Long have I been a subscriber to the theory that those new to the digital single lens reflex arena should start their lens collection with one, relatively inexpensive piece of glass, the f/1.8 variation of the 50mm prime, in either a Canon or Nikon mount, depending on the users choice of camera brand.

As a Canon user there are two different relatively affordable variations of the standard 50mm prime lens. An f/1.8 and f/1.4 version. The f/1.8 variation is the lightest and the cheapest ($79 USD) of all three, it’s the perfect piece of glass to introduce an individual to primes lenses. I’ve owned this lens in the past and thoroughly enjoyed my first experience of inability to zoom. Owning the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 forced me to use my eye to its full creative ability.

Second in the line is the slightly heavier, and relatively more expensive ($329 USD) f/1.4 version of the 50mm lens. Advantages of this lens include a far more superior build quality, faster focusing, full time manual focus ability, and a larger aperture opening. I now own this Canon 50mm lens due to its advantages over its cheaper counterpart.

Also available is the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM. This is the only 50mm prime lens in Canon’s line which features the “L” tag, as a luxury series lens. It features the most superior build quality of all Canon 50mm primes, and is one of two lenses in the Canon EF mount lineup which will open to f/1.2 (the other being the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 USM) - allowing in a significant amount of light.

Why Should I Invest In A 50mm Prime

I initially purchased the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 after hearing praise of the lens optical quality for its small price on photography forum Fred Miranda. Once in my hands, I discovered why.

The focal length of a 50mm prime is somewhat special, as it’s very accurate in terms of field of view to a human eye. Essentially, on a full frame body, what you see through your eye is what you get through the cameras viewfinder.

When limited to a single focal length, there’s only one possible field of view. This view rapidly sticks in your mind, until you know exactly what you’ll see through the viewfinder of your camera without having to life it to your eye. It’ll make you think about framing of images much more closely, and help you improve your eye for creating exceptional shots.

You’re made to think much more about the finder technical aspects of the image, such as aperture, ISO, shutter speed, and exposure. Changing the framing of your image will need to be done via your feet (foot zooming), giving you much more creative control over your image, rather than standing in one spot and either zooming in, or out.

While I believe that all photographers should have a general walk around zoom in their bag for general use, prime lenses will help you create better images, and help you develop your personal photographic style.

From where I’m standing, Twitter is increasingly becoming a means of communication for many creative professionals in doing different things throughout the day - ranging from updating contacts with what they’re doing, direct messaging friends with quick messages instead of an email, and sending/receiving links to newly posted media on the web.

I’ve been mulling over this growing trend for the past few months, and kept an observant eye on not only how I’m using Twitter, but how my contacts are utilizing the service.

What I’ve found is that Twitter has become a tool for doing much more than just updating your friends with what you’ve up to, it’s also a great way to keep in contact with them using the direct message feature. Twitter is increasingly becoming more of an essential relationship and communication tool.

I pulled this following two paragraph quote from a weblog post entitled “Why Twitter Matters.”

By following people on Twitter and other microblogging platforms like Facebook, I’ve gotten to know people at a much deeper level than if I was just to read someone’s blog or socialize at a conference.

Short updates allow me to know a person’s favorite sports teams, restaurants, weekend activities, family adventures and the like. And by weaving together the pieces of someone’s life in this manner, I’m able to know them on a much deeper level. It’s actually quite rewarding on many humanistic levels.

From my point of view, this statement is very accurate. Most of the messages contacts post to Twitter are personal to a certain state, things that help you understand, and get to know a person better. People post thoughts which wouldn’t otherwise be published on their weblog or regular technology column. For instance, if I wasn’t following John Gruber on Twitter, I wouldn’t know that he “fell down the stairs 15 minutes ago”, or that his favorite Super Bowl commercial was the Audi’s R8 “Godfather”.

When I need to get a quick message across to someone and they’re on my Twitter contact list, I fire off a message to them via the Twitter website or via Twitterrific. While it restricts my messages to 140 characters, this essentially helps me stay blunt, simple, and to the point with my wording. Most of my personal correspondence with personal contacts is now routed through Twitter, not email as it was for most of the 2007 calendar year.

I’ve found I’m now corresponding with a lot more people than I was in the past, down to the fact that it’s more simple than clicking on Mail, creating a new message, entering an address, subject line, email, and clicking the send now button - and vice verca on the receptiants end.

While Twitter as a service is still new and developing, utilizing Twitter in the online life of a creative professional is well underway.

The Apple Store (U.S.) - Aperture 2 -

Aperture 2 gives photographers incredible tools to manage massive libraries, speed through photo edits, make essential image adjustments, and deliver photos online and in print using one simple, integrated workflow. Whether you shoot RAW or JPEG, Aperture lets you get the most out of your photography.

Optimized for speed, while more intuitive and accessible, Aperture 2.0 has been released at a lowered price of $199 USD. I’ve been hooked on Lightroom 1.3 these past few months, and my entire 2006/2007 image archives are stored in a Lightroom library.

Could Aperture 2.0 sway me back from Lightroom? I’m looking forward to playing with it and passing judgement.

AppleInsider | MacBook Air face-off: HDD vs SSD (with video) -

Solid state drives are expensive, but costs are coming down. Of course, there’s still a long way for their price tags to go. A 1.8″ 64 GB SSD costs around $1600 at retail and 128GB versions are $3000 and up. The only thing that will force these prices down is the economies of scale from widespread adoption. A number of specialized ultra mobile laptops began offering an SSD option over the last six months, but Apple’s more mainstream offering in the MacBook Air presents high capacity SSDs to a wide new audience.

AppleInsider has written a thorough report on if the MacBook Air SSD option is worth the $1000 USD Apple charge for the upgrade. There are three videos on the article page, each comparing the HDD to the SSD in disk intensive tasks.

The SSD looks to be the ideal choice, if you’re willing to pay a price premium as an early adopter.

After reading dozens and dozens of various posts related to the MacBook Air, the verdict is all over the board in regard to how the machine has been received by the community and general consumers.

After publishing my first thoughts, I came to the consensus that the MacBook Air had a lot going for it, and a lot going against it. It would pair up perfectly as a second more portable machine for those already running iMac’s/Mac Pro’s, etc.

After viewing Macworld benchmarks, the last statement above that the MacBook Air would be suited as a second machine for the creative professional is a somewhat accurate one. The MacBook Air clocks in as the slowest Mac in Apple’s lineup.

Speed aside, if anything could be added to the MacBook Air, on my terms, they’d be as follows.

Extra USB Port & FireWire Port

The MacBook Air’s hub is home to a magsafe power port, one USB 2.0 port, a micro-DVI port, and a headphone jack. While the term less is more is often used in the Mac world (typically when talking about software), the same doesn’t apply here.

One extra USB port, along with a FireWire 400 port would be greatly received. It’s on of my major gripes about the machines design. While it can be easily fixed with a USB hub, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing or simple solution.

User Replaceable RAM

I’d almost be fully content to use a MacBook Air full time if the RAM limitation wasn’t set at 2GB, tethered to the motherboard. While I’m not certain on the practically of it, having the ability for the user to replace RAM with standard DDR2 PC2-5300 667MHz DIMM RAM. It would take the RAM limitation to 4GB on the MacBook Air if two slots were open - much more acceptable for those multi-tasking on the notebook - although, that opens the question once again, if you’re multitasking heavily, why are you doing it on a MacBook Air? The irony.

Don’t get me wrong, the MacBook Air is super elegant in its current state. I still want one, and most of the problems above can be fixed with third-party products (well, not the RAM). All-in-all, the MacBook Air is shaping up to be much more desirable than I initially thought.

Will Shipley, head developer of Delicious Monster’s drawcard (well, only) application Delicious Library has received his new MacBook Air. Replacing his now old (and sold) 2.33Ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro as his main coding system.

Really? Apple’s ’slowest’ computer is the new main coding machine for one of the most well known Mac shareware developers. Shipley shed a little light on the subjective move.

The criticism all basically goes like this: “It’s not like a MacBook Pro!”

No, really? Seriously? I mean, they introduced this new product, and it doesn’t have the same specs as the MacBook Pro? God, that is bizarre. I wonder why they gave it a new name, and continue to sell the MacBook Pro, then, if it’s not going to be exactly the same. I mean, that hardly makes sense, does it?

Apple have three different break-offs in its notebook line. The MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and the MacBook. Each machine is suited for different people, not everyone will be happy with a certain machine, hence the reason there’s three options.

There’s no ruling out the MacBook Air can’t be used as a main (and only) machine. It all comes down to what you do. Most people working with video for instance will not be looking at the MacBook Air, due to its limited storage capacity, processor speed, and lack of connectivity options. However writers who don’t need blazing fast processors, tons of storage, and lots of ports will welcome the machine with open arms. Needs will vary. Something that’s perfect for you might not be for the next person, and vice versa.

Some journalists get so close to the truth it hurts, yet miss the large print. “OMG! The unit is all sealed and self-contained like the iPod!”

I feel this point is possibly the most talked about aspect of the MacBook Air. Whether good or bad, the Air doesn’t have a user-replaceable battery or easy access to replace a hard drive. Then again, devices like the iPhone and iPod don’t have user replaceable batteries like many other devices in the same category, it hasn’t hurt Apple at all.

It’s a fact that if you want a new battery, you’ll have to pay Apple to install a new one. How many batteries do most Apple laptop owners carry around anyway? I only have the one which is permanently residing under my MacBook Pro. I suspect most other buyers of Apple laptops are in the same boat as me.

I don’t buy a laptop because I want to replace its drive in a year. I buy it because it seems great and meets my needs today. If my needs magically morph over the coming year, I guess I’ll sell it on eBay.

This is a perfect example in my eyes of the way I’d like people to think. Buy a computer based on today’s needs. If your needs change down the line, adapt to that with a different tool set; it’s how I’ve personally begun to look at things.

Three months ago, I sold a top of the line workhorse machine, the Apple Mac Pro. Six weeks later, I sold the 4.1 million pixel wonder I had connected to it, more commonly known as the 30″ Apple Cinema Display. Why? The move to a complete portable platform had become more and more attractive as weeks past, while all four million pixels of the Apple Cinema Display sat cold and unused.

4.1 Million To 1.3 Million

Pixels, that is. When I sold the 30″ Apple Cinema Display, I sold the large canvas I had become so attached to when the Mac Pro was in my possession.

Have I missed it? Not at all. The MacBook Pro paired with Spaces has been a perfect solution to losing my large display. I feel so much more comfortable knowing everything is in one place, in one machine. I don’t have as much cash tied up in technology that’s sitting unused.

It’s surprising to myself that I haven’t once regretted my decision. This could be reinforced by the 2 week period I had leading up to listing the display for sale. I told myself I’d not touch it for another two weeks, and see if I missed it. I didn’t, so off it went. Out of sight, out of mind.

Adapting With Spaces

Spaces, one of Leopard’s ‘innovative’ features has shaped the way I use my notebook. When playing with a screen measuring 1440 x 900 pixels - things are bound to change compared to a 2560 x 1600 canvas.

I set up three Spaces on the 15″ MacBook Pro to organize various applications. The first Space been the active work area, for Safari, blogging, writing, editing, etc. The second space is set aside for communication (Mail, iChat, Twitterrific), while the third is my reference Space (iTunes, NetNewsWire).

High Resolution Future

The High-Resolution 17″ MacBook Pro currently sports a display measuring 1920 x 1200 pixels (133ppi), equaling that of the current 23″ Apple Cinema Display (98ppi). The iPhone and iPod touch both boast screens with a pixel density around the 160ppi mark - compared to the 15″ MacBook Pro’s 110ppi display. Where does this leave us for the future of Apple notebook displays?

An addition of the high resolution option in 15″ model would be well received in the next revision of the MacBook Pro line. I don’t expect to see 1080p, but 1680 x 1050 (same as the 20″ Apple Cinema Display) would be a significant move in the right direction. Displays with a high pixel-per-inch density are in our not too distant future.