David B. Brooks Blog

Sort By: Post Date | Title | Publish Date
David B. Brooks Blog  |  May 27, 2010  |  0 comments

Early in the history of photography in America, well before the year 1900, Eastman Kodak invented the concept of “you snap the picture we will do the rest”. Kodak designed and made simple, easy to use box cameras, as well as better models, and the box Brownie was sold at a very low price to make it accessible to a wide audience. Kodak expected to, and did, earn their profit from the sale of film and processing. By the time I was a kid in the 30’s cameras, film and processing (negatives and a set of prints) were available through just about every corner drugstore.

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Jun 02, 2010  |  0 comments

That Apple has overtaken Microsoft in size may be easily rationalized by Windows people claiming 80% of PC users are using Windows. But just because so many are is not a necessity to conform, in fact it may be a bad idea.

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Jun 13, 2010  |  0 comments

Fobsun is a Chinese manufacturer of LED lighting with a wide selection of products listed on their website www.fobsun.com. I took interest in Fobsun because they sent me a news item about a downlight they make that has standard lamp socket as used in America and white light output near 6500K color temperature. This lamp is also about as bright as a 40 watt incandescent lamp. To me its color temperature close to that of an LCD computer display and moderate brightness makes it an ideal candidate as an illumination source for environmental lighting where computer digital photography is done and prints are being made, in a light source matching the computer screen. It is a Fobsun Horizon Down Lights Adopting SMD LEDs, FLB-E27-90W-H, E27 base SMD bulb,38*160mm, 90LEDs,7W,100-260VAC, white color, 6000-6500k,630lm US $16.98

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Jun 19, 2010  |  0 comments

Wouldn’t you know as soon as I admit a typo mistake about 8 gigs of RAM in a Mac Mini in the July issue Digital Help, the following week Apple Announces an all new Mac Mini that will allow just that much RAM to be installed. No , I did not know about the new Mini, I did make a mistake. Ahead of the times? Well, that is usual for me, but I did not see a new Mini coming in my psyche.

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Jun 26, 2010  |  0 comments

I got some of a drubbing due to my opinion there is not much new in Adobe Photoshop CS5 for photographers. So I took it upon myself to look at all of the evangelical video on it at www.tv.adobe.com. What I found were lots of new things art directors, ad producers, designers and many other professionals who use Photoshop will surely like for all kinds of photographic manipulation needed for production projects. But still little or nothing new a serious photography enthusiast would need or want unless it’s someone devoted to making highly modified and distorted photographic fantasies. And I have done a little of that myself, in fact it was the record industry rock and roll part of my career. But I do digital photography editing and processing today and everyday, particularly of scanned film images, and have a copy of Photoshop CS-5 I use. So far I have found nothing new in it I can’t do with CS4 in my everyday work with photographs with my computer.

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Jul 10, 2010  |  0 comments

Not long ago I wrote a blog about the new Mac Mini just announced. The improvements Apple made were encouraging that the Mini would now be an even better mainstream option for computer users. But I had no plans to get one myself when I wrote that blog. But a bit of bad luck changed the situation. My relatively old office Mac Mini was knocked out of business by a “mini” external hard drive, one of several brands designed for convenience with the same lateral dimensions as a Mini and intended to sit under a Mac Mini. For some reason my little “mini” external hard drive failed and got very hot, and that damaged the Mac Mini sitting above. That was the second time I had one of these “mini” external hard drives involved in a problem with a Mac Mini. So a lesson finally learned. Convenience sometimes has a price. Oh! well, the new Mac Mini is a larger shape, so those old “mini” external hard drives are a thing of the past, and that will be a matter of deliberate choice in my case.

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Jul 18, 2010  |  0 comments

About a month ago I wrote a blog here about a new LED lamp made by Fobsun in China. And here is the essential information I had at the time: “I took interest in Fobsun because they sent me a news item about a downlight they make that has a standard lamp socket as used in America and white light output near 6500K color temperature. This lamp is also about as bright as a 40 watt incandescent lamp. To me its color temperature close to that of an LCD computer display and moderate brightness makes it an ideal candidate as an illumination source for environmental lighting where computer digital photography is done and prints are being made, in a light source matching the computer screen. It is a Fobsun Horizon Down Lights Adopting SMD LEDs, FLB-E27-90W-H, E27 base SMD bulb, 38*160mm, 90LEDs,7W,100-260VAC, white color, 6000-6500k,630lm.”

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Jul 25, 2010  |  0 comments

When Canon announced a 9600 optical resolution Canoscan 9000f flatbed scanner, I got on the phone and got a loaner to test and report on. For all the enthusiast photographers with film collections they want to scan into digital files, this new Canoscan made me wonder, is it an ideal answer? It’s priced right with a list of $249. But how well does it work and what quality of scans does it reproduce from 35mm film? Of course from my mail I knew many readers would be interested, but I didn’t get an assignment to do a user report.

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Aug 11, 2010  |  0 comments

Logically, some would think because digital cameras are now so popular and have replaced the use of film to a great extent, that film scanning would decline proportionally. But the reality is that there are enormous personal collections of film images people have created over much of the last century. Most realize these film images will decay and deteriorate in time, but the history they tell should be preserved if for no other reason than preserving the history of their making.

David B. Brooks Blog  |  Aug 28, 2010  |  0 comments

If the bulk of what is written and read is considered, one would have to think having just the right, even the best, camera and lenses is the secret to making good photographs. But although some of the mail I receive from my Digital Help column does involve shooting hardware, most of it is spread over other issues like printers, scanners, and software, as well as a bit about computers used for photo processing. However, the stumbling block that gets in the way for many trying to find a way to make better photographs are limitations of perceptual experience and understanding.

Pages

X