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Here are some basic starting points

If you have any questions, stop by the store, email or call. We’re here to help. Please let us know if you get some great shots we’d love to see!
Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions. Have a great 4th of July Holiday weekend from all of us at BCC.

Find a fireworks display on NJ.com’s July 4th events page

Tripod
Electronic release (available for most cameras at BCC)
Manually set your camera ISO to 100 (You do not want Auto ISO)
Lens Choice – Wide Angle Zoom to frame what you’d like to capture
Auto White Balance or Daylight
Set your lens to manual focus then focus to infinity (take a test image and make sure things are sharp)
Set your camera to Manual exposure – Try 5 seconds at f/ 16
Carefully release the shutter if not using a release to capture from one to several bursts
Evaluate your exposure - Shorter exposures (or smaller aperatures ) will darken the image and capture shorter trails, Longer exposures (or larger aperatures ) will lighten the image and capture longer trails.
Evaluate sharpness by zooming in on your image – adjust as needed

If you are using a point a shoot, check your camera’s manual for fireworks mode.

Improving Fireworks photos
Shoot with a tripod – it will give a more natural cascade of light

Why use a tripod?

Handheld image above shows motion from camera shake  in the burst of light.

The image below is steadied by a tripod, 5 seconds, f16 at 100 ISO

Other Techniques
Set your camera to B and lock open your shutter – keep the lens covered with a dark hat and remove the hat to capture a burst then recover and repeat to capture several bursts. Just be carefull not to bump your camera.
You can even zoom the lens during exposure for some interesting effects

Experiment and best of all have fun

Gallery images below shot mainly at 5 seconds, f16 at 100 ISO

Our customer’s hard drive crashed. It stored nearly 10 digital years worth of her family images: births, family vacations, birthdays, parties, graduations, and other events. Our customer’s digital images had not been printed out (unlike analog photos) – they had been shared on the computer and occasionally uploaded to a digital frame or to an online photo site. Her backup consisted of an external hard drive (also damaged) and an incomplete collection of floppy disks, CDs and DVDs, plus about 1% of their images saved at an online photo site.

This was just too close for comfort, since my own personal backup situation was similar. During the past 15 years I’ve relied on a hodge podge of backup methods: floppy disks, tape drives, CDs, DVDs, online photo services and other online backup solutions.

I set out to find a reliable, affordable online backup solution for my data. Online photo websites that are free often have fine print in the user agreement that allows website to reduce the resolution of stored images if you don’t make a certain number of paid prints, etc. Although it is extremely easy to upload hundreds of images to these websites, if you ever want your images back you must download them one by one which becomes an impossible task if you have thousands of images, as many of us do. (The BCC digital lab was recently hired for $125 an hour by a customer who lost several hundred images, to download images individually from his online printing website – not an inexpensive proposition).

AT LAST: A SMART, AFFORDABLE SOLUTION

After spending some time researching I chose Mozy.com online backup. I signed up for a yearly account. Just moments after installing the Mozy applet, data started backing up over my cable connection at about 10 gigabytes a day. Well, it’s finally complete – for the first time ever I have a complete off-site backup of all my images . . . nearly 50,000, genealogy files, and documents taking up just over 500 Gb (that’s more than half a terabyte, 500,000 megabytes, or the equivalent of about 800 CDs).

Mozy.com is a fully encrypted online backup service that costs around $55 a year. Less if you get a 2-year membership paid up front. Once signed up you have unlimited storage for the flat annual fee. With Mozy you can back up one computer and any drives that are connected to your computer. Many other online backup solutions will only backup drives inside your computer, not external drives. Once installed the process is very automatic. If you power down or reboot your computer, the backup resumes automatically. Backups over broadband upload 5-10 gigabytes per day. Easy configuration options even allow the backup to proceed only when the computer is idle. My computer is relatively new so I left it set for maximum backup speed for the entire time. Mozy will also automatically add and delete as you move files into or out of your watched folders you designate.

At last, I have my images protected.

Also just added to Mozy 2.0 is the ability to create a local backup to an external drive which gives you the best backup a scenario – a local and remote copy!

To learn more or sign up for your own Mozy account, just click on the Mozy logo below.

Here are some great shots taken with the Olympus E-PL1 by our friend Peter Ewen from his recent trip to Mexico. We thought the pictures really showcased the ability of this micro 4/3 camera from Olympus. Small, compact and full of features it’s a great camera to travel with. Feel free to leave a comment for Peter if you’d like. BTW, Peter’s day job is Director,  Product Marketing, DSLR for Olympus. Bergen County Camera has a full line of Olympus 4/3 cameras, lenses and accessories.

Adobe Labs is currently beta testing Adobe Camera Raw Release Candidate version 6.1 to accommodate Photoshop CS5 and several newer digital cameras. This is an Adobe Labs beta product so there can be some issues but for someone who’s just purchased a new camera without current Adobe Camera Raw support, you may want to give it a try. Rest assured though a full tested version will be released soon. If you’d like to try the beta software visit the Adobe Labs Camera Raw page for this download. Please feel free to offer you feedback on this beta product by using the link from the Adobe Labs Camera Raw page listed above.

New lens based distortion correction for geometric distortions, chromatic aberration and lens vignette effects. Includes full manual as well as the abiltiy to create your own automatic lens profiles with the free Adobe Lens Profile Creator. This tool can be a real time saver when corrections for common lens errors can be automatically applied based on image EXIF informaiton. Lens Profile Creator looks a bit complicated so I’ll post someting more once I have had a chance to experiment.

Newly supported camera models include:

Our new Epson Stylus Pro 7900 has arrived! This 24” wide printer uses Epson’s new Ultrachrome HDR pigment ink technology. With 10 colors including orange and green, this is the widest color gamut ever from an Epson Stylus Pro printer. This printer allows you to get the most out of your digital images, making breathtaking color prints and enlargements!  The black and white prints are also spectacular. With Epson’s three level black ink technology, the 7900 simultaneously prints with black, light black and light light black inks, providing outstanding highlight-to-shadow grayscale accuracy for a smoother tonal range. But don’t take my word for it, come see for yourself! Bring us a print-ready digital image and we’ll make you a free custom 8×10 enlargement*. Just mention this article at the processing counter to receive your free print!

 *One enlargement per customer for in-store pickup.  If original is a print, slide or negative, scanning charges will apply.

Hazardous Waste Days open to Bergen County, New Jersey Residents Only

BCUA Hazardous Waste Days Flyer.  No business waste and ID is required. Also please do not bring computers, electronics, batteries, latex paint or tires to these collections. If you have questions please call the Bergen County Hazardous Waste Hotline 201-807-5825. Information for other New Jersey Counties can be found at the NJ Hazardous Waste Co-ordinators website. 

Next Hazardous Waste Day: Campgaw Reservation May 15, 2010

Campgaw Mountain Reservation 9 a – 3 p

200 Campgaw Road, Mahwah, NJ

May 15

September 11

November 20

Bergen Community College 9 a – 3 p

400 Paramus Road, Paramus, NJ

June 13

October 17

Bergen County Utilities Authority 9 a – 3 p

Foot of Empire Boulevard, Moonachie, NJ

July 17

Canon 7D Firmware 1.2.1

Version 1.2.1 incorporates the following improvements and fixes. { from the Canon Website }

1. Extends the timing at which the high temperature warning indicator is displayed and the timing of automatic shut down of the camera due to a rise in internal temperature during Live View or EOS Movie functions.
2. Optimizes program shift when the ISO setting of the camera is set to AUTO.
3. Corrects a misspelling in the French-language menu. 
4. Corrects a phenomenon in which vertical magenta-colored banding appears in still images taken in movie-shooting mode.
   (This only occurs when in Manual exposure mode and when the ISO speed is set to “H”. Note that this phenomenon only affects units with Firmware Version 1.2.0)

Firmware Version 1.2.1 is for cameras with firmware up to version 1.2.0. If the camera’s firmware is already version 1.2.1, it is not necessary to update the firmware. Note that cameras with firmware Version 1.2.1, 1.2.0 cannot be downgraded to a previous firmware version (such as Version 1.1.0).

Be sure to read the instructions on the download  page before proceeding with the update.

After watching the CS5 anouncement (still available for viewing) on Monday I have to say that I was quite impressed with what they’ve included in this update. In the past 10 years, more than one update to Photoshop initially left us wondering what’s this update all about and why did I just spend another $159! Every time after a month or two of using the new tools I’ve wound up impressed and was once again a strong supporter of Photoshop. CS5 looks amazing right out of the gate and that’s before I have even had a chance to use the program.  Abby from Bergen County Camera recently visited Photoshop World in Orlando and was among many industry experts and beta testers of Photoshop CS5 who as a group were impressed with CS5. (Abby’s Photoshop World Post)

Here’s a few things that I think will make this a super upgrade out of the box. These features are really a jump from CS4 and in the words of Adobe – “Eye bleeding cool”

• Smart radius for edge detection when making a selection
• Content aware fill – Remove a horse or any object from an image and CS will intuitively rebuild the background from available image information! Wow!
• When using any kind of a stroke – CS5 will let you vary the width at any point you choose.
• CS Review – a new add on feature that lets you share your work for comments online with other CS5 users
• New improved natural and realistic painting tools
• All new 64-bit Raw processing engine
• All new merge to HDR Pro – with subtle controls to choose parts of the image and make adjustments within this powerful automatic workflow. You will even be able to automatically fix ghosting as in the case of trees in a breeze moving between your HGR shots. You will also be able to use these new HDR tools on a single image as well.
• New improved sharpen and de-mosaic filters
• Better noise reduction – remove luminance noise and add film like grain and more
• Automation of Lens correction based on file EXIF information. For example you could fix all chromatic abberation with your lens at f2.8 and have every image automatically adjusted on import. The same would be true for vignetting or any other lens correction option in the program. For rare lenses not in the original release, Adobe will rely on online reporting and will post EXIF corrections for these lenses as well.

Photshop CS5 looks amazing and everyone at BCC is looking forward to its mid May arrival. We will stock upgrade versions for both PC and MAC (newer Intel based MAC’s only) If you have any questions or comments email or comment here – Thanks!

Two weeks ago I went to Photoshop World in Orlando.  With the nice weather we’ve been having lately you would think I’d be outside soaking it up.  But instead, I’ve been glued to my computer trying all the new techniques I learned.  I went down on Tuesday for a pre conference workshop with Richard Harrington on shooting video with a DSLR.  We filmed a Celtic rock band called Seven Nations.   The next three days were filled with Photoshop and Lightroom classes given by great instructors like Scott Kelby, Katrin Eisman and Rick Sammon (to name a few.)  My brain is full! 

During the opening keynote we got a sneak peak at CS5, the new version of Photoshop that comes out on April 12^th.  Looks like they’ve packed this upgrade with a lot of exciting new features!  The content aware fill is going to save me so much time when retouching photos I might actually get to go enjoy some of this beautiful weather!

Also while I was in Orlando, Adobe released Lightroom 3 Beta 2.  Some exciting new features are the ability to shoot tethered, DSLR video management and noise reduction (that really works!)   I just started using Lightroom recently and now I can’t live without it!  Shooting and processing RAW files is so easy, it has really streamlined my workflow.

At Bergen County Camera we’re really excited about the upcoming release of Adobe Photoshop CS5. Abby our digital imaging specialist was recently at Photoshop World (a full post on this in a few days) in Orlando, Florida and everything she heard about Photoshop CS5 points to an awesome upgrade.

Register with Adobe to be the first to learn about CS5
Adobe’s first look web event is Monday April 12, 11 am EST – register for Adobe CS5 preview at the Adobe CS5 preview site. Reserve your spot now! This event will preview all the latest and greatest features and should last about 30 minutes.

Once we get our upgrade we’ll do a full review.