Digital Foci’s Photo Safe II is now available in three sizes (80/160/250 GB). It is the near-perfect travel companion: small, lightweight and with only two buttons to operate, you don’t have any excuses any longer not to make backups of your memory cards in the field. You don’t need a computer – just plug your card into the Photo Safe, hit the copy button and you are done. Once back from the trip, the device can be used as a USB drive to copy its content to your Mac or PC.
TidBITS’ in-depth review of the Photo Safe II can be found here.
Price:
80GB: $119.00, Amazon: $97.72
160GB: $149.00, Amazon: $118.08
250GB: $199.00, Amazon $169.00
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
Recently CameraBits released version 4.5.3.1 of its popular PhotoMechanic software, which is optimized for very fast downloads of images from your camera to a PC or a Mac. Various metadata speed improvements were implemented in addition to speed improvements in the Navigator. As always, a number of bug fixes were implemented as well. The new version adds RAW support for the Canon Powershot G9, Nikon’s D3 and D300 as well as the Sony DSLR A-700.
This is another development of image transferring software from CameraBits. Various changes have been implemented such as improved file reading speed and a re-acceleration of image transplantation from your camera to computer.
From previous tests of this new software, this new and highly developed gadget is able to download images from O2 mobile phones as well, most specially the latest units.
Price: $150
Lemkesoft updated its GraphicConverter, an excellent program to convert graphics and images between different graphics formats on Macs, to version 6.1.2. The free update (41.4 MB) features improved EXIF handling and bug fixes.
List price: $34.95
CameraBits released version 4.5.2 of its popular PhotoMechanic software, which is optimized for very fast downloads of images from your camera to a PC or a Mac. In addition, it allows for fast sorting, tagging and the creation of contact sheets in a color managed environment. The new version adds support for the Canon 1D Mark III and also contains minor bug fixes.
Price: $150
Here are my three favorite photo/imaging tools, all for free:
1. Irfanview
If you try out just one free tool, this is the one. It’s the best free image viewing tool in the world. Period. Viewing images, printing, converting them between different formats, slide shows, minor adjustments, thumbnails, image organizing – all of these can be done fast and easily. There’s hardly an image format that is not supported by Irfanview. It’s not an image editor, though.
I’ve been using Irfanview since the mid 1990’s and it’s my default application for file extensions such as JPG and TIF. It’s one of the first applications that get installed whenever I get a new PC. Try it out and I bet it will stick. Sorry, Windows only. Available in many languages.
2. Pixmantec Raw Shooter Essentials
Although Pixmantec was bought by Adobe least year and its Raw Shooter engine is now part of the new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom product, you can still google it to find copies on the net. If you bought a Digital SLR in 2006, chances are that Raw Shooter Essentials (RSE) supports its RAW format. In short, RSE is a full-featured software package to convert RAW images to TIFFs or JPEGs and it does a great job of doing so. Intuitive interface, easy adjustment capabilities and superb image processing make this a great value. Personally, I use the Premium (RSP) version, but I used RSE before RSP came out. It’s by far the best free RAW converter. Again, Windows only.
3. GIMP
Not ready to shell out hundreds of dollars for Adobe Photoshop, but still want Photoshop-like functionality? Try the GIMP, an open-source image editor. While its functionality is a bit short of Photoshop’s, it still offers way more than most other free “image editors”. Plus, it’s available on Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix. It would be my image editor of choice, if I would go the free route!
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