Adobe have released updates for Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) 6.2 and Lightroom 3.2 today – note that Lightroom have skipped a version number to align the version numbering of these two products given that they contain updates for the same things.  There are an additional 120 lens profiles in this release which now includes all my current lenses.

The other new feature is direct publishing to Facebook rather than requiring a third party add-in.  I have try this yet as I have only just installed Lightroom 3.2 and now have to go to work so it will have to wait until later.

Great Friday evening visiting Altitude 360 at Millbank Tower on Millbank, London for some evening/night photography with a great photographer, Doug Insole, who was one of my fellow traveller on the recent photo tour to Ladakh, India.  There were some amazing views over London from 29th floor, including the Houses of Parliament, London Eye, City of London, Canary Wharf, The Oval, Battersea Power Station, Wembley Stadium and BT Tower.

It was challenging taking photos through the glass with reflections from the lights inside but luckily had a new T-shirt with me that I was able to use around the camera to block out these reflections.  Overall, it was well worth the effort and a great start to the Bank Holiday weekend.

Now I have decided to create a new London gallery of various images on my home city.  Some of these photos from the Millbank Tower are sure to feature along with others from my library but I am planning to spend some time over the coming weeks to build up this gallery.  It seems odd that I haven’t created one before and this is a good project for the coming weeks.

Major announcements from Canon yesterday, one new DSLR camera, 6 new lenses and new versions of both lens extenders … and all of this ahead of Canon Expo (2nd – 3rd September) and Photokina (21st – 26rg September).  I am sure we will see more announcements at one of other of these events.

The camera is the Canon EOS 60D which replaces 50D but I don’t really see how this fits into their DSLR range because it is too close to 7D and 550D.  It all seems too crowded with more models than necessary and very minor differences between them. The complete line-up from entry level to pro now looks like 1000D, 550D, 60D, 7D, 5D Mark II, 1D Mark IV and 1Ds Mark III.

The lens announcements were more interesting with all 6 lenses being L series (professional) lenses.  The prime lenses (fixed focus length) are EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM & EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM lenses and EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM & EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM which all were recently in final field testing at the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

The first of the two zoom lenses is the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM which a new additional to the L series lenses although Canon have made several versions of a non L lens with these specifications.  It looks like a very light lens but I won’t be looking to replace my EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS lens with this one.

The most exciting new lens is the EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM L-series lens which is making me re-think my plans for ultra wide angle lenses … I had been planning to buy a EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM prime lens but now this new lens looks like it would be preferable.

Finally, there are new versions of their EF 1.4x III and EF 2x III extenders which have been designed to complement the Canon EF300mm f/2.8L IS II USM and the EF400mm f/2.8L IS II USM telephoto lenses (above).  As always these are not compatible with all lenses so check that out first if you are considering buying one.

I have been making some minor improvements and fixing some bugs with my web site … as always it has seemed to have taken longer than I had expected.  I guess that I should know better by now.

The most important change has been to rebuild all the galleries with Matthew Campagna’s latest version of TTG Highslide Gallery Pro. This is one of the best Lightroom plug-ins for building web sites so check it out at The Turning Gate’s web site.  In this release of TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, there is improved support for mobile devices so hopefully this will make my web site easily to navigate on these devices.

Other changes include ensuring all external links open in a new windows or tab (depending how you configure your browser) and correcting the odd typo in the gallery text & photo descriptions.

Unfortunately, there are no new photographs … I now have to go out and shoot some more as I have cleared the post processing backlog – this is great news as I can get back behind the camera!

Finally finished post processing my photographs from India and I have published the fourth gallery titled People & Places in India.  This gallery is a collect of images featuring the people I met and places I visited during the two week adventure.  I would like to thank Steve Davey for all his help, advice and humour which made it a pleasure to travel with him again. 

If you are into photography and like to travel then I highly recommend joining one of his trips – check out his web site Better Travel Photography and you could be going to Kerala in November/December.

Now I need to plan my next trip!  Hopefully, I will be going to Vancouver in November but I am still negotiating the dates with my wife.  On Friday, I had a great idea to go to Cairo for a long weekend on photo expedition so now I am researching this … will keep you posted.

In the middle of July, the guys at Fotomoto introduced some new products to their service, Fine Art (Giclée) Prints and Papers. I have finally git round to changing my web site to set the pricing so I can now offer these fine art prints in addition to the premium prints, cards and downloads. Whilst I haven’t ordered any of these fine art prints yet, I am sure that they will be fantastic just like their existing premium prints.

I have continued with my post processing following my recent trip to India and I now have published a third gallery focused around various religious subjects including a Sikh temple in Old Delhi, various monasteries & monks in Ladakh and a Buddhist template in Dharamsala, home of the exiled Dalai Lama.

I am still working on a final set of photographs from this trip which are a combination of people we met and places we visited.  I am hoping that will be able to completely all the post processing in order to publish them towards the end of this week but will will probably be the weekend.

After all this post processing, I need to find myself a new photographic project!

I have continue post processing my photographs from my recent trip to Ladakh, India and have just published a second gallery.  This gallery is themed around travelling and includes our trip along the Leh – Manali highway which was very challenging for our drivers and one of the more exciting journeys that I have made.

There will be more galleries of India soon.

Finally, I have posted some of the photographs from my recent trip to Ladakh, India.  I have created a photo story of our day long visit to the Tak Thok Tse Chu festival as the first of gallery from this trip.  It was a fantastic and colourful day with religious ceremony and dancing in the courtyard of Tak Thok monastery.

Now I need to order the rest of my selected photographs into one or more galleries.  I haven’t quite decided how to do this yet but it is the task for the rest of the weekend.  Well, unless it is good weather tomorrow and I decide to go out and take some more photos.

Now that I am back from India, I have posted the photographs that I took at Ben & Cheryl Byrne’s wedding back on Saturday 5th June at Cotsford Mill.  All of these photographs were shot with my Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III and the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L lens. Please feel free to look at them in the Ben & Cheryl’s wedding gallery.