Having just made the plunge into the iPhone, I’ve finally come to appreciate what all the hype and fanfare was about. It may not be the messiah device that Steve Jobs and his loyal fans would have you believe, but it’s pretty close. Apple has engineered a fantastic phone mobile computer which is now extensible with third party applications. For photographers like you and me, there are a few apps that could come in handy, so I thought we could take a moment to talk about those.

If you don’t have an iPhone, these apps will also work on an iPod Touch updated to 2.x firmware (though some will require you to be located within a WiFi hotspot). If you don’t have an iPhone or an iPod Touch… you’re dead to me already. I’m kidding. But no, seriously, what are you waiting for? » MORE

I’ve been a little preoccupied lately and have had trouble getting anything done on Fotohacker, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to talk about the second coming of Photosynth, the spacial photography browser being developed by some folks over at Microsoft.

Photosynth is a product being worked on by Microsoft Live Labs, and about two years ago they unveiled a tech demo upon the world which got everyone excited. In a nutshell, the application gathers photos from a source and using an advanced set of algorithms it creates paths between these photos allowing you to browse around geographically local environments, almost like a 3D virtual world. It was really cool, but now they’ve gone and outdone themselves. » MORE

Sharpening is one of those terms that often makes photography purists shiver. After all, if a camera and the lens are doing their job properly, the picture should naturally be sharp and require no further processing, right?

Well, yes and no. Ideally this would always be the case. In a perfect digital world, the picture would be perfectly sharp, perfectly exposed, and the color levels would all be perfectly recorded by your camera.

Sadly, the world of the digital photographer is often times less than perfect. » MORE

Geocoding or Geotagging has become increasingly popular in the last couple of years. That’s likely because the number of cameras that can accomodate GPS integration has risen and their cost has dropped, not to mention the growing list of photo sharing websites that use that kind of GPS data for extended features like mapping. So, it seems like GPS and Photography are now intrinsically linked.

With many higher end cameras, you can now connect a GPS directly to the camera if you have the right equipment. With Nikon cameras like the D200, D300, or D2X, or D3 – a 10-pin port allows you to connect a GPS directly to the unit (provided you have the right cables). The problem is that this can be unwieldy, and it typically requires a high end SLR that not all of us have.

There are two slightly better solutions around this, which we’ll discuss. » MORE

Yup – Adobe is ready to unveil Lightroom 2 to the world, in beta form. After their very successful first version, a lot of photographers are anxious to see what kind of improvements they can expect from the next iteration of Lightroom.

Keep in mind that while the Lightroom 2 beta is free to download and try out, it’s still in a very early stage and shouldn’t be considered as production software. This is strictly for testing and providing feedback to Adobe, and shouldn’t replace your current photo software at this point.

You can download the LR2 beta from here.

Today we’re talking about color spaces. There isn’t a good general understanding of color spaces and their limits, and because of that – there is a lot of confusion and bickering about what to use. These are shark infested waters we’re wading into. If we’re not back in 30 minutes, call the authorities.

While there are plenty of color spaces available out there, the two that are most often available on digital SLR’s are Adobe and sRGB. While you can convert these to any other space in post processing, there’s typically not much benefit, so the question is – sRGB versus RGB (or Adobe RGB)… what’s better? What are they? » MORE

In the photography post processing software world, Adobe reigns supreme. There aren’t many competitors to Photoshop, and Lightroom – but Apple’s Aperture is one of them, and it’s giving Lightroom a run for it’s money with a brand new update.

The Apple Store has been down for a little bit, but when it came back up… it had Aperture 2 details, with a lower price point at $199 plus a redesigned interface with some new shortcuts. Let us know your impressions if you get a chance to use it.

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One of the best ways to determine if your image is exposed the way you want it is to check the histogram. However, when you start talking histograms, a lot of people get that glazed over look in their eyes. It’s a fancy word for something that’s really quite simple. Knowing what the graph means, and how to read it, are important things to understand however.

You may have seen these in programs you use, or on the back of your camera. They are histograms, a visual representation of data in your image. A histogram is a bar graph that shows you the distribution of luminance values in a digital photograph. » MORE