Have a delightful Saturday / Vi auguriamo un incantevole sabato

The virtues of a good point and shoot / Canon G-11

Before I settled with the Olympus E PL-2 as my favorite travel camera, I used a varieties  so called point and shoot models. The Canon G-11 was one of the best. These two photos of rather close up hand held. They show how the image stabilization and the lens all work together to create nice images. Both shots are from my August trip to Sicily in 2010.

Olympus lens news

From the company's press release

New Olympus® Micro Four Thirds® Lenses and Accessories Unleash Creative Power of the PEN Family

High-Speed, Silent and Beautifully Designed, Two New Lenses Complement Latest Generation of PEN Cameras; New Flash and Grip Expand Creative Horizons
CENTER VALLEY, Pa., June 30, 2011 – Two powerful, fast new prime lenses and two new accessories maximize the performance of the Olympus PEN® E-P3, E-PL3 and E-PM1 compact system cameras, also announced today, to help photographers capture their unique visions of the world. The M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f2.0 lens (24mm equivalent) and M. Zuiko Digital ED 45mm f1.8 lens (90mm equivalent) are Movie & Still Compatible (MSC) and feature high-speed, near-silent autofocus during still shooting and high-definition (HD) video capture. Joining them is the sleek, versatile FL-300R Compact Flash and the MCG-2 interchangeable Camera Grip available exclusively for the PEN E-P3.
The powerfully simple and growing Olympus PEN MICRO Four Thirds family now features eight fully-compatible MICRO Four Thirds lenses. The legendary Olympus Zuiko® Digital Four Thirds range of 27 high-quality lenses, OM-series and other manufacturers’ lenses can be attached to Olympus PEN cameras with optional adapters.
New High-Speed and Near-Silent MICRO Four Thirds Lenses

• M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f2.0 lens: This high-speed, single-focal-length, wide-angle lens is ideal for shooting high-quality, dramatic landscapes and street scenes in low-light conditions. It has a beautiful full-metal body and a snap ring that enables photographers to pan focus with a distance indicator.
• M. Zuiko Digital ED 45mm f1.8 lens: This single-focal-length portrait lens has a beautiful shallow depth of field which allows for background blurring effects that are not possible with the 14-42mm kit zoom lens. The MSC mechanism is great for tracking a moving child or pet, and provides a quick and silent focus mechanism for movies and still photography.

These two lenses join the new movie & still compatible (MSC) ED m14-42mm II R f3.5/5.6 zoom lens (28mm-84mm equivalent) which comes standard with the new PEN kit as well as the M. Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm II R f4.0-5.6 lens, an extremely light, wide-zoom range with a 35mm equivalent to 80-300mm lens that offers versatility and portability. Both have been designed to match the body design of the new generation of PEN cameras.

I love this city / E PL-2

Shot from the River Cafe under the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side. Wonderful food and the view is to die for. There's no place like New York.

Have a great weekend / Buona fine di settimana a tutti

May your weekend be as wonderful as these flowers.

Adobe News

Press Release:

Adobe Announces Lightroom 4.1 Release Candidate

Adobe today announced the availability of Lightroom 4.1 release candidate on Adobe Labs. The update adds raw file format support for the Canon EOS 5D Mark III and corrects issues reported from the initial Lightroom 4.0 release.

Adobe encourages the community to provide feedback so it can ensure the highest quality experience for customers working on diverse hardware and software configurations. Special thanks to all community members who provided feedback via the community powered feedback site: feedback.photoshop.com.

Lightroom is the essential digital photography workflow solution, helping serious amateur and professional photographers quickly import, manage, enhance and showcase all their images within one application. The Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in provides fast and easy access to raw image formats produced by many leading digital camera.

Pricing and Availability

The Lightroom 4.1 release candidate is available as a free download for Lightroom 4 customers. For more information and to download the Lightroom 4.1 release candidate, visit http://labs.adobe.com (available for both Mac and Windows).

Happy Thursday/ Buon giovedi'

Something for Thursday as it presages the weekend.

I love this city / Canon 1-D III

Shot from the Skylight Room at the Waldorf Astoria while on a job with the ubiquitous Canon 24-105 F 4 L.

Slowing down time in a big way

There are two ways of slowing down time, the real one is to travel at near relativistic speeds and the photographic one that uses high speed photography that once played back will slow things down. This camera is the champ and it can only be done digitally. You just could not do it mechanically with film not to mention the quasi impossibly large spool of film. In some occasions digital is better.

Vision Research Launches the New High-Speed Phantom v642

The folks at Vision Research have an obsession, and that's slow-motion video. Their latest camera brings that in spades, with a rate of 1450fps at a 4K resolution and 2560fps at 1080p. That gives you a playback speed of around 90x slower than the live action you've recorded.

The camera comes packed with 8GB of RAM, though 16GB and 32GB models are available for those that need a bit more space. This high-speed RAM allows for some impressive things from the Phantom v642, such as the ability to record video even during playback.

Another upgrade to the Phantom v642 is the addition of Multi-Matrix Color Correction Technology. The addition of that tech allows the Phantom to match the colors of a regular speed camera.

Happy Wednesday / Buon mercoledi'

This should brighten your day.

San Gemignano / Nikon D-200

Known affectionately as the Manhattan of Italy, San Gemignano, a hilltop town in Tuscany, had many more towers but. alas, many were destroyed. It is a wonderful place with spectacular views of the famed Tuscan countryside.

Alley in Mazara del Vallo / Olympus E-300

I loved my E 300, it was small, portable and had very high image quality.  his street is in Mazara in sicily. Shot on a very hot August day back in 2005.

Have a wonderful Tuesday / Buon martedi'

Early signs of spring / Canon 5-D

The forsythia is the only plant that betrays spring in this setting. The lens was the fixed focal or prime 50mm F 1,8 Canon ES. One more photo without a zoom. Like the old days when all was really more difficult but also less complicated.

So many deer / Canon 5-D

There's a plethora of deer near out home in PA, it's an area where they cannot be hunted so they can be seen foraging all over. They are cute but most of them are very hungry unfortunately. As the weather improves and foliage increases, they will be able to find more food.

The Sicilian Cuisine Blog: A delicious spring pasta: Bronte's pistaches pesto & speck

The Sicilian Cuisine Blog: A delicious spring pasta: Bronte's pistaches pesto & speck galatiotophoto.blogspot.com

Have a nice week / Buona settimana

Be positive spring is here.

Mixed bag / Nikon D-200

A walk in Manhattan on a Sunday afternoon with my D-200 and the Nikkor 24mm F 2.8 lens. I'm always  exploring what freedom it is to use a fixed focal length lens. It sounds crazy but it's true in my case. One photo shows how even a not very interesting subject can become interesting with the proper light, while the one of the material on sale in a store shows how we can take advantage of digital as a media to take photos that were very irksome to shoot with film. For example we can change ISO on the fly and also color balance. Here I did not try to change the color balance as I like the warm colors.

Happy Sunday / Buona domenica

I love this city; Coney Island / Nikon D-700

Coney Island, "the playground of the world," has always fascinated me. These shots were made on a sunnu March day a few years ago with the Nikon D-700 and the 24-85 Nikkor F 2.8-4.