Back from a bit of a break I thought I'd share some thoughts about free stuff (almost free), Apple iMovie 09.

On this latest trip then I shot a variety of pictures and cameras with a view to make a short multimedia movie of the holiday. Also travelling light I took an older MacBook as it's smaller and lighter. I used iMovie 09 whilst away to build up the story of the trip mixing video from a Digital IXUS, EOS and a video camera plus stills from the IXUS and EOS too. End result is something that the family appreciates and means we can get a feeling of the holiday in about 10 minutes maximum.

The key here is that iMovie 09 is free with a Mac and only around fifty pounds if you have to update from an older edition. In my view Apple cut too much out of iMovie 08 in the drive to make it simpler, iMovie 09 is really a great option and leaves me wondering how Apple will continue to sell Final Cut Express, iMovie 09 is really that good.

 

If you use an Apple MAC and have OS-X 10.5 then most likely you've been running 10.5.6 lately, but now 10.5.7 is now available to download and if you didn't get it already do so...

In MAC OS 10.5.6 Apple seemingly broke the tethered shooting functions making it very tough for users to shoot with cameras connected to the laptop. Typical symptoms include freezing of the whole computer, lock up of DPP or EOS Utility or similar. Usually it happens after around 15 minutes of continuous tethering, sometimes after 20 or more images have been transferred. MAC OS-X 10.5.7 seems to fix this, though there's no mention of fixes to USB on the <a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3397">update release notes</a>.

To try it out we hooked up an EOS-1D Mark III and left it in live view mode for over 30 minutes it was still all alive and working and we could then pick the camera up and shoot a couple of hundred frames straight in to the MAC; just like you could do with MAC OS-X 10.5.5.

One thing that 10.5.7 brings is<a href="http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1475"> support for RAW images from EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 50D and PowerShot G10</a> according to the release note information.