Touted as the “most powerful tool for creating professional quality black and white images from your photographs”, Nik Software’s Silver Efex is the latest in a growing series of plugins for both Photoshop and Apple’s Aperture. As an owner of several of those plugins, Dfine, Viveza, and Color Efex Pro, and as a photographer rather infatuated with the beauty of black and white conversions, I couldn’t resist trying out Silver Efex Pro. “The most powerful tool” is a hefty claim and given the multiple ways of doing black and white conversions inside of your existing software, be it Lightroom, Photoshop, or Aperture, justifying the $199 purchase for Silver Efex is difficult. So the obvious question is, “is it worth it” ? The answer for me is a resounding yes. For my money Silver Efex is the easiest and most visceral way to convert images into black and white, and allows for the most creative possiblities of all the methods I’ve tried. In addition, Nik has well integrated Silver Efex into both Photoshop and Aperture. In the Photoshop version, adjustments made in Silver Efex can be brought back into Photoshop as smart filters and in Aperture, it is an easy task to process multiple images through Silver Efex at one time. Regardless of the version, Silver Efex is easy to use, and smartly set up. Here’s how it works….

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Scott Kelby’s books are like Photoshop’s smart sharpen filter for your brain. They aren’t hard to digest, easy to reference, and have the distinct ability to make things that may have been a little fuzzy in your head, much clearer. And so it is with The Digital Photography Book vol. 2, Scott Kelby’s sequel to the “must have in your camera bag” book, The Digital Photography Book. Written in the same “pro over your shoulder” style that is trademark Kelby at this point, The Digital Photography Book vol. 2 picks up were the first volume left off, covering a range of slightly more advanced topics such as flash photography, setting up your own studio, and travel photography. In addition there are other chapters that add some meat to things covered already in the first volume, like shooting landscapes, portraits and further still, chapters covering macro, and wedding photography and more, honestly lots and lots more.

While the chapter titles may seem exceedingly generic, the information contained within is definitely not. Because of Kelby’s writing style and intended purpose of this book (…”show me how to do it”), the chapters don’t break into a long winded explanations of all the technical aspects of (for example) the hows and whys a flash works, instead Kelby prefers short and direct passages that tell you what you need, or what to do, and sometimes even more helpful, what exactly to buy. This isn’t to say that The Digital Photography Book vol. 2 (or any Kelby book for that matter) is light on information, on the contrary, literally every page has some golden nugget of information, it’s just that Kelby manages to boil it all down to the most relevant bit of information you need to know. A typical and actual example is “how to shoot lightning manually” followed by the actual settings your camera should be set to all in about about a half a page of text. Multiply that by one hundred, and you begin to get an idea of just how useful this book is.

One more thing, while it may be easy to dismiss this book as strictly oriented to the learning (”noob”) photographer, it is in fact exceedingly relevant to a broad range of skill levels behind the camera. I can assure you, even if you are more than the casual weekend photographer, this book will be still be incredibly useful. As I said at the beginning, I love Kelby’s books because in addition to providing some insights into how a pro works and shoots, they also help reinforce what you already know. Not to mention, The Digital Photography Book vol. 2 (and vol. 1) provide a very handy reference guide to have close by. Regardless of experience level, like its predecessor, The Digital Photography vol.2 is a highly recommended must have.

Available at Amazon:The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2

If you want to make an amazing addition to your camera bag and you don’t want to burn a lot of cash, I have the perfect solution for you. It’s called a 50mm prime, and the one you want, if you’re on a budget, is the f/1.8. If you’re a Canon shooter, the lens you want is the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, which generally runs about $90, and if you’re a Nikon shooter, the lens of choice here is the Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm F/1.8D AF, which costs about $115. Before I continue, yes there are better lenses in the 50mm prime category, but we’re working on a budget here, and none will give you the bang for the buck that these two lenses do. If you do have a little extra cash you could opt for the f/1.4 versions, they will triple your cost (still cheap) but give you a little extra speed, a definite improvement in build quality (especially with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8), but honestly not a huge improvement in optical quality. Still if you are currently using a kit lens, either one of these lenses will bring a noticable improvement to your picture taking. Here’s why:

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Sunsets (thumbnail courtesy SqueakyMarmot ). It’s hard to imagine a more spectacular time of day to take photographs than when the sun starts to set. With their incredibly rich colors, and dramatic abstraction of the everyday, sunsets are naturally appealing to most folks even if for the simple reason of we simply don’t see the world this way for the majority of the day (if at all). It’s no surprise then, that most photographers will at some point try their hand at capturing a sunset. Unfortunately, it often is not as easy as you’d imagined. The huge dynamic range of sunsets often will wreck havoc with your camera’s metering, leaving you with blown highlights, or shadows with no detail. Luckily, there are some things you can do with your digital SLR camera (and possibly point and shoot compact) to help you take home some spectacular sunset photographs of your own. We’ll tell you how, after the jump…

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