I caved…and love it so far:
Bought the D90 with the 18-105mm VR lens. Sample video (in ‘cinematic 24fps HD’) and pics from the camera coming soon…need to charge the battery first.
Archive for September, 2008
I spent most of yesterday on Granville Island at BarCamp 2008 and it was a blast.
Things actually started off Friday night at WorkSpace for the opening night party and then up bright and early for the actual ‘unconference’ on Saturday.
This year, I helped organize PhotoCamp which is one of the few pre-determined ‘tracks’ (the other being WordCamp). BarCamp is meant to be an adhoc-like conference where the sessions are proposed by whomever shows up on the day, not weeks in advance. Photo (and Word) Camps require a little more prep since it’s not just an open talk but the idea behind all of them is that the participants shape the conversations.
Photo by Peter Andersen
I ended up giving a talk in the morning about jailbreaking the iPhone 3G (why you might want to do this, what’s involved, etc) which was well attended and seems to have been well received. You can get the apps to jailbreak your 3G here as well as to unlock your 1st gen iPhone.
Then I headed to check out the remaining portions of WordCamp and ended up giving a talk (more of an overview) of the FAlbum plugin I use on this site to share my Flickr photos.
PhotoCamp
Derek K. Miller started things off by explaining a number of digital photography concepts using his collection of film cameras and referencing his excellent cameraworks series of blog posts on the topic.
Next up was Tris Hussey who discussed some of the online photo editing services like Picnik.
Another session I led was about plastic/toy cameras and Elizabeth showed some of her cameras and photos she took with them along with mine.
Then Cameron Cavers and I talked about lens adaptors and macro extension tubes. There seemed to be a lot of interest in these inexpensive addons and the conversation quickly turned to all kinds of cool hacks and things you can do to/with your camera.
As we were quickly running out of time, our last discussion was around camera bags. There was just about every kind and style of ways to carry all that precious gear in the room and it ended up being a show and tell with everyone showing what they use and why.
Unfortunately, there was a little confusion about the end time so when we finally cleared out of the space used for PhotoCamp, the other sessions had already finished but we did manage to meet up with a bunch of BarCampers, had dinner and then finished up with a short photowalk around Granville Island at dusk.
Strangely, I barely took any photos yesterday.
Thanks to everyone that helped make BarCamp happen as well as everyone that came out to hear what I had to talk to about – I hope it was as useful to you as it was fun for me to share. See you next year!
Update: Here’s Roland‘s Qik video of my iPhone session (shot with his Nokia):
Update #2: Here’s Warren’s interview video from my iPhone session:
BarCamp is happening this weekend and a component of that is PhotoCamp.
What would like to talk about this year? Submit your topics here in the comments or on the wiki.
A few things that are on the table which will be finalized this Saturday include:
- a photowalk around Granville Island
- RAW vs JPG – why you should use one over the other and the workflows that come with that decision
- Lens Adapter and Macro Tubes – inexpensive addons to your gear that can greatly expand your options
- Film camera resurgence – Lomos, Holgas and more….why they are fun
- Mobile photography – using various tools and apps on mobile phones
Be sure to bring your gear to PhotoCamp too!
Just found this app tonight and bought it on the spot.
CameraBag (iTunes App Store link) lets you play with any photos you have on your iPhone as well as take new ones in a number of unique ways.
Starting with a photo I already had in my library (from a recent trip to Hawaii – original here), I can crop or zoom:
then choose one of the camera choices:
The cameras choices in CameraBag include:
“Helga”
A square-format toy camera feel with washed-out highlights and old-school vignetting.
“1974″
This is your father’s camera. Faded, tinted, and hip.
“Lolo”
Shoot from the hip and take life as it comes with vibrant, colorful shots. Note: You can’t see the white border it creates on my site.
“Cinema”
Dramatic, moody, wide-screen stills from the movie of your life.
“1962″
Dynamic black and whites from the photojournalists of a bygone era
Pretty cool for $5. There’s already a Flickr Pool for photos modified by this app. The developer has a video of the app in action on their website too.
Earlier this week, I had a chance to attend a special event at the Molson brewery called Brew 2.0. It was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the brewery in Vancouver and the invite list included many local bloggers and geekerati. I debated on even blogging about this event since there was no expectation of doing so and unlike many other events, I didn’t even have my camera with me but decided to because it was such a fun event.
The whole thing seemed a little surreal and a lot like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory except replace Charlie with bloggers and Chocolate with beer. When you get an invitation to tour a brewery, it’s pretty much like getting the golden ticket. This was no exception.
The evening started off at a ‘pub’ inside the brewery with food that was paired with the various beers that are produced onsite. After introductions were made, Geoff Molson (the great-great-great-great grandson of John Molson) told a few stories about the history of the brewery and his family. Then after a little more food and drink, we were divided into two groups and were paired up with the brewmasters to start the tour.
First we were taken to a tasting room where all the ingredients that go into making beer were put on the table and described. We were able to taste the various raw ingredients, something which I’ve never done before.
We were then taken through the various parts of the brewery where the ingredients are mixed with water and go through various processes. Everyone was hanging on Kerry, the brewmaster’s every word. It was truly an interesting tour being lead by someone that clearly loved his job and was able to passionately describe what goes on at every level of the process. It really felt like an episode of How It’s Made unfolding before your eyes with a dash of Strange Brew thrown in for good measure.
The highlight of the night (for me) was being able to grab freshly made cans of Rickard’s Red right off the canning line. The beer was literally canned in front of us and hadn’t yet been pasturized. We then took these cans to the tasting room again and cracked them open and had some of the freshest beer you can get while Kerry explained some details about the canning/bottling process, including how to decipher the codes on the bottom of the cans and why you should never lay bottled beer down in a fridge (air + more surface area = bad beer) – cans don’t have this problem.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to bring our cameras into the main brewhouse…which is a shame since there are so many cool things and machines I’d love to photograph – like the canning line pictured here.
Of course, most of those in attendance at least had cameraphones so Geoff Molson won’t be giving any of us the brewery any time soon since we (kinda) broke the rules. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to come back and break a few more.
The evening’s excellent music was provided by Neil Harnett who Peter photographed at the Pender Harbour Blues Festival earlier this year…he was really great live and a nice guy who was in my tour group as well. I hope his daughter gets well soon.
Thanks to Adam, Tonia, Meghan and the rest of Molson’s community team for throwing an event that made quite the impression. Check out a huge pile of photos from the event on Flickr.
Literally behind the scenes of the filming of a special effect scene for the kids(!) movie “Cats and Dogs 2” that has been filming near my office this past week:
I had a much better vantage point earlier:
but was continually moved back by the crew…so I decided to go to my car which just happened to be parked behind the production.
Today, Apple announced a number of new things at it’s “Let’s Rock” event and I have to say, I was a little surprised and disappointed.
First of all, new iPod Nanos were revealed. Not really that surprising as the spy photos and rumour leaks were pretty strong this time around. I SO don’t need the green one but nevertheless I still want it bad (but am not buying one).
The disappointing thing with these nanos is that they are a throwback to the previous models before they got short and fat. Why did you release the ‘stubby’ only to kill it off? Other than the accelerometer and the cute ‘shake to shuffle’ feature, there isn’t much new here other than a bigger screen. I was hoping for an improvement in the user interface or featureset. I think Microsoft’s Zune interface is still slicker and even has wifi syncing which would be killer on the iPhone. I’m not talking about Mobile Me contact/calendar syncing – I mean music, podcasts, videos, etc. being synced over wifi (or even 3G). I’d love to be able to listen to my subscribed podcasts and have the ability to grab the newest episode if I’m away from my computer.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think the Zune’s navigation, with the custom backgrounds and nice smooth scrolling and animation:
is better than this:
Another disappointing thing was the release of some interesting new in-ear headphones with a mic and remote for the new Nanos and Touch which don’t appear to be iPhone compatible (according to Apple’s site). I would have liked to see a nicer option for iPhone users beyond the bundled buds. Still seems a tad overpriced at $79 and I can see them eventually offering something like this (if not these ones) for the iPhone.
I was surprised to see them release a hard drive based 120gb iPod Classic. I don’t think I know anybody that bought the previous 80gb version so I’m wondering who really wants a 120gb model aside from some DJ’s and a handful of other music geeks. The market has to be fairly small…and I bet most of those people would prefer a 120gb iPod Touch even if it’s as thick as a brick, the user interface, touchscreen et all would benefit so much more from a giant hard drive.
Not surprisingly, the new Touch’s weren’t that much different. The expected inclusion of GPS didn’t happen but it did gain a speaker for ‘casual listening’ – probably a good thing just for watching videos or playing games. The Nike+ integration was unexpected but would make more sense in the Nanos or iPhone to me. One can easily speculate it may become an option in a future iPhone.
iPhone owners will have to wait until Friday to see what kind of improvements make it into the 2.1 firmware release. I’m going to reserve judgement on the new Genius feature of iTunes until I have more time to play with it…especially on the iPhone.
At MobileCamp Vancouver this past weekend, I thought it might be fun to try out Qik.com‘s iPhone app. It’s currently only available for use on jailbroken iPhones (via Cydia).
While David was talking about some iPhone tricks, I streamed him live via wifi to Qik and we had it on the projector in the room. There was only a minor lag in what I was shooting realtime and what was coming back on the screen. I was also impressed by the amount of audio that was picked up by the iPhone’s onboard mic (considering it was inside a rubber case):
While this video example is not ideal, it should give you an idea of the usefulness of a streaming video application on the iPhone…especially with the availability of 3G network speeds and a healthy data plan. I was using a jailbroken 1st gen iPhone to shoot this video and haven’t yet tried it on a 3G iPhone since I haven’t jailbroken mine (yet).
It’s worth noting that Apple doesn’t currently allow developers to create video streaming apps but it’s something that has been available on other platforms for awhile now. Just check out Roland’s adventures in live streaming from Nokia-land.
Qik also isn’t the only way to record video on your iPhone either but it’s the only one I’ve tried that does live streaming.
I thought it might be fun to pit my $37 fisheye lens adapter against the $800 Olympus 8mm fisheye lens.
Of course, there probably isn’t any contest here at all as the Olympus lens is simply stunning but the lens adapter is no slouch either.
But I decided it might be fun to take some photos on a recent visit to the Portland Rose Garden with the 8mm lens and the fisheye adapter attached to the same camera (an Olympus e-520) with a 14-42mm lens.
Same camera settings, same location, different lenses. I’ll let you decide which is better.
8mm (I recommend the larger version):
Lens adapter (again, more detail in the full size shot):
Of course, one of the limitations of the lens adapter is the distortion that occurs when you use the zoom which is very similar to the results I get with my Lomography Fisheye (film) camera:
Which doesn’t occur on the fixed fisheye lens:
Lens adapter:
Both lenses capture an incredible amount of detail. Having a fisheye lens like the 8mm would be a great addition to any camera bag…in my opinion at least. I know a few people aren’t that keen on the distortion that any fisheye brings but for me, it makes things a lot more interesting when you can capture an incredibly wide angle.
8mm:
Sadly, I have to send all the Olympus gear back tomorrow so for now, I’ll have to settle with my lens adapter. I definitely want to add a fisheye to my gear soon…having the Olympus 8mm for this past month has only solidified this.
You can view the rest of the photos from the rose garden, as well, all the other shots I’ve taken with the Olympus gear in the past month.
Here’s an inexpensive way to add a macro mode to your iPhone.
By default, the iPhone’s camera isn’t that great…let alone for macro (closeup) shots. Simply holding a magnifying glass (or plastic) lens in front of the iPhone’s camera will let you get a lot closer (and in focus):
Normal:
Macro:
Normal:
Macro:
The lens I used was popped out of a magnifier I bought for $4…I’m sure you could find a cheaper one if you look around in just about any kind of store (toy, hardware, pharmacy, etc).
Of course this ‘hack’ should work on just about any cameraphone, not just the iPhone.
Have fun!
Update: Looks like Griffin has integrated something like this into a case…very cool!
