Alien Bees in Europe and Australia

I originally posted in 2009 about the discontinuation of Alien Bee equipment outside the U.S. and Canada. However, I failed to update that Paul C. Buff has established a new source outlet distributor in April 2010 for international buyers.

1st Line Digital is supplying parts of Europe, so if you’re hunting to buy Paul C. Buff’s lighting & gear, you might want to have a look.

Here

There’s another separate log in for Australia, NZ, Asia, Middle East & Africa on the page. I believe you will need to register for access to browse.

I do use Paul C. Buff’s equipment. I find their flash units to be lightweight for my on location shooting. My apologies for missing their update!

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Back to Same Old

Christmas is done so I have replaced the header here on my blog. However, the snow is still appropriate considering that the Northeast has just had a blizzard!

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Let it Snow

In the spirit of the holiday, I turned the snow on for the season and added a temporary illustration that I drew so you could see the snow better. 🙂 Fun.

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Lightroom 3.3, Camera RAW 6.3, PSCS5 updates

No more testing. This update to Lightroom is now the commercial release. I don’t normally want my workflow interrupted by beta or pre release testing so I wait. However, the time is now since the releases are out of the final testing phases.

I do own a Canon Powershot S95 (more about that later) as my pocket camera and I’m happy to see this release because the S95 does shoot RAW. If you happen to be the proud owner of the newer Nikon D7000 or D3100, this will make you happy. Of course, there’s also support for other non-Nikon newer bodies.

LR 3.3 for Mac and LR 3.3 for Windows

Camera RAW 6.3 Mac and Windows

Photoshop CS5 also gets some significant fixes. I’m keenly interested in the security vulnerabilities patch and hoping this will fix my font crashes in PSCS5. They were very annoying.

Photoshop CS5 update for Mac and Windows

How do I know what installed versions I have?

If you’re puzzled about which versions you have, it’s simple. Go to Photoshop’s Help menu>Updates after you’ve launched it and check off what you want to download and install. This actually launches Adobe Download Manager to update to the latest installed versions. On a Mac, you will need to authenticate permission to do this with your password. It will ask you to quit Photoshop and you can watch the progress of the installer through the Adobe Application Manager.

In Lightroom, launch and go to Help (far right menu) and “Check for Updates” If you click “Download” you’ll go directly to Adobe’s page to download.

Next you might be asking yourself if Lightroom does its conversions of RAW files by using the Camera RAW plug in. It does not and while the processes use the same pipeline, it’s built into Lightroom updates for their Develop module function so I would update Lightroom on its own.

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Another Front Cover

There’s nothing like the predictability that comes with assignment work. I was pleased to shoot the front cover of the holiday issue for Girlfriendz Magazine. The shoot went well and the cover model is actually a “double” since she is a terrific role model as a partner of a law firm.

Many thanks to a great Editor in Chief, Tobi Schwartz-Cassell for the respect in allowing me to create the image for their front cover. She was great to work with. A shout out to Glori (PR agent), creative director, Dan as well as the 2 makeup artists, Sam and Connie as well. Thank you, everyone!

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Speedlight Wish List

It’s the time of year when Wish Lists abound. I was browsing the Nikonian Wish List for the holidays and thought I’d make up a speedlight one. I do have all the gear listed in this B&H speedlight wish list (exception is the newer SB700 Speedlight that has not shipped yet to the U.S.) so feel free to ask questions about things or “What does this do?”

Speedlight Wish List 2010

Make sure you wish for something useful that you’d enjoy.

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