May 16, 2010 – The Austin Photo Expo hosted this past weekend by Precision Camera & Video was a tremendous success. This demonstrated yet another way that a local camera store that truly supports local photographers is such a tremendous asset to the community.

The Austin Photo Expo was a two day event with a great lineup of speakers and a variety of vendors. The price for attendees? FREE!
It would have been well worth paying a price to attend, but Precision Camera made sure this was a free event for photographers! What a gift to the community! Thank you Precision Camera & Video and the other event sponsors!!

While you can certainly shop around and find the cheapest price out there on the Internet for a camera or lens, that “savings” does not truly translate into a good value for your money. Sure you may shave off a few dollars here and there by Internet shopping the lowest price, BUT think about the value of supporting a LOCAL camera store.

I am a professional photographer here in Austin with a full service studio and I also teach classes and workshops. It is a tremendous value to my business to have a local store that supports me when I have a problem with a piece of equipment, and is a short drive away when I suddenly need something NOW.

Dealing with a local business who cares about me because I am part of the local photography community who in turn supports them, is way different than dealing with some place online in another state who doesn’t know me, and doesn’t really care who I am at all. Plus, all of your dealings with one of those mail-order places in New York involves shipping items back and forth.    Having Precision Camera & Video here in Austin is great.   I can drive down there and actually look at items, hold them, see how they feel and work before buying. That’s way different from looking at catalog photos on some website.

Supporting a great local camera store like Precision Camera is worth it because of what you get BEYOND just the equipment. It’s these other benefits that you should keep in mind.

In case you’re wondering, no one paid me to say this. In fact no one even asked me to say this. I am saying it simply because I believe it.

It would be a truly sad day for Austin if those cheap impersonal camera stores in New York and New Jersey and other places drove a great camera store like Precision Camera out of business by just competing by price alone. Precision Camera offers us something more right here in Austin, Texas.

Sometimes Precision Camera & Video has prices that are very competitive with “New York prices” and sometimes not. Even when they’re not the lowest price, I encourage you to remember these other benefits when you “buy local”. Never look at price as the bottom line. Always consider the benefits and value you truly get.

Thank you Precision Camera & Video for hosting the 2nd Annual Austin Photo Expo and thank you for simply being in Austin!

Kevin Gourley
Kevin Gourley Photography – Austin, TX

http://www.KevinGourley.com

http://www.facebook.com/KevinGourleyPhotography

http://www.facebook.com/AustinPhotographyClasses

If you live in central Texas and you love photography, make plans to attend the Austin Photo Expo on May 15th and 16th! With excellent seminars, all for FREE, this is THE place to be!

More info:
http://www.austinphotoexpo.com

Adobe Lightroom 3.0 has been in Beta test for while now, and Beta 2 has arrived!   The newest version has some great added features!   One feature is native tethered shooting, where Lightroom talks directly to your camera rather than having to point to a folder to watch with the Auto Import feature.    I tried out this feature last night, and it worked great!  I just ran into one small problem where it stopped working and I had to restart the program, but hey, it’s a beta release!

Here’s a quick summary of what Adobe says they have added in Lightroom 3.0 Beta 2:

• Improved performance throughout the application for faster importing and loading of images
• Native tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon DSLR cameras
• Luminance noise reduction has been added to the previous color noise reduction improvements available in the first public beta for outstanding overall high ISO quality
• Support for importing and managing video files from DSLR cameras for better overall photographic workflow control
• Improvements to the import experience in the first beta to reflect public feedback
• Improved watermarking functionality from the first beta to reflect public feedback

Want to try it out?  Here’s the link:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/