Dan Carr

Founder of Shutter Muse, full time photographer and creative educator. Dan lives in the Canadian Yukon, but his wanderlust often sends him in search of images all around the world to meet the needs of clients and readers alike.

New Zoom H1 audio recorder. Multimedia journalists dream ?

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Samson Tech stumbled onto something great with the ubiquitous Zoom H4N audio recorder. When the DSLR video craze kicked off, people quickly realized that whilst the video was stunning to look at, the on-board audio sucked. All professional films use separate audio recorders though, and the HDSLR crowd quickly fell in love with the full featured Zoom H4N. Built in stereo mics and 2 XLR inputs meant 4 track recording was possible in a device that was only $300. Samson was in the right place at the right time with the right price, the H4N was and still is everywhere. …

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Manfrotto 503 HDV tripod head review

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Manfrotto tripod heads are perhaps the most prolific video heads around. They are easily available and offer a solution for every budget and nearly every type of camera. I have touched on the lightweight, DSLR friendly 701HDV before but I recently had the chance to try out it’s bigger brother. The 503 HDV. The 503 skips over the middle sibling, the 501HDV and adds quite a few extra features and improved weight capacity. 701 HDV 501 HDV 503 HDV Weight 0.83 KG 1.6 KG 1.95KG Capacity 4 KG 6KG 8KG Price Approx. $160 Approx. $190 Approx. $360 When you pick …

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Pocketwizard brings control to Elinchrom and Alien Bees strobes.

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Users of pocketwizards and Elinchrom or Alien Bees flashes rejoice! A couple of days ago Pocketwizard announced a couple of pretty cool sounding new products. The PowerST4 and the AC9 adapter for Elinchrom and Alien Bees strobes respectively. They both work in different ways so let me break it down differently… Pocketwizard AC9 Firstly if you have just purchased the new Paul C Buff Einstein lights let me break your heart now and let you know the AC9 does not work with those lights (though intriguingly Paul himself has hinted that there is something else in the works that we …

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Sony NEX-3 & NEX-5

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The popularity of smaller form-factor cameras such as the Panasonic and Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras in on the increase. Samsung recently introduced their version, the NX-10 with its mirrorless design and APS-C sized sensor. Sony announced their intention to join the so called EVIL camera market back at PMA when they displayed prototype cameras, but today the NEX-3 and NEX-5 cameras were finally made official. And at first glace it looks like they will have been worth the wait! The striking design somehow manages to hide a 14 megapixel APS-C sized sensor inside and a swiveling 3″ screen. Spec list: …

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Apple iPad for photographers. What use is it?

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A few days ago Apple announced that it has sold 1 million iPads in the device’s first month on sale. Less than half the time it took the original iPhone to achieve the same feat. Lots of photographers like a good gadget and many are users of other apple products already, but is there actually any practical use for one? It seems as if the iPad might be the catalyst for a fundamental change in the way that we receive what was previously “printed” media. The iBook store has sold 1.5 million books along with that first 1 million iPads …

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Test driving Photoshop CS5?s Content aware fill

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Adobe release Photoshop CS5 a couple of days ago and one of the most talked about features is the content aware fill tool. I recorded a quick demo of it this morning with a couple of potential uses. I don’t think its quite the “black magic” that it seemed to be when Adobe demonstrated it but it could be a time saver in some situations. Just using the tool on its own though rarely does the job, it still needs considerable touching up with the healing tool and brushes but at least it can get you in the ball park …

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Creating a bootable external drive in OSX and why you should think about doing it.

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Catchy title huh? This is a short post but one that I hope might help a few people out. Firstly, if you are a PC user then i’m afraid I can’t help you with all the details, but at least read the first few paragraphs to find out why you might want to do this. In the past 18 months I have had three hard drive failures, 2 in laptops and one in an external USB drive on my desk. It happens and I hope by now we all know that. I’m not going to preach on backing up your …

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Snow Photos 101 – Long lens selection

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So you’ve mastered you wide-angle lenses and medium telephoto zooms like the ubiquitous 70-200. The next step is inevitably looking at longer lenses in the 300mm and up range. Firstly, be prepared for your wallet to take a bit of a hit For the most part, once you start heading north of 200mm the price of lenses can take a bit of a jump for the higher quality ones. I can’t cover every lens option but here’s a few thoughts on some of your options from the main two manufacturers. During my years shooting skiing I have rarely needed a …

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Nikon Announces the new 200-400mm F4 ED VRII

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Nikon has today announced a brand new version of their beautiful 200-400mm F4 zoom lens. Everyone knows I shoot Canon, but I appreciate a good lens and this is one! The original 200-400 was a highly regarded lens and this new version adds Nikons VRII image stabilization (equivalent to roughly 4 stops) and also the new Nano Crystal Coating that we have seen on their latest 300mm f2.8 lens. The new AF-S NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II lens weighs in at 7.4 lbs (3.4 kg), and it will retail for $6999.95 (USD) If I was a Nikon shooter this …

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Geotagging in Aperture 3

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This sort of follows on from the review I did a few days ago of the Gisteq PhotoTrackr. I was not overly enamored with the software that came in the box with the PhotoTrackr but it did allow you to export the GPS track to a .gpx file and that meant you can upload it to other software. With the introduction of Aperture 3.0, Apple added compatibility with geotagging to the popular photographic organizational tool. The new “places” tool in Aperture 3 lets you sort and view your photos by location, and also lets you geotag your photos either by …

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News from NAB 2010

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I know a lot of people who check out this blog are interested in video as well as photography, and especially in the current convergence between the two. This years NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show has just wrapped up, and even more than last year the buzz about the show was all about DSLR video technology. There were many noteworthy announcements at the show but these are a couple that caught my attention. Carl Zeiss Compact Primes II When major cine lens manufactures start producing a lineup specifically designed for shooting video with a DSLR the whole industry sits …

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Gisteq PhotoTrackr review

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I’ve had a mild curiosity in geotagging for a while. Years from now, i’ve always thought that it wold be very cool to know exactly where some of my photos were taken. Especially my backcountry skiing photos where they are not necessarily taken near any recognizable landmarks. As I travel more and more to other parts of the world too, it would be nice to look back at that in the future and see exactly where I was. For Canon shooters you instantly run into a problem though. So far Canon has refused to add geotagging to any of their …

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