OK, now, I'm not too much about reinventing the wheel, but this is cool.  Not only does X-Rite give you a nice little ColorChecker, but they give it to you in a nice little plastic case.  The nice little plastic case will unfod into a three-way, self-standing little, well, stand.  You can carry it around, all nice and protected, then unfold it and stand it right up on the background, either vertically or horizontally. 
 

But here's the cool part.  They added a series of patches for making some basic, preset color corrections- warming, cooling,

Thanks to “Smilin’ Mike” Bard at EP Levine, we got a chance to run some early tests on the spanikin’ new Canon G11.  Much as I went into it wanting to love the camera, I’d read some recent reports that the file quality wasn’t up to snuff.  This is in spite of early reports from friends saying they loved the thing, and were shooting at very high ISO with great results. Stop by and visit EP Levine someday, either on their site or in person- the place is a legend in New England photography.
 

Again, as we did with the Leica M9, we have the test targets lined up and will post that data as soon as we get it, but the preliminary shots, shown here, of Smilin’ Mike himself made us, well, not smile too much.  First, you should know, you need to download the Camera RAW 5.5 update which gives "preliminary support" for the G11, and that's here.  What "preliminary support" means, I sincerely don't know, but I'm hoping it means they haven't done much work with the high-ISO noise.  Read on. 
 

At ISO 400 we got this.  This is pretty much on par with the results we got with the older G9 at ISO 400. 

As you've no doubt read, the inventors of the CCD- W. S. Boyle and G. G. Amelio- were just awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.  As with any development, nothing happens in a vacuum, and the history of digital photography owes a lot to what laid the foundation for this invention, and what followed it.  I've done some pretty geeky work before on the timeline of digital photography, but this award has pushed me to greater heights of geekdom. 
 

Take a trip down Memory Lane- starting with the development of the Integrated Circuit- the IC, in 1960, that would replace the vacuum tube and start the whole revolution.  I even found the point at which Moore's Law was first formed.  Supremely geeky stuff!
 

Since Sept. '08, Hasselblad has come under fire from both it's customers and the industry for not providing a buy-back upgrade path for owners of previous models.  An interview and statement from Hasselblad can be found at the British Journal of Photography's story, here, but the details of a part of the upgrade program to the new H4D system are found on the Hasselblad site, here. 
 

In the last few weeks that we’ve been moving into our new office, (YES!  Very excited!) there’s been a lot of news in the photography community.  Some of the saddest was that photography master Irving Penn passed away at his New York home, at 92 years old.  There’s not much I can add to the many, many stories posted on the life and career of Mr. Penn, (probably the best I’ve seen is on the New York Times site, here, and here), but I can add my own little, personal and perhaps a bit indulgent story about Irving Penn. 
 

In the early ‘80s I was a few years into my career as a commercial photographer.  I’d set up a studio, and had a few clients- notably a company called DarLabs, (literally two guys in a garage- to soon become ModTap, then, after ten years and astounding growth to be acquired by industry giant Molex), an offshoot of Digital Equipment Corp. called the Computer Museum, and a dear friend and supremely talented goldsmith, Blue Poitras (dear friend indeed, but certainly one of the most demanding and challenging clients I was to have… always asking me to push my limits).
 

As a budding young photographer I looked to everything I could find for direction, inspiration, a sense of style that I could relate to and that my clients would find compelling.  Interestingly, W Magazine, Vogue and the New York Times Fashion supplement were the sources of what seemed like the most exciting, current and inspiring photography- far more than anything the tech industry or photo industry was doing.  Not to mention I got to see all sorts of great shots of hot babes…