Photo Accessory News

The latest manifestation of desktop back-up devices from Western Digital, the My Book Studio Edition II, makes what might have seemed to some as a difficult task—backing up and retrieving image and other files—quite easy.

Polarizing filters make pictures look like they were taken at either the North Pole or the South Pole. Rotating the Polarizing filter shifts the appearance from North Pole to South Pole and back again. They are not always used to photograph Polar Bears; it’s easy to understand the confusion, but there are no Polar Bears at the South Pole. Polarizers are important because our ice masses are disappearing, melting away and raising the sea level around Miami. When the ice caps are gone, the only way we’ll have to recreate them—or Miami, for that matter—is with Photoshop.

Okay, I made some of this up. But I do know how Polarizers work and why you should use one. Please read on…

Some photographers are surprised to learn that all memory cards and card readers are not created equal. Not only do they come in different formats, but some are faster than others, and card capacity tends to vary with price.

We’re, generally, not fans of those “What’s in My Camera Bag?” photo essays where photographers run down a bunch of, shall we say, rather typical stuff they bring on a shoot (fast telephoto lenses and memory card organizers, anyone?). But we take exception for Peter McKinnon who has a knack for rounding up a range of creatively useful photography tools we hadn’t thought of before.

Colorimeters and spectrophotometers are the two types of color measurement instruments that are used to capture, analyze, and communicate color. In just about any industry where color accuracy is important, you’ll find that color measurement is an essential part of the production process.

There are numerous “rules” of photography, many of which apply to shooting landscapes. There’s the Rules of Thirds, certain “must have” filters, the importance of paying attention to hyperfocal distance, and many more.