Rob Galbraith: Digital Photography Insights

NatureScapes.Net has recently published two interesting articles on the use of the Phototrap automatic triggering device and flash to photograph certain types of wildlife.

PTLens has recently come available as an external editor plug-in for Lightroom on both Mac and Windows as well as an image editing plug-in for Aperture on the Mac. The venerable software for correcting various types of optical distortions also ships as a Photoshop plug-in and a standalone application on both platforms.

Reuters has posted a gallery of its best images from around the world for the month of June.

News agencies were generous in their photo coverage of Euro 2008 and several slideshows have surfaced including this one from msn Fox Sports, another from the New York Times and a more fan-orientated collection of images from Spiegel Online International.

Sports Shooter's monthly clip contest for May has produced some strong images available for viewing in this slideshow.

Nikon has posted firmware updates for both the D3 and D300.

Nikon in Japan has posted a brochure on the D700.

Mac OS X 10.5.4, a maintenance update for the Leopard version of Apple's Mac operating system, corrects a bug that could cause file corruption when saving files across a network from within Photoshop CS3 as well as other Adobe CS3 applications, plus it adds RAW decode support for the Canon EOS Rebel XSi/450D and several other digital cameras and backs.*UPDATED*

Nikon has filled in the gap between its midrange and pro digital SLRs. The D700, announced today and slated to ship in late July 2008, looks like a D300, acts like a D3 and promises to be as big a hit as each of them. Nikon has taken the full-frame 12.05 million image pixel CMOS sensor from the D3, placed it inside a body that is similar to the D300, weaved in capabilities from both and put a price tag of US$2999.95 on the result.

Alongside the D700 today Nikon has announced the Speedlight SB-900, a new shoe-mount flash unit that incorporates a revised control layout, extended zoom range, faster recycling times plus a long list of other refinements relative to the SB-800 it replaces.

Completing Nikon's announcements today are two perspective control lenses, the PC-E Micro Nikkor 45mm f2.8D ED and PC-E Micro Nikkor 85mm f2.8D ED.

Popular Photography magazine has published a profile of USA Today staff photographer and Sports Shooter website co-founder Bert Hanashiro. The article, called Behind the Lens with Robert Hanashiro, covers a range of topics but focuses mainly on what it's like to cover a summer Olympics.

Adobe has released a testing version of Camera Raw 4.5, an upcoming release of its RAW conversion plug-in for Photoshop CS3 for Mac and Windows.

Zeiss this week has added a new wide angle to its range of manual focus lenses for Nikon and other SLR cameras. The 18mm Distagon T* 3.5/18 joins a family of eight such lenses in all, and will ship in July 2008 in a ZF version for Nikon F-mount, followed by a ZK K-mount version for Pentax and Samsung SLRs one to two months after that.

The redesigned Camera Muzzle, a new version of the soft-sided sound muffling enclosure for digital SLRs from Canon and Nikon, should be on the shelves of U.S. dealers early next week.

If you like good sports photography like we do in these parts, it's well worth the time to check out Al Bello's site.

Eight Magnum photographers traveled to nine countries documenting 30 people before and after they received treatment for AIDS in a series of multimedia presentations called Access to Life.

In a Canon Professional Network (CPN) feature called Behind the lens, the timing is appropriate with Euro 2008 winding up for Part 2 of Football shooters' favourite photographs.

National Geographic's Gerd Ludwig shows how Russia's vast northern region has been changed by oil wealth in an interesting photo gallery called Siberia's Frozen Assets.

Although there are still a few games to go before a winner is crowned, lots of great soccer images are emerging from Euro 2008.