Archive for April, 2009

Eye-Fi + Nintendo DSi

John / April 27, 2009 / Hardware, Photography / 12 Comments

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been playing around with my shiny (actually it’s matte black) new Nintendo DSi. One of the new features of the DSi is the fact that it has two onboard cameras (one facing towards you and one facing outwards), albeit sub-megapixel ones. There is a built in camera app that has a lot of fun & goofy photobooth-like features. It also has an SD card slot that allows you to copy game data and save your photos to it which you can then import into a computer and use like a normal digital photo.

I bought an Eye-Fi 2gb Secure Digital Card awhile ago and haven’t used it as much as I wanted to for a couple of reasons. Primarily is it’s limited access point connectivity – it can (currently) only be setup for one access point at a time and it has to be connected to your computer in order to change it. Kinda of disappointing considering they now have an iPhone app to manage the card but it doesn’t let you do much other than review your uploads and post your iPhone photos to whichever online service you have the card setup to post to. The card also doesn’t recognize RAW files that I usually shoot in and the card I own is only 2gb (they now have 4gb cards and support video). I usually have either a 8gb or 16gb card in my DSLR or point and shoot cameras.

Since the DSi doesn’t have any built in way of posting photos taken with it’s cameras online, it seemed like a good fit to utilize my Eye-Fi card in the DSi.

This way I can use the camera(s) and as I take the photos, they literally get posted immediately to Flickr (or any other services you set it up to post to):

The files upload almost instantly since they are 640×480 but it’s pretty cool that this part works so well and effortlessly once it’s all setup the first time.

Unfortunately, it only works this effortlessly in one wifi location at a time so if I take my DSi out somewhere and take photos, it won’t upload to Flickr via another wifi access point. It would be nice if you could add multiple access points to your account or change it on the fly via the iPhone app. Going a step further, it would be amazing if you could use the iPhone as the access point and have the iPhone post the wifi photos via your 3G/Edge data plan….kind of like a wirelessly tethered SD card.

While this is a good use for my Eye-Fi card right now, Nintendo (or a third party) could easily come out with an app (another new feature of the DSi is it’s online game/app store) that gives you this functionality since the DSi already has built in wifi connectivity. But until that app comes out, this seems to be a good workaround.

Maybe Eye-Fi will expand the options the card has too….one can hope.

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Twitter client for the Nintendo DS

John / April 27, 2009 / Hacking, Videogames / Comments Off

I recently traded in my Nintendo DS Lite and some old games for a (basically free) Nintendo DSi so I’ve been playing around with it a fair bit lately (especially the cameras it has). I stumbled upon a Twitter client for it called DSTwitter that is actually pretty cool:

Of course, something like the iPhone is a much better experience for Twitter apps but not everyone has one plus the DS is sometimes more convenient to quickly check up on Twitter or play a quick game while your iPhone is charging.

The lack of a real keyboard is also kind of a pain on the DS but it’s no worse than fat-finger typing on the iPhone screen:

It’s still very much beta and it crashes a fair bit (or won’t even load any tweets) but that may have been due to other factors like a flaky wifi hotspot. It seems to be regularly updated by the developer so it can only get better with more features added.

It does require a flash cart or hacked firmware for your DS (or DSi) to use homebrew software like this but it’s worth checking out if you’re able to.

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Light Writer POV app for the iPhone

John / April 18, 2009 / Photography / 3 Comments

Light Writer is a persistence of vision application for the iPhone. Essentially it’s a tool for using your iPhone to paint with light…and it’s pretty fun to play with.

You will most likely need a camera to actually be able to see the effect. A slow shutter shot will allow the full message to be displayed and your movements while displaying it can further enhance the effect:

You simply enter your message, choose your color(s) and then move the iPhone infront of the camera – it’s accelerometer will start displaying the message once it detects movement. It can take a lot of tries to get it to work right…I’ve got lots of shots of a blur of light rather than the message because I was moving the iPhone too fast.

The rainbow mode is interesting too:

Of course, there is a group on Flickr to see more action shots. It’s $0.99 on the iTunes App Store.

Crumpler Brazillion Dollar Home camera & laptop bag

John / April 13, 2009 / Photography, Reviews / 1 Comment

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of Crumpler bags. I have one for practically every situation I could need one for. I recently had the chance to ‘trade up’ my 7 Million Dollar Home for a Brazillion Dollar Home (they have the funnest names for their bags):

Basically, someone bought a bag bigger than they needed and I wanted an upgrade so thanks to Craigslist, a deal was made. Both of us had barely used the bags – I only bought mine a couple of months ago and only used it once. I wanted the Brazillion because it’s a great bag to store ALL of your gear at home and for dragging everything to a studio shoot…basically you wouldn’t want to use this for a photowalk (you don’t really need everything when you’re walking around anyways) but it’s great for car trips if you want to take it all with you.

The main difference between the two bags is size…the Brazillion is HUGE. It has a large internal cavity that can be configured using the big pile of inserts any way you need for your gear:

It also has an internal pocket that can hold up to a 17″ laptop. The lid of the bag can actually be used as a laptop stand – it’s quite rigid and has a strap you can put around the laptop to keep it snug. It also has external zippered pockets to hold all kinds of gear like cables, flash units, memory cards, etc.

The one thing it didn’t come with is a manual! Seriously there are a million ways to configure this bag and at least a few example setup photos would be helpful. I’ve been trolling around online looking to see how other people have set up theirs.

Here’s the Brazillion next to my 5 Million Dollar Home bag which I usually use for small photowalks when I only need a couple of lenses and my DSLR:

To give you a better idea of what this bag is capable of, check out this video (the first half anyways) from PMA a few years ago where Ben Richards from Crumpler demonstrates some of it’s features….and check out that snappy tux Ben’s wearing…classy, just like the bags:

I’ll post a photo or two once I’ve got it setup the way I like…which could take awhile.

UPDATE: Here’s the bag fully loaded after my first attempt at configuring it and all the gear that fit inside (click the bottom photo to see the gear notes on Flickr). There is still tons of room inside as well…so it’s not truly ‘fully’ loaded:

Update: Here’s some pix of my configuration –

top layer:

bottom layer:

Click on the photos to see gear notes.

My Earth Hour photo in print

John / April 10, 2009 / Photography / 2 Comments

This year, during Earth Hour, I played around with my camera and some tea lights on the floor. This photo is the result:

It was printed in The Herald-Gazette from Barnesville, Georgia on March 31st, 2009.

Someone at the newspaper found my photo on Flickr and sent me an email to ask permission to use it and said they would give me a photo credit. I usually give anyone permission to use my photos (they are almost all licensed under Creative Commons).

I’m always curious to see how my photos get used so I asked for a link to the article when/if it went online. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be (easily) accessible online so they offered to send me a print copy of the issue it appeared in which I thought was pretty cool:

It’s not every day I get a newspaper in the mail from a place I may not ever have visited or even known about. I think this is a great example of how Creative Commons can & should work.

How I post my iPhone photos to Flickr and Twitter

John / April 8, 2009 / Photography / 6 Comments

Thanks to a tip by Ianiv awhile ago, I’ve discovered a great way to post iPhone photos online very quickly and without a lot of effort. Sure you can simply email your photos to Flickr or post them to Twitter via Twitpic, but why not do both at the same time and with more control over the process and not have to double post photos to different services?

This requires a couple of apps to get working. First of all, you’ll need Mobile Fotos which is a great Flickr management app that has a number of features we’ll take advantage of. The app lets you view and manage your Flickr account from your iPhone much more so than the mobile Flickr web version. Unlike emailing your photos to Flickr, Mobile Fotos can upload your photos at the full resolution they were taken at.

You’ll also need a Twitter client for your iPhone…I use Tweetie but Mobile Fotos supports most of them. You’ll also need to setup both applications with their host APIs which is a painless process and only takes a couple of clicks to setup. The apps will walk you through the authentication process.

So let’s go through the steps to post a photo to Twitter via Flickr using Mobile Fotos and Tweetie:

1. take a photo using the built in camera app or any other camera app you have…Mobile Fotos also can take pictures directly inside itself.
2. launch Mobile Fotos if it’s not already running.
3. Click Upload and browse your camera roll for a photo to upload. You’ll then get this screen:

Here is where you can set a title, description, tags and choose a set for it to go into on Flickr. The nice thing about this is that the tags and sets you choose will be there for the next upload. This can be a blessing and a curse. Great if you’re uploading a number of photos in a row from the same event but if you forget and then upload something next week and don’t change the new defaults, you’ll have to adjust things after the upload goes.

If you scroll down, you’ll get additional options including location, privacy and safety level:

Unfortunately, the location option uploads the location you are uploading from, not where the photo was actually taken and shows the level of accuracy on GPS (or in the screenshot above, cell tower location since it was taken with a 1st gen non-GPS iPhone).

4. click Upload in the top right and you’ll be taken back to your camera roll to continue selecting photos to upload. Hit cancel if you’re finished.

5. You’ll now be back at the main Mobile Fotos screen and should see a batch process message at the bottom of the screen. Depending on how you’re connected and how many photos you selected, this should go by fairly quickly. Once it’s complete, the message will disappear.

6. Now click on Your Photos and you should see the thumbnails from your Flickr account in a big scrollable list:

You may need to click on the refresh icon on the top right to show your recently uploaded photos. Mobile Fotos uses caching to speed browsing your photos so it may not display everything up to date unless you refresh.

7. click on the photo you’d like to post to Twitter. There should be an icon on the bottom left which will bring up this menu of options:

8. Choose Share Photo and then assuming you’ve setup Mobile Fotos to use your Twitter client, you should see this set of options:

9. Choose Twitter. This will then close Mobile Fotos and launch your Twitter client (in my case, Tweetie) and then create a new tweet like so:

The tweet will inherit the title you gave your photo in Flickr and provide a link to the photo. Press Send and you’re done.

It may seem like a lengthy process when it’s presented this way but it can happen rather quickly once you get the hang of the workflow and upload your photos in a couple of clicks. The only delay might be the speed of your connection to the internet.

The benefits of this method rather than using Twitpic is that you easily link any photo you have on Flickr, not just iPhone shots. You also get better stats and trackable comments via Flickr than Twitpic (in my opinion at least). The time saving batch upload function alone makes this process valuable to me and the better control over the tags and sets while you’re uploading rather than having to deal with it at a later time which most people would forget to do.

I-5 to Highway 1 [HD Video]

John / April 5, 2009 / Photography, Video / 1 Comment

Playing with my Lensbaby Composer and the star disk from the creative aperture kit on my D90 while driving back from Seattle:

Sometimes it’s fun when you don’t have to drive.

Kodak Zx1 vs Zi6 low light test

John / April 1, 2009 / Reviews, Video / 24 Comments

I’ve gotten a lot of requests for a low light sample with the Kodak Zx1 and thought it might be good to see how it compares to the Zi6 so I strapped them together on a tripod:

While the cameras aren’t perfectly lined up, the video below should demonstrate low light well enough. Both clips were shot at 60 fps.

Kodak Zi6 vs Zx1 low light test from John Biehler on Vimeo.

I think that the Zi6 is marginally better in low light than the Zx1…but the Zx1 seems a little less noisy. My Zi6 has the 1.1.0 firmware update which was supposed to improve low light performance and I think it did…even if they simply turned up the gain a little.

It seems to me that both cameras share the same image sensor and the only real difference between them is the firmware tweaks to the image processing and the form factor changes. I still like the Zx1 better even if the video is the same. The form factor is very comfortable and the buttons are much easier to use than on the Zi6.

Both cameras are great for their price point and features, but the Zx1 is slightly greater to me.

Made it through March

John / April 1, 2009 / Photography / 2 Comments

Last month, I set a new photography goal which was to take/upload at least one photo every day.

Made it…barely. A couple days were a little close but I managed to shoot something every day.

The experiment continues…