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Digital Photography

Storage on line
YouSendIt FREE version.
Pando FREE downloaded software that uses pando servers for temp storage of the files. Notification can be an email with attached .pando file, a link in IM, or via web.
iBox FREE version.
Photo tools (digital darkroom)
The GIMP - Photoshop replacement. Quite a good one too. FREE.
PSPI - GIMP plug-in, which allows use of Photoshop plug-ins. FREE.
GIMPShop - GIMP that mimics Photoshop UI. In Windows version, uses a plug-in called 'Deweirdifier' to do this. GIMPshop does not support Photoshop plugins. FREE.
FastStone: Image Viewer - image browser, converter and editor. Image Capture - screen-capture utility, MaxView - image viewer, Photo Resizer - convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermark to images in a BATCH mode. GIMP is (much) more capable but for basic editing it does a very good job. And it's evolving. FREE.
IrfanView - Image viewer and various basic image manipulations, including 8bf filters. Good as a viewer and a batch converter. GIMP is much better at image manipuation. FREE.
Picasa - Google's image browser and some basic editing. Latest verion includes a RAW converter. Good for browsing the disk, moving pix around, and some very light editing: if your images are so good, you don't need to do much or if you don't know what to do with them. Good UI. FREE.
Microsoft ICE - makes panoramic views from poorly aligned images. Works very well. Promises to add HDR handling too. FREE
Autostitch - makes panoramic views from poorly aligned components. Free version is extremely basic but works well. FREE for personal use.
PTgui - panoramic stitching software. The engine is PanoTools, a free set of CLI tools driven by a script. Very nice UI with precise controls. Can generate layered output for PhotoShop. 70 eu as of v.6 @ 2006.11.01.
Hugin - panoramic stitching software. Like PTgui, it is based on PanoTools, a free set of CLI tools. not the best choice but works. Main tutorials for Hugin. and one more Hugin totorial FREE.
Autopano - an adjunkt tool for Hugin - Automatic Panorama Recognising Tool for Panotools. Finds panoramas in the supplied pictures, creates the PanoTools panorama project files for them and adds sets of control points. FREE.
Polaroid Dust and Scratch Removal Software. No longer manufactured. Polaroid now being just a name, no longer on their web site. Stand alone or Photoshop plugin. The link above is for stand alone on WayBack Machine. Or search for pdsr1_0.exe. FREE.
Noiseware Community Edition - removes color noise. FREE.
Raw Therapee - RAW format converter. The raw loading engine and the colors are taken from dcraw. As of 2.4 became usabale: faster during parameters change due to the work on displayed image rather than on source. Can now process batches and shows which ones are processed. FREE.
UFRaw - Unidentified Flying Raw: RAW format converter. Standalone or a GIMP plug-in. Usable but as long as RawShooter and RawTherapee are available, should be ignored. FREE.
RawShooter - RAW format converter. As of Oct. 2006, Adobe acquired the original manufacturer - Pixmantec and is replaced by Adobe Lightroom. Very good user interface, very good capabilities. The manual is rather terse. FREE.
dpMagic Community Edition is a Windows shell extension that supports thumbnails for RAW files. FREE. dpMagic miniLab is a paid RAW converter.
Rawstudio Linux only. Been tested on the following platforms: * Ubuntu (Hoary, Breezy, Dapper and Edgy) * Debian 3.1 * Frugalware (Wanda) * Apple Mac OS X (PowerPC) FREE.
HDR tool: Picturenaut Windows only. FREE, donation requested.
HDR tool: FDRTools A free version of FDRTools Advanced. Allows to import RAW images fro processing as well as JPG. Uses DCRaw to handle RAW images. Windows, MAC. FREE.
HDR tool: Luminance Based on pano tools. Luminance HDR (formerly known as Qtpfsgui) is an open source graphical user interface application that aims to provide a workflow for HDR imaging. Windows, MAC, Linux. FREE.
HDR tool: easyHDR A free version of easyHDR Pro. Windows only. FREE.
RegiStax Image stacking package. Windows only. Also see Wiki for other image stacking software. FREE.
Exif library and CLI tool - Command line tool that reads and modifies EXIF and IPCT records. Most of the functionality is in the library. FREE.
PC Inspector recovers deleted files on the disk and attempts to recreate some image, video, and sound files. FREE.

Info: cameras, techniques, etc.
dpreview is my primary source on digital cameras. it also has section on techniques used with digital cameras.
Short Courses on all things related to digital photography. A book on digital cameras. Preview is FREE.
Technology of digital imaging.

Monitor calibration on line.
Lagom tests for monitors; comprehensive.
TFT monitor tests. Nice interface, less comprehensive than Lagom.
Quick and simple 1.
Quick and simple 2.

Photo techniques, tutorials, etc.
photo.net learning section : cituation techniques, underwater, some digital processing.
Luminous Landscape has articles, tutorials, product reviews and photographs - with no advertisements.
Cambridge in Colour has tutorials and a gallery of photographs.
Outback Photo
Ken Rockwell has tutorials from Holywood perspective and a gallery of photographs.
Norman Koren has very technical tutorials and a gallery of photographs.

Cameras I owned and used.
Super Iconta C was my first camera. and another view.
Chaika 2 A cheap little half framer, a knock-off Olympus Pen but nowhere near quality wise. Despite that, it was quite handy on the slopes of Elbrus - small, lots of frames, and sharp, with deep DOF.
FED (serial number < 100,000 for those who can appreciate ...)
FED-2 with Industar-62.
Zenit E with 50mm Industar-61 L/Z and 135mm Jupiter 11. Industar was a pretty sharp lens and the Jupiter was quite good for portaiture.
Pentacon_Six The linked web site indicates sync speed as 1/30. I can't comment on all the models but mine had a sync at 1/15, which was a bummer. Other than that, I enjoyed it.
OM-2S - the size, the weight, the controls' placement, the reliability - there is nothing that I did not like about this camera...
Olympus C7070 - Does what I wanted it to do. For the money and for my usage mode it's the best fit -- and I like it! And another view.
Olympus E-520 - Does what I wanted it to do, primarily portrait and landscape. Missing: swiwel LCD, viewfinder info should be on the bottom, would like more buttons programmed, not just one.
Olympus OM-D M-10 - A very nice camera. Size-wise, very similar to the OM-2. Good controls, good UI, including touch screen. A replacement for both C-7070 (which died) and E-520. Just what I wanted.
Exakta - belonged to a friend and we had a lot of fun using it.
Kiev-4 was a derivative from Contax (practically a clone) and quite a nice piece of hardware. The rangefinder was simply superb - bright and clear.

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