Barring divine intervention, bobsled brakeman Lascelles Brown will not pair up with pilot Pierre Lueders. It’s a classic case of “Friendship” versus “Win at all cost” mentality, with the latter permeating our sports, business and entertainment.

[ Read the full article at: Toronto Star ]

Continue Reading »

Do any of you use the Google Reader to access Photoxels? There are lots of issues with it, the major one being that our system will sometimes [often] treat it as an attack to the server (sudden high volume of requests from one IP). Let us know because we usually deny access to it. Thanks!

Apologies to all who received spam from “rachelle” purporting to be from Photoxels. We hate spammers (and their spam) as much as you do. We have removed all cgi scripts from the site so this type of spamming should not happen again (fingers crossed).

Lots of companies are still under the delusion that they can do business on the World Wide Web (WWW) and still discriminate among the countries they want to sell in. For example, they release a product in one country — and not in other countries.

Continue Reading »

“Will we one day see the end of all things printed to be replaced by “The Digital Print?”

I still get the occasional call offering a limited time free subscription to a newspaper. I feel pretty sad when I turn this offer down because I cannot remember the last time I really read a newspaper, except perhaps the odd time when I am in a waiting office and see one lying around.

Truth be told, I get [almost] all of my news online, mostly on the Internet, a few times on the TV and radio.

The digital revolution is upon us, the door has turned on its hinges and we are entering a new era where the printed material is the exception rather than the norm. Some will argue that we are already there, but it’s not quite true. Just look around you and you will still see billboards, posters, street and traffic signs, house numbers, even mail boxes — all testament that the printed material is still with us in one form or another. Museums and fine art galleries still predominantly display prints.

Continue Reading »

“Taking better pictures may not require you to purchase a better camera or more lenses.”

Beginners constantly flood the forum boards with questions about which DSLR or lens to buy. A little probing by smart (and helpful) forum members reveals that the OP (Original Poster) is not satisfied with the image quality their compact digicams produce, especially when compared to the images from digital SLR cameras.

We all tend to believe that better equipment will somehow give us better results. Oh, they will, but probably not to the extent you expect. Most of the fantastic pictures you see on the Web are not straight from the camera: they have been post-processed to bring out the best in them.

Continue Reading »

Parents love to take pictures of their kids. One couple did just that and took pictures of their daughters after bath-time, with some of the photos showing the children partially wrapped in a towel.

When they sent the pictures to an Arizona Wal-Mart to be printed, an employee turned over the bath-time photos of the kids to authorities, deeming the partially nude photos to be inappropriate and shocking. Police was called and they in turn determined the photos to be child erotica and child pornography.

Continue Reading »

It’s that time of the year again when we take a time out and check to see if we are still having fun doing what we do. And, we are! Thanks in a large measure to you, our loyal readers, and to the many emails of support you have sent our way. We say, Thank you! We also thank the camera manufacturers (and their Marketing Departments and PR firms) for helping us help them.

PMA Canada

We attended PMA Canada last week here in Toronto and, of course, saw all the cameras that were already introduced earlier and that we already told you about weeks, if not months, ago. It was still a good opportunity to meet old friends and renew contacts, make new friends, rub shoulders with the competition, and just breathe in the atmosphere. We collected lots of business cards, and put down our name for loaner reviews so you can expect to read reviews of some great cameras in the near future.

Continue Reading »

The Week That Sports Stood Still, a photo gallery from Sports Illustrated.

September 9, 2009 will no doubt go into digital camera history as a defining date that took the evolution of digital cameras into the right — and common sense — path.

After submitting to years of the mega pixel war that sought to cram ever more millions of tiny pixels into tiny image sensors — with the engineers telling us that they got the data to prove they are giving us better pictures [ROTFL] — and years of mindless smile technology, blink technology, slimming technology, and a thousand and one other gimmicks that probably caused many a reviewer to fall into a software-induced comatose state, Leica has sounded the clarion loud and clear that it is bringing digital camera development back to its roots, back to its senses and back to what’s really important in being able to capture a moment in time that we can treasure for years.

Strip a digital camera of all superfluous baggage and we are left with four essential functions, features, elements, call it what you may:
the lens to bring the light in, the image sensor to receive the light, a focusing mechanism to focus the light fast and precisely, and an exposure function that combines shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and white balance for correct exposure of light and colors.

In its latest models, Leica has pared down its digital cameras to these four essential elements, and ensured we receive the best of all four. Just like it did years ago when it introduced the first 35mm camera and revolutionized photography, the new Leica M9 and Leica X1 have set digital cameras onto the right track again.

Though we have yet to see the images from the M9 and X1, the technological hurdle of putting a full-frame sensor in the X9 and an APS size sensor in a compact body like the X1 has been overcomed, and that in itself has to be applauded.

Concerned photographers can all breathe a sigh of collective relief that we will soon start seeing “real” digital cameras coming out this and the years to follow.

Like a lion that, with one roar, quiets the mindless chattering in its forest, Leica can sleep peacefully tonight in the sure knowledge that it is once again at the forefront of camera development.

Well done, Leica!

Addendum: the lion has roared and perhaps awokened some other beasts of the forest that might not appreciate the return of the lion king? I betcha Canon and Nikon will have their versions of the X1 soon. The (digital camera) world is right again.