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April 03, 2008
[ WORLD WIDE TIME WASTER ]
The American journal for health professionals, mdng, gives its readers some advice on addictive web sites that are guaranteed to waste a lot of time. Some of the time wasters mentioned are sticky traps for photographers.
Flickr, the on-line photo gallery, and National Geographic are sure to help fritter away an hour or two looking at other people’s photos. But the really dangerous addiction is www.dpreview.com. Mdng is blunt in its warning: “…this site might turn you into a gadget junkie.”
In fact its worst feature is that it is “guaranteed to induce gear envy and chronic drooling in shutterbugs”, so “before visiting the site, tell yourself that these products are just for looking at, not for buying. Even better, hide your credit cards.”
London-based dpreview.com has been so successful that it has been bought by Amazon. This is where everyone in the know goes for reviews of the latest cameras and lenses. The testing procedures are exhaustive and objective, with a little subjective assessment thrown in at the conclusion.
The site also has very busy discussion forums, divided up according to camera type, where Sony owners can pour scorn on benighted Canon snappers who in turn have nothing but contempt for Nikonians.
Speaking of Nikonians – if you are one then you should bookmark the site www.nikonians.org Discussion forums on this site are divided according to Nikon model, and like the dpreview forums provide for visitors to display their pictures.
For Canon owners one of the most inspiring sites is www.fredmiranda.com While this is not exclusively for Canonians it is certainly biased in that direction because Fred himself, model turned photographer, is a Canon man. There are collections of superb photos on this site which set just about the highest standards for anyone daring to show their work. To see some great work by Sydney photographer “Sheila” go to fredmiranda.com/hosting and search for Sheila.
Fred is also a dab hand at creating Photoshop plug-ins and actions. These are low-cost automation routines for sharpening and enlarging images and for creating monochrome from colour. He also has a plug-in that gives images the appearance of Fuji Velvia film. We use them all.
When we want to check our subjective assessment of a lens against objective measurement of resolution, flare, chromatic aberrations and distortion we always go to the German site, www.photozone.de As well as conducting their own tests of lenses photozone maintains an owners’ database to which users of the gear contribute their assessments, which are then averaged to give a rating to various lens characteristics.
If what you’re looking for is basic information about current camera models and their specifications and sometimes also their retail price then look no further than the makers’ local web sites. Sony, Canon, Olympus, Fujifilm and Panasonic list prices on their sites. Nikon doesn’t give prices but, like all the others, it gives full specifications on screen and most also have downloadable pdfs. Just remember that the URL is always com.au – if you leave off the .au you will get the American or international site.
OK. Now start wasting time.
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Posted by terry at April 3, 2008 11:17 PM
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Comments
I normally prefer going to http://www.imaging-resource.com/ when I feel like I have a budget allocation for a new camera. Otherwise I try not to look.
I did check out their first shots review of the K200D after reading your review. Interesting to note that it's list price is still 50% more here.
Posted by: Andrew Rasmussen at April 4, 2008 01:27 AM
Another site for Nikon owners that I've liked is nikongear.com.
Also, there's a nice photography related web comic called What The Duck - http://www.whattheduck.net
Posted by: William at April 4, 2008 01:38 AM
My favorite time waster is theonlinephotographer.com. Less pixel peeping and more about photography and art. Well written and usually quite humorous.
Diverse opinion is encouraged and it's editor can be quite quirky but always thoughtful and intelligent. He reminds me of Terry, a wonderful photographer and even better writer. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Posted by: Tony M at April 6, 2008 01:33 PM