Shutterbug Staff

Longtime Shutterbug contributor Howard Millard is offering his "Travel Photography
in the Digital Age" workshop in Italy May 12-19. While staying in a country
villa nestled in the verdant hills of Tuscany, participants will photograph evocative
landscapes, a vineyard, an outdoor market, and the exquisite towns of Florence
and Siena to learn techniques to make stunning images for personal, editorial
and fine art use. While film will be covered, the emphasis will be on shooting
and processing digitally. Howard gives personal, hands-on instruction and reviews
of your work to help refine your personal vision, maximize your photographic and
digital skills, and energize and stimulate your image-making process. Topics include
photographing people, architecture, interiors, landscapes, nurturing a personal
style, natural and artificial light, equipment, working with Photoshop, and printing
options including fine art papers.
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Hasselblad has launched the Hasselblad H3D-31, the 31 megapixel version of the
H3D-39, the world's first 48mm full-frame DSLR camera system. Featuring
near full-frame capture, the H3D-31 uses a 44×33mm sensor enhanced with
micro-lenses to boost ISO rating one stop to a new maximum of ISO 800. The system's
new high-speed capture architecture, which is common to all H3D models, gives
the H3D-31 a capture rate of 1.2 seconds per image in either mobile or tethered
mode. These features give the H3D-31 the highest burst rate of the H3D family
and make it the camera of choice for the professional mobile photographer.
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The new Olympus SP-550 UZ Ultra Zoom has an 18x optical zoom lens (28-504mm
equivalent in 35mm photography), which gives users the ability to shoot telephoto,
wide-angle and macro (as close as 1cm) all in one. The camera's full manual
exposure control provides professionals and photo-enthusiasts with unlimited
creativity, while its automatic settings and Built-in Help Guides will put novice
users at ease.

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Lexar has introduced Professional UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) memory
cards, the latest addition to the company's Professional line of high-performance
cards. When paired with a UDMA-enabled device, such as Lexar's new Professional
FireWire 800 Reader, UDMA cards improve the professional photographer's
digital imaging experience by reducing the time needed to download captured
images to a destination computer. In addition, the benefits of Lexar Professional
UDMA memory cards extend well beyond card-to-computer transfer rates, to improved
in-camera performance in several UDMA-enabled digital camera backs and digital
SLR cameras expected to be announced later this year. Speed-rated at 300x, or
capable of a minimum sustained write speed of 45MB per second, and available
in capacities of 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB, new Lexar Professional UDMA cards deliver
a 125% performance improvement over Lexar's previous generation 133x CompactFlash®
product line when the card is used with a UDMA-enabled device.

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