Father’s Day, June 16, honours one of the most influential and loved people in our lives – our dads!

Epson has the following gift ideas for this great celebratory event:

Epson Father’s Day Gift Ideas 2013

This video presents “Epson WorkForce WF-2540 Inkjet Printer for Business”:

Epson WorkForce WF-2540 All-in-One Printer
For the work-at-home dad
$ 129.99

Epson WorkForce WF-2540 All-in-One Printer

Don’t be fooled if dad’s still wearing pajama pants at noon, the home office dad has a lot on his plate juggling both work and family. Help dad check off more tasks on his list with the WorkForce WF-2540 all-in-one printer. Ideal for the space-constrained home office, this compact printer is a fast, high-performance all-in-one that offers affordable, individual ink cartridges and a space saving, compact design — the smallest in its class1. It also offers built-in Wi-Fi and wired networking2, a 2.5-inch tilt LCD screen, and a 30-page automatic document feeder to increase productivity and efficiency. Dad can even print directly from his iPad®, iPhone, tablet or smartphone with Epson Connect™3.

This video presents “PowerLite Home Cinema 2D and 3D 3020 and 3020e Projector Product Overview”:

Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020 3D 1080p 3LCD Projector
For Dad’s man cave
$ 1999.99

Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020 3D 1080p 3LCD Projector

Fulfill dad’s craving for bold, big-screen entertainment at home with the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020 Projector. Delivering 2300 lumens of colour brightness and 2300 lumens of white brightness 4, the PowerLite Home Cinema 3020 uses 3LCD, 3-chip technology for brilliant images with true-to-life colour. Epson 3LCD projectors have up to 3x Brighter Colours than leading competitive projectors making this projector truly brag-worthy. With the included RF 3D glasses, two built-in 10W stereo speakers and the ability to project up to 300 inches, dad is guaranteed to experience an eye-popping, rich cinematic adventure. The projector also has a split screen feature (not available in 3D mode) so dad can project two images side-by-side from two different sources simultaneously. Featuring Full HD 1080p performance and a remarkable contrast ratio of up to 40,000:1, the Home Cinema 3020 makes it easier than ever to entertain family and friends.

This video presents “WorkForce DS-30 Portable Scanner Product Overview”:

Epson WorkForce DS-30 Portable Scanner
For professional dads on-the-go
$119.99

Epson WorkForce DS-30 Portable Scanner

Help your on-the-go dad scan, save and send important documents wherever his business takes him with the WorkForce DS-30 portable document scanner. With the DS-30, dad can easily scan receipts, documents, business & plastic I.D. cards and more right into an e-mail, searchable PDF or directly to the cloud. Included correction tools make it easy to remove punch holes from scanned images, auto-size documents, enhance text quality, and correct image skew. Not only is the scanner, Mac® and PC compatible it’s also USB powered so there’s no external power supply required. The lightweight, travel-friendly single-side scanner is ready to perform anytime, anywhere.

1 Smallest footprint among colour inkjet all-in-ones priced at $129 or less, as of February 2012.
2. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™; level of performance subject to the range of the router being used. Visit www.wi-fi.org/files/11nbasics_glossary.pdf for more information.
3. Most features require an Internet connection to the printer as well as an Internet- and/or email-enabled device. See www.epson.ca/connect for a list of Epson Connect enabled printers and compatible devices and apps.
4. Colour brightness (colour light output) and white brightness (white light output) will vary depending on usage conditions. Colour light output measured in accordance with IDMS 15.4; white light output measured in accordance with ISO 21118.

The Bata Shoe Museum and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura present A Snapshot of Tuscany: Celebrating Italian Heritage Month

The Bata Shoe Museum, in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, presents the work of Tuscan photographer Matteo Brogi in celebration of Italian Heritage Month and as part of a Snapshot of Tuscany series :

A Snapshot of Tuscany:

Unconventional Portraits

A Snapshot Exhibition

Wednesday, June 5 – Monday, September 2, 2013

Bata Shoe Museum – 327 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This snapshot exhibition will be on display in the B1 foyer:

Hours: Mon.-Wed. and Fri.-Sat.: 10 am – 5 pm; Thu.: 10 am - 8 pm; Sun.: 12 pm – 5 pm

Included with regular museum admission

• “Sophisticated and beautiful, Unconventional Portraits offers visitors the opportunity to “meet” the students, dancers, architects, fashion designers, wine producers, celebrity butchers, perfume makers and carabinieri that represent Italian society from the knee down“

• As a photographic exhibition “revealing varied passions and lifestyles, Matteo’s work masterfully conveys an intricate weaving of emotion and story through the lens, illustrating the important role that footwear plays in the modern Italian identity“

• An exhibition catalogue will be available in the Museum gift shop beginning June 5

A Snapshot of Tuscany series also includes Celebrating Italian Heritage Month which is a series of tastings, lectures and events in June promoted by the Bata Shoe Museum and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura.

The following Celebrating Italian Heritage Month programs will be held at the Bata Shoe Museum and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura:

Continue Reading »

Father’s Day is Sunday, June 16.

Celebrate Dad with some shiny and new tech from Panasonic! If you’re stuck for a gift idea this Father’s Day, Panasonic has you covered with some neat gadgets Dad would love.

Panasonic: Father’s Day Gift Guide 2013

Leica is teasing us with a new camera to be announced on June 11, 2013. The new model is positioned between the Leica M and the X2 (awfully dubbed for this marketing campaign as the Micro M) and code named the “Mini M.” Let’s see: an APS-C image sensor, interchangeable lens, EVF? It could also be simply a slightly less speced Leica M (e.g. retaining a FF sensor) though it is unfortunate that the marketing people went with the term “Mini” (which triggers a very negative connotation).

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is in a giving mood. Not only did she just announced earlier today that she is paying US $1.1B for Tumblr, making founder David Karp the latest billionaire, now she is offering 1TB of free photo storage to every Flickr user. The night is young out here in the East Coast, with one hour to go as I type this post, and who knows what other surprise she might spring on us yet!

How much is 1 terabyte of storage?

A helpful slider calculates how many images you will be able to save in 1TB:

1 terabyte = 537,731 6.5 megapixel photos (* Assuming the resolution of today’s most commonly used smartphones)

Digital editing is performed by all photographers. In fact, the more WOW! Factor a photo has, the greater the likelihood the photo has been digitally edited, perhaps even to the point of “manipulation.” This is the dirty secret that most point-and-shoot photographers never learn: your camera, however sophisticated and expensive, will never take these pictures out of the box; you have to post-process the pictures.

So, when readers pointed out that the winning entry in the recent Word Press Photo contest looks obviously digitally manipulated (with a very pronounced tone enhancement), World Press Photo got defensive and, after submitting the photo to Fourandsix Technologies for “forensic analysis,” declared the winning entry’s digital editing totally acceptable.

Just what did photographer Paul Hansen do to his winning photo to stir such controversy?

The experts at Fourandsix Technologies found that though Hansen’s winning photo was “retouched with respect to both global and local color and tone,” they “find no evidence of significant photo manipulation or compositing.” So, what is the problem? Why is there even a controversy?

It is because the tonal enhancements applied to the photo is so very obvious to the naked eyes. Many photographers who have played with so-called HDR photography can spot the over-the-top digital enhancements right away. However, World Press Photo has officially given its blessing that such heavily enhanced photos are acceptable as journalistic photos and so falls within their rule that “retouching which conforms to currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed.”

Even without any digital editing, the content of Hansen’s winning photo packs such a punch as to stop you in your track and elicits a reaction. In our view, that photo deserves to win but requires zero to minimal digital editing. It is sad that the controversy about how much digital editing is acceptable has relegated the content of the photo into the background.

View the before and after pictures.

via Imaging Resource

Travelling this summer?

To be ready to capture the moment, the memory, and the shot no matter where you are in the world, be sure to pack the following compact, performance enhancing gear from brands like Sigma, OPTEX, Manfrotto, BlackRapid, Kata and National Geographic:

SIGMA 18-250mm OS HSM DC MACRO Lens

Get Closer
SIGMA 18-250mm OS HSM DC MACRO  Lens(Available for Canon, Nikon and Sony mounts)
($649.95, London Drugs, Henry’s)
Designed exclusively for Digital SLR cameras, this all-in-one zoom lens has a high zoom ratio that’s ideal for close-up photography. And with Sigma’s unique Optical Stabilizer Technology, photographers have the option of using shutter speeds up to four stops slower, ideal for handheld photos from macro to telephoto lengths or in low-light environments.

Continue Reading »

Photo by Chris Hadfield/Twitter

Now that astronaut Chris Hadfield is back on Terra Firma, we take a look back at some of his spectacular photos of Earth taken from the International Space Station. It is incredible that we can now simply tweet an astronaut on the ISS with a question and get an answer back on YouTube. Hadfield made himself highly approachable this way. Welcome back home!

View Chris Hadfield Earth Photos

via Yahoo!

A tremendous explosion has occurred in the nearby universe and major telescopes across Earth and space are investigating. Dubbed GRB 130427A, scientists predict the gamma-ray burst may be the glow of a classic supernova (and black hole). The Earth-orbiting Fermi and Swift satellites were the first to detect the high energies and quickly reported the findings down to Earth. Within minutes, the the half-meter ISON telescope in New Mexico, the 2.0-meter P60 telescope in California, the 1.3-meter PAIRITEL telescope in Arizona, and the 2.0-meter Faulkes Telescope North in Hawaii were investigating. The 8.2-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii placed the explosion about 5 billion light years away — considered nearby in cosmological terms.

Just after 3:47 a.m. EDT on Saturday, April 27, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the brightest Gamma-ray burst ever seen. The burst produced radiation at energies up to 94 giga-electron volts, about three times higher than the previous record. It also set the record as the longest GRB ever; the GeV emission from the burst lasted for hours, and it remained detectable by the LAT for the better part of a day. An accurate position by the Swift space observatory allowed detection of the burst by ground-based optical, infrared and radio telescopes, making this one of the best-studied GRBs. This GRB was probably produced by the catastrophic death of a massive star that suddenly ran out of nuclear fuel. When this happens, the core of the star collapses into a black hole. Models suggest that as the black hole at the center of the star accretes matter from the star, a powerful jet forms on either side of the black hole. These jets then rip through the star, blowing it apart. GRB 130427A was so bright because it was one of the nearest bursts ever seen, and astronomers are continuing observations, hoping to find the optical supernova associated with the Gamma-ray burst.

View the Before and After images of the space where the explosion occurred.

View an animation of the explosion.