Weekend Recap for May 19 - May 25, 2013

"This is The-Digital-Picture.com's Weekend Recap for the week ending May 25th, 2013

In the news...

On Tuesday, Nikon published firmware updates for the D700, D300 and D300s DSLR cameras. The firmware updates added support for the AF-S NIKKOR 800mm f/5.6E FL ED VR lens.

Also on Tuesday, we commented on the extensive changes to Flickr and asked – is it better than it was before? In a nutshell, Flickr overhauled their photostream layout, restructured their accounts, and released an updated Android app.

While some of the changes are certainly good – like 1 terabyte of free storage for free user accounts, we noted some issues with the new photostream layout that we’d like to see addressed to achieve an improved user experience.

On Thursday, Canon launched PIXMA Comix, an interactive application found its Canon U.S.A. Facebook page that allows users to create personalized photo comic strips for printing and sharing. While the idea is novel, I found the layout program to be a bit awkward to use when I tested out it out earlier this week. Hopefully your experience will be better than mine…

In site news and reviews...

On Monday, Bryan published the ISO image quality samples and vignetting test results for the Canon EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens. Distortion results were added later that day. Check the lens’s review page for full details and links.

On Thursday, Bryan posted an update to the site’s Canon Lens Date Code Chart. Unfortunately, 2013 has been a challenging year for predicting Canon’s lens manufacturing dates. The Date Code Chart is still a work in progress. Site visitors are encouraged to let us know if they suspect any discrepancies in the date code chart when examining serial numbers or date codes on newly acquired lenses by emailing us at info@the-digital-picture.com.

And, for our deal of the week…

On Friday, we posted a deal from DigitalRev where you could get a Canon EOS 6D DSLR Camera for $1,679.00 – more than a $300.00 savings off the market’s going-rate.

This has been the The-Digital-Picture.com’s Weekend Recap. Thanks for listening, and as always, happy shooting!"