Halloween postcards, greeting cards & swag bags!

• Greeting card 100m x 150mm (6"x4")
• Greeting card 125mm x 190mm (5"x7.5")
• Postcard 100mm x 150mm

Tote Bag for collecting or handing out treats

Lots of new stuff up on RedBubble

I've been selling my photos on RedBubble for a while now but just recently got some stuff off them for myself, cushions, postcards, prints, stickers. Great quality, heres a couple of the cushions!

They offer loads of product options, heres some of them.

Throw Pillows

Throw Pillows

Art Prints

Art Prints

T-Shirts

T-Shirts & Hoodies ~ Women's Fitted Scoop T-Shirt

RedBubble offer a number of great products for your prints: Shirts & Hoodies, Women's Fitted Scoop, Stickers, iPhone Cases & Skins, Galaxy Cases & Skins, Posters, Throw Pillows, Tote Bags, Studio Pouches, Duvet Covers, Mugs, Travel Mugs, Photographic Prints, Art Prints, Framed Prints, Canvas Prints, Metal Prints, Cards, Pencil Skirts, Scarves, Kids Clothes, iPad Cases & Skins, Laptop Skins, Drawstring Bags, Spiral Notebooks & Hardcover Journals! 

www.redbubble.com/people/shaymurphy/shop

LowePro Pro Roller Lite 150 AW

I've a silly amount of camera bags:

• LowePro Stealth Reporter D200 AW, my most used one, great walk around bag
• LowePro Slingshot 202 AW, never really liked this bag so was usually relegated to storing stuff
• Think Tank Retrospective 30, a bit big for a walk around, great for location shoots but not secure (Reviewed here)
• Hama Track Pack old one that I use occasionally to bring extra gear

So with some travel coming up it was time to buy yet another bag! I will be packing the LowePro Stealth in my checked bag to use as a carry around when I reach my destinations, but I wanted to carry on my actual gear, in case anything went missing either accidentally or maliciously when checked in to the hold.

After a lot of researching (a number of LowePro's & Think Tank's) I decided on the LowePro Roller 100 AW, its a little bit small for me but it is regulation carry on size, even for the "budgetest" of airlines (i.e. Ryanair!) and other smaller domestic flight operators.

Delivery took two weeks, and I was like a little kid on Christmas morning waiting for this (currently no commuting to work means a lot more time in the day)! It finally arrived and I couldn't be more happy with it, realistically fits all the gear I need, sturdy, its a roller!! And like all LowePro bags with the AW - All Weather, it has a weather jacket than is stored in the handle pocket for when it rains. A padlock can be put on the zip, and theres some nice front pockets for quick access to travel documents, photograph release forms etc.

The wheels are sturdy but if do need replacing, only require an Allen key. It can take upto an 11" laptop, I don't have a laptop at present, but I'm hoping at a squeeze it will take a larger one, not the end of the world if it doesn't. 

Fits (as per the LowePro website):

• 1 Pro DSLR or 1-2 Pro DSLRs without grip, with attached 70-200mm f/2.8 lens
• 3-4 extra lenses
• Flash
• Spare batteries and memory cards
• Up to an 11" laptop or tablet
• Extra accessories or personal items

Technical Specifications:

• Notebook Compartment: 33.3 x 1.9 x 24.8 cm (13.11 x 0.75 x 9.76 in)
• Internal Dimensions: 33.7 x 12.7 x 40 cm (13.27 x 5.00 x 15.75 in)
• External Dimensions: 35.6 x 18.4 x 47.6 cm (14.02 x 7.24 x 18.74 in)
• Weight: 3.5 kg (7.70 lbs)

My use:
I used some extra velcro dividers I had from my other bags to divide the bag up a bit more than the provided dividers allowed. This fits pretty much everything I need except my large reflector, but once all airlines allow this as carry on, I'm more than happy.

• Nikon D700 + 85mm lens
• Fuji X100
• Nikkor 14-24mm, 24-70mm, 50mm
• Nikon Speedlight SB800
• 2 x Cactus triggers
• Nikon & Fuji chargers
• AA batteries
• Camera batteries
• Memory card case
• Memory  card reader
• Blower
• Cables (flash, power)
• Torch, Monocular, pocket tripod (for Fuji), lens & body caps, mp3 player
• And other smaller bits in the pocket on the left of the photo

Pros

• Meets all airline carry on specs
• Sturdy, well padded
• Its a roller!
• Adjustable layout
• Handle can be hidden away
• Side handles
• All weather cover
• Front pockets

Cons

• Given that its airline regulation size, I can't really put lack of laptop space as a con

Buy on Amazon.co.uk

CameraBag 2

I'm not sure how I stumbled across CameraBag, but when I did they were offering it for $19 (€15/£12) with a free upgrade to CameraBag 2 which was following in a number of weeks. 

What its not is Photoshop, but almost! What it is, is probably the best $19 I've ever spent! 

I have been using it as my final pass for a number of images after I've prepared and cleaned the photo in Lightroom. I've even by-passed Lightroom and just processed a number of photos in here. Combing this with something like GIMP is the perfect and very affordable alternative to Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture etc. 

The thing that stood out the most for me with CameraBag was how easy it was to use and get going with it straight away. The interface is clean, simple and very intuitive:

• Application menu down the right, with a sub menu for items inside each section
• Adjust menu along the bottom when an item is chosen from the application menu
• Both side and bottom menus can be hidden when required

Menus

You get adjustment options (25 of them) - subdivided into Basics, Light, Color, Photographic & Utilty. Some of these adjustments include:

• crop
• rotate
• exposure
• contrast
• saturation
• vibrance
• brightness
• shadows
• various curves
• grain
• color correction
• tint
• RGB curve
• and a lot of other options

The amount of filters (like presets in Lightroom) it comes with by default is fantastic, a great start to processing your image. You have full control over these filters to adjust them and make them your own. You can save your own and share them, and add other new ones, other people have made.

The adjustment controls are a nice size and really easy to understand and use, the slider being big enough to tweak as necessary. It has non-destructive editing, and removing an effect is as easy as just closing the control for it, no need for Cntrl-Z'ing!

Adjustments

Inline Preview gives you a preview beside your original image. You are not limited to one preset, you can layer presets, adding them one after another.

Inline Preview

Quicklooks is a nice feature which takes the Inline Preview a step further, where you get a page of thumbnails with all presets worked on your photo, see one you like click on it and adjust as necessary.

Quicklook

Another nice easy to use feature is Batch Processing, its a cinch; adjust one image, then point the software to the folder you want to run it on the rest of your images which get output with an added _cb to the orignal filename by default.

The only things I found lacking were controls such as clone/heal, dodge/burn, watermarking, but as I've already said above, I've been using this as a last pass, and as I've said, combined with the likes of GIMP this is perfect for you. And for the cost of takeaway & DVD it is more than worth it.

For what it has to offer at the price I wouldn't be expecting anything more...in fact I would have thought it had a lot less.

Camerabag 2 is currently $24 - http://nevercenter.com/camerabag/desktop

Samples:

Click here for CameraBag YouTube Videos