Steve Balcombe

Overall I'm in favour. I think many of the objections are just a 'shock' reaction which will dissipate pretty quickly as people get used to the new look and work out how to use it.

BUT - I think they've made one hideous mistake, which is that we can no longer browse photographs with the data on the right. Sure we want the best possible view of the photographs (which was already possible using the Lightbox) but sometimes the data is part of what you want to browse and now you have to actively scroll down to see it. Imagine doing that dozens or hundreds of times...

Also in the views where we have screenfuls of justified images, I'd like the option to choose much smaller images.

One final thought - I have fibre broadband so it's all very slick, but I wonder what this is like to use on a slower connection???

This is a daft argument and always has been. If an image is used to tell a lie, it doesn't matter whether that was achieved by digital manipulation, directing a scene, using a biased selection of images, or whatever. A lie is a lie and the tools used are irrelevant.

Neither of the above examples tells a lie, so there's nothing to object to.

"... you don't need a valid license or Internet connection to uninstall the software." - Winston Hendrickson, VP of Creative Solutions, Adobe Systems, Inc.

!!!!!!!

Whooopsy - the graphic at the top calls this the 18-35mm f/1.8 DG. Should be DC of course.

I subscribe to Wired, it contains some fascinating stuff and people who have succeeded despite (or by) flouting convention are a favourite topic. But this is just tosh. "Studio lighting"?? Is he kidding?

These are some of the most poorly executed and pointless street photographs I have ever seen.

The currently model is easily bought for £1600 in the UK, and when you bear in mind that includes 20% VAT it probably does equate to about $2k. I don't know why the actual US price is so much higher.

No doubt the new version will be more expensive for a few months though, especially if they are in short supply.

The current model is actually quite a bit heavier than the Canon EF300/2.8L MkII - 2950 g vs 2400 g - and there's no mention of a weight reduction in the press release. My arms ache after an hour of hand-holding the 300/2.8 so the extra 23% would be significant to me.

'There is a defense to lawsuits called "laches", meaning that the owner of rights has slept on his/her rights too long and therefore lost them'.

Sounds similar in spirit to a property law here in the UK, which says that if an owner has knowingly allowed someone to occupy land for more than (I think) 15 years without a tenancy, the occupier owns the land. I fell foul of that when I tried to remove someone from a property I owned and received legal advice that I would never succeed because the previous owner had done nothing about it over a period of 20 or 30 years.

Pity the comments section has been swamped by an irrelevant discussion.

But regarding the technique itself, I'm sorry but using the gradient tool is poor advice. You can just about get away with it in this particular case because there is a conveniently detail-free straight band just above roof height in both images, but in general you won't have this. The wiser and more versatile technique would be to marquee or lassoo the area to be revealed and refine the selection to create a soft edge before filling the selection with black/white as applicable. Or in many cases it's quick and convenient to select first then create the layer mask from the selection. You can then fine-tune by painting with a soft brush, or whatever suits, directly onto the layer mask.

There are applications for using gradients on layer masks, but this isn't one of them.

Here's a kind of similar story with a different outcome:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2013/03/humans-new-york-makes-international-brands-screw-pay-city-kids/4876/

Be sure to look at the Humans of New York blog as well:
http://www.humansofnewyork.com/

That's good stuff. I'm not a big mobile user but this will be great for the occasional boring train journey.

It's relevant for a travel tripod, which will often be packed inside a bag. And it achieves this with no cost to the rigidity - I think it's a great idea.

Did you mean cat detection?

Equally importantly, if people don't like the test results for a particular lens because it doesn't fit their agenda, they can't exclaim "bad copy" and dismiss them.

Or there's:

<West Country accent>Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers</>

(Topical reference which will only make sense to English readers...)

Very good article. What is particularly interesting to me is that for the images which supposedly "break the rules", you analyse them with the aim of establishing why they work. Surely what you are doing is working out what the rules are which _were_ employed in that image?

I'm very happy for Nikon owners - at last they have a lens which will hopefully equal Canon's 70-200/4L IS.

Of course, many of us on the Canon side have now switched to the equally good and much more versatile 70-300L...

:-)

I thought the same at first (I have one) but actually this one is a lot smaller.

Very interesting article. I don't own the lens in question, but I can dream I guess :-)

Let's start one.

$300/€300/£280