A concise round-up of new product updates, international snippets and other interesting stuff from the wonderful world of photography: Petapixel jumps the shark…Another puzzle from Kodak…We’re from Google – here to help…Luminar 3 for free…
Petapixel jumps the shark
It’s not worth the full soapbox treatment, but we can’t let a recent article – ‘The Canon EOS R5 is the Most Exciting Camera Anyone Has Released in Over a Decade’ published by clickbait website PetaPixel – slip by without some comment.
This is Petapixel’s ‘jumping the shark’ moment. Author and regular contributor Jaron Scheider, who is/was features editor at the far more respected but semi-defunct website Imaging Resource, should have a good hard look at himself, because any ‘critically acclaimed and internationally published journalist’ as he describes himself, is only as credible as his or her least credible piece of work.
It may well indeed be that, when the long-heralded Canon R5 is finally released, Jaron Schnieder is proven correct – and omniscient as well. But it isn’t released. All we have is an incomplete listing of specifications, strategically leaked in three phases (so far), with no release date and no pricing. So how can he write of a product he has not even handled but just seen in a glass box (‘though we couldn’t hold it, we could look at it from nearly 360 degrees’): ‘The R5 is offering an unprecedented gigantic technology leap from any other camera Canon has ever made. Not only that, it puts to shame every other hybrid camera currently available and even outperforms almost every high-end cinema camera available.’
Or: ‘…It might be the most impressive leap in capability I’ve ever seen between any two models of any digital camera, ever. Not just between Canon products, but between any two models of any camera released by any company.’
The whole article is a homage to the R5’s claimed – not proven in the real world, mind – specs as a video camera. There is not one sentence about its capabilities as a stills camera, and a lot of the content is walking back from the Big Statement (BS) contained in the headline. And yet the article concludes: ‘At the very least, I hope that most of you will agree with me that the title of this article is not hyperbole.’ Yeah, well, no, Jaron. It defines hyperbole.’
The ‘hungry beast’ nature of online publishing leads to a lot of content seeing the light of day which is a waste of everybody’s time, especially in an indiscriminate content aggregator like Petapixel, but this is special.
One of the many ‘what the?’-type readers’ comments which followed captures the incredulity we here at Inside Imaging experienced when we read it: ‘I don’t understand how you can say it’s the most exciting camera released in a decade without having used it. You say “It puts to shame every other hybrid camera currently available and even outperforms almost every high-end cinema camera available”. But wait. You haven’t actually used it and the camera hasn’t even been announced yet, so what are you talking about? I don’t even know why Petapixel keeps you on staff. Your articles are so bad. I mean seriously, the worst. I like Canon gear but I can’t take anything you say seriously anymore.’
Click here for the full experience.
Another puzzle from Kodak
‘American technology company Kodak has invented the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle, with a whopping 51,300 pieces,’ claimed the story on News.com.au and other media around the world this week.
‘The company reported that the jigsaw, once completed, would be 8.6 metres wide and just under 2 metres tall,’ it continued. ‘The 50,000 jigsaw pieces interlock to depict 27 wonders from around the globe.’
It’s been a while since anything inventive came out of Old Yella (Photo CD springs to mind) and whether you can be said to ‘invent’ something simply by super-sizing a thing which already exists – jigsaw puzzles go back to the sixteenth century – is open to debate. So the Inside Imaging Investigative Unit delved further to find that, as we expected, the only thing out of Rochester about the Kodak World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle is the brand.
It turns out that Kodak has rented its brand to the Lafayette Puzzle Factory, aka Cra Z Art, and Kodak-branded puzzles have been in the market for some time – even in Australia. Whaddya know!
The Kodak World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle has ‘richer, truer colours’ as befitting a Kodak product and features ’27 Wonders from Around the World’, photographed by professional photographers no less. To protect puzzlers from going berserk, the 27 wonders are separated into 27 bags containing 1900 pieces each. Instructions advise a sturdy frame if you choose to mount the finished 2 x 8.6m puzzle. With the finished product weighing close to 20kgs, that’s good advice! If you don’t already have some at home, jigsaw puzzle glue is sold separately.
RRP is US$600 if you can get it. Amazon website states: ‘Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.’
Hey – Kodak hasn’t just invented the world’s largest jigsaw-puzzle-based publicity scam, has it?
We’re from Google – here to help
If you have no issues with Google knowing just a little bit more about you and your business, the world’s greatest IP thief is dropping a few crumbs from its table in the form of an easy DIY video making template.
The Google Video Builder, currently in beta, animates static content – images, text and logos – which can be embellished with music from Google’s library. It’s set up to make short YouTube ads from 6 seconds to 15 seconds. You can choose from a variety of layout templates, customize colours and fonts, and voila!
It all looks pretty straightforward and do-able and the resulting video will present well on YouTube. There are a few bugbears though – you actually have to apply to Google to be permitted to use the Video Builder and, from what we can gather from the video ad for the video ad builder, you can’t save an incomplete project or make changes to an already saved production. And you can’t take a copy to play ‘natively’ on your website – it’s always located on You Tube. Still – the Lord Google doesn’t giveth much compared to what the Lord Google taketh away, so why not give it a go!
Luminar 3 for free
If you’ve always wanted to own your own photo editing software but are an Adobe customer, Skylum is making it’s penultimate (always wanted to use that word) version of Luminar, Luminar 3, available free of charge, and without any apparent strings attached.
Skylum Luminar is both image editor and photo library. It includes full raw support, support for editing with layers, custom brushes, etc.
Luminar 3 came out in 2018 but had regular updates in 2019 until Luminar 4 came out this year. Reviewers rate it as a viable alternative to Lightroom, and it offers AI enhancements such as an AI Sky Enhancer. In this version Skylum has put a lot of work into improving its digital asset management (cataloguing/library ) features to complement what is a first rate photo editor.
Alternatively, you can go straight to a free trial of Luminar 4. Click here to access the free Luminar 3 download
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