The Season of New Things That Wasn’t

You probably have just come back from long summer days at the cottage, on a trip or just spent lounging away from all of your many commitments. Some part of you looks forward to coming back, re-establishing that routine and settling back into it. Part of my routine is usually paging my way through fall announcements of new computer and photography technology and software. Although I no longer routinely purchase the latest and greatest of anything, I still enjoy (or used to) seeing what the brilliant engineers have come up with. Not this season.

Draco Smart Telescope

There are some new developments in my astronomy hobby with more and more releases of smart telescopes, and of course the new Apple products have been announced as they always are each September, but all other domains seem ridiculously quiet. Even the rumor sites are quiet. And even the annoucements we do have include staggered or delayed release schedules. I haven’t seen anything like it since the height of the Covid pandemic. So I set out to find out why.

Continue reading “The Season of New Things That Wasn’t”

Adobe’s Puzzling February Update

Whenever Adobe releases a new version of its photography software package components (i.e. Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop), there are typically a multitude of videos that explain the new releases and, again typically, comment on how great the new features are.

Not this time.

The bulk of videos I have watched, mostly from long running pro photographers, have described and demonstrated the features, but also offered some very puzzling or at least unexpected commentary. Find out what.

Continue reading “Adobe’s Puzzling February Update”

Jumping into the Deep End

I can’t resist commenting on the release this week of Canon’s new mirrorless flagship cameras, the EOS R5 and EOS R6.  There are lots of technical commentaries out there; instead, I want to document how I felt listening to the details of the release. Continue reading “Jumping into the Deep End”

A First Time for Everything – Saying No to Luminar 3

It’s just before Christmas, and the spate of Christmas offers from all manner of retailers is becoming overwhelming.  Not to be outdone, Skylum Software, the authors of Luminar image processing software, this week released the next version of their product.

SkylumThey elected to call it “Version 3” rather than 2019 because promises made to users of version 2018 were not fulfilled until now (and were only partially fulfilled even now). Continue reading “A First Time for Everything – Saying No to Luminar 3”