A Sigma lens more expensive than the Canon equivalent lens? Not possible, you say. Consider the new Sigma 50mm f/1.4 lens expected to be in retail shops in July. The lens effectively becomes an 80mm medium telephoto lens (35mm equivalent) on digital cameras with APS-C size image sensors.

The Sigma 50mm f/1.4 has a minimum focusing distance of 45cm (17.7”) and has maximum magnification of 1:7.4. A HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor) ensures a quiet and high-speed AF as well as full-time manual focus override.

The lens also features a 9 blade aperture with a f/22 minimum f-stop. The filter attachment size is 77 mm. Dimensions are 84.5mm × 68.2mm. Weight is 520g. It will be available with Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Sony mounts.

Sigma lists the following distinguishing characteristics:

• Standard lens with large maximum aperture of f/1.4
• Creates sharp images with high contrast and ensures superior peripheral brightness
• Incorporates molded glass aspherical lens, perfectly correcting coma aberration and creating superior image quality
• Super multi-layer lens coating reduces flare and ghosting
• Hyper Sonic Motor (HSM) ensuring silent, high-speed AF

Sounds good so far. However, the pre-order price (in stock) for the new Sigma 50mm f/1.4 is US$499.00 US$479.00 on Amazon USA.

Canon already has four 50mm lenses. They are listed below with prices from Amazon USA for comparison.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM – US$1,300.00
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM – US$325.00
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II – US$89.74
Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 – US$255.98

Canon’s ‘plastic fantastic’, the f/1.8 version, has long been a favorite with budding Canon photographers thanks to it’s large aperture, pleasant bokeh and low price. However, it lacks the Canon USM motor and metal barrel causing more experienced photographers to go for the more expensive f/1.4 version.

Sigma’s HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor) is on par with Canon’s USM. The Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 is smaller at 73.8mm x 50.5mm, weighs less (290g), and has a low-cost 58mm filter size. Will the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 lens performance relative to the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 justify the extra size/weight and a whopping US$174 price difference? In the end, performance will be the deciding factor for most photographers.

Note: Photos have already been posted on DPReview. Bokeh looks very smooth. You be the judge.

Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras
USD 499.00

9 suppliers – prices from USD 375.00

Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM 50 f1.4 for Canon

US $486.74 End Date: Sunday Aug-01-2010 1:49:32 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $486.74 Buy it now | Add to watch list

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Canon Europe has announced the latest addition to the EX Speedlite flash unit range – the Speedlite 430EX II. The new flash has a guide number of 43 (m/ISO 100 at 105mm) and includes an built-in wide panel to allow coverage suitable for wide angle lenses to 14mm.

The Speedlite 430EX II replaces the Speedlite 430EX. Canon has re-designed the mounting foot (now metal) and the connection pins. They have incorporated a new quick release and locking mechanism. Also, recycle times have been reduced by approximately 20% with the recycle process performed silently to minimize distraction.

Used in Manual mode, the Speedlite 430EX II offers settings in 1/3 stop increments for increased precision of operation. When used with compatible EOS cameras – every setting on the Speedlite 430EX II can be controlled via the camera menu system allowing more rapid and intuitive alteration of settings.

The 430EX II can also be used as a slave unit when combined with a master unit in a wireless flash setup. A small stand is included (see photo).

Other features on the 430EX II include 1st and 2nd curtain flash synchronization, exposure compensation, and an expanded range of nine custom functions. The 430EX II is compatible with the Canon OC-E3 off-camera shoe cord and SB-E1 flash bracket.

Update July 9th: Canon USA has also announced the Speedlite 430EX II Flash.

The 430EX II can be ordered from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

Phototrade (now in beta) is the latest service to help photographers share and monetize their work. They made a big splash at BlogWorld held earlier this month. Right now you can only upload photos from your hard drive. However, Flickr integration is coming soon so you can choose photos to offer for sale from existing Flickr galleries.

Ways to Share Photos on Photrade

• Post and share photos on your blog, website, or MySpace page
• Email photos to family and friends
• Set photos to private to share them only with who you want
• Tag photos to make them easy to search/browse

Ways to Earn Money on Phototrade

• Sale of prints or merchandise
• Sale of digital rights to use your photos
• CPM* revenue from ads on your gallery page
• CPC** revenue from ads in your photo (external sites)

You can set prices individually or choose not to sell any of your photos. Photo products include normal prints, canvas prints, T-shirts, and a 15 oz. mug.

Withdrawl of money earned is via PayPal (US$10 minimum). Also, you can choose to donate the money to your favorite charity. Soon you will be able to use your account balance (revenue you earned from selling prints and advertising) towards purchases on the site.

Any shortcomings? There are quite a few print sizes available but no choices of photo paper or information on the photo paper used. The T-shirts are available in one size only. And, it’s not clear what size you get or what the shirt is made – cotton, polyester, or both? Keep in mind that Photrade is still in beta. I am sure more options and information will be added before the final release.

Photosharing is a crowded space. Phototrade will have to compete with Flickr, Zoomr, SmugMug, CafePress, PBase, Exposure Manager, and many others. They will survive only by doing it better or differentiating themselves. Time will tell how well they do.

*CPM = Cost per thousands impressions
**CPC = Cost per click

The 11th issue of PBase magazine has just been released. Anna Pagnacco from Italy is the featured PBase photographer of the month along with a host of other articles on Photoshop actions, composition, travel to Russia and Nambia, and more.

If you are not familiar with PBase magazine, it was launched in April 2005 by a group of PBase power users. Interestingly, the idea came about when a PBase member, Gary Blanchette, posted a number of spoof magazine covers. A small discussion in a dpreview forum was all it took to get started. By the way, Gary now designs all the PBase magazine covers.

PBase magazine is available only in PDF format. No printed edition – not yet anyway. Go ahead and download the latest issue or all 11 12 issues. You’ll be glad you did!

Yip Cheong Fun’s superb photos in this month’s Asian Geographic magazine look more like duotones than black and white photos. Is it possible to reproduce that rich, historic look using images from a dSLR?

Yes, of course! Robert achieved a similar look and feel using images from Myanmar taken a few year ago with a Canon EOS 10D. To add an even more antique feel, you can apply a worn-away photo emulsion edge. All you need is Adobe Photoshop CS2. Here’s how to do it for free – no plug-in or add-on software required:

How to Create a Duotone:

Use your standard workflow to create web-ready color images. Sizes 400×600 or slightly smaller fit most monitors. Flatten any layers.
Instead of converting directly to grayscale, first change the Mode to Lab Color.
Go to the channels palette and drap the b channel to the trash can. Then, drag the Alpha 2 channel to the trash can.
Now, go back to Image -> Mode and click on ‘Grayscale’. See the difference!
Go again to Image -> Mode and click on Duotone. Click on Load, then on Pantone(R) Duotones. Click on the first one (144 Orange) and choose Load.
Then, click on the orange square and look for Pantone 146C. Click on it then choose OK and OK again. (Optionally, you can use my modified Pantone 146C – download it below.)
Go back to ‘Mode’ and choose RGB.
Save your work.

How to Create an Emulsion Frame:

Download one or both of my emulsion images (below).
Open the emulsion image in Photoshop along with your Duotone.
Rotate the emulsion image to the same orientation as your Duotone.
Note the size of your Duotone image.
Click on the emulsion image and choose Image Size from the image menu.
Click OK. Turn off ‘Constrain Proportions’ and enter the same dimensions as your Duotone.
Then ‘Select All’ and go to Edit and select ‘Copy’.
Click on your Duotone and go to Edit and select ‘Paste’.
Make sure that your Layers Palette is visible.
Click on the Emulsion Layer – from the dropdown box just above it – choose ‘Screen’.
Go to the Layer Menu and flatten the image.
Save your work.

Duotones were originally invented to deal with the problems that color printers have in printing black and white photos. If you are preparing a duotone for a commercial printer, you need to stick to one of the Pantone listed colors so that they can match the ink. Because we are printing to ’screen’, it doesn’t matter if we tweak the Pantone colors a bit. I prefer color of this custom duotone to Sepia. Others have told me they prefer Sepia. What’s your opinion?

Why convert photos to duotones? By removing most of the color, the eye focuses more on the subject and texture of the photo. It is particularly well-suited for travel photos from ‘culturely rich’ countries. In this region, countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, India, Bhutan, and Indonesia come to mind. Also, duotones are a good way to get around color correction and white balance problems.

The photo shown above (click on it for a larger version) was taken by Robert at the Hledan Market, Yangon, Myanmar in 2004. If you would like to see the rest of the series, check out my PBase gallery here.

Download emulsion #1 here.
Download emulsion #2 here.
Download emulsion #3 here.
Download Robert’s modified Pantone 146C here.

Yesterday at Photoshop World in Singapore, Adobe announced that the Windows beta version of Lightroom(TM) had just been posted on the Adobe Labs website. At the conference, Ton Frederiks (Senior Application Engineer Adobe Systems Benelux, Holland) spent about one hour showcasing Lightroom. It is clear that Lightroom is aimed at heading off Apple’s Aperture; already making inroads with Mac users.

I was impressed! Lightroom gives us a hint of what we might see when Photoshop v10 is released. It has a totally different architecture than other Adobe products. The standard top menu bar has been replaced with snazzy right and left sidebars with collapsing menus and slick sliders.

The ‘black tie’ color scheme seems to be the new trend in commercial software. The are many enhancements and additions compared to the Adobe Camera Raw plugin (ACR). For example, the usability of the curves adjustment has been greatly improved through the addition of luminance and compression sliders. A cool ‘lights off’ feature dims everything but the preview window. Also, grayscale conversion has new colorizing options. And if I heard correctly, history states are saved with the file.

Of course, the raw conversion engine will ultimately determine the success of Lightroom. Adobe has already announced that they will use the recently aquired Pixmantec conversion technology in Lightroom.

At the conference, Adobe was pushing their ‘digital negative’ raw format (DNG) as a solution to the ever growing list of proprietary raw formats. The rest of the conference could have titled, ‘Photoshop Tips and Tricks’. Ton Frederiks and Marianne Young (Solutions Engineer Adobe Systems, South East Asia) showed intermediate and advanced techniques for getting the most out of Photoshop. While Photoshop is the ‘killer app’ for professional photographers and graphic designers, it can be perplexing to even skilled users. Towards the end of day, Ton Frederiks got lost in a myriad of layer stacks, alpha channels, and masks. I don’t feel so bad anymore!

Reference Link
Adobe Lightroom at Amazon.com

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening…

US $19.95 End Date: Thursday Jul-29-2010 23:08:11 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $19.95 Buy it now | Add to watch list

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Wordpress is fantastic software for blogging. However, it has few features for integrating photos or galleries. A photo blogger is left with a number of sub-optimum choices such as pasting in photos, linking to an external gallery, or integrating a gallery manually or via a Wordpress plugin.

The last two choices require maintaining separate galleries – either on a commercial site (PBase, Flickr, SmugMug, etc.) or using open source software (Gallery, Coppermine, Zenphoto, etc.). The commercial sites don’t integrate well with Wordpress nor do they allow you harmonize the ‘look and feel’.

I have been looking at the open source software choices for months. They all have one big negative feature – the requirement for a MySQL database. OK, OK – a database is the right way to store and sort a large number of photos. However, I am not starting my own PBase. I just want small, lightweight galleries to supplement this blog. A database driven gallery means extra cost and complicated set-up. Also, moving or replicating the installation is a major hassle.

‘Singapore’ is an open source, template-driven, image gallery web application written in PHP and is licensed under the GNU (General Public License). It does NOT require a MySQL database (optional) because all image information can be stored in flat text CSV files. Tamlyn Rhodes (based in the UK) is the founder and lead developer of ’singapore’.

Here is a list of key features:

Can store image info in CSV files on server (no database), or
Can store image info in a MySQL database, or
Can store image info in directory and file names (no setup), or
Can function without any extra image info.
XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0 compatible output no JavaScript and no cookies).
Works on a domain or sub-domain.
Multi-language support (over 25 translations currently available).
Fully template-driven with several templates available for download.
Very easy setup and easy-to-integrate into existing websites.
Web based admin to add, delete & edit images and galleries.
Add images via admin interface or ftp.
Automatic thumbnails generation (requires GD or ImageMagick).
Image and gallery viewing statistics.
Allows sub-galleries and sub-categories.
User defined image information such as location taken, camera used etc.
Clear, logical, object oriented code that is easy to modify and customize.

What’s the downside? What’s missing? There are two key features that have not yet been implemented – commenting and EXIF extraction. Commenting/rating will be added soon. However, Tamlyn is ‘backpeddling’ a bit on the EXIF issue. This feature is more difficult to implement and will most likely be added later. The most current version is 0.10.0.

Unknown issues? Indexing by search engines, tagging, etc. I’ll post an update about this latter.

I am in the process of moving all the post-related photos to the new gallery. The old links will be maintained until the seach engines re-index the site and bury their old records. Obviously, all photos related to new posts will go to the new gallery also.

My new gallery with a customized style sheet is here. In the future, just use the ‘Photo Galleries’ link on the navigation bar.

Robert’s Rating:

OK, OK! So PBase announced them on June 8th. I wanted to use them for a while before posting my opinion. You might remember from my previous post concerning PBase that most Java scripts were disabled in early May for yet ‘unstated’ security reasons. The big uproar from users was due mostly to the loss of use of 3rd party statistics software packages such as StatCounter, webstats4U, Addfreestats, etc. PBase users were told that PBase statistics were on the way soon. Now we got’em!

Here are the features at launch according to the PBase Site Admin (Emily):

“The statistics pages have arrived! Go to your PBase statistics page at (http://stats.pbase.com). You can also get there from the “view full statistics” link on your profile page.

Aggregate statistics page (default):

See a graph of your total image and gallery daily page views over the past 30 days.

See a list of your 20 most viewed images and galleries in the past 3 days.

Gallery stats page:

See a graph of daily page views for this gallery over the past 30 days.

See a list of the top 20 most viewed images and subgalleries inside this gallery over the past 3 days.

Image Stats page:

See a graph of daily page views for this image over the past 30 days.

Statistics for the current day will be available shortly after the day change on PBase clocks, which are on UTC.”

The gallery/image stats are also accessible from a link at the bottom of each gallery and image page. The link leads to a graph/report on hits over the last thirty days. The gallery stats link allows you to see your 20 most viewed images and galleries for that specific day. You can drill down further by click on the date link at the beginning of each stat bar.

If you are webmaster or gallery owner, is there such a thing as too many stats? Probably not. PBase stats is a nice feature to take a quick look at traffic through a gallery. However, in their current form they are no substitute for the wealth of data provided by 3rd party programs. Anyway, it’s a start and I am sure they will be improved as time goes on. In the meantime, the Java script issue is still festering.

Click on the thumbnail above for a screen capture from my Exotic Birds Gallery stats.

Robert Rating:

In Asia, you can still find extreme religious festivals either forgotten or banned in other parts of the world. Local photographer and good friend, Stuart Clyne, recently traveled to San Pedro Cutud (San Fernando), Philippines to shoot the annual Good Friday re-enactment of Christ’s final hours. The Lenten ritual drew a large crowd this year that was estimated at about 30,000 including 400 police and volunteer guards.

Scores of penitents, inflicting self-flagellations using glass-spiked leather thongs on their bare backs, trail a “Christ”, a Filipino penitent, who bears a heavy wooden cross during the trek to the makeshift Golgotha (calvary). Upon arriving, the women kneel at the feet of the makeshift cavalry and wail a version of the Gospel of Seville Passion. Spectators watched devotees being crucified in batches, their palms and feet attached to the crosses with 10-centimeter nails soaked in alcohol to prevent infection. Some repeat the ritual year after year. This year’s ‘Christ’ was on the cross for his 20th time.

Some reasons penitents give for enduring the crucifixion include asking for forgiveness for their sins, praying for peace, and asking for good fortune. The Catholic Church disapproves of these acts and distances itself from them saying it is a misrepresentation of the faith.

Stuart shot under the hot sun all day with a Canon EOS 30D and a Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens. He also carried a back-up body, a Canon EOS 300D with Canon EF 24-70mm lens. A preferential vantage point was difficult to find, so Stuart tried and succeeded in registering with local authorities at the last minute to gain access to the enclosure. Click on the thumbnail to go to Stuart’s PBase galleries for this event.

PBase is one of few photo-sharing sites that survived the dotcom bubble. Started in August of 1999, it has grown to be one of the largest photo-sharing sites on the web. The PBase business model is built around subscribers not advertising. So you don’t get bothered by flashing banners or barking dogs. Photo-sharing sites are designed for people with cameras who want to display and share their work on the web. Normally, all you need is an email address to open a trial account. Different photographers have different needs. A freelance or professional photographer might care less about the snazzier features of the newer photo-sharing sites and more about reaching potential customers and clients.

I started posting photos on PBase in 2003 at the urging of a friend. And, to date have posted nearly 1,300 images. Only last year was I able to acquire to username ‘Robert’ which had been locked by a defunct trial account. IMHO, PBase is the best choice for a freelance photographer (maybe, even better than putting up your own site). I say this because I get many requests to purchase photos through SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). As long as you give your PBase photo a specific title and even better yet – add a description, the search engine bot/spiders will find it and index it. Munch, munch! If the information is general, forget it! But if the information is even partially unique, you will find a link to your photo floating to the tops of the SERPs as the hits pile up.

Here are the pros/cons of PBase as I see it:

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Free trial accounts
• No advertising
• User forums
• Private mail
• Linking allowed
• Multiple file uploads
• Custom style sheets
• Optional gallery password
• Indexed by search engines

Cons

• Gallery themes limited
• Limited text capability
• Customizing difficult
• Some Most Java scripts blocked
• No embedding tools
• No video sharing
• Occasional downtime

Addendum – May 9th: PBase is now blocking almost all Java scripts. This change effectively blocks the use of external counters, slide shows, add-to-cart buttons, rrs feed to Java, and other embellishments. It has provoked the ire of PBase power uses. Posts in the PBase Q&A Forum asking for the return of scripts have yet to be answered by the owners of PBase.com.

Addendum – May 23th: PBase has increased the storage limit for a basic account to 400MB. The price is unchanged at US$23/year. That’s enough capacity to post an amazing 4,000 photos assuming an average size of 100KB/photo.