Play Ball!
Less than 10 bucks gets you a bat bag made to hold up to two baseball bats. Less than 34 inches long, one of these bags can also be used to carry a tripod or lightstand. Available in many sporting goods stores, they have carrying straps with clips that let you hook them onto a fence or peg board. There's also room for a small camera bag and an extra pocket for loose photo gear.
Jim Beatty
O'Fallon, IL
Paging Batman
The backing boards for preserving comic books are a handy way to stiffen photo mailing envelopes. Typically 6.75x10.5 inches, the lightweight boards are inexpensive and come in large bundles at comic book shops. They can be trimmed to size for small envelopes or taped together for large mailers -- perfect for mailing contest submissions or sending photos to relatives. And unlike cardboard, they're acid-free, so they're good for both short- and long-term storage.
Dennis Divine
Joplin, MO
A better way
Debbie Grossman answered a reader's query (October 2006) concerning how to batch-convert RAW files into JPEGs small enough to e-mail conveniently. There's an even easier and cheaper way for Windows XP users -- use Picasa 2. You can't beat the price (free) and it reads almost all popular RAW formats. Download it from Google, open it, hit Control and click the pictures you want to send, then click the e-mail button at the bottom of the screen. The program automatically attaches JPEGs at about 25K to messages sent from almost any e-mail program.
Neil Kurtzman
Via e-mail
Got a tip, trick, or technique? E-mail it to us at PopTips@hfmus.com. Readers whose tips we publish will receive a special-edition Popular Photography & Imaging Tamrac Photo-Video 1 Model 5201 camera bag. See this SLR-sized bag at www.PopPhoto.com.
|
