What Tablets Need in Order to Replace Laptops For Photographers

We’re the closest we’ve been yet to having tablets that can be considered true laptop replacements, but there’s still a little way to go.

For the last few years, Apple, Google, and Samsung have thrown around the term laptop replacements when it comes to their tablet offerings. But to date, that has not been delivered. There have been some recent offerings that come close though, with the iPad Pro series, the Google Pixel Slate, and the Galaxy Tab S line all trying to make this dream a reality. This week Apple announced the new iPadOS at their World Wide Developer Conference, but is this enough to make photographers ditch laptops for tablets? Let’s discuss after the break. Continue reading…

In Regards to Tablets and Cameraphones Getting in the Way of Your Shot

Taking a photo with a tablet

A colleague of mine recently asked a question about wedding photography after talking about his experience of shooting his first one. He ended it very stressed out and eventually complained about so many folks holding up iPads and phones to take a photo during the ceremony and in some instances getting in the way of his photo-taking opportunity. While yes, it’s unfortunate that it ruined his shot I believe that event shooting and wedding shooting has changed to the point where we as photographers should instead be embracing this instead of trying to fight it.

Let’s be honest here, no one in the crowd taking a photo with their phone, tablet or even a little DSLR is your competition. Absolutely no one is going to shoot a photo and then charge the bride and groom for it. Yes, they’re getting in the way. Yes, it’s annoying. But instead of fretting over how a single image of yours is now ruined, turn it into something else immediately. If you’re at the back of the hall and you suddenly see cameras, phones and tablets go up you shouldn’t try to fight it. Embrace it and shoot that instance because at the end of the day your job is to be a documentarian.

If you’re at a wedding, and trying to snap a photo of the cake or a specific moment and someone’s flash is getting in the way and messing up your exposures, then that’s one thing. You can easily and politely ask them to stop for around 30 seconds so that you can take photos that the happy couple will remember and cherish later on in life. But if someone is simply just taking a photo, then that shouldn’t really bother you or prevent you from doing your job.

Of course, you can always ensure that this doesn’t happen to begin with by getting more creative with your angles and positioning as well as having a second shooter if that option is available to you in your budget. Furthermore, I don’t think that we can really stop people from taking pictures at this stage of the game. Everyone has a phone on them or a tablet and everyone loves taking photos all the time even though it’s not anywhere in the same realm or reason as to why you’re doing it. At certain times, telling folks to stop taking photos isn’t a bad idea–but again only at certain times.

Otherwise, it’s time that we embrace it rather than fight it.

Wacom Has Announced New Intuos and Intuos Pro Tablets

intuosintuospro

Wacom has been announcing a few new products lately. They recently announced the Cintiq companion as well as the Intuos Creative Stylus. To top it all off Wacom has refreshed the entire Intuos line as well. The old Bamboo line of entry level tablets has been discontinued. Now the Intuos line is now made up of 7 tablets. The regular Intuos tablets have a silverfish design and the Intuos Pro sport the classic black look similar to the Intuos 4. Included in this line is the Intuos Manga, the first tablet marketed at manga and comic book artist. Imagine what this table can do for photography! All the tablets have a newly designed pen which is more tapered in shape and has soft touch finish as well as colored rings and pen holder tags for customization. The standard model pens deliver 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity while the Pro models deliver 2048.

  • The three entry-level Intuos models include the Intuos Pen (small – $79 USD), Intuos Pen & Touch (small – $99 USD) and Intuos Pen & Touch (medium – $199). All three models can be plugged into a Mac or PC or equipped with wireless functionality (with a range of 30 feet) via Wacom’s optional $39 wireless accessory kit.
  • The Intuos Pro is essentially the same tablet across the board, with all of the same hotkeys and built-in wireless and touch functionality. The smallest model will retail for $249, with the medium model going for $349 and the largest model costing $499. The medium-sized special edition will go for $379.
  • The Intuos Manga ($99) is the same model as the small Intuos Pen & Touch, only it comes bundled with Smith Micro’s Manga Studio Debut 4 and Anime Studio Debut 8.

These tables are now available on the Wacom Store .

Via Comics Alliance

 

Photoshop Touch Optimized for Smaller Tablets

Smaller tablets such as the iPad mini, Google Nexus 7, and the Amazon Kindle Fires are getting some love from Adobe with their latest Photoshop Touch 1.4 update. It brings additional new features and effects while adding support for some long-awaited functions.

You’ll now be able to use your Pogo Connect, Jot Touch and the JaJa pressure-sensitive styli to edit your photos more effectively and quickly. To make things even easier, the 1.4 update gives you smoother brush strokes and improves your overall workflow. The update is currently available for download on your respective platform’s app store for existing Photoshop Touch users while new users can grab a copy for $10.

Tablets For Photographers: The Round Up

Throughout all of last week I have discussed The HP Slate, The JooJoo, The Dell Mini 5, Archos 9, and The Apple iPad as to find out which tablet would serve a photographer best. Now all these tablets have a usefulness to them, none of them is without any worth, however from a photographer’s point of view some of them do not stand up to what we need from a Tablet PC. Here are my final thoughts. Continue reading…

Tablets for Photographers: The Apple iPad

Finally we have come to the last tablet, and possibly the be all end all to this tablet war, the Apple iPad. The Apple iPad was deemed the savior to many media industries and was looked forward to by photographers as a way to edit, and view your photos on the go. So is it really just a better way of presenting your portfolio?

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Tablets for Photographers: The Archos 9

The Archos 9 PC Tablet is Archos’ latest touch screen tablet. It’s being advertised as the thinnest tablet on the market, while still being able to boast the high performance of a high-end netbook without risk of over heating. This will be the second tablet we’ll be taking a peak at that uses some form of Windows 7. Let’s see if the Archos can hold a candle to everything else we have looked at this week.  Continue reading…

Tablets for Photographers: The Dell Mini 5


The next tablet I’m going to take a look at is The Dell Mini 5 (I’ve already looked at the JooJoo and the HP Slate). Not much is known about the Dell Mini 5 yet aside from that is has a 5 inch multi-touch screen, runs a customized version of the Android OS, and uses a 1 GHZ Snap Dragon Processor. The Dell Mini 5 also doubles as a phone and supports wifi and bluetooth. The plus side of this is that the Android OS supports a lot of apps that can only be rivaled with the iPhone/Pad/Touch OS. In fact, Chris wrote a posting on the best Android apps for photography. But does that do anything for us photographers?

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Tablets For Photographers: The HP Slate

The Tablet PC Market has seen quite a lot of news as of late, the release of the iPad getting the most of it. With five more tablets on the verge of launching, photographers who may want to invest in one may be wondering which tablet is the right tablet for them. Over the next 5 days I’m going to take a look at these tablets and try my hand at deciphering which tablet would be a good tablet for photographers. The first being the HP Slate.

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New HP DreamColor Displays Want To Improve Your Photo Editing Experience

The new DreamColor Displays, along with HP ZCentral and NVIDIA Omniverse, will make creating with teams easier.

The global pandemic has shown us that we need new solutions when it comes to working from home. Many of us creatives need to collaborate with team members daily, but that is now harder than ever. HP, however, has been trying to figure out solutions to help us stay in touch. Today, HP announced new DreamColor Displays that are Pantone validated and a new remote collaboration tool called ZCentral, which allows us to create and collaborate in real-time. We have all the details for you after the break.

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How Passionate Photographers Stay Sane During the Pandemic

It’s easy to see how difficult it’s been for many photographers.

Fact: tons of people are bored in the 2020 pandemic. Many took on a new hobby that they’ve meant to get into for a while. And amazingly, sales of photo equipment and services enjoyed a surprising increase. Photography is a great hobby. While stuck at home, lots of new, passionate photographers started cutting their teeth. The more experienced creatives embraced this new freedom and spread their wings. Some of us got new lenses. Others headed into the woods. But no matter what, most of us kept shooting. And here’s some of the gear that kept passionate photographers sane during the 2020 pandemic.

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Their Most Gorgeous Bag Yet! Billingham Hadley One Review

The Billingham Hadley One now comes in navy and brown–and it’s beautiful.

It’s hard to not be a fan of navy and brown leather. They work so well together. And the Billingham Hadley One is getting just that color scheme today. I haven’t seen it done this well in years, and this one is exceptional. The Billingham Hadley One isn’t a new bag. But it has given so many photographers high reliability, so you’ve got a winner. Billingham has long created bags for journalists and photographers. But they’ve fallen out of favor in the past few years. You can blame Kickstarters and more flash marketing tactics for that. The Billingham Hadley One is one of those classics that you don’t really need to improve on, though. In a world where mirrorless cameras and lenses are dominating the market, the Billingham Hadley One is a welcome option. Besides being very functional, it’s durable. This bag is also surprisingly comfortable when packed to the brim with cameras and lenses. If I haven’t said it enough, it’s also incredibly alluring.

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I Used a 3.3-Inch Smartphone Camera: Here Are the Results

Shooting on a smartphone is nothing new, but what about shooting on one that’s only 3.3-inches big?

Smartphones, laptops, tablets – they suck us into a world that can be very difficult to get out of. Working in the digital space, I’m often looking for ways I can disconnect and be more present in real life. One step I took to achieve being less digitally dependent was to purchase a Palm Phone. It’s a 3.3-inch minimalist smartphone that encourages you use it less and live life more. It has a 12-megapixel front-facing camera: something I didn’t pay much attention to – until now.

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Deal Alert: Grab the 10.2-inch Apple iPad for $249 (32GB), $329 (128GB)

The iPads make a great companions for photographers who like to do some photo editing while on the go, and for many more reasons.

Long gone are the days of Apple iPads being outrageously priced and out of reach for many. Now you can get well spec’d, very capable tablets that can help you as a photographer in many ways on the cheap. Right now, you can score a 10.2 inch iPad with 32GB of storage for just $249.99, and for only $329.99 you can bump the storage up to 128GB. I use my iPad all the time for photo editing and as a Wacom style tablet with the Apple Pencil when linked to my iMac via SideCar. At these prices, these tablets are no-brainers. Find out more after the break.

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Mac vs PC: The 2020 Razer Blade 15 Studio Targets Photographers

Creative professionals will love the newly refreshed Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition, but does it still hold an advantage over Apple’s offerings?

Razer is introducing the 2020 refresh of its well-regarded Blade 15 Studio Edition laptop today. We found the previous generation Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition to be the most powerful mobile computing solution available on the market for creative professionals. In many ways, it was the Windows version of Apple’s MacBook Pro and packed significantly superior performance. Since then, Apple has closed that performance gap somewhat with its revamped 13″ MacBook Pro. Similar upgrades will surely make their way into the 16″ variant when they inevitably drop later this year. Is the 2020 Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition still the best laptop option for creatives? Let’s look at the numbers.

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The Latest Capture One Update MAY Make You Leave Lightroom for Good

Capture One 20 is already superior to Lightroom in many ways, but it still lacks some features that hinder it from exerting total dominance.

A new update is coming to Capture One 20 today. We’ve been testing the beta for the better part of the past month. So far, the improvements included in this update seem quite promising. Chief amongst them is the newly enhanced Heal and Clone tools, and there’s a new Before & After tool as well. Photographers looking to break free from Adobe will also appreciate the new Lightroom catalog importer. The best part: all this is gratis for existing Capture One 20 users! Photographers shooting exclusively with Nikon gear will be glad to know that a Nikon specific version of Capture One 20 will now be available too. Capture One for Nikon is a full-featured version of Capture One Pro available for a reduced cost. The only limit is that it will only work with Nikon raw files, like other brand-specific versions of the software that are already available.

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One of the Smartest Photo Organizing Softwares Ever: Mylio Review

Mylio is a promising yet imperfect software solution that aims to be the swiss army knife for your photo organization, management, and editing needs.

One of the unintended side effects of living in the digital age is that we all inevitably experience digital clutter in one form or another. Known sometimes as storage creep, this phenomenon certainly applies to photographers as well. I personally know photographers that have a drawer containing nothing but hard drives and memory cards that are full of images (you know who you are). That doesn’t even include all the photos we have taken or saved on our phones or tablets. If you were Marie Kondo, having to juggle thousands of images across all of these devices certainly doesn’t spark joy. This is where Mylio comes in, with the goal of bringing order to your digital chaos. Mylio allows you to consolidate all of your photos and videos into one place, syncing them across all of your devices so that you can access them everywhere. Sounds promising for sure, but does Mylio deliver? Find out after the jump.

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Is it Real? How the $500 Apple iPad Air Could Be a Photographer’s Dream

According to reports, the Apple iPad Air might be a powerful, yet cheaper option for creators over the iPad Pro.

For as long as I can remember, Apple has been touting the power and capabilities of their iPad and have often said that their tablets are bonafide PC replacements. Still, to date, that hasn’t materialized. Apple has come close with their line of iPad Pro’s, but they are just too costly to only be ‘almost’ good enough. There are now new reports that suggest a new Apple iPad Air might be in the works, and that it could be a very powerful, yet still affordable option for photographers, and creators who work while on the go. If there is indeed a new Apple iPad Air, it’s going to need a serious bump in specs to be taken seriously by creators. Let’s talk about this after the break.

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Kingston’s Refreshed Canvas SD Cards Now Support UHS-II Cameras

Canvas SD Cards

If you need blazing-fast transfer speeds, you might want to take a look at Kingston’s new Canvas SD cards.

If there is one thing you need to know about SD cards, it’s that they are not created equal. A lot of cameras these days support UHS-II SD cards, which support much faster data read and write speeds and help you not fill up your camera’s buffer so quickly. Until this point, Kingston didn’t offer any UHS-II cards, but now, they have some speedy Canvas SD cards that do. Join us after the break for all the details.

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