September 2012

I am really excited about the Nikon D600 as a new, less-expensive, way to get high-performance full-frame images. Mine is arriving tomorrow, and I'll be writing more hands-on when I get it. But in the meantime, I was blown away by the amazing test results achieved by the D600 by the folks over at DxOMark. In their exhaustive tests the D600 bested not only the Canon 5D Mark III, but Nikon's own D4 for low-light performance and overall image quality...

It didn’t take long for Canon to respond to Nikon’s D600 announcement with a $2100 full-frame DSLR of its own. I covered the introduction along with the PowerShot S110 and PowerShot G15 announcements for Extremetech.com, so you can get all the details there. You can learn more and place pre-orders at B&H, $2099 for the Canon EOS 6D, or get on the notification list for the Canon PowerShot S110, or for the Canon PowerShot G15.

The well-liked “missing manual” series has finally tackled Photoshop, and the result is quite a magnum opus. I’ve never seen so much information about Photoshop packed into a single volume. At 862 pages it may be a little daunting, but it is well-organized, colorfully-laid-out and has an excellent index. As someone who has watched with dismay as the documentation provided with Photoshop decreases and its complexity and price grows, this book is very much needed.

Photoshop CS6 – the missing manual’s strength is its broad coverage of Photoshop, and its appeal to all levels of users. There is a soup to nuts treatment of almost every aspect of the program, starting with the very basics of each piece – from opening images to using layers. That breadth is also the source of the book’s biggest shortcoming, that in trying to be all things to all people it risks not being ideal for anyone.

Welcome to DPS 10-07: Field tests of Sony RX100, Tamron 24-70, Nikon GP-1, and Spyder LensCal, plus photo tips -- July and August were incredibly busy months, with plenty of great gear to review in the field. We're featuring field tests of the amazing new Sony CyberShot RX100 point and shoot, as well as the new Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 lens with vibration reduction. They and the Spyder LensCal get pretty solid "thumbs up" from myself & my safari participants, while the Nikon GP-1 is definitely a mixed bag.