RF-Photography

I’ve recently been a part of some discussions on commonalities between film and digital and film concepts that have carried over to digital. In particular, a discussion on whether HDR techniques could be used with scanned film (they can) and on whether Zone System concepts could be applied in digital photography (some can). The 'Forced' Digital Upgrade, con't >

I’m likely to slowly migrate most of what’s on my main website to the WordPress format and figured I’d start with this tutorial rather than putting it over there.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of timelapse shooting of late and have had some questions about the process so thought I’d put together a short tutorial. This isn’t going to go into extensive depth on video editing as that’s really beyond the scope of what I’m wanting to outline here.

Timelapse is the opposite of high speed photography. In high speed photography, you capture images at a very fast frame rate and when played back at a normal frame rate, the action appears slowed down. In timelapse, you’re effectively lapsing time or skipping time. You capture at a slower frame rate and when played back at a normal rate, action appears sped up. If you’ve seen, for example, a video of the progression of a flower bud coming into bloom, that’s timelapse. Timelapse Video Tutorial, con't >

In an earlier post about geocoding, I’d talked a bit about options for Nikon users and noted that, at the time of writing, Canon didn’t have anything available, to my knowledge, for its users.

Well, Canon has come out with updated versions of some of their wireless file transmitters; the WFT-E2 II A, the WFT-E4 II A and the WFT-E5A, all of which offer the ability to embed geotag information into the EXIF of image files.  The downside is you still need a separate GPS device (via USB connection) and these wireless file transmitters cost anywhere from about $640 to $750 depending on the model.

At least Canon is in the game now, but not in an overly user friendly or bank account friendly way.

Geocoding digital photos has become a popular thing to do. It makes sharing of photos in applications like Google Earth very easy. Some suggest that it’s helpful for buyers of stock photos in finding images but I’m not sure I completely see the connection there. Are stock buyers searching based on geo. coordinates? Maybe some folks could weigh in on that one.

Anyway, I began geocoding my photos about a year ago. It’s another step in the workflow but it’s reasonably automated so not terribly onerous. In my case, I used my Garmin eTrex Vista HCx which has route tracking capability and GPicSync. GPicSync uses .gpx track files which is what my eTrex creates. The workflow goes like this – Load images from the CF card to the computer via Lightroom (adding copyright, keywords, etc). Transfer the .gpx track file to the computer. Launch GPicSync, point it at the track file, point it at the folder with the image files, let it do its thing. Easy peasy. I set the eTrex to record a track point every 10 seconds. In GPicSync, I set the threshhold for time difference between track points in the track file and the time code in a particular image file at 10 seconds. GPicSync then writes the long/lat coordinates into the EXIF if the difference between the two is less than 10 seconds.  In order for this to be successful you have to sync the time in your camera with the GPS time in the GPS receiver you’re using, be it something like my eTrex, a smartphone or a small GPS tracker like those from Trackstick. Geotagging/Blackberry, con't >

As a long time Canon customer I think I’m very fortunate that I’ve never had to send any of my cameras in for repair – until recently.

I’m an owner of a 5D. The issue of the mirror detaching is fairly well known. It seems as though it’s been isolated to certain areas with hot, humid climates. I don’t live in that type of climate and mine detached a couple weeks ago. Canon’s repairing them at no cost so no problem, right?

Rather than deal with a mail delay, I decided to take the camera to Canon myself. I live about 45 minutes from their head office in Mississauga. Upon taking the camera in, I was given no receipt or any documentation to verify they had my camera, no repair tracking number, nothing. That seemed a bit odd, but so be it. I was also told it would take 15 to 21 ‘working days’ for the repair. That means 3 to 4 weeks in calendar days. What? 3 to 4 WEEKS? That’s absurd. If Canon’s backlog of repairs is that large, then something is either seriously wrong with their products or they don’t have a large enough staff to do the work. According to a post on Rob Galbraith’s site Canon closed its Montreal and Calgary facilities earlier this year, consolidated everything in Mississauga and hired more staff than they had at the three facilities combined previously. And it’s still going to take 3 to 4 weeks? I have other cameras so I’m not stuck but that’s not really the point. Has Canon Lost Its Way, con't >