A Man and a Camera

Photography Help: Sleeping Beauty Castle

This photo of Sleeping Beauty Castle is obviously blurry. What settings do I use to make sure I get the castle in focus better?

I have a Canon S230, so I have controls for the ISO speed, long shutter, exposure, and slow-synchro flash. I don't have manual aperture or shutter control.

I'm standing about 300 feet away from the castle. I think I should've used ISO 100 and Infinity focus. Would that be good? Something I'm missing? There is EXIF data on the photo page. Any help would be great! Thanks.

New Album: Disneyland Park Summer 2003

I went to Disneyland about a month ago, and here are the pictures from the original Disneyland Park in Anaheim. Photos from the adjacent Disney's California Adventure Park will be contained in a separate album.

New Album: Homecooking

Ending a drought of new photo albums and album updates, I finally created a new one. This album will house pictures of, you guessed it, homecooked food! The first homecooking featured is a dinner Tomomi, my girlfriend, made a few weeks ago.

Upcoming Trips

In less than a month I'll be heading to Japan for over two weeks, so expect a lot of photos from there. I hope to be able to update the site from there, and I'd like to try some moblogging/photoblogging from Japan as well. Hopefully one of my friends has one of those camera phones!

For the rest of this month, expect photos of California locations for the most part. I'll also scan photos from my traditional film shots to put here.

Canon s230: What I Like

Form factor: dimensions are smaller than my wallet; only a little bit thicker.
Metal tripod socket
Optical viewfinder and LCD viewfinder
Intuitive controls and menus
Well-written manual
Includes battery charger, USB cable, and AV cable
Bundled panorama stitching software
Includes set of manuals in Spanish (not necessary for me, but nice for those who do need it)

Organizing with iPhoto

After reading various books and articles, and experimenting, I've finally come up with a routine/strategy for organizing and archiving my photos.

Import images and video clips (if any) via Image Capture.
Group related images into folders, either during or after importing.
Open iPhoto.
Drag folders one by one into the album pane.
Each folder then gets imported as an album and as a film roll with the folder name you entered.
Set the title of each film roll to blank or the roll info title.
Make backups of the Photo Library to CD-RW or DVD-RW depending on the size of the Photo Library.
When the Photo Library size will fit almost all of a disc, make a backup to CD or DVD (not RW).
Rename (safer) or delete (more risky) the iPhoto Library folder and create a new empty one.

Optional:
Make a disc image of the CD or DVD using Disk Copy to mount the Library without having to use the actual disc. It's easier than switching between Photo Libraries.

Importing Images on the Mac

Image Capture has emerged as my software of choice to bring photos onto my Mac from my camera. Why? Because I have more control over the process than when I use iPhoto.

Not only that, but iPhoto has been taking forever to recognize my camera. In fact, I end up force-quitting iPhoto after staring at the spinning beach ball for too long. When I first started using my camera, iPhoto recognized it quickly. My friend's Sony camera was always recognized quickly, too. I don't know the source of the slowdown.

Aside from that, there are other reasons why using Image Capture has its advantages.

It opens faster.
You can choose which photos to download. (it's all or nothing with iPhoto)
You can also download movie files if you have any. (iPhoto can't)
Thumbnail previews of everything you've got on your memory card. (iPhoto shows only one thumbnail as you download, which is of no help)
You can choose which photos to delete from the camera or have all of them automatically deleted. (iPhoto can only auto delete everything)

Sold? Go to Image Capture->Preferences to set it as the default to open instead of iPhoto when you connect a camera.

Note that I still use iPhoto for cataloging my images. I'm only talking about the process of getting them onto the computer.

Graphics Tablets: Which Size?

Eventually, I would like to add a graphics tablet like the WACOM Intuos to my arsenal of equipment. It also comes with Photoshop Elements and a couple other programs which I think would make this a worthwhile investment.

However, I've been debating which size to get. I'm looking at either the 4 x 6 or the 6 x 8. I can't afford anything more expensive. Is it worth it to go bigger, especially considering I'm just getting into image editing?

Any advice would be great.

JPEG vs PNG

I have a question for the file format gurus out there. PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics, right? I thought the file sizes were supposed to be smaller than a JPEG of equal resolution. However, I exported two batches of images at the same resolution and the batch of PNGs had a filesize more than twice as large as the JPEGs.

What's wrong with this picture?

Online Developing Services

Has anyone tried to develop digital photos or scans of traditional photos online? I recently submitted an order for a few from Kodak's online service via Apple's iPhoto interface.

Just wondering what people thought of the print quality, service, etc. I'll post more thoughts when I get my order.