herbko

How unApple .. they have made the phone ugly ? why ?

they even just released the ipad with similar looks to the iphone .. and yet this thing is really more htc from last year looking.

edit .. i say ugly but i kinda like it .. i guess i meant they have deviated from their what we have come to think of normal look !

I do like the look of the current version but think it's design is somewhat impractical. The round smooth bottom has such low friction on a smooth surface that a little tap can send it flying off a desk. Mine probably would not have survived more than a few days without a skin. I don't know anyone who uses a naked iphone. It seem such a waste to put in what must have been a great deal of engineering to make it so slim only to have to put a thick rubber skin on it for practical use. I would much rather have the bottom flat and a little more sticky.

Well, of course it may sound a bit biased, but I really liked the Port Hardy article by Alex. Almsot like I was there. THe cover is a beautiful shot. I also enjoyed Eric's story on his turtle photos.

Rand

Not biased at all. Great shot Rand!

Jeff, it seems Matt and Herb are on the party of noise reduction. I sorta like a bit of noise to add grit and mood to certain shots. I certainly dislike the lack of detail with the new NR and AA filters on the newer cameras.

No. I'm on the party of having sensors with lower noise to begin with. That was the reason for choosing Canon. A little noise is much better than heavy NR.

The amount of AA filtering trades off sharpness for digital artifacts, and does not affect noise which is produced by the sensor under the filter.

I do want to bring up about the illusion of grain and how some noise can simulate grain. Matt once said he's of the digital generation of no grain pls. I like grain for a look but maybe I'm dinosaur about things?

There's probably a grain-o-matic plug-in for photoshop somewhere on the web. If not I'm sure you can write one. I'm with Matt on this one.

Is there a reason you chose high ISO for a macro shot? Macro was not something I would have been thinking about with high ISO. Was your reason for using high ISO here to bring out the background more? Do you have indications for when you would choose high ISO for macro images such as this, especially with strobe?

Yes. I chose the high ISO to get the natural water color background. Because of the low light level, high ISO was the only way to get that. I was already at the limits of low shutter speed and wide aperture (for the DOF I wanted).