In a never ending search for great resources on Digital Photography, I recently came across this one: The Digital Picture.  Now I'm a Canon guy, and it slants that way, so it suits my 'lifestyle'.  If you're from the Nikon camp, you might like to check out Nikonians. 

There's a great section with detailed reviews on just about every lens you could imagine (for a Canon SLR body).  Their reviews and ratings track very closely with preferences and suggestions that pro photographer friends of mine have made.  So I'll assume they're pretty spot-on here.

You can also find some nice tips for shooting, and understanding what your camera is actually doing.  All in all it's a very nice collection of information about Digital Photography.  Whether you're Canon or not, it's worth a peek and a read.

Have you ever downloaded photos from your camera and started reviewing them, only to notice a little dark spot showing up in the same spot throughout the catalog?  (Check out the photos from the sinking of the Oriskany - you'll see a similar spot to which I speak of.)  Yeah, it's happened to me, and it's really annoying.  

So it's time to check your glass - everything clear there?  Sensor time!  I always get a bit queasy when having to go anywhere near my Sensor, let alone completely exposing it for cleaning purposes.  Since it's essentially the brain behind your camera's abilities, the last thing you want is a scratch, or some piece of dust lodging BEHIND it.

Typically, cleaning options revolve around the blow method.  Puff some air in there and the debris goes whooshing away.  But what if it's something (dust I'll assume) that ends up getting lodged deeper into your camera's innards, as I just mentioned above?  Suddenly your problems are much larger than before.  

Enter Green Clean's touchless solution to the problem.  It sucks.  No really, it's a little vacuum action that actual SUCKS the debris away from the sensor and other sensitive parts of your camera.  There's even a filter to capture the dust and debris, to prevent it from falling back down and settling inside your camera body again!  Very cool.

Since it's nho bigger than a deck of playing cards, you'd think that the Fujifilm FinePix F470 wouldn't be big enough to hold a 6-megapixel CCD sensor, a new digital signal processor, a 3x optical zoom and a large 2.5-inch color LCD monitor. Well, it can.
Let's Go Digital has reviewed this lightweight wonder - let's see how they found it.

With its slim-line aluminum-finish body, the Fujifilm FinePix F470 gets the vote on the looks alone. But what about performance? The FinePix F47 offers an array of optimized automatic photography settings, allowing users to select 10 scene positions via the mode dial. The scene modes include the familiar “Portrait”, “Sport”, “Landscape” and “Night” settings, as well as more defined settings such as “Beach and Snow”, “Sunset”, “Museum”, “Party”, “Flower Close-Up” and “Text”. The Manual mode enables photographers to control the image quality at will.

The large 2.5-inch color LCD has an automatic gain-up that senses low-light and brightens to compensate. Live image from the LCD can be further brightened with a manual control, a big help when shooting in dimly lit places.

The 3x Fujinon lens has a focal length range of 35-105mm, typical of most cameras in its class, but FinePix F470 is able to produce good center sharpness throughout its zoom range. The downside is that it showed a noticeable amount of barrel distortion at full wide angle, but little pin cushioning at telephoto. Some shots have also exhibited chromatic aberrations, with purple fringing evident in high contrast areas. Well, that's not a good thing. But overall, the F470's shooting performance is up to par. The reviewer concludes:

The F470's shooting performance is good. From power-on till the first image was captured measured under just over 2 seconds. I was happy with the quality of the Fujifilm F470's 6M Fine mode. Indoors it produced pleasing portrait shots, with good flash exposure and natural skin tones, but the flash red eye reduction mode was only marginally effective. The F470's review mode is useful for field-checking your results, providing up to 4.4x magnification for critical examination.