Rich Creamery Goodness

According to Digital Photography Review: “Adobe has updated its DNG digital negative specification to allow a series of image corrections to be embedded in the file. Version 1.3 of the non-proprietary RAW file format allows a series of ‘corrections and enhancements’, which Adobe is calling opcodes, to be defined in DNG files. These opcodes include the ability to specify corrections for lens aberrations such as geometric distortion and lateral chromatic aberration that should be made to the RAW data when it’s processed.”

As I’ve written here in the past, the lack of Apple’s ability to support this in their RAW support led me to sell my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. With the advent of newer, better cameras in smaller formats (the new Olympus E-P1 also performs “image correction” internally and presumably would need such processing in RAW workflows) I think this will become more commonplace rather than less.

This brings to mind a number of discussions I’ve read lately about the evolution of camera components and technology. Specifically with regard to the DSLR world. “Back in the day” the camera was essentially a box that held film on one side and glass on the other. Besides convenience and operational features, as long as the box could reliably open the shutter for a predetermined length of time with some accuracy, that’s all that it needed to do. Therefore, a photographers investment could focus more on the two components that could make the biggest difference: the lens and the film. The lens was an investment in image quality, usefulness, clarity, composition, etc. The film was an investment in speed, signal to noise, aesthetics, white balance, etc.

Nowadays the film has become the sensor, and the sensor is built into the camera body. Until we get swappable camera electronics (RED?) an investment in a camera body has a huge effect on how we work and how that work looks. Glass is still of course glass, but with camera bodies (and external software) compensating for (and enhancing) lens performance, the entire SYSTEM becomes more important than ever.

From subject to lens to sensor to storage to post processing - any one affect the other and the results we achieve.

We live in an exciting and complicated time.

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I thought I would start a series of my own observations on simple, and complex things that come up for me in photography.

I woke up this morning feeling less than well. I had a fever all night and didn’t get much sleep and so I decided to call in sick. After napping a bit I surfed the internet as usual when I woke up and saw that President Obama would be landing at LAX today. LAX is about five minutes from my house and I wondered if I would be able to see Air Force One from my house. Probably not.

I did a little research and found that his schedule had him arriving at LAX at 1:35 pm and I debated with myself whether or not to try to drive down there and get a picture. Given as close as I live to the airport, it’s surprising that I really haven’t found any remarkable locations for shooting air traffic there. Any point of view of the entire airport would really require a longer lens than I own and still require a bit of luck.

However, just south of me is a Home Depot store that I frequent and it is notable in that there is a constant stream of landing traffic that passes only hundreds of feet over the parking lot - gear down, flaps out. Now LAX has four major runways, but if the plane was going to land on 24R, the north-most landing strip, its path would take it directly over my local home center. One-in-four that it would pass overhead.

I debated all morning, considering how I was feeling and all, but I knew I had to get out at sometime to get juice and other sick supplies (my damn cat is too lazy to help out, even when I’m sick). I did a little research and found the the LAX tower frequencies (you can even listen to tower traffic over the internet - pretty cool) and plugged them into my scanner. Then I checked my camera. I mounted my 70-200 f/2.8 with my 1.7x teleconverter and remembering the air show I shot a couple weekends ago and knowing that I would want to keep my shutter speed up to get as sharp a shot as possible (there would be plenty of light) I set my camera to shutter-priority (I’m usually and aperture-priority guy) and made sure my shutter speed was at least as fast as one over my focal length (340mm in the case of my longest zoom on this combo). I also changed my focusing mode to continuous 3D tracking. This would be a moving target. I threw my rig in the car and headed out to the store, by way of Home Depot.

It only takes about five minutes to get there from my place - one exit south of me on the 405, I don’t even have to leave the exit ramp. I circled the parking lot and found an empty spot in the lot between a couple of trees. From my past experience I thought that I had a clear shot of the flight path, and I saw a small dot far on the horizon which, I figured, was a landing commercial airliner I could take a practice shot on. Knowing odds were against me that this would be the landing trajectory, I wasn’t too anticipatory, until, strangely enough, I found myself asking myself, what airline sported a medium blue and white paint scheme?

Holy crap!

My odds paid off. This was it. I threw off my sunglasses and lifted the camera. I had all of 8 seconds to fire off about 8 frames of the approaching aircraft. I was shaking when it was over, realizing how close this had come to one of those “damn I missed that shot!” occasions.

What did I learn today? Be prepared. If I hadn’t preset my camera for my expected circumstances, if even on a basic level, I would have been where I left off yesterday, shooting in manual, low ISO, and single point focus with a wide-angle lens. My shots turned out good, not great. I stll was in low ISO (100). Not a problem for light, but a higher ISO would have forced my aperture a bit smaller, putting it in a sharper range for that lens. My images are a little soft. I also had a little more noise than I would have liked. My camera peaks its signal to noise at ISO 200. I might have had better results there. I also would have liked to be in high-speed continuous shooting mode, but that’s not really that big of a deal, this camera fires really fast in single shot anyway.

But overall, if I had just grabbed my bag and gone I would have arrived with a 10-20mm lens on my D300 in manual mode and single point autofocus. Not realizing the plane approaching as I pulled up was the one, I would have had to get out my teleconverter and long zoom, swap gear and setup my camera. By that time it would have been long gone. In this case it really helped to think a minute and prepare, even before I left the house.

Oh, and as an aside, this plane was a little earlier than I expected. I guess there’s no way I’ll know if this was really Air Force One or the backup (they always fly two, only the one with the President on board is referred to as Air Force One) but I like to think that Obama was inside. Besides, I doubt that President Obama has to worry too much about his plane being late.

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I wrote in my last post how my Geotagging workflow has evolved. For some time, I had been using an external GPS logging device (AMOD AGL3080). The device is super simple to use and simply records your location, adding a data point at intervals you select, and saves them in a standardized text file. I then used a piece of software to match up the time/date stamps on my images with the tracklog data and write the location data to the IPTC data of the image file.

Easy enough, but a multi-step process nonetheless and requires the use of a batch-tagging application before importing the images into my management software (Aperture). Heaven forbid I should want to tag the images after I had imported them into Aperture. That was just a PITA - until Maperture Pro came along. But that was yesterday’s post.

What if the camera wrote the location directly to the image BEFORE it left the camera? That certainly would be ideal, and camera’s like ’s Coolpix P6000 do just that. But I use a D300.

The Nikon camera line (at least the higher-end models) have included location tagging capability for quite a while, but the hardware involved was cumbersome to say the least. Cameras like the Nikon D300 (D200, D700, D3, D3x, etc.) all have a Nikon proprietary 10-pin port that allows for attaching devices like remote releases. This port can also receive data from an external device like a GPS. In the past, Nikon manufactured the MC-35 GPS cable ($164.00!!!) that connected this 10-pin DIN connector to a 9-pin serial connector. Yes, I said 9-pin serial connector. So, if your GPS device was made in the last decade you could (probably with ANOTHER a cable proprietary to your GPS device) take the serial output of the GPS and connect it to the serial input of the Nikon cable. A workable solution and nicely enough, the Nikon camera could see this data, indicate its status on the display and tag the images with the location. Workable, but ugly. Spaghetti central. Clumsy. Non-elegant.

Fortunately several manufacturers saw the opportunity here and produced their own Nikon-specific GPS devices. In addition, there was no shortage of clever DIY-ers coupling off- the shel GPS modules with Radio Shack project boxes and third-party eBay Nikon cables to come up with a more elegant solutions. I had considered doing the DIY thing myself, but by the time I was ready to take the plunge, the cost of ready-made units had approached the parts cost. Indeed word spread of Nikon introducing their own GPS unit as well, and thus I decided to wait until the field cleared up a bit.

In the third party world, the first GPS unit of this type that seemed well-recommended by the internets that I encountered was the Geotagger N2 (or it’s earlier variants) sold through Nikonians.org and others. At $250 plus shipping it is a little more than an impulse buy and there were other options. After comparing some of the lesser-priced models (which may essentially be rebranded versions of the same thing - I don’t know) I had essentially narrowed my search down to the Macsense Geomet’r brand tagger for Nikon cameras at about $150. At $150 bucks I could justify the purchase and rationalize the convenience factor (vs. my AMOD workflow) for the price. However, I knew Nikon had something in the works and I figured I’d wait.

Nikon introduced the Nikon GP-1 GPS unit about the time of the release of the D90 camera. It offers not only compatibility with the 10-pin equipped Nikons, but the newer D90 (and D5000) via an interchangeable cable. It looked like the thing to have, and I waited to see where the street price would fall. At the time that I was ready to take the plunge, the GP-1 sold on Amazon for about $250 - about the same price as the higher of the aftermarket units that I had been considering, but $100 more than the non-OEM unit I had settled on. With that, I headed off to Amazon and searched for Nikon GPS and found something new (at least to me). There was a new player on my list, the Promote GPS-N-1.

The Promote GPS looks just about like any of the others. It’s a square block that sits in the hot shoe via a plastic foot (there is no electrical connection to the camera via the hotshoe) or (as I have done with velcro) can hang loose and attach to your camera strap. It connects to the Nikon camera via a short length of cord and the aforementioned 10-pin plug. It’s not nearly as sexy looking as Nikon’s own unit, but it seems to work well. In this review I’ll make some comparisons to Nikon’s GP-1 solely based on my research of the various units on the market. I have no first hand experience with Nikon’s GPS.

The Promote has a power on/off switch to force the unit off (it is powered from the camera batteries themselves) to avoid draining your camera when not in use. This is its only control. Simply plug the unit into your camera, turn it on, and look a the GPS indicator on the top of your camera. When it is flashing, the GPS is acquiring its location, when solid it knows where it is. Pretty simple.

In my own home I find the Promote GPS can lock on to its location in about 30-40 seconds without much trouble. Mileage may vary in different situations, as I am usually near a window throughout most of my house. Outdoors it is the same and quite tolerable. Once the GPS is on and functioning, it is very quick to acquire a signal if it loses it (while traveling through a tunnel, or in a larger building, for example) and remains active as long as the camera is on if configured to do so. Shutting off the power on the camera or the power on the GPS itself will require re-acquiring the signal. In my experience this never requires more than 30-40 seconds, provided a signal is available.

One nice feature of the Promote GPS-N-1 that I don’t believe you’ll find in the Nikon unit or any but the higher-priced aftermarket units is its ability to hold a position. Whereas most GPS units I’ve seen provide no data when they have lost signal, the Promote GPS will hold the last acquired location until it can regain a new satellite connection. This is particularly nice if you find yourself moving in and out of buildings and the like. You may not be able to pinpoint your location inside of Fort Knox, but at least you’ll be able to locate the building you burgled those gold bars from! As far as I know, this seems to be one of the often reported drawbacks of the Nikon GP-1 system. The loss of acquisition and thus the loss of any data whatsoever. And, as I mentioned before, the Promote GPS seemed really good at acquiring a signal inside of many buildings. Something I don’t see very often in other reports.

It is interesting to see how Nikon has addressed the use of these devices in cameras made even before they produced their own unit. The D300 menus have a GPS option that will display the location when the unit is attached - yet another affirmation that everything is working properly. Also, Nikon addresses power usage with these attached devices as well. The Nikon cameras essentially supply power to the external port anytime the meter is active. In the GPS menu, the user can select whether or not to automatically shut off the meter (and thus the power supply to the GPS) after some interval or to leave it on as long as the camera is powered on. With a GPS device attached, turing off the Auto Power Off option will prevent the GPS from shutting off on and having to re-acquire a signal when the meter wakes up (i.e. a half-press on the shutter).

Given that the GPS draws its power from the camera battery, it is reasonable to consider how that affects battery consumption. I usually use my D300 with an on-board EN-EL3a battery as well as the MB-D10 battery grip filled with NiMH AA cells. In that configuration, I can practically shoot forever. I carry my D300 with me every day and rarely think about charging my battery - maybe every couple weeks or so. Things are different with the GPS installed - different, but not debilitating.

On a particularly active couple of days, shooting sports with the GPS in constant use, I can drain the battery grip in 8-10 hours of shooting. I’ve never had the camera go dead on me, as it reverts to the internal LiON battery when the grip goes flat, but it does make sense to have an extra battery around (which I almost always do anyway). If I was trapped on a desert island and somehow my camera was my only source of life support I’d probably take it off of the camera, otherwise I’d just plan on charging my batteries every few days instead of every few weeks.

The Promote GPS is not without its drawbacks. Having this little brick on your hotshoe all the time isn’t always the most ideal scenario. The plastic shoe (and thumbscrew) result in an adequate, but not failsafe, mounting system. It’s possible to knock the device out of the shoe and I would be careful not to overtighten the plastic thumbwheel on the plastic screwthreads. The device is light enough and solid enough that I wouldn’t expect it to fall out, but nevertheless it would be nice to see it just a little more secure. Unlike the Nikon GP-1, Promote provides no facility for attaching the GPS to your camera strap. I engineered my own solution, as I am fortunate to use a Lowepro camera strap with a built-in patch of velcro near the end of one side. A strip of my own self-adhesive mating velcro on the bottom of the GPS unit holds it securely to the strap and out of the way. I also like the fact that the cable is only about 6″ in length. Long enough to comfortably plug into the camera from either the strap or the hotshoe without being so long as to prove cumbersome.

I’m not a big fan of the plug that Promote has chosen to terminate the cable. The Nikon 10-pin receptacle is robust in that it provides for screw threads that allow a ring on the mating plug to securely tighten down, holding the connection in place. Even my cheap eBay cable release has a threaded metal ring to assure that the plug won’t fall out of the camera. unfortunately, the Promote GPS uses an all-plastic plug without any means of locking into the camera. On more than one occasion I found the plug backed out of the camera just enough to lose connection and shut down the GPS. It has left me nervously in the habit of squeezing the plug into the connector on occasion - almost subconsciously. The fit is tight, but it is possible to snag the cable and pull out the plug or have it work lose. I really wish they had used the screw-lock mechanism built into the camera.

Lastly, and this is the case with many of the accessories available for the 10-pin connector on the camera, you can only use one device at a time. Nikon had the forethought to include a secondary connector on their GP-1 for the use of a remote cable release. Granted it doesn’t work with the more sophisticated Nikon remote releases, but at least there’s an option. With the Promote GPS plugged in, there’s no option to use a remote cable release - at least not without a specialized (and expensive) 10-pin Y-cable. Back to spaghetti! I suppose in cases where a cable release is important - landscapes with the camera locked down on a tripod and the like - it would be reasonable to pop on the GPS for a reference shot to get the location and then to remove it for the bulk of the shoot. But that’s a little cumbersome and not ideal. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I get frustrated by it.

All in all the Promote GPS-N-1 is, for me, the best option for an add-on GPS for the Nikon DSLR family. At it’s core it is fast and functional and has as good GPS performance as can be expected. Perhaps it is not as convenient as the Nikon OEM GPS, but all-in-all it’s a solid performer.

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I’ve been interested in Geotagging for quite some time now. I won’t say that I tag everything, but I’m horrible at adding tags and sorting my photos and it sure is nice to have just one more way to find that one image I am looking for or perhaps refresh my feeble mind as to the location of the image. I wrote some time ago about my Geotagging workflow using the wonderful HoudahGeo application. HoudahGeo is a great app that will take a bunch of images from a folder, mate them up with Google Maps or a tracklog from a GPS device and write the location data to the EXIF. Pretty straight forward and simple. One problem. I’m lazy.

I wanted an application that could tag my images right inside of Aperture. I like to import my images directly from my CF cards into Aperture and the HoudahGeo workflow required an intermediate copy and tag process before ever getting into Aperture. Heaven forbid I might want to tag after the fact. In which case I would have to drill down into the Aperture Library package and find the desired image and load that file into HoudahGeo. If I wanted to do a bunch of images it was even harder, since Aperture encases every master file in its own folder with its metadata. No easy processing of a group of images since I had to open every folder and drag in each desired image on its own.

Some time ago, an application called Maperture from Übermind Software popped up, promising to allow Geotagging of images inside the Aperture application. Hallelujah! I cried, no more intermediate steps.

I was not so delighted upon trying it. I suppose maybe I’m too sophisticated, but it seems that many location tagging applications presume that you want to look at an image, remember where you took it, and use Google Maps or Google Earth to pin it to the map. Whoaaa there buddy! That’s way too much work. The entire reason I want geotagging is that I can never remember where I’ve been in the first place! I want either my camera to do the work for me (more on that in another post) or I want to let some little cool gadget keep track of where I’ve been and then I want it to tell my computer where I was at the time of any given image. It sounds simple. It took a little to get there, however.

Shortly after I discovered Maperture, I sadly realized that it never really addressed the whole tracklog issue. It did really nothing more than Apple was able to achieve in its later update to iPhoto: if you were lucky enough to own one of the few cameras with GPS built in (or have an integrated device on your camera - but that’s another post) then the application will pin it on the map. Otherwise, do it yourself.

I own a little GPS dongle from AMOD that is as simple as it gets. I’ve written about it before, but very simply you turn it on, it acquires data, you turn it off. Plug it into USB and you can copy the data off in a standardized text file. Easy Peasy - or so you would think.

When I met with my initial disappointment over the early version of Maperture, I contacted Übermind about the inclusion of tracklogs in future versions. Some time thereafter, I was fortunate to be invited to participate in Übermind’s beta program on their Pro product which was slated to support tracklogs.

It took a while, and some discussion of workflow ensued over the course of several months. I’m not taking credit for any ideas, but I’m very happy to see the operation of the Aperture plugin with regards to tracklogs exactly as I had hoped it would be.

The key to making a tracklog created by an external GPS device work with images made in a digital camera is that the time reference of both the camera and the GPS device must be synchronous. It sounds simple, but when you consider that you usually enter the time into your DSLR with the press of a few buttons on the back of the camera while looking at the clock on the wall and the GPS device gets its time from the satellite, its not so trivial anymore. Some devices have a display that shows the time, so you can set your camera from that (or take a picture of the time and compare to find the difference). But many devices, like mine, have no such display. Maybe it also seems trivial that you can be “close enough” and that may be just fine in some cases. But consider the scenario of taking pictures from a moving car at 60mph. A difference of just a minute between the GPS and camera results in a mile offset in your GPS data! Nevermind that picture of the grand canyon taken from the helicopter ride or the shot out the cabin window of the airplane. I, for one, want more accuracy than that.

I discussed this at long lengths with the beta contact at Übermind. And, whether they got it from me or got it from someone else, they definitely got it!

My workflow starts when I turn on the GPS. My AMOD device takes about 30 seconds or less to acquire a satellite signal. It tells me it has achieved triangulation nirvana by flashing the green satellite shaped LED on the face of the device. I simply turn on the AMOD, wait for the green light to flash and snap a picture of the device. It doesn’t even have to be in focus. Now I have a reference point. I know that the first entry in the tracklog file must coincide with the picture of the device itself - at least within my reaction time. And now I can calculate the offset between my camera and the GPS device. Think about it. It makes sense.

So let me show you how Maperture Pro works in my workflow. Once I know my reference image is accounted for, and my GPS is running, I shoot away. Last weekend I shot almost a thousand images at an airshow. The AMOD GPS just ticked away, clipped to my camera bag as I walked around the show snapping images. When I returned home I mounted the GPS device via USB (different devices may require different methods to get the data off) and pulled the tracklog file (in my case the AMOD writes a standard NMEA 0813 format file). Then I loaded all my images from my CF cards into an Aperture project (not an insignificant amount of time, mind you) and I was ready to go.

Maperture Pro works just like any other plug in. Simply select the images you want to process - in this case I selected all 970 images - INCLUDING the first one of the GPS device itself - and selected Maperture Pro from the “Edit with…” menu.

Maperture Pro opens the images into its interface and shows you the selected images across the top.

At this point it’s easy enough to select an image and pin it manually on the map. But I don’t want to do that. I have 970-some images to tag and I have a record of where I’ve been when. From the gear menu on the right, I select “Import tracklog…” and go select my tracklog file.

The AMOD device uses a naming convention that lets me easily find the right file by date and Import it into Maperture Pro.

Then you wait….and wait…and watch the beach ball…and wait again.

Honestly, Maperture does a pretty good job of parsing the file, but you do have to be a little patient. Tracklog files like this are huge (I have my device writing a new data point every 5 seconds - this one was over 16 thousand points!) and being patient is expected. It took 2-3 minutes before I could proceed.

Now the brilliant feature that a lot of applications don’t consider. Maperture Pro tells me what I’m working with and preps me for what to do next. After the tracklog is processed, Maperture Pro displays some very important data.

It tells me what time my first and last tracklog datapoint is and what time my first and last image is. Remember that blurry image I took at the beginning of the day? THAT is my first image, and my tracklog tells me what time that image SHOULD have on it. Simple math does the rest. In this case, I see that I must add 13 seconds to my image time for it to match the tracklog time. Simple enough. Enter it into the Time Offset field and you’re ready to go (this could also be useful if you’ve not changed your camera to Daylight Savings Time, or you’ve switched time zones and not accounted for it, etc.). This dialogue also lets you set your options for how to interpolate between tracklog data points or skip data points. Useful, but not as useful to me as the offset time.

Clicking “Match Images” starts the process of finding the location of each image. Locations that have been tagged show up as pins on the map and images are badged in the image display (images that already contain location data also bear this badge when the plugin opens). Again, a little patience is a virtue, especially if you are processing a lot of images, but the wait is certainly reasonable considering the alternative.

Finally, “Set Locations from Tracklog” writes the location data to the EXIF and returns to Aperture.

I can’t say enough about this plugin. I was so frustrated with my previous workflow - as good as HoudahGeo was - that I purchased a hardware GPS device for my Nikon D300 to tag as I go. It’s great and I thought that I’d never use the AMOD GPS again, but Maperture Pro has changed my mind and now I’m glad I have both. I’ll talk more about that device in a future post. but for now, if you have tracklogs you want to process in Aperture, Maperture Pro is it.

It’s that simple.

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“Zoom with your feet.” That’s easy for you to say!

Those that know me know that my photography perspective is usually from about 3-1/2 feet off the ground. Nothing wrong with that. It has its challenges (unless of course you like to shoot butts) but everything does and it usually doesn’t frustrate me too much. However, being unable to even get in position to make an attempt? That can be frustrating.

For example, a few weeks ago I ventured out with some Flickr buddies to a beautiful park in Van Nuys to shoot a cricket match (I know, I know, “cricket in LA?” you say? Yea, and it was fun - but that’s another blog post). Beautiful park on a beautiful day. Well groomed grounds, grassy fields, close parking. But alas, in my current superbadass, titanium, extra-light, extra small chair, which is perfect for slinging into and out of the car, tooling through tight spaces, and traveling light chair I found myself face planting as the front wheels dug into the soft earth while traversing the grounds no less than THREE times. Frustrating to say the least to balance on your front wheels and footrest, one hand keeping you from a complete somersault while the second protects your D300 and 70-200 from taking the brunt of the fall while a third hand (ok, maybe not literally, but we all could use a third hand once in awhile, eh?) waves down an able-bodied passerby to right this whole folly by tilting you up like a refrigerator on a furniture dolly.

Never again.

Yea, my credit card has been burning a hole in my pocket for sure. That Nikkor AF-S 200-400VR zoom or that D700 sure looks sweet. But what I really need, before I dive into more gadgetry, is to get to the location to make what I’ve got work even harder. And thus the search for multi-terrainical-transport was born.

I looked for awhile at power chairs. There are some amazing all-wheel-drive, independent suspension beasts out there. And, speaking of beasts, there is always the TankChair. And these would be great. But I have pretty good strength in my upper body and, frankly, $12,000 for a non-essential luxury item (as the insurance company most likely refers to such things) is a little out of my reach. Not to mention the trailer I’d need to carry it and the hassle of transport that, most likely, would result in more time in the garage than in the field. No, what I needed was an adaptation to my current method of mobility. Big tires. Traction. Stability.

After looking at my options, considering my out-of-pocket budget, and reading reviews, I settled on the Top End Crossfire All-Terrain. It had everything I wanted and, thanks to Sportaid’s aggressive discount, came in less than a new D700. It’s got the knobbies, the big front casters and most importantly, caster arms that extend IN FRONT of the footplate instead of behind. No faceplants on this one baby! Even with my ThinkTank belt pack strapped across my shins.

Of course, it will be fun when fishing, or shooting (the other kind) too!

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This is my beloved Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. I waited with baited breath for this camera to be released and snapped one up as soon as is was feasible. It had everything I wanted in a high-end point and shoot, full manual control, RAW format capability, 720p video and a hot shoe for Strobist-style shenanigans. Plus it had that amazing wide-angle Leica lens that everyone was raving about, and f/2.0 and low noise (relatively speaking - given sensor size) for low light drama. It had it all. On paper.

Then I got it. And I coveted it. And I took it everywhere I went. And I never used it.

That is not to say that I never took a picture with it. You see, I was looking for a point-and-shoot sophisticated enough to preclude carrying my DSLR with me wherever I went - something to throw in a pocket or bag and take amazing images and process through my existing workflow. I didn’t expect a palm-sized DSLR, but I expected to transition between the two with at least a certain amount of fluidity. And this camera made a valiant effort. No, it didn’t let me down. I let me down.

You see, something as brilliantly made as this camera is one thing on paper and another in the hand. It had the best specs. It had the best reviews. It was treasured by those I trust and admire. It is loved by its users far and wide. But it is the wrong thing for me.

As wonderful as the images are coming out of this camera, it has two short-comings for me that are deal-breakers. Many wouldn’t care about these issues (in fact, many may see them as advantages), but I do. First of all, I like to shoot RAW. (No, not in the raw, RAW.) You know, camera, just give me the data that you have collected on the sensor, write it to the SD card and I’ll take it from there. Don’t sharpen it for me. Don’t saturate it for me. Don’t en-vibrate it, or transmorgrify it, or dynamic it, or “kids” it, or “sports” it, or B&W it. Just give me the data I made and I’ll do the rest. Thank you.

You see, apparently there are some shenanigans going on in the RAW processor that Panasonic provides in the (HORRIBLE - IMHO) software included with the camera that others (Apple specifically - Adobe seemed to figure it out) can’t seem to duplicate. This added level of complexity has completely held up the release of any RAW support for this camera from Apple. Oh, if you shoot in JPEG you are fine, but for me, Apple Aperture (my workflow of choice) and iPhoto are completely useless with the .RW2 files that poot out of this camera. I know I can use Adobe Camera RAW to convert the images to TIFF (no, the DNG’s that ACR makes from RW2 don’t work with Apple’s photo products either) and then import those into Aperture, but this costs me storage, complexity, and headaches and defeats the whole purpose. I just want my RAW, non-destructive process, please.

Second is that amazing lens. That Leica glass is sharp, fast and beautiful. And I love it. Oh, and I hate it too. You see, This beautiful lens offers wide-angle views that are unchallenged in most of the point-and-shoot arena. The 24mm-equivalent (compared to 35mm frame) lens is wide and vast. It makes great panoramas, wide-angle landscapes and distorted-reality shots. Unfortunately I don’t make many panoramas, wide-angle landscapes or distorted reality images. On the long side the LX3 barely tickles 60mm equivalent focal length. In my opinion, this is just barely acceptable for a portrait and, for a guy that likes to fill the frame, still results in a certain amount of unflattering distortion. Look on the Flickr. There are tons of awesome, beautiful shots of landscapes, abstracts, wide angle close-ups of cats, etc. There are very few flattering portraits.

I need just a little more reach. I know, I know, “zoom with your feet,” you say. I agree, but sometimes that is just not possible and it still doesn’t change the foreshortening effect you get with a longer focal length. With my LX3, everyone has a big nose and a little forehead. It’s not flattering, trust me.

So what is a guy to do? Well, in most cases I would chalk this one up to experience and put the camera in a drawer and move on. But that is an expensive proposition and, in this economy I simply can’t afford to do that. Ok, maybe I could but it is the wrong thing to do. SOmeone deserves this camera. Someone need to love it and use it and enjoy it as much as the thousands of others that continually rave about its performance. Just because I’m not one of them doesn’t mean I should spoil it for the rest. The only question remaining for me is “craigslist or eBay?”

And then what? Well, I am considering two possibilities. The first is to go with my first gut instinct. I initially wanted Nikon’s new P6000 point and shoot. Readers of this blog will remember how disconcerted I was with Nikon’s announcement that the RAW format of the P6000 was going to be proprietary to Windows (Vista nonetheless). Well I guess that was simply a false alarm since, within a few weeks of its release, the P6000 was well supported by both Apple and Adobe and the world still waited patiently for the LX3 support to come around. The P6000 also has built-in GPS - a feature I like to toy with - a longer zoom (28-112mm equivalent) and meets the same manual/RAW/flash requirements I set out with.

My other option? Do neither. Stick with the DSLR. That has been my fallback position of late and has been less cumbersome than I anticipated (although I still wouldn’t want to carry that thing on a floom ride at Disneyland). Sometimes I even change things up and grab my old trusty D50 instead of the D300 and throw on a 50mm or 85mm prime for the day - just to “dress down.” Perhaps the funds are better spent with a more compact, all purpose lens, like Nikon’s 18-200mm VR superzoom, just to make for a small package. They go used on craigslist for about what I can sell my LX3 kit for, so maybe that’s an option.

All that remains to be seen, but all-in-all the only regret I have is that I have to sell such a lovely device. This is the perfect camera in so many ways. Unfortunately it is not the perfect camera for me. But you never really know until you try.

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I haven’t written a post in quite a while now. But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up! It’s been 117 days since I started my 365 project…almost 1/3 of the way there. The time passes in various ways. Some days the shot is easy, some days it’s hard. Some days it’s almost embarrassing to post my shot of the day, but always less embarrassing than failure.

I have to say, this project is a lot more stressful than I imagined. The minutes tick away throughout the day, hounding me to get my picture in. I go on photowalks near the office, both shooting and taking notes on what to save for next time. I think that is the most counter productive thing about this project. I can’t say that I have passed on a truly remarkable image, but I have paused, and considered whether to snap the shutter now, or perhaps wait for another day - another time perhaps when not only might the light, angle and atmosphere be better, but will fill my quota. I’d like to think that I’m patient, but I’m also calculating. The 365 project is not only a challenge, it has become a game.

It is a learning experience. Sheer boredom forces me to change up my gear and try something different. Lust for inspiration has me hungry to read about technique and process, to look at every photo I can, to scour books web pages waiting for the lightbulb to go off.

And it has taught me to edit. On that rare occasion when the images come in a glut, I must choose one. Only one. To call for that day. That in itself is challenging and frustrating. But it has been a learning experience. I try to avoid the “hundreds of vacation photos” scenario and only pick the few, the one. Of course, there is still documentary thrown in, photos to share with my friends. I need to sort that out on my Flickr stream as it becomes cacophonous sometimes. But maybe, just maybe, in another 248 days I will have at least one image that is special, that helps me answer the question so many ask: “What do you photograph?”

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Last week I attended my first P.M.A. in Las Vegas. P.M.A. is the Photo Marketing Association and their annual show is supposed to be the biggest in the USA for photography gear (apparently it pales in comparison to Europe’s Photokina, however). It was nice to attend a smaller manageable show (I usually attend the massive CES and NAB each year) and especially to be exposed to a new industry and look at lots of cool toys.

There were a lot of incredible things to see at the show. I lust after Sigma’s 300-800mm zoom and Nikon’s 200-400mm as well. It was great to see all the small accessory vendors with their unique (and sometimes knockoff) wares. And it was great to meet the guys from my favorite bag manufacturer, ThinkTank.

However, my favorite thing of the show had to be this little device from a small German company called Foolography. Readers of this blog will know that I have a thing for Geotagging my images, especially when I’m traveling or visiting an unusual place. My current workflow involves using a GPS dongle that keeps a log of where I go and later matching the time/date stamps of the tracklog with those in my images. It works but it is a little cumbersome.

The best way to do this would be to stamp the GPS data right into the image when it is taken. And this can be accomplished on my D300 and other Nikon cameras with a number of 3rd-party devices as well as Nikon’s own solution, the GP-1, just recently introduced.

However, these guys have taken it a step further. Instead of plugging a cable into the jack on the Nikon camera body and then having to manage the actual GPS device by placing it either in the hotshoe or on the strap, this little tiny bluetooth receiver plugs into the DIN connector on the camera and communicates with nearly any Bluetooth-equipped GPS device. Brilliant.

Of course it’s so small I would probably lose it. I did discuss the possibility of a thin lanyard taht might attach to the strap loop and the developer mentioned that he was considering this - although he did chose to name the device Unleashed.

The major drawbacks? Well the projected cost of the device is EU200 (currently over $250 USD!!) and you need to purchase a Bluetooth-equipped GPS device (the one I have sadly is not). But it sure is cool.

We’ll see what happens when the thing is available, but even with the cord-management grief of one of the aftermarket devices like the Geomet’r ($150 USD) or even the Nikon GP-1 ($265 USD) these hardwired gadgets are very appealing. Of course, they aren’t nearly as sexy.

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