Billingham recently released their PhotoVest in an updated version. I wore one of them on a recent photoshoot – here are my impressions:

Good:

Pockets Galore: In fact, it will take you a few trips to figure out where to put what into one of 16 pockets this vest has and then to find the item quickly when you need it. But it is great to have so many pockets and I stored a huge load of gear in the vest without any problems at all.
Padded Collar: Often, the weight of all your gear pulls the vest down in the front, thus pressing the vest’s collar into your neck. Nothing you can do about it, but the Billingham collar is nicely soft-padded, thus no rubbing you raw in the neck. In fact, I did not notice any pressure in the neck, which is a good sign to me.
Comfortable wear: Initially, I wore the vest over 3 layers of shirts and sweaters. Later, I took on the layers off and tied it around my waist under the vest. No impact on the wear of this vest. It felt well balanced and “comfy”.
Short size: It’s shorter than most vests, which allows you to sit comfortably in a car with a lot of gear on your body. With longer vests, they get pushed up and are bunched around you. Not with the Billingham. Yet, its reduced length still allows you to carry long lenses.
Water-repellant, easy-to-clean outer material: Despite walking alongside a waterfall and getting even splashed on by a big dog coming out of a pool, water did not make it through the outer lining of the vest. I simply let it dry after using and then brushed off some of the dirt from the dog. Done.

Bad:

The price is high, but then, would you put $2000 worth of camera gear on a $60 tripod? With vests as with tripods, you get what you pay.
It feels thick, thus I assume that this is no summer vest, despite its vents in the back. More about that once I’ll wear it during summer excursions.

Verdict: Highly recommended!

Price: $398.00, Amazon: $279.95

Let’s face it – a lot of pictures taken with an iPhone and posted straight to Flickr or Facebook don’t look very good. But help is available for some quick adjustments through Tiffen’s Photo Fx. Simply take a picture, open Photo Fx, choose one of the 26 filters, use the sliders on the bottom to make your adjustments, then save the picture before posting it. It is a very simple and quick process which can yield quite dramatic improvements over your straight-out-of-your-iPhone pictures. Also handy is their before/after toggle, so you can always compare how the improvements look over the original. Of course, you can apply multiple filters on the same picture.

Supported filters include: Black and White, Black Pro-Mist®, Center Spot, Color-Grad® , Color Spot, Day for Night, Enhancer, Fog, Glow, Halo, High Contrast, Infrared, Looks, Night Vision, Old Photo, Polarizer, Pro-Mist®, Reflector, Star, Soft/FX®, Tint, Two Strip, Three Strip, Ultra Contrast and Vignette.

Our verdict: Highly recommended!

Price: $2.99 (introductory), later $3.99

Here’s one that you should always have in your Bag! The Bottle-top Pod, made by Adorama, is a simple holder screw that’s attached to a bottle top. Simply take a soda bottle, water bottle or any other bottle, screw the bottle top pod on and you have an instant tripod. For added stability, fill the bottle with water or, better yet, wet sand.

Price: $9.95, Amazon: $7.99

Macbook users have the MagSafe adapters, PC notebook users have… the Jerkstopper. If you are worried about ripping the power cord violently from your notebook, thus damaging your notebook’s power plug and possibly more, the Jerkstopper is the right product for you.

Each order comes with three plugs — one each for USB, modem and network ports. Installation is easy — put the plug into the desired port, slide the end part to the side, align the cable with the plugged in part and push the end part back. Very easy, takes less than a minute.

Once installed, the device does exactly what it’s supposed to do — it keeps your power cable in place. We tried to jerk it off, but it was impossible to do.

We tried the Jerkstopper on five (sub-)notebooks from HP, Lenovo, Dell, IBM and Alienware. While our preference was to connect it to the unused modem ports of these notebooks, all of them have their modem ports so close to the networking ports that the secured cable would have totally obstructed these, thus rendering the network ports unusable. For that reason, we ended up connecting the Jerkstopper to a USB port. However, given the dearth of USB ports on many notebooks, if you are unwiling to give them up, the Jerkstopper is also available attached to lanyards and other cables.

Recommended for all PC notebook users

Price: $9.95, directly from jerkstopper.com

Here’s a very nifty program: Vincent Cheung released version 2 of his ShapeCollage program, which allows you to easily create a collage of different photos which you can then arrange in the shape you want. Simply pick your images, drag them into shape collage, choose your shape or create one and you are done. Upload the collage to your blog or website, save it as a separate image then import it into Photoshop — there are no boundaries. Let your creativity reign.

Sure, there are other ways to create collages and shapes of collages, but not as easily as in ShapeCollage. Give it a try and see yourself how easy it is to be creative!

Highly recommended!

Price: free

Tiffen released version 2 of its Dfx software, which allows you to reproduce many of the most popular filters you used to use in the field. Overall, the new version includes more than 2,000 standard and special-effects filters, which can be used as-is or even customized and saved for future use. Some of these filters have been part of our workflow and have consistently produced superior results without going through a steep learning curve. While not inexpensive, these filters can save you endless hours trying to re-create a special look or effect in Photoshop.

Some filter examples: Ambient Light, Close-up Lens, Hazem High Contrast, Warm and Cool Polarizers or Wide Angle Lens.

Highly recommended!

Standalone price: $99.95, Amazon: $99.95
Photoshop plugin: $299.95, Amazon: $299.95
Aperture plugin: $299.95, Amazon: $274.85

If you are like us, you carry your iPhone whereever you go. Thus, I’ve been looking for a DOF (Depth of Field) calculator on my iPhone for quite some time. No longer! Bitwerks, a company from Switzerland, released f/8, its DOF implementation for download from Apple’s iTunes store. Once installed, it’s easy to enter through the familiar iPhone interface all of the required information about your cameras and lenses. Then, just pick a camera/lens combination in the field and calculate your DOF. It’s that simple.

Our verdict: Highly recommended!

Price: $3.99

Drobo has established its data storage robots as one of the premier providers of redundant data storage. This is exactly what photographers need and thus, a lot of different sites (TWIT, TWIPphoto, Digital Outback Photo, Luminous Landscape and others) have praised it. Having used it here for almost 6 months (Drobo USB with 3 1TB drives), we can confirm that it deserve the praise that is heaped on it. We use it mainly for backup, much of it autmated. It’s easy to use (connect the unit to a PC or Mac, install software and plug in the drives) and very reliable. The USB unit we have is a bit noisy, but that does not bother us, since the backup unit is connected to our file server and tucked away. Drobo listened to the complaints – the noise problem has been alleviated in the newer USB/Firewire units.

Our verdict: Highly recommended!

Price: $499, Amazon $374.95 after rebate

Macbook users have the MagSafe adapters, PC notebook users have… the Jerkstopper. If you are worried about ripping the power cord violently from your notebook, thus damaging your notebook’s power plug and possibly more, the Jerkstopper is the right product for you.

Each order comes with three plugs — one each for USB, modem and network ports. Installation is easy — put the plug into the desired port, slide the end part to the side, align the cable with the plugged in part and push the end part back. Very easy, takes less than a minute.

Once installed, the device does exactly what it’s supposed to do — it keeps your power cable in place. We tried to jerk it off, but it was impossible to do.

We tried the Jerkstopper on five (sub-)notebooks from HP, Lenovo, Dell, IBM and Alienware. While our preference was to connect it to the unused modem ports of these notebooks, all of them have their modem ports so close to the networking ports that the secured cable would have totally obstructed these, thus rendering the network ports unusable. For that reason, we ended up connecting the Jerkstopper to a USB port. However, given the dearth of USB ports on many notebooks, if you are unwiling to give them up, the Jerkstopper is also available attached to lanyards and other cables.

Recommended for all PC notebook users

Price: $9.95, directly from jerkstopper.com

Every camera comes with a strap — why would you ever need a different one?

Just put your regular camera strap over your shoulder when you wear one of these micro-fiber jackets — it’ll slip constantly and you’ll be adjusting your camera position all the time. But there’s a solution: The Upstrap. It works so much better than your regular camera strap: its surfaces does not slip and provides lots of stability; it’s made from very flexible materials; and none has ever deformed or ripped no matter what I did to it.

That’s why the strap that comes with a new camera never even gets unwrapped. As soon as I order a camera, I also order the Upstrap.

Highly recommended!

Price: $32.00