Lightweight, Convenient and Protective

At this year’s Wedding and Portrait Photography International expo, I spent several hours talking to vendors of cameras, equipment, accessories and services. The people at the Think Tank booth, gifted me a small accessory for everyday use.
This accessory goes by an unorthodox name: My 2nd Brain 11. I suppose the name suggests that all of your necessities can be easily kept in this single case. The “11” refers to the size of a tablet or notebook that it can hold, in this instance an 11″ model of either. Load up the case with what you need, throw it over your shoulder and you’re ready to attack the world.
The inner pocket is well padded and provides protection for my iPad. The outer pocket is perfect for holding my cell phone. A non-zippered pocket on the reverse side conveniently holds standard letter-size papers.	The case opens wide and has several elastic-mesh pockets for securely holding pens, business cards, notepads, more. The padded shoulder strap is fully adjustable.
My 2nd Brain 11 comes in black and green. The suggested price of My 2nd Brain 11 is $85. Think Tank also has larger My 2nd Brain cases for 13″ and 15″ tablets or notebooks. For more information, please visit Think Tank.

 

 
Written by: Arnie Lee

 

 

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Innovative New Feature Makes the Eye-Fi Even More Valuable

 

A few months ago, I ran into Ziv Gillat, one of the co-founders of Eye-Fi at a photography trade show. His company developed a set of SD-cards that can send images directly from your digital camera to your personal computer by way of a local wi-fi network.

For background information about these cards, you can read the original review of the Eye-Fi from a few weeks ago here.

Anyway, Ziv was excited to tell me about a new feature that the company was developing. Finally last week, Eye-Fi unveiled a fascinating new capability for any of their X2 series cards. With this free update, the Eye-Fi can now send images directly to a mobile device – either an iPhone, iPad or Android. By itself, this provides an automated way to backup your images. On the mobile device, you’ll need to download and install either an iPhone/iPad app or an Android app. These free mobile apps (also provided by Eye-Fi) receive the images from the Eye-Fi card. The apps provide another very useful feature – they let you resend the images to other online sites. And since they use cellular to upload, the mobile devices replace the personal computer.

To use the new capability which the company calls Direct Mode, I downloaded and installed an update to the included Eye-Fi Center software that is used to configure the SD-card. Using one of the dialogs, I added my iPhone and Android device to my list of supported wi-fi networks. Next I installed the Eye-Fi iPhone app from the iTunes website (and later the Android app from Market) and I was ready to give Direct Mode a try.
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Over the past few weeks we’ve been preparing our popular DSLR Stay Focused Guides for the iPad. Starting today, you can now get any of these five apps immediately through iTunes.

Canon XS Canon XSi Nikon D40 Nikon D60 Nikon D3000 Canon T2i (coming soon) Nikon D5000 (coming soon)

Each app presents dozens of easy-to-follow chapters for taking even better photos. We show you both the “before” and “after” pictures and the fully illustrated camera settings that will turn your snapshots into gallery quality photographs. For the iPad, our full-color, 180-page books with easy-to-use navigation, fast thumbnail access and instant bookmarking for recalling your place give you a very convenient way to take it with you. 

You can purchase any of these apps from iTunes and going to our iPad Apps.

If you’d rather read the printed versions of these books, please click here.