Blurb, the Cafe Press of On Demand Book Publishing
Blurb is an online on demand book publishing service. You download their free Blurb BookSmart software to organize to layout your photos and text content for your personal book.
A number of predefined templates gives you a quick jumpstart to creating a cook book, poetry book, blog book plus baby book, dog book and cat book premade styles.
The Blurb book making software is available for both PC and Mac and allows you to customize your photos, add design effects and enter your text.
The finished books on the Blurb site look high quality and professionally printed but come only in 10x8 portrait or 8x10 landscape format.
The printed books are on heavyweight, archival paper stock ideal for photos and text come in bound hardcover with a custom dust jacket. Blurb plans on including softcover binding in the future.
The book prices are reasonably priced at around $29.95-$37.95 US for hardcover books 20-120 pages. The Blurb book service is only available in Canada and the USA at the moment. Quantity discounts on orders of 25+; custom quotes on 400+. Books are expandable up to 440 pages and no limit on number and size of photos.
Blurb even lets you sell…
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Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2
The Lumix DMC-LX2 is the successor to the Panasonic wide screen 16:9 format digital camera. Announced in July it is now widely available and the reviews are starting to come in from around the web.
What made the LX1 unique are still around in the DMC-LX2 with some extras in the revision.
The f2.8mm, 4x zoom, 28mm x 112mm equivalent lens is the same but there is now a larger 2.8” 207,000 pixel LCD. Of course Panasonics’ own MEGA O.I.S. antishake system is included. In fact all Lumix cameras now have the MEGA O.I.S. system incorporated. The LUMIX LX2 is also equipped with the world’s first* Intelligent ISO Control (hereafter I.I.C.) within the advanced image processing LSI Venus Engine III.
Panasonic calls this camera triple “wide” because it features three wide functions, 28mm wide angle Leica lens, 16:9 wide CCD and 16:9 LCD.
Panasonic has long called their image processing engine the Venus Engine and with the LUMIX LX2 Panasonic uses the Venus Engine III for noise reduction. Noise was the dealbreaker on ISO speeds higher than 200 on the previous LUMIX LX1 and unfortunately it appears the same problem persists with the DMC-LX2.
The LX2 includes 13mb of internal…
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Sigma SD14 DSLR with 14 Megapixel Foveon X3 Sensor
Sigma has introduced their new SD14 digital SLR camera. The SD14 uses the new 14 megapixel Foveon X3 digital image sensor. Sigma appear to the the only digital camera manufacturer to currently use the Foveon sensor in a line dslr cameras. Canon, Nikon and the rest of the majors still use their own cmos or standard ccds.
The Sigma SD14 is the first Sigma camera to output to jpeg mode. While it does not have a dust removal system Sigma has designed a dust protector that covers it’s image sensor. Sigma uses a LiOn BP-21 battery with an optional ac adapter.
Accessories included in the package consist of Li-ion power battery BP-21, Battery charger BC-21, USB cable, video cable, neck strap, eye cap, body cap, eyepiece cap, SIGMA Digital Photo Pro 3.0 CD Rom, SD14 instruction manual.
Some key points from their press release.
The SD14 Digital SLR camera features four JPEG recording modes, a large and bright pentaprism viewfinder with 98% coverage, a built-in flash with a Guide Number of 11, 5-point AF system, a large 2.5” 150,000 pixel resolution LCD monitor as well as a new user friendly design. The durable shutter mechanism has over 100,000-cycle life and…
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