Free Photography e-books and magazines

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ebooklets/e_ultimate_photo_guide.pdf

http://www.photographybb.com/magazine/

http://www.photographymonthly.com/Magazine/Downloads

http://cameraobscura.ro/category/editions/

http://www.pbase.com/magazine

Autumn

The world will miss...

...One of the few people who clearly knew what to do.

Some visual experiments

Como - The Cathedral

The ball is mine!
Sony 35mm f/1.8

Canon 500D Close-up Lens #1

Canon 500D Close-up Lens #2

Como - Tower of Baradello
Sigma 18-250 HSM 

Sigma 18-250 HSM

Sony 35mm f/1.8

The big picture: Sigma 18-250 HSM vs Tamron 18-270 PZD for Sony

Side-by-side comparison courtesy of dpreview

There are 4 feasible "super zoom" lenses.
The most recent are the Sigma 18-250 HSM and the Tamron 18-270 PZD.

There are some reviews, but no real head-to-head testso it's seriously difficult to compare the alternatives; to make things worse, the Tamron PZD model replaced an analogous (but fundamentally different) screw-drive lens with a similar name, so many reviews actually describe the old model.

I will quote below some paragraphs that I found interesting, with some notes in color and some highlights.

To mirror or not to mirror?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-07/canon-clinging-to-mirrors-means-opportunity-for-sony-cameras.html

A Canon lens for my Sony Camera

Canon 77 Close-up Lens 500D, for Lenses 70mm to 300mm, Double Element

The 500D close-up lens incorporates a double-element achromatic design for maximum optical performance. It changes the closest focusing distance from infinity to 500mm.
It has the same mount as a 77mm filter, so it can fit on the Sony 70-400, with some interesting results:

http://forums.dpreview.com/galleries/8878319148/photos/547510/ladybird