DigitalPro Shooter Volume 2, Issue 2, January 16th, 2003
Welcome to DPS 2-2. We'll discuss the Supreme Court's decision on the Copyright Extension Act, give you the latest and greatest on profiling your camera, and pass along an exciting opportunity for Nikon Raw file and Nikon Capture users.
As photographers, we have suffered a steady assault on our business models and our intellectual property rights over the last decade. With the steady rise of royalty free stock libraries, lower day rates, and increasingly draconian contracts from news organizations and agencies, it has been a difficult time to earn a living making photographs. This week was a pleasant interlude, however, as the US Supreme Court validated Congress's extension of copyright terms. While there are some serious First amendment issues regarding the act, and it was almost certainly passed to help protect media companies and not photographers, it does have the heartening effect of extending our copyrights on our works for 70 years after our deaths. The extra 20 years is probably not something you can take to the bank, but for the curious Harvard University's site provides a royalty calculator to estimate how much those extra 20 years of royalties would be worth to you in today's dollars. I typed in my numbers and I have to admit the economic impact was not going to change my lifestyle much. I cheered myself up by estimating how much the copyright extension will earn Disney. It turned out to be quite a bit more.
There is increasing agreement that the best way to create an accurate color workflow is through color management. Unfortunately for digital photographers, profiling a digicam is one of the hardest problems in color management. A new product, ColorEyes from Integrated Color claims to be a breakthrough product by allowing photographers to create effective profiles that will work under varied lighting conditions. Sure, it sounds great, but is it too good to be true? Read the full review as David takes ColorEyes 20/20 through its paces.
Nikon will be offering a session, Nikon Capture - Getting the Most Out of Your NEFs, as a breakout at Digital Shooters Retreat. Steve Heiner of Nikon USA will cover how to get the most out of your Raw files using Nikon Capture 3.5. The session will also cover creative uses of NC and Raw files. Free trial versions of NC 3.5 will be handed out to all participants at the retreat.
The first rebuilt EN-4 batteries are back from Batteries Plus in Sacramento and are working great. Shooters are generally very pleased with the improved color after upgrading the firmware in their D1X and D1H. Maha, battery and charger superstars, are shipping 2000maH AA NiMH batteries. We'll have first hand reports soon, but if you're in a rush you can buy them from Thomas Distributing. I also just got a really nice ground plate designed by Walt Anderson of Better Beamer fame and sold by Moose at his WRP Trading Post. Normally when I'm photographing shorebirds I find myself setting my lens on a towel on the sand. I'm really looking forward to having a nicely machined swiveling base as a high performance alternative!
Moose must be doing something right. Image quality is steadily improving in the Wildlife Forum, and it is quickly becoming one of the most popular places to learn about wildlife photography on the Internet.
We're often asked about creating more saved settings for Publishing in DigitalPro, because many users don't realize they can create their own Submission settings simply by using the Save As... button on the Publish dialog. Each custom setting will remember your desired output format, optional batch image processing, watermarking, and web gallery creation options. You can have as many save Submissions as you want. Since they are simple files you can also transfer them between machines or share them with other users.