Photography and Skiing News Roundup

Photography News:

On the photography front, there are finally a bunch of new photos out on the web from the new Nikon flagship, the D3. Rob Galbraith has compiled these and you’ll be amazed at what this camera can achieve, even at iso 25,600. Yup, you read that correctly.

Adobe just released Adobe Camera Raw 4.3 and Photoshop Lightroom 1.3. For the most part, these updates just address compatibility issues with Leopard and add Raw file compatibility for a few more cameras such as the Nikon D3, Nikon D300, and the Canon 1DS Mark III.

Michael Reichmann from the Luminous Landscape has just given a field report/preliminary review of the Canon 1DS Mark III. It’s a full-frame camera, 21 Megapixels, with everything you can expect from a new pro body camera including a dust removal system, something noticeably lacking on the Nikon D3. The Nikon D300 has it though. Anyways, he likes it a lot. Are you ready to drop 8 grand on one of those babies though?

Also announced recently is this new product called Naked Light. It aims to approach photographic editing in a much more user-friendly way then Photoshop. It uses non-destructive editing (ie. you never mess-up your original) like Lightroom, but seems to compete in features with Photoshop. It will be very interesting to see what happens with this product. There is also much conjecture that it may be coming from some Mac guys, as the interface looks very Mac-ish and it only runs on OS 10.5 on a Mac, otherwise know as Leopard.

Skiing News:

Most of the major resorts in the east opened this weekend. It’s man-made snow for the time being, but temps are cold so hopefully something’s in store. Check out the conditions at the major ski resorts in the east:

Killington
Okemo
Jay Peak
Sugarbush
Stowe
Sunday River
Sugarloaf

There was a little bit of fresh snow on Thursday and Friday and Jay’s claiming 16″ and Sugarloaf’s claiming 10″.

Check out the Mt. Mansfield snow stake. I know it seems like we’re getting a late start, but actually, we’re right where we should be according to historical averages.

If you get a chance, check out Chris Davenport’s site on his successful quest to ski all 54 Colorado 14’ers (peaks over 14,ooo feet) in one year. I think there’s a movie coming out about it and he just release his photo book called “Ski the 14’ers” that I’m sure is beautiful and I’m definitely going to get. Lou Dawson raves about here on his site Wildsnow.com.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. My review of Seven Sunny Days the new movie from Matchstick Productions will be posted tomorrow evening.

Oh, and as for Cyclone Sidr. Not great news, but it looks like Bangladesh had shelter ready and set up for a lot of people. Still, over a half a million people are homeless and 1,700 are confirmed dead.