Pixlr - an excellent choice for photo editing

Pixlr (http://pixlr.com) is a a free online suite of photo editing applications
3 separate apps (describe)
Main app works, looks and feels like Photoshop:

Smooth, free, blah blah blah

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SLAMA Photography

Christmas lights and ICM photography

Intentional Camera Movement blah blah blah
Long exposure with movement:

Long exposure w/ zoom

See many more examples here: Afterimage's Art Gallery

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Exoticars USA Open House

Exoticars USA
Milford, New Jersey
Automotive Repair & Restoration

We caught word of a Fall Open House at Exoticars USA and decided to take a nice morning drive up to Milford New Jersey to hopefully see a few nice cars and some car owners. It was a beautiful fall day, a perfect day to stretch the legs of my project car a 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo. On the way to ExoticarUSA we came across the Bucks County Exotic group on their monthly meet. How could we not stop by to see even more amazing cars. It was a great showing with a seriously nice variety of exotic and domestic pride.
We eventually left our new friends and continued on some amazing scenic roads towards our destination.
Sure enough these great roads lead to a beautiful facility with a parking lot overflowing with dream machines.
You really couldn't ask for a cooler location for an Exotic car shop. The changing leaves on the trees sure did hurt the atmosphere. Yellow and orange leaves set the back drop for these exotic beauties in some many different colors and models.
We eventually finished drooling outside and move to the lobby. AMAZING! The showroom was awesomely adorned with an automotive flair. Gas pumps, Lamborghini and Ferrari shields on the wall, a racecar and a flat track motorcycle to set the mood. Then we stumbled into the "engine room". A beautiful Lamborghini engine sat alone on a lift. Just an engine on a lift and it was gorgeous. The shop was spacious in size but packed with so many amazing cars. Show cars, cars in for repairs, a cool barn found Lamborghini Miura getting a full restoration, classic beauties from Ferrari and Lancia and a stunning Blue custom Maserati Roadster built by Wil de Groot.
So not only were the cars great but the people were great as well. Everyone very friendly and happy to talk about their cars and happy to have their cars photographed. We also had the pleasure to meet our hosts, Wil and Sandy de Groot, owners of Exoticars USA who were amazingly friendly and welcoming.
As always,we share our images with our hosts at any event and they likes our images enough that they used our photo for Facebook Cover!
Checkout the Gallery section on their website for a few more of our shots!

See our gallery complete here: SLAMA Photography Gallery

Thanks to: Exoticars USA and Autofocus Photography
Photos by: SLAMA Photography
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Delaware River Canal

Blah blah blah
location

See our full gallery here: http://slamapa.smugmug.com/Parks/Delaware-River-Canal/

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St. Peter's Village

Blah blah balh Neat place, little shops, waterfall blah blah blah
brief SPV history and link

See our full gallery here: http://slamapa.smugmug.com/Parks/St-Peters-Village/

Visit us on Facebook! SLAMA Photography

Bushkill Falls

Blah blah blah
copy paste from BKF website

Gallery: Bushkill Falls

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Gear Review: Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5

Looking for an ultra wide angle lens I decided to give the Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 a try. Saying the 10-20 is a wide angle lens is an understatement. At 10mm and close focus the lens acts more like a fisheye than a rectilinear lens; there's tons of stretching, bending, and distortion. This evens out when your focal point is at a distance but up close it's rather wild. It's not the sharpest lens in my bag but few UWA lenses are razor sharp and it's hardly "bad". Actually it's pretty good if you stop down to f/5.6 or so. I found the AF motor (Sigma's HSM) to be fast and quiet, rarely hunting for focus even in challenging light.

I'll say at this point I'm satisfied with the performance of the lens and give it a solid B+ based on my limited experience with it.

From Sigma's Website:

SPECIFICATIONS

Lens Construction	13 Elements in 10 Groups
Angle of View	102.4° - 63.8°
Number of Diaphragm Blades	7
Mininum Aperture	f22
Minimum Focusing Distance	24 cm / 9.4 in
Filter Size (mm)	82
Maximum Magnifications	1:6.6
Dimensions (Diameter x Length)	87.3 x 88.2 mm/3.4 x 3.5 in
Weight	520g / 18.3oz.
HSM - Hyper-Sonic Motor EX - EX Lens DC - DC for Digital Lens Hood: Petal Type * The appearance, specifications, and the like of the product are subject to change for improvement without notice. * Vignetting will occur if the lens is used with 35mm SLR cameras or digital cameras with image sensors larger than APS-C size. * Pentax mount, if the camera body does not support HSM, auto focus will not be available. * Nikon Mount Built in motor lens: compatible with D40, D40x, D60, D3000, D5000

Checkout some sample photos for the first outing here:
Sigma 10-20mm Sample shots

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Full House Fall Fling

One of the best local shows blah blah balh
blah blah wide variety of cars

Check out of gallery here: http://slamapa.smugmug.com/Car-Shows/Fall-Fling-2013/

Special thanks to Full House Motorsports
check them out on Facebook Here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Full-House-Motorsports

Want to shoot this show with us next year? Visit us on Facebook here: SLAMA Photography
With a special thanks to Autofocus Photography

French Creek State Park

blah blah blah

Gallery: French-Creek-State-Park

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Gear Review: Sigma 18-250 OS Macro

Here's a 3 part "review" of this lens. I initially got a bad copy (misaligned or decentered lens), returned it  and received a good working copy. The text is copy and pasted from our Facebook page but I couldn't attach the images so I'm including the direct links to the album. Check each image for a more detailed description of the image, settings and issues:

INITIAL REVIEW:

I just picked up the "new" sigma 18-250 OS Macro as a walk-around lens and wanted to share some of the test shots. The over all impression I have from my limited time with it is that Sigma has put together a decent... not awesome... a decent general snaphooter. Great range in focal lengths, lightweight, amazing OS, a few sweet spots of sharpness and versatile. For under $300 (keep your eyes open for sales on eBay!) it might be one of the better do-it-all lenses for casual snaphots. All shots were taken in Jpeg Fine, resized to 1000px and "saved for web" in Photoshop CS6. No post processing in any shot

Album here: https://www.facebook...69882829&type=3

Ut-oh, problems spotted!:

I did some further testing of the Sigma 18-250mm OS Macro lens and determined that I received a bad (defective) copy. Something about the softness in the wider angle shots wasn't well sitting with me so I decided to run a few extra tests to see if i was being picky or I was truly seeing an issue with softness in the lens. Read through the descriptions of each images and I'll explain what I found but my guess is that there's a misaligned lens element in one of the groups. Telephoto shots are wonderful, macro shots even better, but anything less than 135mm was mushy, ghosted and full of chromatic aberrations.

Album here: https://www.facebook...69882829&type=3

Ah, a good copy:

So you may recall that I ordered a Sigma 18-250mm OS Macro lens last week and after a few test shots determined either the lens was just plain terrible or I got a bad copy. A bunch of research lead me to believe the first copy had a misaligned lens element so I took a swing returned the first copy and ordered another. 

The results from this batch confirm that the first copy was indeed defective. While the lens is a "walk-around super-zoom" and not going to produce the highest quality images you can clearly see that this copy is MUCH better than the first. Images resolve to acceptable sharpness, there's minimal distortion and none of that ghosting I saw in the original version. My initial assessment still stands; the macro functionality is actually impressive, focal lengths above 70mm are really pretty nice but under 35mm are still a little "weak". Not horrible, it's just that the deeper zooms are much better. Again all images are jpgs straight from the camera, resized to 800x600 in Photoshop and saved at web quality. No post processing other than to provide the 100% crops.

With that I can comfortably recommend this lens as a walk around snap shooter. It does the job nicely...as long as you get a good copy.

Album here: https://www.facebook...69882829&type=3

Sigma's technical data for this lens is here:

http://www.sigmaphoto.com/product/18-250mm-f35-63-dc-os-macro-hsm

Check out more reviews and sample images here: SLAMA Photography

John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove

About the park
Lots of trails

Copy/paste info on Audubon Society

See our full gallery here: Audubon-Center-at-Mill-Grove

Visit the park's website here: Mill Grove

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SLAMA Photography

Churchville Nature Center

Churchville Nature Center was a location we accidentally stumbled up during one of our random location searching drives. We looked at our GPS and said...hey look a park! Lets drive there! It has turned out to be one of our go-to spots when we just want to get out and shoot. It has earned that go-to reputation for us because it just offers so much. On our very first visit we found a well made bird blind adjacent to the nature center. We were shooting birds at the feeder and all of a sudden all of the birds abruptly left...we wondered what had happened.
Favorite place

Check out our gallery: Churchville Nature Center

Church

Churchville on Facebook: Churchville-Nature-Center

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SLAMA Photography

Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire

PA Ren Faire

Time Traveler's Weekend















Special thanks to: Punkship Enterprise Check out their excellent assortment of Steampunk themed jewelry

See our Gallery here: 2013 PA Ren Faire

If you missed last's year's gallery be sure to check it out here: 2012 PA Ren Faire

Visit us here and join us there! SLAMA Photography

Le Belle Macchine d'Europa

Le Belle event

Le Belle website: http://www.italiancarevents.com/
Italian Cars Facebook Page: Le-Belle-Macchine-dEuropa-Italian-Cars-Inc

Porsche 901

World class driving event at Pocono Raceway

SLAMA Exclusive Gallery: Le Belle 2013

Visit us here: SLAMA Photography