References:

Strobist.com
KenRockwell.com

Brett

Brett

I’ve listened to The Digital Photography Show for over a year and find it very entertaining and most of the time educational. These guys are not your typical know-it-all photo pros. They are uber enthusiasts who have made some great connections with industry professionals like Scott Kelby and Rick Sammon and frequently do interviews with them.

Apparently they had a not so elegant breakup with The Podcast Network and have moved their podcast to Digital Photography Life on Personal Life Media.

If you’re a podcast junkie and into Digital Photography, you have to subscribe to Digital Photography Life.

Brett

A great guy, David and his wife Kelli started David Weathers Charities in 2003 to champion causes for children in Lawrence County, TN. We’re very proud of him for that because they do a lot for the community.

David and I played baseball together back in the late eighties at Loretto High School. This year I volunteered to be the photographer at the Celebrity Golf Tournament that the charity hosts annually. The event was held at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail course in Muscle Shoals, AL.

It was an absolutely perfect weather day and a good time was had by all. I wanted to share a few of my favorite photos from the event. Kelli has posted all of the photos on the David Weathers Charities website.

She’s in kindergarten this year and learning fast how to read and write. I don’t know about you but I didn’t learn that stuff until first grade. Here it is

The funny thing is that you I can tell which letters the teacher has gone over with them because they are much better than the other ones. I’m sure you’ll need some translation so here goes:

Dear Santa

Bratz House
Mommy’s Gotta Go Doll
Princess Bedroom
Potatohead

Love Savannah

I’m not sure what some of that is, but I’m sure I will find out before Christmas!

Brett

Even renting such a lens costs more than the kit lens on your DSLR so I wanted to find a good company to rent from at the best price and service combination. As usual I researched several companies and I think I found a gem. More after the jump. . .

Camera lens rental is obviously a commodity business model. Most of the companies I looked at had very similar prices and terms. You can rent with or without insurance and the rental periods usually start at a week with extended periods available. Most of the websites of these companies also functioned very similarly. I think most of them operate out of a garage at their home, but that’s ok.

In the end I went with LensRentals.com. They are not the absolute least expensive, especially where I live because we’re in the same state so I had to pay sales tax. But the service was top notch. From reading their “about us” page I learned that they were located near Memphis TN which is only about three hours from here.

From order placement to receipt

LensRentals.com is one of the oldest if not the oldest lens rental company. The other thing that impressed me was that they bit the bullet and took the steps necessary to implement good business systems. They have custom software that tracks their inventory of lenses and it works. Here’s a quick workflow example:

• Shortly after I placed my order online I received an order confirmation email and then FedEx tracking information in another email.
• FedEx delivers the lens. The delivery requires a signature.
• Within a half hour of receipt, I got an email notifying me that the rental period had started.
• The email had instructions for returning the lens and the due date.
• The paid return shipping label was in the box.
• When LensRentals got the lens back I got an email that told me the transaction was completed.

A problem and how customer support handled it.

The day after I got the lens, I was showing it to my friend and fellow photographer, Kyle Johnson. To be honest, Kyle recommended LensRentals to me in the first place. Kyle shoots local high school sports and you can check out his work and buy sports photos on his website right here.

I had noticed an intermittent squeaking noise coming from the lens when I used it the first couple of times, but I did not notice the fact that it was focusing slower than it should have. Kyle picked up on that and suggested that I email LensRentals right away, so I did.

Actually I decided to use my Canon PowerShot SD750 compact to make a short video while Kyle operated the lens, and sent the video along with the email to customer support. That was at 2:50pm. At 3:05pm I got a reply email from one of their reps. The video helped them diagnose the problem. They would be sending out a replacement right away. By 3:08pm I had another order acceptance email from their system and by 3:14pm I had a tracking number email on the replacement lens which was shipped priority overnight.

Now admittedly, my sending a video to demonstrate the problem greatly sped up the diagnosis process (my arm hurts from patting myself on the back, by the way ;), but still you gotta admit that is fast service. The next day I got the replacement lens and it worked fine.

Three nuggets of advice

This is a long post, so to reward you for reading this far here are three pieces of advice:

1. Allow a couple of days lead time from when you actually need to use the lens.
2. Videos such as from a compact camera are worth a million words when motion and sound are involved. I had used this technique with a Canon printer that went bad about a year ago.
3. Don’t hesitate to use LensRentals.com

I also got very quick email response from LensRentals.com before I placed my order. BTW, I’m not receiving any kick backs for this review. I was genuinely pleased with the service.

I may as well throw in one small glitch. For the return shipping you can specify a USPS return label instead of FedEx. Since my nearest FedEx drop-off location is almost 20mi away I did just that. With the first lens I got a USPS return label, but with the replacement lens there was a FedEx label. I’m sure FedEx is the default and since it all happened so fast I am willing to forgive them for the very small oversight.

So there you have it. If you need to rent a pro lens check out LensRentals.com.

I plan to post about the event I shot with the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR. Stay tuned.

Brett

If you spend any amount of time online and you use a Microsoft Windows based PC you know, or at least I hope you know, that you need to be on your toes to protect the security of your computer and the data stored on it.

I want to share one of my core resources for keeping up with the latest news and information about keeping your Windows PC safe and running its best. That resource is Windows Secrets.

I have subscribed to the Windows Secrets newsletter for several years. Then this past summer I upgraded to their paid version. I read it thoroughly each week. It’s not always a home run for me, but this week was good enough that it prompted me to write about it. Click this link to read this week’s Windows Secrets Newsletter.

If you don’t have time to read it, at least install the NoScript plugin for Firefox (if you don’t use Firefox, you should). NoScript is a defense against “click-jacking” where a bad guy can install something on your computer when you click a seemingly legitimate link on a website. Be aware though that NoScript also blocks friendly scripts, but you can turn those on when you are on a trusted site.

The other good article in this week’s WS (you have to upgrade to the paid version to get it) is an explanation of how Adobe Flash player stores information on your computer similar to browser cookies. Too much to explain here but you really need to read it if you have the Adobe Flash Player plugin installed.

Check out Windows Secrets.

By the way for the record, Microsoft Windows based computers and Apple computers are both PC’s (Personal Computers). They just run different operating systems. Apple PC’s are not totally immune to viruses, etc. The bad guys don’t bother creating viruses for Mac PC’s because there are relatively few of them. For now. Just had to get that out there!

Brett

I’ve lost count, but I believe 2007 marks the ninth year that I’ve created photo calendars for my family. Every year I scare them by telling them that I just didn’t make enough photos this year to come up with a good calendar. They never take me seriously and I have always managed to put thirteen photos (one for each month and one for the cover) from the year gone by into a calendar that they can enjoy until the next year.

Back when I started doing this, there were no online photo services and very few digital cameras, if any. The first two or three calendars were made by Kinkos. I would label the photos by the month and they would make color enlargements and laminate the photos and the calendar pages and assemble the calendars. Then as inkjets and scanners improved I started scanning my 35mm prints and printing my own enlargements for the calendars. I even did my own assembly by borrowing some time on the laminating machine and binder at my work. That was less costly, but needless to say the quality suffered.

This year I had plenty of photos. As you’ve noticed I have also been experimenting with Flickr and photo sharing online. My favorite online photo sharing and backup site has become Phanfare. More about them later. On Phanfare they give links to order prints, etc. One of the companies they use for printing is Shutterfly.

If you sign up with Shutterfly, they give you 10 free 4×6 prints to try out their service. I ordered my 10 prints right away so I could get an idea of their quality. If the prints were good then I wanted to give them a shot on this year’s calendar. I placed the order for the 10 prints and got them back in about a week. They looked great! I got busy right away uploading my calendar photos. I was able to choose special borders and even put in custom dates for the birhdays and anniversaries in our family.

My 2008 calendars arrived yesterday and I was beyond pleased! They did in fact look exactly like the Shutterfly previews, custom dates and all. No silly lamination here. The pages are heavy card stock with a nice white spiral binding and the photo results were of the highest quality. I like doing things myself, but there’s no way I could get this kind of quality doing the calendars myself. I can’t wait to see the reaction this Christmas eve!

If you’re looking for a printer, especially for calendars, I highly recommend Shutterfly.

Merry Christmas!

Brett

As of a couple of months ago I’ve started a virtual tour business (panoramic photography) that will serve real estate agents and business in Middle Tennessee and North Alabama. It’s called SpotLight Virtual Tours. As in “Put your property in the SpotLight”. Check out the website to learn more and refer anyone you know who could use virtual tours to market their business…please!

While working on SpotLight Virtual Tours I have re-awakened my love of photography. This post is getting long, so I’ll tell that story in a later post. I’m taking a lot of pictures lately and started posting them to Flickr as you can tell from the last couple of posts. While I’m in the mood this may become a photography blog so that I can record all sorts of things that I learn from photography. I will probably share a lot of my photos and also resources that I find around the web.

Be sure to check out my Filckr photos and feel free to comment. I need a “Pro” account on Flickr so that I have unlimited uploads, so if you’re feeling generous….

Well, this post has grown long enough. I just wanted to let you know what I’d been up to over the last few months. I know better than to promise regular posting, but I’ll try.

Brett