SnapperTalk

Lots of new Canon camera gear announced recently…

Canon EOS-5D - a 12MP full-frame camera placed in the line-up between the EOS-1D MkII and EOS-20D. Although the frame rate is 3fps compared to the 20D’s 5fps.
DPReview hands-on preview - Rob Galbraith article

Canon EOS-1D MkII N - An upgraded version of the current Mark II with a larger screen and improved buffering, among many other minor additions
DPReview article - Rob Galbraith article

Canon Powershot s80 - I’ve really liked the Powershot s40/50/60/70 series, which seems one of the best-suited compacts for professionals. The S80 continues that tradition with 8 megapixels and a wide-angle 28-100 mm f/2.8-5.3 (3.6x) optical zoom, but very disappointingly for those of us with lots of CF cards, they have dropped Compactflash in favour of SD cards as per the rest of their compact range.
DPReview article

Canon EF 24 - 105 mm F4.0 and 70 - 300 mm F4.0-5.6 lenses - The 24-105 is interesting in that it has image-stabilisation, which is rare in wide-angle zooms but a welcome addition.
DPReview article - Rob Galbraith article

Canon Speedlite 430EX Flashgun - A mid-range model probably aimed at buyers of the new EOS-5D digital SLR
DPReview Article - RobGalbraith article

In other news… Rob Galbraith reports that Delkin have released an OS X 10.4-compatible driver for their excellent CardBus 32 Compactflash adapter, and that many readers of the site have written in to say that the new Delkin driver also enables Lexar’s 32-bit CardBus CF-to-PC Card adapter to function in Mac OS X 10.4.x. Apparently the two product’s hardware is the same.

Somebody please build one of these - an image created by artist ‘Chris’ and titled “Oldtimer Mark II” in a ‘vintage products’ contest over at Photoshop-skills contest site Worth1000.
Easy to forget what amazing images can be crafted in Photoshop when you live outside of the zero-manipulation arena in which photojournalists work.

From RobGalbraith comes the news of a new Photoshop plug-in for Mac or Windows that takes a very different and innovative approach to the problem of colour correction in images. Rather than a complicated process of colour adjustment based on hues, colour-channels etc, the aptly named SkinTune from the company PhotoTune attempts to achieve natural-looking colour correction based on skin tones. They collected thousands of sample images of all different races from around the world, took precise spectrophotometer measurements, and then compiled a database which is the basis of the plug-in. Basically you choose the likely race of the subject and then have options for fine-tuning. Technical notes on the process can be found here and demo versions can be downloaded here.

Since the switch over to the new Inmarsat-4 F-1 Satellite BGAN satphones can now be used all the way down to South Africa which is good news. But the switch has also left a gaping coverage hole over parts of West Africa (plus northern England and Portugal) that will only be filled once the Inmarsat-4 F-2 satellite becomes operational over the Americas sometime in 2005/2006. Until that happens, it seems that you will not be able to use BGANs in these West African countries:

Western Sahara - Mauritania - Senegal - Mali - Guinea - Gambia - Guinea-Bissau - Sierra Leone - Liberia

Users wanting to know more about the oh-so-revolutionary news that Apple has finally launched a mouse with more than one button, albeit with some clever touch-sensitive technology, might want to check out the in-depth Ars Technica review of the new device, or the Apple “Mighty Mouse” product page.