Mark told you that the Nikon D4 was finally announced, but they also announced an 85mm f1.8 lens at $500.  A lens that will give you lots of speed and creamy bokeh for relatively few dollars.

Canon announced their high-end compact, the G1x.  It shoots RAW; 1080p video; and has a 28-112mm zoom.  It will compete with Nikon’s 1 (although the Canon doesn’t have inter-changeable lenses) and the Fuju X100 (also fixed lens).  Go read Google News about all the photo gadgets that are being introduced in Vegas this week.

But the photo world wasn’t just buzzing over the neat new hardware….  Adobe announced the public beta of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.  There are some major changes, including a revamped Develop panel; a Map panel that connects to Google Earth and let’s you geo-tag any image; and a Book panel to create your own Blurb photobooks.  You can download it here; there is no cost to try it.

I’ve been playing with it all week on some recent photos, and I’m already hooked on the improvements.  It is still a Beta, so you only want to use it on copies of your photographs.  You will probably experience some slowness and crashes, but this is normal in a Beta.  They’ll have that taken care of in the final release.  When does the final release come out?   They haven’t announced that, but the Beta expires on 31 March.  (Isn’t that less than a week after Photoshop World?  Hmmmm.)

You can bet we’ll blog about all the features when it comes out, but let me show you a couple of examples of the new Develop panel.  I really love the changes here.

Here is the York Minster.  A blah sky provides enough light to create a common problem – the camera meter averages the scene, and my sky is too bright and the church is too dark.

In Lightroom 3, I would globally lighten the church and then use the adjustment brush to bring down the brightness of the sky.  This isn’t difficult, but it will take a few minutes of brushing to get the sky the way I want it.

In Lightroom 4, I moved few sliders to give much better results in seconds.  The corrections were so fast, I used the lens correction to minimize the image distortion and still had a much better image in less than one minute.

The clouds have more definition; you can see details in the towers; and the exposure is fixed.  The transformation is really something to watch as you move the sliders.  Of course, I could do this in Photoshop, but that would take even longer.

I had to try it one more time.

Wow!  I really like the way shadow detail can be revealed.  You should download the program and give it a try.  This new Lightroom is going to be fun.

The GP-1 measures about two inches square and fits neatly onto your hotshoe or can be attached to a camera strap.  Its operation is simple: plug the cable into the camera via the 10-pin remote terminal cable; turn the camera on; and wait for the LED to turn green.  In my experience, this takes less than a minute, but I’ve seen reports stating times up to two minutes.  It’s even faster after you’ve taken a few shots and turn the camera off to walk to another location, and then turn it back on at your new spot.  Here I’ve seen times as fast as five seconds.  Power comes from the camera battery, so there are no worries there.

I like to travel and geotagging has always been fun for me.  There are other methods to geotag images using separate GPS devices, but why would I want to go through all those extra steps when I can insert the data directly from the camera?  Once the data is attached to the metadata, you need a way to access it.  You can use my favorite application, Adobe’s Lightroom; the free Nikon software, NXView; or Apple Aperture.

Once you have imported the photos into Lightroom, you can find the information in the Metadata section of the Library module, located on the right side panel.  Any photo with the GPS metadata will display it here.

If you click on the arrow to the right of the lat/long, it will take you to a Google Maps page displaying your location when the picture was taken.  Click here to see where this image takes you.  Ain’t that neat?

When I post images with GPS data to my PBase account (www.pbase.com/radjr), you will see a notation under the image title.  Once again, you will be taken to a map of the photo’s location. This one was taken in Aruba.  Many other photo sites also have this capability.  The larger photo sites (Flickr, PBase, and others) give you the ability to geotag a photo after you upload it to their site.  If you have an account there (they’re free), you, too, can join in the geotagging excitement.

The GP-1 lists for $199.95, but you can get it for  much less than that by looking around at several photography equipment retailers.  Is it worth it?  It is for me.  You’ll have to decide for yourself.  It provides another way to have fun with your photography.

We talked a little about traveling with your camera back in July.  I have two Tenba camera bags – one large and one small.  This time I took the small one for the day trips and got on the airplane with my Tamrac roll-away.  The roll-away allowed me to keep my gear with me on the plane, and it was easier to get onto the boat.  With proper packing, I had my camera and all my lenses, with my computer and two external hard drives for backup.  My tripod and monopod were packed in my suitcase.  I was ready to go.  Here is the Tamrac.

We stopped at Holland America’s leased island, Half Moon Cay, the next day.  I shot a few photos as I walked around the island.  There really wasn’t much there that wasn’t directly intended for fun, fun, fun – a bar, beach chairs, and kiosks for necklaces or t-shirts.  Since we were on one of the first boats to the island, there were very few folks there, allowing me to shoot images of the area without too much worry about people walking through my scene.

This was the least interesting part of the trip, since the little island provided very little of interest if you weren’t there for a swim and some tasty libations.  I headed back to the ship to play with the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta.  Maybe I can have some fun playing with its new features.  I’ll let you know what I find there in the near future.