News

Maybe Cuba attracted me most because it was forbidden. If I’m not allowed to go, I want to go. There was also the lure of a place stuck in time, where people were cut off from technology, a place very different from the world I knew. Which is exactly the kind of place I love to explore and photograph.

The holidays are approaching and that’s a good excuse to buy a new photo bag for yourself or a loved one. Here’s a collection of my seven favorite photo bags, gleaned from full reviews that appeared in this column over the past couple of years. 

The new Panasonic G85 is based on a Micro Four Thirds 16MP. The camera offers a brilliant electronic viewfinder based on OLED technology. This viewfinder is very large (0.74x; equivalent to a 35mm film camera with a 50mm lens) and offers a high resolution of 2.36 million RGB dots. The EVF has an eye sensor, which means the view switches automatically to the EVF when the photographer looks into the viewfinder: alternately, the user can toggle view manually by pressing the “Fn5” button on the back. This function button is one of five user-definable “Fn” buttons on the top and on the back: the G85 also has five “virtual Fn” buttons on the LCD screen. The screen is touch sensitive and fully integrated into camera operation.

Everyone who loves photography is aware of the legendary Hasselblad cameras, but few of us know much about Victor Hasselblad himself—the man responsible for the iconic brand. The rare film below provides a unique opportunity to watch Hasselblad discuss his vision of photography in an interview broadcast by Swedish National Television in 1967.

Now that most of us are shooting with high-resolution cameras, the need to upscale our image files isn’t as pervasive as it was a few years ago. But occasionally we still need to res-up an image that’s been cropped significantly, and there’s a freeware program that’s designed to do that and more.

Like many of us who have lived in the beautiful city by the bay, photographer Dan MacRostie is enchanted with San Francisco and the gorgeous foggy sunrises and sunsets that occur in “The City” and above nearby Mt. Tamalpais just across the Golden Gate Bridge.

The folks at MacPhun are really excited about the launch of their new all-in-one desktop image-editing program for Mac users, calling Luminar, “The most fantastic piece of software we’ve ever created.” This robust program was designed to deliver both simplicity and creativity for photographers who desire a less-expensive alternative to Photoshop.