16-year history of the show! In contrast, last year’s sales totaled S$34M and attendance was 630,000 persons.

Check back in a few days (updates are on the newsbar) for photos from the show including some of the best [tag]booth babes[/tag] in Asia.

Photos are now in the Events Gallery.