New Sensor and Lens in iPhone 4S Camera ☛
The improved camera is the single reason I will replace my iPhone 3GS by an iPhone 4S as soon as it is available.
It’s too bad that James Duncan Davidson announced they shut down the Daily Shoot when I finally have a good camera in my pocket all the time everyday.
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Creative Commons licenses for photographs on the Web
Interesting conversation between James Duncan Davidson and Tim Bray about photos and licenses on the web.
- James wrote about its reluctance to use creative commons licenses for his professional photographs
- Tim then explained how one of his photographs that he uploaded on Wikipedia (in a compressed size) under Creative Commons licenses was chosen to be a book cover and that he got paid for the full size version
- James then replied with additional food for thought
At the moment, I upload my photos on Flickr under an “Attribution, Share Alike” Creative Commons license. I do not take photos professionally but if people would be interested to use them in commercial products, I would like to get paid for their use.
Tim’s proposal to use different licenses depding on the resolution is a good idea:
- use a creative commons licenses for low-to-moderate resolution and make them available liberally (on Wikipedia, Flickr, etc.)
- keep a more restrictive licenses on the full resolution
Jaguar XK 120 Roadster
I don’t care much about cars but when I see a beauty, I know it.
A friend’s father owns the Classic & Sports Auto garage and kindly invited me to shoot a Jaguar XK 120 roadster that he is renovating:
It was a great opportunity to shoot such a beautiful car with enough time and freedom to compose the shots. I waited for the late afternoon and the sun was starting to be low enough to reveal the curves of the car.
I shot on top of a stool to remove the noisy background behind the car and put the emphasis on the car’s front. A 3/4 view was the best way to show the length and curves of both the car’s hood and left side.
I used my Nikon 16-85mm at f/11 to shoot it. At first, I tried to shoot at 16-18mm but I found it made the car’s hood too much proeminent at the expense of the rest of the car. I stepped back a little bit, zoom to 35mm and shoot it on top of the stool to get a more realistic perspective which still highlights the long and curvy hood.
If you like this car, you are lucky: you can buy it once it is renovated.
I really enjoy the experience and I am looking forward to the next opportunity to shoot such a beauty again. I may even start to care about (beautiful) cars a bit more!
Kodak Junior 620
While talking about photography with my father, he told me that he still had an “old” camera from my grandfather and, lo and behold!, he showed me a folding camera: the Kodak Junior 620.
I have not found a serial number and I don’t know exactly which series it is but Kodak Junior 620 cameras were manufactured between 1935 and 1939 (depending on the series).
My grandfather’s model has a Kodak Anastigmat f/7.7 lens and the shutter speeds are 1/25, 1/75, T, and B.
The camera is in pretty good shape (except for a bit of leather skin that I need to glue) and if I buy a 620 film roll, I could shoot like my grandfather did when he got it.
I even found its user manual to use it properly (I have never owned a camera with roll film).
What a family treasure to discover!
Fête de la Musique
The best thing with the coming of the summer in France is that it starts with la Fête de la Musique.
On the 1st day of summer, every music band can go out and play in the streets until late in the night.
Everybody can enjoy this celebration listening to a gospel in a church, laughing with kids fascinated by a big band, or just spending the evening with friends listening to rock and irish music in a small pub.
When Nothing Seems to Help…
When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
I first read this quote from Jacob Riis in an article about the way the San Antonio Spurs front office builds a perennial contender for the NBA championship.
I later learnt that Jacob Riis was a journalist and a social documentary photographer that covered and fought against the living conditions of the poorest New York citizens.
Minding the Baby, Scene in Gotham Court
I sometimes think about this quote when I develop software. Every line of code, every commit is a blow at the rock. It takes many of them without noticeable changes before the rock is split and the software is finally released.
Review of gps4cam – iPhone GPS Tool for Cameras
I want to have GPS data for pictures taken with my Nikon camera and I looked at different tools to achieve that.
At first, I was using Aperture‘s Places to manually locate the pictures but this is a long and tedious process. Sometime, I shot a picture with my iPhone (which contains GPS data) and import them in Aperture to geotag my camera pictures. But more often than not, I forget to do that and have to do it manually.
I could add a GPS device to my camera directly but they are expensive, bulky, and drain the battery. Why buy another GPS device when I always have my iPhone with me?
After some research, I settled on using gps4cam and I am very happy with it.
gps4cam comes in two parts:
- an iPhone app (App Store link)
- a free Mac or PC application (available from their web site)
When I go outside and start shooting, I just need to run the iPhone app and start a new trip. The app supports multitasking, so I can exit the app, put the phone in my pockets and not worry about it anymore. I can focus on shooting instead.
Periodically, the app will capture my GPS location. The app is configurable and you can specify the frequency, to use GSM to triangulate the position instead of GPS (useful when abroad), etc.
At the end of the trip, when I am done shooting, I export the trip which generates a QR Code.
I then shoot this QR code with my DSLR. This picture contains all the GPS information captured during my trip. The fantastic idea of using QR codes is that there is no need to synchronize the iPhone and camera clocks: the QR code generated by the iPhone and shot with the other camera allows to know the clock difference between the two devices and deduce where the camera photography were taken.
The last step to do is to use the desktop application which reads the QR code and put the GPS data in the other pictures’ EXIF metadata1.
Finally, I can import the pictures in Aperture or any other software and voila! My pictures are (almost automatically) geotagged.
The iPhone is simple, non-obtrusive and a steal at 1.59€ (or $1.99). It is a pleasure to use it and I haven’t noticed a specific battery drain.
On the opposite, the desktop application needs more spit and polish. It is a Java application, I use it on my MacBook and it does not feel at home. The UI is not consistent with the OS (the progress is shown with a modal dialog window instead of a sheet or a progress bar) and it is too slow.
As I understand it, the desktop applications takes 3 steps:
- analyze the pictures (to find which one contains a QR code)
- retrieve the GPS data from the QR code picture
- copy the pictures and store the GPS data in their EXIF metadata
I don’t understand why it should take several minutes to perform these 3 steps (for a trip where I took only 40+ pictures). I suppose the performance could be improved by identifying faster the QR code picture. One way could be to let the user chooses the QR code picture (as I propose in the mock screenshot below by using an Image Well):
This would work fine if there is only one “trip” (i.e. one QR code) in the pictures but this will not work if there are many of them…
The desktop application also needs to improve the user experience. I put GPS data directly in the pictures on my SD card before I import them. Every time, the application asks me if I am sure to do that and I must confirm.
Instead, the application should let me check a box to say that I don’t want to be warned next time and remember it. If anything bad happens, it is my fault, I explicitly told the application to not warn me anymore.
Pros:
- unobtrusive and configurable iPhone application
- trips can be exported as GPX (and visualized in Google Maps, Google Earth, etc.)
- inexpensive
Cons:
- desktop application’s UI needs more attention (I would prefer a native Mac application)
- desktop application takes too long to process pictures and store GPS data
I hope that the cons will be fixed in future releases.
But as it stands now, I heartily recommend gps4cam to any iPhone user who wants to geotag automatically their pictures taken with another camera.
- I specify the same directories as input and output to store GPS data directly on the pictures on the SD card. ↩
Fuji FinePix X100 ☛
Inspired by the beauty and form of classic cameras from the past, the FinePix X100 combines all the latest technical digital innovations in a beautiful, traditional chassis which oozes class and prestige.
The Fujifilm FinePix X100 turned heads at Photokina 2010 and it looks promising with its classic design and modern features. I am looking forward to holding one and seeing through its viewfinder.
In the mean time, Fuji’s advertisement web site is worth reading to get some hindsights on the decisions made by the design team for the lens and the viewfinder.
⚑Nikon D7000 scores 80 at DxOMark ☛
I don’t really understand what this score means and how it is measured but apparently it confirms that the D7000 is a good camera.
I will not take better pictures because of it but I am no longer able to blame the camera for the photographer’s deficiencies! :)