This involves no selling and you don’t even have to spend money on marketing. You simply show advertisements on your photos, like how Google does on YouTube videos, and you make money from ad clicks.

This is a passive way to monetize all the hundreds of pictures you may already have – each could turn into a money maker for you instantly!

Click Here to Read About Making Money from Photos Passively.

The implementation is very simple and all you need to do is to put in your custom advertising code. And you don’t need to know any computer programming either!

As long as you can display your own pictures, you can make money from the advertisements you show. Google realized the immense potential of such ads & hence have stopped online photo & video publishers from using this technique. Instead, now Google shows these ads on all videos hosted on YouTube & they get to make money!

So its your photos & videos & Google makes all the money!

This Photo Video Ads Plugin Script can be used as easily on your videos as well. You can show ads on videos that you are embedding on your website or blog & make all the money that you have had Google make from them!

Don’t let you online photos & videos sit idle any more. Don’t let others make money from your online pictures & videos while you get nothing! Start making money & increase your income from your pictures on websites & blogs now!

The rumors about Nikon D700 suddenly picked up a couple of weeks back with pictures & news running all over the internet. The stories mainly came in from Chinese websites. But UK was the first to make a sensible announcement with a date & a specs list. Although the prices have been taken down to avoid confusion, the news of Nikon D700 news is now holding back potential Nikon D300 buyers.

Here is a snapshot of the UK shop announcing the arrival of Nikon D700 for sale.

You can check the prices on Digital Depot website by the first week of July. The specs released by Nikon to another UK retailer mentions that the Nikon D700 is a hybrid of the Nikon D300 & the costlier Nikon D3. It also mentions that the new Nikon D700 is a 12.1 mega pixels full frame camera.

Here are the other features released to some of the reputed UK retailers:

• 36×23,9mm CMOS sensor FX format 12,1mp effective
• RGB Color filter array, build in low pass filter
• EXPEED processor, 14-bit
• NEF, NEF+jpeg, TIFF, Jpeg file formats
• Auto crop when using DX lenses. All other lenses usable.
• 51 point AF, 15 cross type sensors
• Live view mode
• 3D Colormatrix II metering modes
• ISO 100 – 25600
• CF card slot FAT32
• Accu and grip same as MB-D10 (from D300)

Nikon is yet to come out with a press release, but shops in UK believes that it will happen sometime on July 1 2008. And most of them have already started to stake in orders for the new Nikon D700. You can also order your Nikon D700 here at the danish dealer Photografica.

For a price list released by Photografica earlier & now removed, see post on Journal Image.

Note: We are now integrated with photoduniya.com and have moved to a new location. Please update your bookmark. Click here to go to the new location http://www.photoduniya.com/photography-blog/

.

Nikon announced the launch of Nikon D60, a 10.2 megapixels camera, today with a street price of about USD 700.00. The camera has been launched in Europe today & is supposed to hit the US shelves by March 2008.

.

With the D80, D40 & the D40x targeted at the same market segment of amateurs & advanced amateurs, the camera bears a significant trend of the market – help more in-camera processing & reduce the dependency on a computer. In terms of technology though, it bears the same high level of Nikon techniques as in any other along with an advanced dust cleaning mechanism. People have been known to depend on their computer mostly for (a) cleaning up images (b) changing saturation levels & (c) cropping. Having an advanced dusting mechanism would certainly help those who would prefer to spend more time with the camera than with the software!

.

Here is a detailed report from DP Review on the camera along with it’s specifications.

Note:
.

We are now integrated with our website, photoduniya.com. We have moved over to http://www.photoduniya.com/photography-blog/. Although we shall keep this blog up and running, most of the future posts will be on the Photoduniya Blog.

.

Please take a moment to view the new site and let us know your feedback.

.

Nikon had announced the launch of the Telephoto VR lenses late last year. The Nikon 600 mm f/4 AF-VR (estimated street price USD 9,500) and the Nikon 500 mm f/4 AF-VR (estimated street price USD 7,900) were announced late last year by Nikon and are yet to hit the market. It had always been a question as to whether one needs a VR with these long lenses for an additional price of between USD 500 to USD 700 and an increased weight of the lens. But looking into the way Nikon is trying to get into the Canon sports market, probably the thought is that many of these “nature” & “field” lenses would now be used in the sports arena easily.

Having said that, the 2 other lenses that automatically come into the discussion are the Nikon 400 mm f/2.8 AF (street price of USD 7,000) and the Sigma 500 mm f/4.5 AF (street price of USD 4,200). Nikon would definitely discontinue the non-VR versions of all the lenses that are already made with VR. The Nikon 500 mm f/4 (non-VR) had been a favorite of most of the nature photographers and had performed superbly for ages would be gone in a few months of time.

Personally, since I do not do sports, I have not much use of the VR in these tele lenses. That leaves the proposition for the Sigma 500 mm f/4.5 AF extremely enticing, especially if I weigh the positive price and the weight factors to the only negative brand factor. But a difference of USD 4,000 does a lot of justification for a small time photographer like me! The reviews had been excellent over years together. And apart from the Service related cribbing that many people reported as a pain point with Sigma, there have been no complaints on the quality or the operations of this lens.

The other brand lens that appears very enticing at least from the price point of view now is the Nikon 200 – 400 mm f/4 G-AFS which comes with a VR for a price of USD 5,100. I have recently sold my very favorite Nikon FM 3A and probably would not have much need of the “D” versions anyway. The Nikon F5 and the Nikon D200 works superbly with the Nikon 200 – 400 mm f/4 G-AFS VR. The zooming ability of this lens, for my needs, out-weighs the benefits of the 500 mm prime.

I have thought of the Sigmonster (Sigma 300 – 800 mm f/5.6) for over a year now. It is probably an excellent value for the money (for a price of USD 7,000) but since I have started doing a lot of streets now, I have to finally get this lens off my mind for good!

This is a DX format sensor, with the benefits of the improved auto focus mechanisms of the Nikon D3. It still uses the battery from Nikon D200, the EN-EL3e, which is known to have a very poor battery life.

Priced at about USD 1,900, the body is expected to hit the US & UK markets in November 2007, the same time as the D3.

You could read the Nikon D300 specifications on their official website here.

Here’s a brief of what the D3 has to offer:

• 12.1 MP CMOS sensor
• FX format (thats a full frame 36 x 24 format)
• Continuous 9 fps in FX mode and high speed 11 fps in DX crop
• Noise reduction in extreme 25,600 ISO
• 51 point auto focus with 3D focus tracking and improved Scene Recognition System

Here is the link to the detailed specifications on the Nikon’s website.

I recently saw one of the documentaries by Dr Alan Rabinowitz made by the National Geographic Society – titled In Search of the Jaguars. It details the life and the heroic work of Dr Alan from his early days growing up in Brooklyn, NY to the rest of his life spent in an undying effort to save the Jaguars in Central America.

Although the Jaguar project of Central America has taken up the most of Dr Alan’s better life, he is also known to discover the smallest deer species – the leaf deer and communicating with the Tarons – the Mongolian pygmies who faced  near extinction. The documentaries are published in his book “Beyond the Last Village“.

While you read and see his work, you get to realize what an immense source of strength this person had been throughout his life. Refusing to  give up at daunting challenges, he has fought over twenty five years of his life for the safety and preservation of some of the most fragile species and cultures of our planet.

Today, while his Jaguar project has gained some momentum and has interested similar minded conservationists, Dr Alan Rabinowitz  is facing a harsh reality. He has been diagonized with Leukemia. But not deterred by his physical challenges, Dr Alan Rabinowitz continue to lead the conservation initiatives till today.

You could read more about him on the web at Save the Jaguar. As a last note, the Wildlife Conservation Society runs completely from donations and some of their most critical projects are funded out of donations from people who want to save this planet.

Celebrating this occasion,  the President Michio Kariya laid a clean vision for the next decade – “Our Aspirations – Meeting needs. Exceeding expectations” as Nikon steadily moved ahead to its 100 birthday.

Nikon will retain it’s brand logo of the hashed yellow square, meant to represent “Transforming imagination into creativity“. The sequential white rays symbolize “infinite possibilities within the domain of optics” while the yellow has an emotional significance of “depth” and “passion“. The bold black name of Nikon within the logo emphasizes the solid “trust” and the “commitment” of the company.

Quite truly, Nikon has evolved as an institution of creativity. Starting with the F mount cameras in 1959, and the 3D color matrix metering of the early 2000, Nikon has shelved competition from Canon, Sony and Panasonic. Albeit the staunch followers of Nikon are more than willing to bear the high prices for the quality they offer.

More news available on the Nikon Corporate website.

Note: We are now integrated with photoduniya.com and have moved to a new location. Please update your bookmark. Click here to go to the new location http://www.photoduniya.com/photography-blog/

.

When digital technology and advances made in digital sensors have created excellent cameras, it has constantly challenged the ability to store digital files – be it images or movie files. While Tera Bytes have become cheaper and softwares are becoming more efficient in retrieval of files, the main challenge that digital photographers and video makers face is that of an era of evolving file-creation technology.

The traditional CDs have slowly given way to the more efficient DVD format allowing us to store more images on a smaller media. The DVD format has constantly evolved and is going through another major evolution right at this moment! The Blu-Ray is in! Developed by the Blu-Ray Disck Association and funded and supported in various capacities by close to 200 world renowned electronic device & movie makers.

Contrary to the current disk writing technology of using the red laser beam (that has an effective wavelength of 650 nano meters) the Blu-Ray will use a Blue Violet laser (with an effective wavelength of 405 nano meters) allowing the technology to pack more content within the same space of the disk. A single-layer Blu-Ray disk can store 25 Gigabytes of content compared to 4.7 GB of a DVD and a double-layer Blu-Ray disk can store as much as 50 GB compared to 8.5 GB of a DVD!

While the Blu-Ray technology is supported by a large array of disk makers and industry leaders including:

Apple Computer, Inc.
Dell Inc.
Hewlett Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Pictures
Warner Bros. Entertainment

a competing technology, named the HD-DVD, is extensively developed by Toshiba & NEC.

Although at this time, the Blu-Ray evolution is backed up by the largest number of the world’s leaders of electronic device manufacturers and movie makers, the capacity advantage is surely in favor of Blu-Ray. With a larger Numerical Aperture of 0.85 exceeds that of HD-DVD’s 0.65, allowing it to put in more data on the same disk. As a comparison, a single-layer Blu-Ray disc packs in 25 GB vis-a-vis 15 GB for a HD-DVD while a double-layer Blu-Ray disk packs 50 GB compared to 30 GB for a HD-DVD.

To match the camera, the digital back comes with impressive writing speed of 300 MB/sec & an ISO range from 500 to 10,000 ASA. The special sensor is produced by DALSA Corporation exclusively for Seitz. Ref: http://www.roundshot.ch/

SanDisk has aggressively produced CF cards to go along with such a massive electronic device. In 2006 Photokina it launched the 12 GB and 16 GB Extreme III CF cards with writing speeds of 20 MB/sec. Not to mention the cost that pro’s shell out for such gadgets – a whopping USD 800.00 for the 12 GB and USD 1050.00 for the 16 GB.

And yes, with such a capacity, you can shoot without the worry of running out of space!

Had things not gone as bad as it did one weekend, I would have waited for a couple of more years and gone for a pro grade Nikon DSLR. But now the situation is different. I have a Nikon D200 DSLR. I had determined that I would be using this digital equipment only for street, candid and black and white shots, and hence there was no need for me to switch to any other brand. I still have a large stock of Fuji chromes for my art work. But had I not done that study, and for those who wants to do landscape on digital too, the Canon high end DSLRs would probably a suitable option.

For the first few days, it rained continuously in East Bay. The camera laid on the table completely ready to go but I just could not take it out. For the next week, I was so tied up with my regular job that I could not even think of anything! Finally, I managed to bring out the camera on the open.

My first few hundred shots were a disaster. It was not the camera, it was my lens. I was using about 800 mm handheld! I brought the camera out from chasing the birds and the bees into the streets of San Francisco. And it created wonders. I tested the exposure rapidly in all possibly drastic conditions that the city would allow me and I have to say, I am very pleased. I am yet to test the high ASA range though – I have used it only upto 200 ASA.

Below are three images from my tests – and if you see the tonal range, they are 5 stops apart! But as I said earlier, the metering is right on. So what did I like about metering? Ah! The ability to chose your exposure area in the center weighted option. Thats just brilliant.

And what I am no happy about so far? Well, since the first few days the camera was lying in my house, I tried a lot of shots in a lower Kelvin situation. I am not happy with the ambient range that is provided on the White Balance options – I would have loved to go down to 1000 K if possible!

The lady on the train

The bicycle man

The Tram Cars in Powell, CA

Except for the last image The Tram Cars in Powell, CA the other two had f/stops difference of 4 – 5 and yet the camera handled it graciously. I had not used any filters and the shots were hand held.

Unfortunately, D200 is not compatible with the SB50 DX – my pet filler that I have so grown used to. A SB600 or the SB800 would cost another US $ 400 to upgrade. I have also lost 1 stop and 50% of the wideness on my Tamron’s 17 – 35 f/2.8 lens. Thankfully, most of my lenses are Nikon’s and will not suffer from such a problem.

From the information available so far, the EOS-1D Mark 3 is a complete overhaul – a 10 mp APS-H Foveon CMOS sensor ( APS-H means a crop factor of 1.3 ) with the ability of shooting 10 frames per second. The updated DIGIC III image processor will reduce noise sufficiently to allow a shooting range upto 3200 and can be pushed further upto 6400 ASA. Added to that, it will have a 19 area AF system and a 3.0″ LCD monitor with a live-view feature.

The model is to be shipped in April 2007 and is estimated to cost around US $ 3,999.

This launch, and the fact that there were absolutely no news of it whatsoever, took a lot by surprise. For the Nikonian’s though, not only does it put the pressure of the new D3 but also would make them look at repositioning the D2Xs and the D200.

.

We are now integrated with our website, photoduniya.com. We have moved over to http://www.photoduniya.com/photography-blog/. Although we shall keep this blog up and running, most of the future posts will be on the Photoduniya Blog.

.

Please take a moment to view the new site and let us know your feedback.

.

[Read - Aug 23 2007: Here is the update on D3 - Nikon launches the D3!]

[Also read - Aug 23 2007: Nikon Launches the D300!]

With the PMA 2007 just months away, the rumours around the Nikon next generation digital revolution is hitting the peak. Gossips had been around for almost a a couple of years now and the stalwarts from Ken Rockwell to Thom Hogan all contributing their share of informations and tid-bits. Although the improvements are primarily expected in the one major areas of a better chip and its ability to pack in over 18 mega pixels with better noise reduction (Foveon chip), the debate is quite low on whether Nikon will bring out a 35mm chip or continue to build on the DX format. The Bayer pixel extrapolation methodology of the existing models could be dispensed with an improved physical sensor in terms of the RGB sensors.

There could be some amount of truth in the time of the release of the D3 series. The latest buzz around the D200 (Sept 2006) have died down and the prices continue to vary from $ 1,350 to $ 1,600, with a downward trend. With the D3 in the market, the D200 will obviously take up the space for a digital back up camera. And much like the fate of the F5, the D2Xs will be discontinued? The price proposition of the D3 is around $7,000 with the D2Xs at $3,500 and the D200 at about $1,300 it would be difficult for the current D2Xs owners to make a quick move onto the newer D3.

The pictures that added to the gossips are worth a last look. A jelly bean body for a camera that is supposed to fit onto your palms looks odd, but the rapid change in design on the film cameras from F5 over to the F6 could mean that the D3 could be smaller than the existing D2 body type. That does pose a challenge given that the body could hold a larger mega pixels sensor. With the users desperately in need for a smaller and lighter body with more efficient battery life, its unlikely that the new D3 body would be larger than the D2.

Most of the imaging community websites have started showing up that perfect picture – with the perfect lighting and colors and sharpness, capturing the perfect moment, where the bird of prey is just snatching the prey from water, the the landscape with the perfectly balanced morning light and the green of the grass as never seen before. So where does the credibility lie?

Photoshop™ isn’t a debate any more. To the professional studio photographers, it’s just the much needed tool to save time and money, to make the right image in their digital dark room, to the journalist, its just the right encouragement to make sure that you have not missed the shot, to the editor, its the perfect tool to make the image available right in time no matter where its shot. And to the amateurs, its just the right software to help them emerge out of mediocrity!

So while the difference is like between the user of a computer and the brains behind creating it, the competition between two such amateurs now depends on whether the creators in Adobe ™or Corel ™ could create such an effect with just the click of a brush and whether such a software would be made available to the enthusiast for an affordable price off the Walmart™ shelf!

While the software developers in these leading imaging corporations are expanding their minds, so is the photographic community. The ability to judge an image based on its merit and that of the photographer has returned and the initial wow of the amateurs’ ability to manipulate and master Adobe and such softwares have subsided considerably. These softwares have brought out another new genre of talents. The people who have so longed to express themselves through abstract art have found the perfect way to bring their creations to the table. They have not only mastered the software, but have started to push the limits by their constant effort to dive deep into the abstract world. And over the years, the corporations creating the imaging softwares have listened to them and have oriented their products to enable them move forward. A perfect synchronized effort of the mind and the technology!

So where does it leave the pampered amateurs? It looks like they will always be amazed by what these softwares can do. Some that perfect the ability to exploit the abilities of such softwares will spend considerable time on their computers and the others will keep fiddling with the saturation, hues and the brightness levels instead of spending more time on the field with their subject and camera.

I am also sure of doing a portion of my work in digital media. I would be doing some editing in Adobe™ softwares. Like it has been since ages, the print is the final art form. And the creation of the negative and the final print have to add to the success of the final art. The darkroom allowed the artist to expand their creation through burning, dodging, cropping and the like. I would definitely perform these activities on my digital editor as well. At the same time, since my primary interest is impressionistic art form, I would continue to do that on fim, as long as Fuji continues to make their chromes!

Photography has been one of those areas where the digital revolution has been very prominent. People have taken wildly to digital cameras, digital videos, podcasts and others very keenly. And slowly, as the buzz settled, we have started to read and make more sense of what is it that we need and what is it that is useful to us. Laymen like me have taken slightly more time to comb through the complicacies of the pixel battle to realize that its just not the number of pixels that matter in a digital camera, its also the size of the sensor and the orientation of the pixels within the sensor. So now, I have some idea of what a sensor array is, how many types of arrays are available and what is the difference between a CCD and a CMOS sensor. More importantly, i have a fair idea of what I need to make the transition to digital photography.

I would continue to shoot film for another two years at least. I would still wait to read and understand more about the technology. The downside? I would continue to incur film buying, processesing & storage costs. The upside? I love the sense of being immersed in the chrome. And I could continue do impressionistic art on slides. I also get to plan for a smooth transition rather than jumping into the water and then learning to swim.

I have started preparing for the digital shift though. I have made a choice of continuing to shoot impressions, art work, landscapes, macro and partially travel and wildlife on film. I will be using digital media to capture people, street and partially travel & wildlife.

I also plan to complement my still digital images with some sort of video. I am still working to find out how and what, but I am sure that in some situations, still images can be completed with a video compendium. Since I have been a Nikonian for long, I would continue to use future Nikon digital cameras and lenses. As for video, I am comfortable with Sony. The heart of my system is going to see a major change though. I am going to make the biggest transition on my main processesing unit from a PC to a Mac OS X based machine. From what I understand, this is going to be a very complex decision and hopefully one that I would be more productive with.