Some valuable Digital Photography (and related) resources

Review Sites for Digital Cameras

Other Photography Blogs

  • FredMiranda.com wide range of reviews, reader contests, plus active and worthwhile forum. Of particular note is the remarkable "Show us your Studio" forum, a single thread which started in October 2004 and is still running at this writing (May 2007).
  • The Strobist, a blog about using electronic flash effectively and creatively

Canon-specific info:

Frozen sites (still useful; no new material)

  • Digital Camera Resource ("dcresource"), Outstandingly thorough reviews. [Site frozen as of 2012 Dec. Author Jeff Keller now part of DPReview.]
  • Rob Galbraith (Digital Photography Insights), a news site [Site frozen as of 2012 July]
  • Digital Outback Photo [Uwe Steinmueller died in August 2014]
  • Chuck Westfall's Tech Tips column for The Digital Journalist magazine.
    Chuck Westfall, Canon USA's main technical representative, writes a highly informative (but often very technical) monthly column. The URL for his articles changes from issue to issue, but you can find it at the latter link. The column concentrates on detailed issues related to Canon digital SLRs.
    You can also check the archive of his past columns. (This link is correct as of 2015 but you cannot jump there from another site.)

Lens Review Sites

  • Photodo.com Lens review site (has been arond a long time)
  • SLRGear.com (from the Imaging Resource folks, listed above)

Scanning:

  • Scan Tips, an excellent reference on everything related to scanning.
  • VueScan, a very flexible non-TWAIN scanner driver for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS (9 and X).

Noise Reduction:

  • Photo Ninja can reduce digital noise (akin to film grain) from high ISO digital camera images or from film scanning. (Follow-on to original Noise Ninja; now a full image editor.)

EXIF data:

Digital photos have a lot of extra info ("metadata") written in the "header", including EXIF data (details from the camera, including exposure and other camera settings) and IPTC (captions, keywords, and other information added later in a computer application, e.g., Photoshop or Lightroom)

Here's a clever web page I ran across that can show you the EXIF data for photos you see on the web.

Buying:

  • DealCam is a meta-site that can help you to find good prices. Don't go for the lowest price! (A lot of these places are disreputable!) Ask David for advice on some recommended places.
  • ResellerRatings.com is a place where users can rate the vendors who sell equipment. As always, the complainers are going to be the ones who take the time to write. (I have had good experiences with some places with mixed reviews. However, a place with uniformly bad reviews is best avoided, most likely.)
  • For a devastating photo essay on a wide selection of the New York photo places that advertise widely, see Brooklyn Store Fronts. (Contrast that with photos of B&H Photo, Adorama, Calumet, and others at Manhattan Store Fronts.)

David Friedlander
2 Jan 2004, original document
28 Jan 2005, updated
27 May 2007, updated & expanded
7 July 2013 updated
10 Dec 2015 updated