New blog in finnish!

I have started a new blog in finnish in this address http://valokuvaajaramilappalainen.fi

I realized that if I want to express my thoughts well it's better to write it in my real language. If you are not speaking any finnsih you can try to use google translator, sometimes it works really well!

I will keep these posts alive because somebody might find them usefull. Have a great time, hope we could co-operate in future!

Rami

Red Bull Photo Workshop Norway

It´s now two weeks after the Red Bull Photo Workshop in Norway, Haugastol. It was nice to meet some new colleagues and discuss about photographic scene in different parts of Europe. Partly it felt a bit too hectic as we all were also shooting the Red Bull Ragnarok snowkiting event, would have preferred a bit more time to relax in sauna and maybe enjoy some red wine with colleagues:)

Later I heard nice news that one of my pictures was published spread wide in a biggest Norwegian newspaper, I guess you can call that a success! Also the final feedback from the headquarters was pretty good both technically and creatively.

Here´s our group picture of the workshop. I am furthest from the camera as I prefer to stand on the other side of camera:)

Be carefull out in the field dear colleague:)

Motion Photos - what is it?

I used part of my holiday recently shooting some video footage in Fuerte Ventura, Canary Islands.

Actually I prefer to call these short video clips as a motion photos. Camera is not moving but there is some movement in the images which make these clips to stand out without any editing or music. The sound of the nature creates all necessary voices.

I found this work with video exciting and a natural extension for a photographer to create wider experiment especially in the world of tablet applications and digital environment. Visit my Vimeo gallery to see rest of the motion photos!

Curiosity, how do you transfer fish?

Well known snowboarding photographer Scott Serfas is doing nice work creating a cover for Transworld Snowboarding magazine. Huge load of work but sometimes it´s really a worth it!

TransWorld SNOWboarding April 2011 Cover from TransWorld SNOWboarding on Vimeo.

Hurttacollection shoot in Spain

Just back from a trip to Spain and super exhausted...

Hurttacollection dogwear new product line needed some photos for the packages, brochure and print adds, so we decided to skip a too cold finnish winter and moved our ass's towards somewhat warmer locations in southern Spain.

6 days of travelling and shooting in beautiful locations yielded to quite spectacular images!

Although it's always a bit more expensive to travel to get more juicy images, I garantee - it's really worth it!

Photo art as it´s best

I am not really a big fan of art photography. Mainly because I have seen so much blurry shit which has been considered as art only because it´s blurry and shaky. The technical abilities are the main factor of photography. Think for example Ansel Adams! His pictures are so powerful just because of the sophisticated b/w technique he used in his exposures.

Also a good idea can make the difference and actually the best images always combine these two things, technique and good idea. I just found a perfect sample of a great photo art by photographer Irina Werning. Her Back to the Future project is just so cool!

Winter wishes from Finland

Today was a great day working outside the office doors. It was a
perfect winter day with temperatures -17C and full on sunshine the
whole day!

I was again shooting with Red Bull Open Ice crew. Beside taking
pictures it was a good moment to watch some hardcore "pond hockey".
The rules are simple no checking, no slapshots, just having fun on the
natural ice!

Wuuhaa new year, new plans!

I just arrived from Canarias to this dark piece of land situated so north that even cocroaches don´t live here. Don´t ever think again why we skandinavians can be a bit withdrawn sometimes:) Luckily when the sun comes up again in april, it doesn´t go down until august!

I found a nice piece of flowchart designed to help creatives all around world, made by great illustrator Jessica Hische Keep these advices in mind heh:)

Feliz Navidad from Canarias!

I wanted to send out some Christmas greetings from Fuerte Ventura!

I am spending my holiday here for surfing and filming some video footage for a release of new products for 2011.

So all of you my friends; Feliz Navidad as spanish people tend to say at this time of year!

What the fuck is art?

I think the sentence above is the main important factor when you consider something as art. Have to admit that I don´t know shit about art but I have always counted my eyes. I don´t need somebody to say if something is art or not, if it´s cool a will dig it, but I also understand why somebody else doesn´t.

I just visited Reina Sofia and saw a huge collection from Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. I was really stoked to see some of their major artpieces live in museum.

After checking some dozens of paintings from both of those hardcore painters I really have to admit that Salvador Dali is something that the human mind cannot understand in this life. When you saw some Picasso´s next to Dali´s, it seems that Picassso was just too fucked up in his head, but still couldn´t really match up with Dali.

Actually you can find many similarities in Dali´s paintings and modern (but outdated) "photoshop collage" advertising images nowadays. And yes Pink Floyd and Storm Thorgerson also ripped Dali a lot...

Finally I found my favourite artpiece, The Great Masturbator, Salvador Dali (1929)

Behing the scenes - Hurttacollection shoot

Check out the recent behind the scenes documentary of Hurttacollection shoot. Some nice furry animals out there!

In The Shoot with Rami Lappalainen from Rami Lappalainen on Vimeo.

Downshifting or not?

There has been recent news about people who are trying to balance more carefully between the job and leisure. That´s nothing more than basic human sense of balancing life, but nowadays named neatly as "downshifting".

Especially if you work as an entrepreneur and have to decide your action only by yourself, you definitely need to concentrate to balance your time usage that you don´t burn yourself out. That´s not downshifting it´s just a clever thing everybody should do, whether you are entrepreneur or employee.

Last wednesday the surfing world was hit by news that 3rd time world surfing champion Andy Irons was found dead, alone in his hotel room, at the age of 32. Well okay he has definitely seen more than average people could see in his life, but to die suddenly at the young age is nothing more than sad story...

We wanted to go catching some waves on the same day. We decided to skip the job and go surfing like Yvon Chouinard book "Let my people go surfing" tells for us. First I was a bit ashamed about skipping the work but then I realized that if you just concentrate for your job you don´t remember to live!

We were sitting in the water with my friend only by ourselves, Waiting for some waves to surf. Wind was blowing, bit of rain too. I began thinking about Andy and everybody who left the planet earth at the young age...

You really have to enjoy the every single moment of your life!

Hans Välimäki joins Red Bull

I was meant to write this update even earlier but it didn´t come public until now. Red Bull contacted me in june if I would be interested to shoot finnish top chef Hans Välimäki for them - I was pretty amazed again, how an earth Red Bull could be interested about food and Hans Välimäki?

Red Bull Hangar-7 is a hefty "home" of Red Bull in Salzburg airport in Austria. A huge contemporary glass dome where you can find a private airplane collection as well as Red Bull racing cars.

After a tour you can have a snack and drinks at a bar or if you are into some real deal culinary trip you can book a table from restaurant Ikarus.

Ikarus is run by celebrity chef Eckhart Witzigmann who´s right hand is chef Roland Tretti. They change their menu every month and the main focus is to try out some new tastes from all over the world - like now some finnish tastes created by chef Hans Välimäki.

Roland Tretti visits every Ikarus quest chef beforehand to get an idea about the menu. Likewise they shoot all the dishes and make a documentary about the visit. You can see some of the images here.

You should be hungry, at least I am!

“Photojournalism: time of death 11.12. GMT 1st August 2010.”

Everybody knows that the digital era has changed everything in photo business. At least the photographers who have been around when it was only you, darkroom and that beautiful red light.

The whole business is kind of struggling all over the world. Recent recession is definitely not helping things to evolve and many newspapers and magazines are concentrating to take care of their website more than real quality on photographs they publish on their printed version of the mag.

For example Metro newspaper in Finland published 6 pictures shot by their "readers" on their last week´s issue. You can not say anything about the quality anymore. It is just a matter of how they use their budget to produce the paper. The reader feels himself important when the picture is published and the publisher is happy when they saved some more euros to spend somewhere else, like a new copymachine for their office.

I just found this article about the "dead of photojournalism". It´s a good text, very well written - and it´s sad but true.

Stardom

Just came back from a shoot with Citroen WRC Rally Team. Soon it´s time for Finnish WRC rally in Jyväskylä.

It was nice to see the press reactions about French rally star Sebastian Loeb and also our own boy Kimi Räikkönen who decided to drop out from F1 to concentrate full time for rally.

Everybody was rushing to get any, I mean ANY, pictures of Kimi. I guess Sebastian was a bit annoyed that all the interest was towards our superstar Kimi Räikkönen.

Kimi was relaxed but still a bit lazy on things which meant to be done under this press meeting. He wore his mirror shades all the time and didn´t really bother that no photographer got any decent pics where his eyes would be visible.

Soon I realized that everybody of us might act similarly if you can´t move your finger without somebody snapping pics, asking autographs or just staring at you all day long.

If I should compare Kimi to other rally drivers he was looking more like a pro snowboarder or surfer - not like the traditional motorsport athlete without any style - if you understand what I mean...

Keep it up Kimi, I will hold my fingers crossed during WRC Finland!

Summer Gigs

So what a photographer does in summer? Shoots add campaigns for Coca Cola and some editorials for Vogue? Hell yeah!

NOT...

Almost everybody is getting married in summer time and off course they need somebody to cover the most important day of their live. I have been doing these wedding gigs multiple times per summer and "pro bono publico" off course. Every spring I have decided that I will keep my hands of from weddings to save those weekends for my hobbies and relaxing.

I just came from my good old friend´s wedding and decided finally that this is it. No more weddings after this shot. It resembles all feelings the wedding day consists...

Time to throw away your clothing!

Thank god it´s summer. After a busy april/may it was time to relax and enjoy the short but beautiful finnish summer.

According the statistics it´s normal that we have 4 days above +25C per summer (sounds bit weird right?) but these last 3 weeks have blown out the records for many years! I am sitting on my wooden boat waiting for the dinner, it´s 21.00 and it´s still +29C. If this would be the normal summer in Finland many travel agencies would end up into bankrupt:)

Soon it´s time to get back to business again. Hopefully many new interesting assignments will come up. I will soon also publish something other than just pics or words. Keep you posted!

New stuff

Just back from a trip to Norway and Sweden. Weather sucked big time and it was sure the coldest times ever for an outdoor shoot. Just checked out the new Freeskier (US) and two complete spreads were dedicated to my recent pics about urban skiing in Helsinki.

BAD SERVICE SUCKS!

Isn´t the customer always right? Well here I am, the customer!!!

That was a line from a movie (which name I don´t remember...) The point was that when the customer comes to the store to buy some goods, the salesman have to be ready to serve the customer in any ways possible. At least that was the case some ten years ago in Finland.

Today everything has changed. You are a customer and are willing to spend some serious money to these expensive cameras and other equipment. You should be served with honor and expertise - even if you are just a typical consumer.

I have had so many bad occasions for example in Rajala Pro Shop Helsinki and Verkkokauppa.com computer store. And I am not the only one...

For example one case was that my friend was asking some basic questions which camera he should buy, and got some really nasty answers back. They just couldn´t answer his questions and hided behind of their cheeky attitude. And this friend of mine happens to be an olympic gold medalist and kind of "known" person in the world... And because he didn´t get the answers he called to me.

When I am buying new stuff I really try to order everything from internet for example B&H Photo Video if I just have time. And if I do not have time the only option nowadays is Optotek in Helsinki which is the only real old-school photo store in Helsinki.

I truly wait when other people start to think also for what they are paying for - is it the price only, or is it a combo of the price and extremely good service you can get?

I really urge you retailers to concentrate of your customer service!

ADOBE LIGHTROOM 2 VERSUS 3

Adobe launched some time ago a beta version of their upcoming version of the Lightroom 3. Of course I downloaded and installed it immediately, but didn´t have time to give it a try before my dear 2.6 version crashed and my original database was wasted too. I was on a trip shooting some backyard ice-hockey for Red Bull and I wanted to give it a try.

I was also using the new Canon 7D for the first time, which sure is the best all around camera Canon has ever published (I will try to write some expressions about that later). And the new version also included the support for that camera too.

I was amazed when I opened some of the RAW images shot with 7D. First I thought that behind the quality was the camera, but later when I opened the same images with the 2.6 I understood that it was the revamped Adobe RAW generator behind of the image quality!

This image (click to open it) consists 100% crops of the same image. The left side is converted with LR 2.6 and the right one is with LR 3.0. I am pretty sure you can see some differences there! I tried to adjust images as close to each others. It´s reasonably close to see how good the new RAW generator digs out more details than the older one. Also the pixels look a bit more like the normal high-quality film grain. I did not want to use the luminosity noise filter at all because you loose all those fine details.

I just wait when Adobe will launch the 3.0 update that I really could start using that. Right now it feels that I updated my two digital cameras - that good the quality is. Thanks Adobe for the good work you guys and girls have made!

(I am sorry about the jpeg packing of the blogspot, everything looks like shit... Email me if you want to see it better quality)

Mac Cube

In 2001 Apple published a computer targeted for high-end professional users. Their Cube project was simply way before it´s time. Consumers just did not understand how a computer can be so small and still could work normally. The price was a bit hefty also and this project ended before it even begun.

I found my Cube many years ago. I just wanted to have it. I don´t know why. I can´t use it anymore because none of the programs is running on it. Maybe I just wanted to have it because it is maybe the most innovative design piece of our time. Actually it´s the only computer placed in any museum´s art collection. New York Museum of Modern Art have it on their permanent collection.

Reason I´m writing is that I finally found a place for it on my office. Here you have it. You´ve to admit it´s beautiful:)

Canon EF 24-70/2.8

Just received Canon EF 24-70/2.8 lens. It´s kind of old model (2002) from Canon, and sure it´s not an obvious choice for everybody. Previously I used EF 24-105/4 a lot and was pretty satisfied of the quality it produced. There are many 24-70 vs. 24-105 tests available but there was no winner announced in any of them.

After just one day with this marvellous lens I have to admit that it´s most propably the best wide/normal zoom lens I have ever used. Especially the Bokeh is looking really creamy. It actually feels that you are shooting much bigger aperture than 2.8, that much background separation you´ll get with it. I begin to feel that the minimum aperture is not the factor if you want soft and beautiful background blur, it depends on so many issues that I might never understand it properly.

Distortions are also well corrected. I noticed very little barrel distortion on the wide end and on the 70mm a bit pincushion. Nothing too serious. It´s also sharp - at least sharp enough to suit for professional photography. Didn´t see any fringing neither. The best thing is that there are absolutely no vignetting!

Most people were not satisfied the weight of this lens. By 950g. it sure is a big buddy but I think that it´s more positive than negative matter. More weight more steady! Also it looks simply so good with the hood!

This lens is going to be my best friend for everyday usage. It sure is an all around performer!

Red Bull Streetstyle finals @ Helsinki

Job done! Yakill Reyes Ramu was winner and earned a free trip to Cape Town world finals. This guy is actually really talented and motivated so we might hear about him in future.

It was really nice assignment to shoot freestyle soccer. I like combining the urban location and soccer player. These new kind of sports kick ass big time!

Red Bull Streetstyle qualifiers

Sorry for not updating for a long time... Summer is almost over in Finland, autumn is knocking on the door. Right now I am travelling Finland with Red Bull Streetstyle crew. Freestyle soccer might be the next big thing in the world. See some pics and more from official Red Bull site http://www.redbull.com/ Today it´s time for Jyväskylä qualifier @ Karma and 12.9 Helsinki qualifier and finals @ Helsinki Tennispalatsi square.

The end of analog era

The Luminous Landscape published a story or actually more or less a research about how things have changed after the first digital camera was published. It´s written by Christian Sandström who is Ph.D candidate at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Besides the knowledge about technology he is pretty damn enthusiastic about short history of digital era. The story is long, so take care you have some good wine along with you when start to read it!

Btw, I started shooting digital in 2000 and had to sell out all my dear Hasselblads to get enough money for this change from analog to digital. I have to give some props to Lasse Heerman who was working as a CEO in Fotoyks on that time. He said already in 1998 to me, "If you want to make money as a photographer you have to start shooting digital, otherwise you will be out after some years. If you just want to shoot as a hobby then you can shoot analog as long as you ever want..." I have to admit that I denyed it forcefully but understood that after some years. So two words, thanks Lasse.

Shooting golf & fashion

Just finished shoots in Kytäjä Golf. We were doing pics for Rukka`s Golf cataloque and advertisements. Pretty fun job to stay outdoors when the sun is shining and it´s warm enough to weat just a T-shirt! You know it´s usually pretty cold here in Finland and it´s a big deal for us if it´s over 20 degrees of celsius:)

Because of the huge size of Kytäjä golf course I was wondering how to get everything carried to various locations. Well, stupid me, those golf cars are just perfect location vans. Beside the golf bags I attached two lights with stands, two battery powered generators, huge camera backpack and some other stuff.

The shoot itself went pretty good, partly because of these golf cars. It was just sooo... easy to move around the beautiful courses. I am actually thinking to buy this kind of monstertruck for everyday usage. So when you see me with my stuff cruising around Helsinki streets say hello for me:)

Times visual journalism blog - LENS

Just checked out the new promising blog by New York Times. The Lens which they call it will focus on the most interesting, visual and multimedia reporting. It´s a showcase for the Times photographers but also seeks to highlight the best work of other newspapers and magazines.

Most propably it will be one of the major photography blogs in future. Right now it seeems to be a bit confusing and just "an additive" to their main website. Anyways it´s worth to check it out.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/

Positive feelings

Usually working as a professional photographer mean long days, huge amount of pressure and just enough money to get things going on. Usually people think that this is a most interesting job in the world - I guarantee It´s not...

I usually shoot round 100 assignments per year. Most of the pictures are just basic images for certain companies to help their products sell more and more. There is nothing to do with art - as photography is recognized in some cultures.

Time to time you can still catch some beautiful images which gives you positive thoughts and strength to develop yourself as a photographer. Without these all the effort you have put into this job is pointless.

Just got two pics published which gave me this particular positive feeling. A French freestyle skiing magazine WeSki is one of the most interesting mags in the sporting business. They have their unique style to write and choose pics. You have to check it out to understand. Suddenly they chose my picture for the cover. I admit, I am stoked about it because I really like this particular image shot last winter in Ruka Finland.

Secondly Bluewings magazine (Finnair inhouse magazine) published a story about the finnish group gymnastic team Olarin Deltat. I really like the layout of the spread and it also gives nice respect for the picture.

What is a correct camera for me?

Many people ask me yearly what would be the correct camera for general photography. I will always write loooong emails regarding it to various people. So this time I want to give some advices how to pick up a right camera for a certain kind of usage.

1. First you have to think do you just want to document what is happening in your life or do you want to take it seriously and start taking pics as a hobby - it really needs money and time spend if you want to develop yourself as a photographer!

2. If you just want a kind of "partycamera" the best choice is to grab any small camera which is at least, well, let say 6 megapixels version. That´s completely enough for all kind of tourist shots and you can easily exceed the quality of many crappy film cams you might have owned 10 years ago.

3. In the case you want to take this seriously, you obviously and most propably need a SLR digital camera and lenses. This case the stakes will be higher and you have to ensure you´ll have a pretty thick wallet ready for this.

The best option is to check if there are any "outdated" secondhand professional SLR bodies available. Nikon D2x, D200 or Canon Eos 1D MarkII, 30D, 40D could be your best friend for years! These bodies have a fast and accurate autofocus and many options to adjust the picture to make it look better.

But the body and the megapixels doesn´t do the perfect picture automatically for you. You´ll need to spend hundreds of euros for good quality lenses. Usually if the maximum aperture is between 2.8-4.0 and the lens is big and heavy, that´s a first sign that it might be a good piece of glass on your hands. Typically the crappy lenses are lightweight and they feel crappy in every ways. Also the aperture is something between 4.0-5.6 or even worse like 6.3 and thats the reason your pictures in a low light situations will be always dark and full of noise. Most propably you will need one wide angle zoom and tele zoom lens to cover most of your needs.

You also need to get a good backpack or other carrying system for your stuff. You just spend round 1500-3000€ so you dont´want to ruin them immediately. This case you´ll have to check that your incurance covers this equipment at any situations - usually they don´t...

4. Okay, you don´t want to spend so much money for this sport so you might want a simple camera which also offers you some pro adjustments like manual exposure and RAW mode. You might want to check out cams like Nikon P6000 or Canon G10.

These kind of cameras are reasonably small, lightweight (compared SLR system) and can produce really high quality images. Usually it can be challenging to shoot any action or fast moving childs crawling on the floor, but it is doable, it just needs your concentration. The prices of these kind of cameras are round 500€ which is much more reasonable than a complete SLR system.

5. In any case you´ll need to buy Adobe Lightroom to get best out of your pics. Other similar programs are also available but I haven´t used them so I can´t recommend them. You will upload everything into LR catalogue, set keywords, make the adjustments and you are ready to export them in any size and format.

You will have to understand also that the digital world is full of viruses and you should really take care of necessary back up actions. Usually it´s good idea to reserve one RAID1 (mirrored disks) external drive for pics and make monthly back ups of the best images to another locationt than your home.

6. Note: Dont call me and ask "what you think about these cheapest crappy SLR packages with some crappy lenses" my answer is "put your money to something else". And the best of all, I don´t want even show any arguments about this:)

Don´t believe da hype! If some adverts recommend you to buy something, you really should consider it to be a sort of a lie. You should consider all models and retailers available and not just run into Hobbyhall or Wallmart and buy it.

Catch some killer shots!

Surfer beer

Today is a finnish Labour Day when everybody gets wasted - so perfect time to talk about booze:)

Stopp press: finnish brewery Sinebrychoff (Koff) has published a beer called Surfer. This is pretty weird because in Finland we have maybe two hundred "so called surfers" and maybe ten surfers...

It´s weird also if you think general rules of marketing. At least in Finland. Pretty hardcore idea for a brewery to brand a beer for something which just doesn´t exists if the market channel is only Finland.

On the same time if Koff really would like to enter to a international surf community they should push this beer towards the community with substantial marketing budget - it could even work! A beer for surfers, it´s kind of a bad joke but also a simple and "perfectly stupid" idea!

Big ups for the guy who is behind this, hopefully you are going to conclude the branding:)

Ambühl Invitational Film & Photo competition

The action sports scene is now packed of different kind of competition concepts. If you think about a bit how everything started in action sports round 40 years ago, it´s not too hard to understand that these Ride & Film & Photography contests and sessions are the most precious ones nowadays.

The Ambühl Invitational was started by Arosa skicenter. They wanted a late season competition or session made for the skiers to promote their beautiful skicenter and the snowpark Arosa. Soon they teamed up with a local skier Andri Ambühl and Andreas Lanz from D7sports to get everything happen.

Basicly the competition idea is to team up with two riders and put up a smooth short movie after 3-4 days of shooting. There are no pressures between the riders and filmers/photographers. Everybody can just do their best technically and creative ways.

I was teamed up with finnish filmer Aarni Toiviainen and two norwegian riders Klaus Finne and Elvis Harsheim. The norwegian hard working attitude was our savier and Aarnis nice style to do things very smoothly. We decided to skip any special ideas and just make a smooth documentary about what happened - in a film and also in the pictures. That worked out super good and we took the deserved win.

Check out the movie and relax...

ambuhlinvitational.com - TEAM NORWAY from Aarni Toiviainen on Vimeo.

New premises

Two weeks ago I moved the office to new premises in Helsinki. Suvilahti Kaasutehdas is an old gas factory close to Helsinki center. It´s owned by city and the basic idea is to develop the art scene in Helsinki to provide good premises to various artists around. There are painters, writers, photographers, media consultants etc. so the area should be a nice place in future for the people who have something in common. It will be also a home for new circus center Cirko.

Within 5-7 years that area will see a huge development. It might be a startingpoint to something which Helsinki can be proud of. Now it´s bit rough out there but I like it, it feels like home...

Suvilahti Kaasutehdas location

In subzero environment

To be not too tech orienteed my focus is also write about my work as a professional photographer.

I just finalized shootings in the Ruka skicenter which is located near lapland in the northern Finland. Ruka is one of the major skicenters in scandinavia and has also a huge developing process going on.

As I am used to shoot action sports like skiing and cataloque shoots, it was yet challenging but also a fun assignment for me. Within 2,5 days and 28 shooting hours later we had over 2000 pictures to choose from. It´s kind of unusual for me to shoot so much, because I rather plan things first carefully and then shoot. Now the timeline was so hectic that this amount of images was needed.

When shooting in sub zero climate it´s really important to have right clothing and hardware to work with. We begin shooting before the lifts opened and used the skidoos to drag skiers/models up and up again. First day the combined chill effect was -40 degrees (temperature+wind). I guarantee it´s a weather where nobody should not be taking pictures!

People are thinking that shooting skiing or any winter sport is a glamour kind of lifestyle. I can say that it´s complete opposite. In a studio you have to control only your equipment, models etc. so basically you have a complete control of everything. When shooting in harsh environment, something which is already planned beforehand can turn out a real nightmare...

If you want to test your limits and really want to destroy your dear hobby, just begin to shoot that sport:)

iPhone experience

I am a definite mac user. I like how they design their softwares, as user friendly as possible. I haven´t had any serious complaints about Apple products ever since I just bought the iPhone 3G...

Normally when take the Apple product from the package you can use it right away. Or at least you don´t have do any serious install or mounting routines. This wasn´t the case with iPhone. I wanted to mount the sim card to the phone and saw this small hole where it supposed to be, but I didn´t realize how to open it. No instructions anywhere. Even did a fast search in google. Then I just grabbed a paper pin and stuck it in and pulled it out. Okay, pretty simple but could have helped if there would have been a fast guide to show it. Later I found out that there was an Apple paper pin included in the box...

After the first day I still could not put up sms messages so easily if you compare the blackberry or Nokia equivalent E61/71. I knew this before the purchase of course. I think it just take time to get a good relationship with the touchpad gwerty.

I plugged also iPhone to my car stereo and played some music, it was simply marvellous! I just begin to think the situation back in ninetees when I was a junior. I had a cheap Sony Walkman cassette player and I just listened one tape when walking to school. Now you can have one week of music on a smaller player, which actually works as a phone - you know this really is scary. What is the next invention? A teleporting device like in Startrek series?

The internet surfing went really nice with iPhone. It was easy to contact to any free Wi-Fi network. The only thing is that the battery will die really easily when using Wi-Fi.

The sound on the phone is better than any other phone I have had (Nokia phones). It´s maybe even "too clean" and sometimes you just ask in the middle of the conversation "are you still there".

The software needs some developing I think. I don´t actually like the way that everything works. It´s good but it´s not perfect. And I really hate that the best way to use the touchpad is your front finger and not the thumb. I think it looks pretty gay-ish that way.

Also the BIG BIG mistake is that you can´t organize the phones folders like with any computer. Of course you can buy some 3rd party softwares to get iPhone act like a normal external harddrive, but I hate the 3rd party licenses sooo much...

Anyways, Stevie you did good with this phone but you did not it with a perfection the Apple users have used to. If I would give a school rating for this device it goes something like this: build quality 9,5 (hated the paperpin sim card mount), software 7,4 (my average school grade) and trendiness 8,5 (bit gay-ish...)

Is digital world a way for happiness?

I have used digital cameras since 2000. The first model I used was 5 megapixel Canon (don´t remember the model) which was kind of shitty in quality wise but usable for many occasions. In eight years the digital world has evolved so that I nowadays shoot with 21 megapixel bulldog which shoots 5 frames per second. Quite promising right?

Many professional photographers have spent thousands of euros to these partial camera updates between several years. It seems that always when you´ll get a new camera, you have to update the computers and software also. And that means more money for those big companies like Canon, Nikon, Adobe, Apple etc. Their stock market is rising because of us - the stupid customers!

Maybe we aren´t stupid, we just have to keep up with the hi-tech innovations, if we really consider us as "professional photographers"...

My wild guess is that those big manufacturers could have done these modern high resolution "bulldogs" several years ago but they just wanted to exploit the pro consumers by doing the updates little by little.

The proof of this is the RED digital cinema´s new announcement  The RED CEO Jim Jannard is the founder of Oakley sunglasses and nowadays runs RED as he happens to like photography and filmmaking. He sold the Oakley away, founded RED and said "if nobody can´t produce a professional digital cameras maybe I have to do it" and announced immediately a 4K film camera. Recently RED announced the DSMC (digital stills and motion camera) which will be capaple to shoot 65 megapixel frames 50 times per second. Thats a camera which should available now and much reasonable pricetag!