The Digital Photo Guy

If It’s Wednesday, It Must Be Mono Lake

Once again, I tried to cram in too much in a week. After attending California Photo Festival in Los Osos for a week, my wife and I drove over Tioga Pass Road to visit Bodie, Mono Lake, Ancient Bristlecone Pines Forest and Alabama Hills in six days with a geriatric cat and a recalcitrant battery charging system in the RV. There was also the issue of unseasonably hot weather (90F-105F) and 10,000 foot peaks that sucked all the air out of me. But, the views and photos were worth it.

Bodie – The Town That Refuses to Die

Bodie State Historical Park is one of the best ghost towns in the west, if not the US. It’s hard to believe men, women and children built this gold mining town at 8000+ feet. They lived there through searing summer heat and arctic like winters where snow drifts can be 8-12 feet deep.

     
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Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I wrote my last full MMT. (A full MMT is a separate article that’s archived as a PDF or video in the password protected MMT area.) The closest was my Depth of Field Calculator video back on Sep 23. Speaking of which, I’m going to renew my FREE DoF Calculator offer but I need some feedback regarding what lens focal lengths you need/want. Tell me via the poll to the right.

This week’s MMT is a review of a boring but necessary device for photographers, a monitor calibration system. It’s called a system because you need both the hardware (colorimeter) and software to calibrate your monitor. The reason you need to calibrate your monitor is because different monitors display the same color differently. In other words, you want the fire engine to look the same color red on all monitors. More importantly, if your monitor is off, how can you identify the problem point? When that fire engine print comes out looking like an orange, how do you know you sent the correct info?

It used to be that monitor calibration was expensive and tedious. Today, there are several choices well below US$100 that are a snap to use. Read my review of the Pantone Huey Pro monitor calibration system.

If, after reading the MMT, you decide you want to calibrate your monitor, check the Tips & News page for a screaming deal on colorimeters. Since I only bought these as tests and don’t need them for daily use, I have the original Huey and the new Huey Pro for sale along with a bunch of Canon gear I need to cull from my inventory. I recently sold my Canon 100-400 so now I’m motivated to thin my excess equipment even more.

As always, MMTs are here. You’ll need to register to get into the password protected areas where about 100 MMTs are archived.

Quick Tip

In Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Elements 7 (may apply to earlier versions but not tested), in the past if you wanted to unlock the Background layer, you double-clicked the lock icon and dismissed the dialog box that appeared with a suggested new name Layer 0. It wasn’t a big deal but a minor annoyance. It turns out you can simply click the lock icon and drag it to the trashcan. Whoulda thunk? It’s a lot quicker and more efficient.

More Eastern Sierras Photos

This is a hokey way to display photos but I just haven’t had time to figure out how the gallery software works. Like most anything in WordPress, I have a choice of about 10 gazillion photo gallery modules and they all seem to be written by Martians so bear with me.

In case you missed them the first set, here are some of my favorites in an earlier post.