Almost all the bird images on the website will have been shot with this lens so you can view the image quality possible

To purchase the latest version of this lens would cost around $10,000CAD assuming you can find one – there is currently a long back-order list at all suppliers., Further images are available at http://www.peterllewellyn.com/600_f4.html

The lens is offered complete as originally purchased including shipping case, lens hoods, instruction manual, filter holder and the original foot. The lens is currently fitted with a P-50 Wimberley mounting bracket for Wimberley or other Arca Swiss type tripod heads (value $58). Included in the price is a Lens Coat cover in Realtree Max – see image below (Value $99.95)

For sale for $5500 CAD

Of these two are of particular interest to the advanced amateur or professional photographer, the 85mm and the 24-120 zoom

The superfast 85mm 1.4 has been around for decades and was somewhat overdue for an upgrade. Although dubbed as the ideal portrait lens many sports photographers, myself included, owned one for shooting indoor and floodlit sports back in the ‘old days’ of film when we did not have the luxury of ISO settings of 3200 or higher and stadium lighting was a great deal poorer than we find today.

The new version features a silent wave motor, Nano crystal coating (to reduce flare and ghosting), Internal focusing and a 9-blade diaphram for natural bokeh. It is expected to sell at around $1700 US.

The 24-120mmm zoom with it’s constant maximim aperture of f/4 is likely to find it’s way into many professionals bags (maybe mine) as a ‘catch all’ lens at the wider end, and would be a great lens for news and general use. Now that we have super clean files at higher ISO settings the f/4 maximum aperture would not be much of a handicap in most situations.

The lens features Silent Wave motor, VR II (Vibration reduction) internal focusing, Nano Crystal coating, nine-blade diaphram, and ED glass. A professional specification all around. Price will be around $1299

Both lenses will be available from September.

Full details of all  these lenses at www.nikonusa.com

‘Digital Workflow for the Working Photographer’ has been completely updated to take account of the changes in the most recent versions of Aperture 3 and Lightrrom 3, and considerably expanded.

Although this e-book is not intended as a definitive guide to all the features of Aperture and Lightroom I have now included much greater detail on the processing steps taken with each image.

PHOTO MECHANIC

• Copying files from your camera, sorting, deleting outtakes and renumbering
• Comparing images and rating them by star ratings or colour ratings
• Applying IPTC data for keywords and captions bothfor individual files and in bulk
• Automating caption building and rapid keywording strategies
• Copying images to their final location
• Transmitting images by Email and by FTP

APPLE APERTURE and ADOBE LIGHTROOM

• Importing Images into the database
• Building a filing structure
• Processing RAW files and exporting into a usable image format
• Controlling the RAW processing functions and applying changes to multiple images
• Cropping, cloning, colour correctionsand other image enhancements
• Using Aperture and Lightroom as your catalog database and how to find and retrieve images

PHOTOSHOP

• Explanation of the range of tasks still performed in Photoshop
• Accurate re-sizing of images
• The quick mask technique for the seamless removal of unwanted areas of your image

Available from the web site at www.peterllewellyn.com – still priced at $25

• Speed improvements all arond but particularly on import and thumbnail scrolling
• DSLR video file import
• Tethered capture
• Improved preview quality
• Improved RAW conversion (uses same conversion engine as Photoshop CS5)
• Improved sharpening
• Much improved noise reduction
• Automatically profiled lens corrections
• Develop presets
• Output of HD video
• Better watermarking capabilities

I will be working with the full version for the next couple of weeks and will then re-write my workflow e-book to take account of the changes in both Aperture 3 and Lightroom 3 and do an in-depth comparison of the two.

Overall my satisfaction with the new version can be rated highly. The speed improvements are substantial and when you deal with high volumes of image files this can save many hours of work. This alone would be worth the upgrade as far as I am concerned. Importing images is now much more intuitive and works better in the background allowing you to start working on imported images immediately. Although I generally trash outtakes in Photomechanic before import into Aperture I really like the feature that puts deleted images into an Aperture trash allowing you an extra chance to recover mistakes before finally deleting them to the OS trash.

For my take on some of the most touted new features I list them below:

• FACES – Now here is a feature that I thought I would never use. Yet I was recently shooting images for a theatre production and found the ability to name a single performer and then instantly find all other instances of that same person proved an invaluable time saver. (Although heavy make-up did throw things askew). Not something I would need on a regular basis but having used it I would not hesitate to use it again. Some users have found a major slow down in overall performance with Faces turned on and have disabled the feature. This may be due to the computer you are using and probably works best on a high-end MacPro with lot’s of RAM
• PLACES – Don’t have any GPS capabilities and have not use it.
• BRUSHES – Suddenly even more images are never seeing Photoshop. The ability to selectively brush various adjustments onto specific parts of the image is a huge step forward
• ADJUSTMENT PRESETS – Not an issue that I use a great deal as most of my work is aimed at the Photo-realistic editorial market. However I have I love the high-contrast black and white preset and have produced a couple more that I particularly like. (You can also bush in a preset allowing you to produce images mixing black and white and colour
• FULL SCREEN BROWSER – Wow, even though I use dual Apple Mac 23″ displays the ability to work full screen on both is great.
• ADVANCED SLIDE SHOWS- not used this feature yet but am sure I will, also allowing you to produce shows with music from your iTunes library and export them in a movie format
• METADATA – Aperture 3 ‘fully supports’ XMP Sidecar files. Well that may or may not be true but here is where I have hit the first major hurdle with the new program. Just as when Aperture 2 was first released there are some huge metadata problems. Most notably is when images are exported. IF YOU ENTER YOUR METADATA, EVEN SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FIELDS SUCH AS CAPTION AND KEYWORDS IN APERTURE OR IN ANOTHER PROGRAM SUCH AS PHOTOMECHANIC BEFORE OR AFTER BRINGING YOUR IMAGES INTO APERTURE, AND THEN EXPORT THAT FILE AS A JPEG YOUR METADATA IS NOT READABLE MY MOST OTHER IMAGING PROGRAMS, INCLUDING PHOTOMECHANIC, AND PHOTOSHOP. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOUR FROM A PROFESSIONAL PROGRAM. (Strangely the metadata is read correctly by my on-line service Photoshelter so obviously it is there. What is going on – is the problem in fact with the other products ability to read the metadata embedded by Aperture? Hopefully more on this later)
  

Come on Apple – this must be corrected – or at least provide some information to photographers explaining the current anomalies.

Other than this problem the upgrade is well worth the money or, if you are a Mac using photographer and do not use this program take the plunge and get Aperture now.

Well, ask Lise Gagne that question and she will tell you a different story. Since joining iStockPhoto (now owned by Getty Images) seven years ago she has just passed her 1,000,000 – yes that is the correct number of zeros, one millionth, download. Now, assuming the average price of her downloads is $2 (of which she receives 50%) that gives her an annual income of $142,857, and that’s considerably more than I have ever made from stock licensing! Perhaps this whole thing needs a re-think – or perhaps not.

The big thing to remember is that, as in all forms of stock photography, you have to be shooting the right kind of material, and obviously Lise is an expert in this area. She is a self taught photographer but was formerly a graphic designer and shoots the kind of material she was constantly looking for in her previous career. See her web site at http://www.lisegagne.com/ Armed with this knowledge she has produced thousands of images on themes that are constantly sought out by designers and this is her great strength. They are certainly not the kind of images that I shoot on a normal basis, and many of my images could not be licensed Royalty Free anyway. But perhaps I should re-think my strategy as my traditional markets get worn away by the economic climate, declining fortunes of the magazine industry, and proliferation of weekend photographers giving their images away.

Interestingly my best selling stock image has been neither a sports nor a wildlife photograph, the two areas for which I am best known, but an image taken on assignment near the Arctic Circle of the sun rising behind an oil drilling rig.

Some of the best Pronghorn images were shot out of the window of my Guide’s truck at around 60 miles per hour as we attempted to get past a galloping herd and so I duly sent a selection to the publisher. I got a reject back stating that the images were very close to what they needed but ‘were not quite right’ and did I have anything else. I really didn’t think that I did but on closer examination of the original images sent I thought a couple could be improved with a bit of additional work.

Simply by making a strong crop on two of the images I had originally sent created quite a different set of dynamics, so I resent them to the publisher. Immediately a sale was made with the comment ‘much better than the first images sent’!

Moral of the story – You are the creator of the photo and it is your responsibility to make the best of your images.

Pronghorn Antelope in full flight

The original image – Nikon D3, Nikon Af-S VR 200-400 zoom at 360mm, ISO 200, 125th @f16 hand held from moving vehicle. I used a slower than normal shutter speed as I wanted to blur the legs while rendering the upper bodies reasonably sharp inducing a sense of speed.

The cropped image – Other details same as above

The new version, which will be available at the beginning of June at a price of $CAD 7099.45, features the following

• A super telephoto zoom lens supporting Nikon’s exclusive range of focal lengths from 200 to 400mm Coverage for a wide range of focal lengths enables capture of a wide variety of angles of view with a single lens.
• Nano Crystal Coat significantly reduces ghost and flare.
• Built-in vibration reduction (VR II) offers camera shake compensation equivalent to a shutter speed
  increase of approximately four stops.
• ED lens elements (4) adopted for superior chromatic aberration compensation.
• A/M (autofocus with manual override, AF priority) mode added. Three focus mode options include M/A (autofocus with manual override, MF priority) mode, which enables manual operation with the focus ring while autofocus is operating; manual focus mode (M); and the most recent addition of A/M (autofocus with manual override, AF priority) mode, which prevents accidental switching from autofocus to manual focus.

The two most important changes are the addition of the nano crystal coating which results in improved clarity and sharpness in challenging lighting, often encountered in sports facilities. Secondly the addition of of VRII enables users to shoot up to 4 stops slower than otherwise possible, increasing hand held opportunities.

Further information is available at www.nikon.ca

To some extent the answer depends on what software you are using to output the images and what the image purpose is to be. If you are using Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s Lightroom you can opt to have a watermark added at the time of output (i.e. when outputting a jpeg for web use from an original RAW capture I have a pre-set available to re-size the image for it’s intended use and add a watermark automatically.

However if you want to simply add your signature to a print you are selling a different approach is required. the simplest way to do this is to create a new brush in Photoshop and then simply ‘stamp’ this brush onto your image.

Here are the required steps:

1 . Open PS and create a new file about 500×200 pixels. Make sure the background is set to “transparent”.

2. Make sure foreground is set to black, select the “Type” tool and select a type style you like and type your signature in black as you want it to appear on your images. Option ‘g’ makes the copyright symbol. If you want to get creative you can select your text and using Edit/Transform/Rotate you can slant the text box to add a bit of interest to the brush you are making

3. NOTE: I add the copyright symbol and the year below my name.

4. Once you have the signature the way you want it, merge the layers. (Layers/flatten)

5. Now using the rectangular marquis, outline the signature area.

6. With the selection active, go to Edit/Define Brush Preset and give your brush a name you will recognize like “My Signature” and click “okay”. Your brush is now saved and is the very last brush in the brush palette dropdown list, but it is likely not the best size for your uses. Just size the brush. Place cursor on the image, and give a single mouse click to ‘sign’ the photo.

7. To correct the size of the signature for the image you are ‘signing’ you can now adjust it like any other brush. You can either stamp the image at 100% opacity or you can reduce the opacity to give  a slightly transparent effect. You can also change the colour of the ‘stamped’ signature by changing the foreground colour before you stamp.