Jon Sienkiewicz Blog

"Viewing any part of the bright Sun through a camera lens, binoculars, or a telescope without a special-purpose solar filter secured over the front of the optics will instantly cause severe eye injury." These words come directly from NASA, and they ought to know. Don't take chances. Be informed. Read what NASA says about annular eclipse safety.

3 Legged Thing just introduced their 2023 lineup of monopods, and Shutterbug had a chance to evaluate the model of our choice several weeks in advance. Here's why the 3 Legged Thing "Taylor 2.0" works for us.

The Vanguard VEO 3T+ 234AB aluminum travel tripod is the quick change artist I’ve been looking for. It’s light, folds to just a hair over 18 inches, and is about the most versatile tripod I’ve used in a long time. Plus...

Adobe announced major AI-generation news and the best thought-out, purposeful rules to protect nearly everyone in the source artist-to-end-user chain. Here are the major takeaways.

Our local supermarket has Halloween candy and scary witches on display, so that can mean only one thing in New Jersey—school is about to open. Annually, each and every elementary school student produces, on average, 331* metric tons of precious artwork; add another 11* tons if they attend summer camp. Some of the items are small enough to fit on the refrigerator door, and all of them are worth keeping forever. Short of renting offsite storage space to house and curate their youngsters' souvenirs of academia, how do sentimental parents cope?

[ *Author's estimate based on absolutely nothing. ]

Vanguard, one of our favorite photo accessory manufacturers, has a slug of new stuff you should know about. Why do we favor Vanguard? In addition to their impeccable high quality, Vanguard creates and supervises the concept, design, manufacturing, distribution, marketing and sales of every product they sell—unlike many other camera gear wholesalers. This means the price you pay at your local photo retailer or when you order directly from Vanguard tends to be below market—saving you money and delivering greater value. And we're all in when it comes to getting more for your money.

Think of Generative Expand as Cropping in reverse gear.  It's mind-blowing. Instead of making the image smaller and deleting pixels, the new feature allows you to expand image content beyond its original borders by using the Adobe Firefly-powered Generative Fill function to create additional content that never existed but blends naturally with the original image. The new content can be an extension of the original data or based on the Command Prompt you type. This description is an oversimplification—read on for some real-world examples you haven't seen anywhere else.