The Z340 has an internal printer good for 20 shots between charges
Polaroid is back with a new instant print producing camera before the holidays, but this time without the smelly chemicals associated with instant film. The new Polaroid Z340 has a built-in, low-profile printer that churns out the same 3×4 format as the original images.
The printing technology is made by Zink – Zero Ink Technology, that was also found in the short-lived PoGo Bluetooth portable printer. The ink is actually embedded in the paper and heat-activated to develop the image.
Weighing a little less than a standard DSLR, the Z340 is also a digital camera that stores images in its internal memory.
Coupled with the internal printer is a 14-megapixel camera and, like any other digital camera, has an LCD screen on the back so you can preview your photos.
Unlike the old style Polaroid cameras, the Z340 allows you to print the pictures right away, or run various edits and corrections before printing them out.
Don’t expect much in the way of manual controls, white balance and ISO are all you get, everything else is automatic, though there are 30 different built-in scene modes such as Portrait, Sunset, and Backlight for different shooting situations.
The camera can hold 10 sheets of print paper at a time and the replacement packs of 30 will run $19.99.
The Polaroid Z340 is available now for $299.99 from Amazon.
Instead of sending a pre-printed holiday greeting card that gets displayed for a while then whisked into a box somewhere, think about shaking things up a little this year. Instead of a seasonal card, think about getting a print that will last for years and with a chic aesthetic that would look good in any modern decor.
The range of materials and printing processes available today are nothing short of amazing. You can can choose from textured paper, glass, even aluminum panels.
Here are my suggestions to replace the tired old holiday cards.
Instead of the larger size gallery blocks, send something that will fit on a desk or hang in a smaller space in a hallway. Floating gallery blocks are chic, modern, and classy. They make a great showcase for your photography and fit with any decor.
Have your favorite photos turned into attractive holiday decorations. An interesting idea is to commemorate major life events with metallic print ornaments and watch the progression of change over the years.
The advantage to prints on metal is they last nearly indefinitely.
Another print option that lasts virtually forever. Prints on glass that really stand out, are stylish, and easy to hang. They come in wall size and desk size prints and the prices are fairly reasonable.
Hopefully this gets you thinking about ways to break up the holiday greeting card monotony in time to do something about it before the holidays.
Pint size but packed with features the Pentax Q - by Pentax
User reviews of the Pentax Q are starting to filter in after being officially launched back in June. Pentax advertises the Q as the smallest interchangeable lens digital camera on the market.
They definitely got the small part right, the camera easily fits in the palm of your hand. Despite its size, it’s packed with features usually found in much larger cameras.
The 3 inch LCD screen takes up almost the entire back of the camera and the Q has a hot shoe attachment that will accept one of the Pentax external flash units, which are, somewhat ironically, bigger than the camera itself, and can also be used to fit an add-on optical viewer.
Inside the Q packs a 12-megapixel BSI-CMOS 1/2.3 inch sensor behind the Pentax Q-mount interchangeable lens mount. The camera comes with a 47mm f/1.9 prime lens, but several other lenses are available.
Surrounding the electronics is a magnesium alloy shell that gives the little camera better protection than you’d normally expect in small frame cameras.
The software provides the usual mirrorless camera tricks like 5 frame per second continuous shooting and an in-camera HDR option that automatically blends bracketed exposures.
On video it sports full 1080 HD video at 30 fps in H.264 format.
My only niggles are the senor size and price point. For less money you can get a Sony NEX-5 with a full APS-C chip. For perspective, the 1/2.3 chip in a Pentax Q is less than a 10th of the size. When it comes to sensors, size does matter and bigger is better.
All in all, when size is important, the Pentax Q definitely fits the bill.
Take a look at how the Pentax Q stands up against its competitors.
This is the first installment of a long series of articles shot and composed with the help of professional photographer Karl Leopold at ImagesForever.net in Melbourne Beach, Florida. Karl is one of the top photographers in the area and president of the Atlantic Professional Photographers Association and graciously opened his studio up and lent his expertise to us for this series.
The basic three-point lighting setup
While we’re going to start with an overview of basic three point studio lighting, this series may jump around a bit as basic lighting touches on several peripheral topics that are key to understanding how good portraits are composed along with studio lighting.
First, the equipment we had to work with:
The Key is the black Fomex on the right and the fill is the Octodome on the left. Please note that flower leis are not stock equipment on Alien Bees
Our key light is an Alien Bees 800 in a Fomex rectangular soft box
Our fill is an Alien Bees 800 in a 48 inch Octodome
The hair light is an Ultra 1800 fitted with a grid screen on a boom
Throughout the shoot we used only a single modeling light on the Fomex soft box.
We maintained a consistent distance to the subject the old-fashioned way, with a string to the center of the key soft box.
Start off with a meter check to make sure we're in the ballpark
All the lights are on PocketWizard Plus remotes and the transmitter on my Canon 7D was a PocketWizard MiniTTL. The lens was a stock Canon 28-135mm zoom set to my closest eyeball approximation to 85mm.
All camera settings were manual unless otherwise stated, we used 1/125 of second for a shutter speed through the entire series. The f stop varied as I’ll explain in the article.
Karl checking distance the old fashioned way - So we didn't have to do meter checks constantly
I did minimal post processing adjustments on the pictures so you can see the difference in the lighting. Standard color correction and cropping is all that was done.
The Setup
While the layout of a basic three point setup is fairly straightforward, it’s actually a little tricky to get everything working together properly.
First we moved the key 10 degrees off the camera axis and shot a key only test. That’s actually not bad, if a little flat.
This is the key only, about 10 degrees off the camera axis - A little flat but not bad
Next we added in the fill and you can see that gave us much more natural looking lighting and skin tones, but our subject’s hair looks a little flat. That’s where the hair light comes in.
As you can see the hair light really helps separate the subject from the background. It highlights her hair, but also her back shoulder, which changes the entire character of the photo and makes the background more distant.
This is adding the fill - As you can see it yields a much more natural looking lightWhat a difference the hair light makes! See how it separates the subject from the background
Fujifilm fielded a budget camera with an impressive set of features in the FinePix AV200. Released back in January, the compact pocket camera hit the market at a sub-$80 price point.
The FinePix AV200 may be small but it sports a 14-megapixel 1/2.3 in CCD sensor behind a 3x optical zoom Fujinon f/2.9 lens. Although the camera does have autofocus, including multi, area and tracking AF, there is some confusion in the published specs on whether it has any kind of image stabilization. Some sources say it has digital image stabilization, some say it has none, some say yes and no on the same page. Okay, you have to sacrifice somewhere for the price point, even without image stabilization it’s still a pretty good deal.
The CCD chip type also means the camera performs relatively poorly in low light with an ISO rating of 100 to 3200 and not even that at all resolutions. You also don’t get much in the way of continuous shooting speeds, with the camera topping out at a stately 1.2 fps pace.
You will get video, however. 720 at 30 fps, but that it has video capability at all is pretty amazing.
On the back it has a 2.7 in TFT LCD screen and accepts either SD or SDHC storage cards.
The internal software provides some nifty features like Motion Panorama Mode, Scene Recognition, and Face Detection with Red Eye Removal. It also has the ability to search for a particular face on the pictures in your camera.
When you consider you’re getting a 14-megapixel camera for $80 that fits in your pocket, runs on AA batteries and weighs in at a thrifty 196 grams, the FinePix AV200 is a great camera to toss in the tackle box or glove compartment of your car. It’s definitely a step up from most cell phone cameras and offers a lot of features for the price.
