Splash – The Video

We all know what our friend Mike “Splash” Marceau can do in his basement with plenty of patience and tons of experience; recently Deb and Holly have also entered this magic domain. There are others who seek the same kind of beauty that may exist only for a split second. One of them is Martin Waugh and his collaboration with the Discovery Channel has recorded the dance of the droplets in motion.

Watch!

Yet another white balance tool

White balance has become a well-known issue and benefit to digital photographers. There are several different products in the market from simple to more complex. I have come across yet another one of these tools, this time from Datacolor, the makers of Spider series of monitor calibration, printer profiling devices. The new tool, SpyderCube, lives up to its name. It is indeed a cube with different tones on its surfaces with one side having a circular opening into a black-painted cavity. Its base allows it to stand on flat surfaces or, using the threaded mount, it can be mounted on a light stand or a tripod. The loop at the top will hook on other suitable objects to appear in the scene. It even has a chrome ball at its apex to evaluate the specular highlights. At $59 MSP it may deserve a look. These tools can be extremely useful to get an accurate white balance setting under diverse conditions. For more information visit the Datacolor Web site.

A new color tool

Designed to be portable and used anywhere, X-Rite ColorChecker^® Passport and the included Adobe Lightroom Plugin promises to make color correction, neutral white balance, or creative white balance adjustments extremely easy. Based on the larger Macbeth Color Checker, the new tool is about the size of a passport (see the name!) Read more about this interesting tool at the X-Rite Web site.

Poor Man’s Lighting

PSRI had a couple of guests who shared their knowledge and experience on lighting on a small budget. Small budget does not mean the results have to suffer, as long as one learns the qualities of light and uses them to her or his advantage the results can be very satisfying. See the Poor Man’s Lighting document as a refresher if you like.

Thanks Paul, Jim.