Mike DelGaudio

A Christmas From My Memories, originally uploaded by delgaudm.

This is how a lot of HDR images come out, interesting, but pretty cartoon-y and not at all realistic looking.

Living Room, originally uploaded by delgaudm.

I’ve been messing around with trying to get more realistic looking HDR photos. Too many of the ones I have create look like surreal cartoons. Cool, but not what I was looking for. I am actually pretty happy with this one. It pretty accurately reflects what I actually saw.

This is a stack of 5 jpg images, -2 to +2 Merged in Photoshop.

This beta release is a preview of Picasa 2.7, which will bring the Linux version of the application up to speed with the Windows edition. Picasa remains the only Google app which is unavailable for Mac OS X, a fact you can brag about to your Apple-loving friends.

As with previous versions of Picasa on Linux, this release bundles a customized version of the Wine Windows compatibility layer automatically installed inside the app, freeing you from the burden of maintaining a working Wine installation and from worrying about Picasa’s compatibility whenever upstream Wine is installed

Linux.com :: Picasa 2.7 a slick upgrade on Linux

From time to time friends and family will ask me “which camera is right for me”. One recently came up that I thought I would share.
This is how I decide if a camera is right for me.

>>Mike can you compare this Olympus and this Panasonic camera for me? Which is better?

Which is better, a 2 foot hole or a 3 foot hole? ;-)

These are two very evenly matched cameras. I don’t have direct experience with either Panasonic or Olympus cameras specifically as I tend towards Nikon because I am familiar with them.  In order to decide you’ll need to consider what you are going to do with the camera. I’ll consider how I take pictures and will tell you which one I would pick. Your mileage may vary.

I looked at this page to compare the two, so this page, and the links below are where I’m getting my facts from:

A couple things stand out with me on each camera:

The Olympus:
1. Good: Takes AA batteries. You’ll never be far from a place that sells AA batteries, but you might be far away from a plug for enough time to recharge the battery in the Panasonic. (And besides, you can always get rechargeable AA batts.)

2. Good: The Olympus can focus on objects as close as 4 inches or so, the Panasonic 1 foot or so. That means the Olympus can do better closeups. That may or may not be important to you.

The
Panasonic:
1. Good: Can take higher resolution videos. If you’re a YouTube type or want this to double as a video camera, this might be important.

2. Good: Uses

SD cards for storage instead of the XD format of the olympus. You”ll want to confirm this. but I think XD is limited to 2GB per card, but SD can go to 8GB. At 8 megabytes per image, that’s only 256 pics on a 2 GB card. If you go with the Olympus, you’ll want to get extra memory cards.

3. Good: Two timer lengths, 2 and 10 seconds.

4. Good: Exposures as long as 60 seconds.

So, if it were me buying for me? It’s a close race. I’d probably go with the panasonic, for the following reasons:

Oh. And forget the digital zoom. Never use the digital zoom. You are FAR better off using the full OPTICAL zoom, then cropping the picture back at your computer. That’s all the digital zoom does, except not as good.

If you find yourself taking macro close-ups or photographing items where the camera MUST be located close, very close, to the subject go with the Olympus. If  having batteries readily accessible is important, go with the Olympus. If you do a ton of traveling, or camping trips, the Olympus might suit you better because of the AA batteries.

HOWEVER: Before I purchase either, I would see if I could
actually hold one. and take a picture or two in the store. See if one
fits better. See if you can actually get through the menus. My gut tells
me that you won’t be disappointed by either camera.

If you are going to take your pictures in Full Automatic mode to get
pictures of the kids and the dog and other everyday snapshots comfort
and ease of use will probably be a big deciding factor. Both will take
great everyday snapshots, see which one feels good in your hand and go
with it.

I hope this helps.
Mike D.

Download Squad tells us about PictoBrowser – a new way to embed flick photo slideshows into your blog.

I’ve recently been invited to a private Vox community, and because the posts are not for public consumption, the RSS feeds for the posts require basic authentication. Unfortunately, Google Reader and Bloglines both cannot support authenticated feeds. I’ve also tried the Attensa plugin for Outlook — which claims to support basic auth — but I’ll be darned if I can get it to work. So, my question is why are authenticated feeds so difficult to support? Would it be worth the ability to create difficult to find/guess the RSS feed and leave authentication off? There are so many opportunities for private feeds, I am surprised that this problem has not been solved yet.

Flickr user [p!]Wack has created this beautiful calendar.

I love this — it convey a ton of information, is easy to read and understand although I wish it had the SMTWTFS days of the week indicated on it instead of just the Sunday indicator.

Gorgeous.

I love this liquid rescale plugin for the Gimp.

For me it totally rocks that this hit the Gimp BEFORE Photoshop.

A while back BMW did a viral video series showcasing thier cars. This M5 video was my favorite of the series.

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I’ve been doing a lot more portrait work recently, so I am loving this video showing how to get great lighting on a super-budget. Home Depot here I come!

Tho’ if this were me, I’d ditch the light stands and make my own. DIY all the way!