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Eye-fi Pro X2 Wireless SD card review

John / January 19, 2011 / Mobile, Photography, Reviews, Technology / 3 Comments

During the holidays, I came across a boxing day deal for the Eye-Fi Pro X2 8GB wireless SD card.

I’ve written about these Eye-Fi cards before but this is a much newer version with some key differences that address the previous model’s shortcomings.

These memory cards are unique in that in addition to being memory cards for storing your photos, they also contain tiny wifi antennas (in this case, with support for 802.11N) that allow you to upload your photos and video straight from the camera. This usually requires you to have already setup a wifi connection (at home, work, school, etc) in advance using a laptop.

The main reason I picked it up is that the Pro line supports ad-hoc wireless modes. This means that I can use my iPhone as a wireless hotspot and have this card connect to the internet directly via my iPhone and upload photos in near real time. It did require advance setup, via a computer, but once setup, you shouldn’t have to do anything for it to work going forward. This is huge for me when I’m shooting events and such and I really want to upload some photos right away, I’m now able to do it with nothing more than my camera and iPhone with me.

My Nikon D7000 has dual SD card slots that are configurable. I’m able to choose what the second slot is used for. Normally, it’s just overflow storage. But when I use an Eye-Fi card in that slot, I set the camera to send a jpeg copy of the photos I’m taking to that card. While the Pro cards now support RAW files, it just seems faster/easier to store RAW on the main card slot and drop a much smaller JPG file onto the second slot for uploading.

You can set the upload options via the Eye-Fi card management software. It can upload everything or you can selectively choose what to upload by using the camera’s ‘protect’ option. This lets you pick and choose which files get uploaded. You also choose where the files are uploaded to via the software with support for a lot of common photo sharing sites, Facebook, etc. Mine all go to Flickr with custom tags, sets and other settings I can setup in advance.

An added feature is that many newer cameras have support for Eye-Fi cards in their menus.

My relatively new Nikon D7000 (as did my older D90) has a menu function to turn off/on the wireless uploads which can save battery if you don’t need to be uploading on the go:

The back LCD screen on the D7000 has an interesting icon that I didn’t immediately notice when an Eye-Fi card is inserted – a wifi icon! It’s static normally and then blinks when it’s actually uploading photos:

I’m currently using this card with my jailbroken iPhone 4 running MyWi as a personal hotspot. Apple recently unveiled a newer firmware for iPhones that may potentially give you this function without having to jailbreak but it’s still to be determined if your carrier will allow that. Eye-Fi also recently announced at CES 2011 an update is coming called Direct Mode which also allow this:

Ziv, one of the Eye-Fi co-founders confirmed on Flickr to me that this will be a free update for X2 card owners which is awesome news.

So any downsides?
I can only see three issues with the card given my use case:

Speed: the cards are only class 6 which is very slow for some cameras…I usually use class 10 (or higher speed) cards but given that I’m only dumping jpegs and not RAWs to the Eye-Fi, it may not be that big of a deal. The upload speed from the card to the internet is pretty fast and a non-issue with it taking around 2 minutes from shot to appearing on Flickr in my tests.
Price: these cards aren’t cheap…my 8gb card is usually around $150. I got mine on sale for $100. In comparison, you can usually get 16gb pro speed SD cards for ~$100 from a name brand company
Post-Processing: while I don’t do much, if any post processing usually, obviously, your photos are going straight from the camera to the cloud…this may be a deal breaker for some photographers. I figure in some cases, it might be better to get the shot online and publish (or replace) that photo with a processed version later otherwise this card may not be that useful to you

I think this card will be a huge asset in my camera bag for event photography where I can truly be a photo ninja.

GoPro HD Hero mini-review

John / November 12, 2010 / Reviews, Video / 1 Comment

After pining away for one for ages, I finally bought a GoPro HD HERO camera:

It’s a tiny little HD camera with an amazing wide angle lens (170 degrees @ 720p!) that comes with a myriad of attachment options.

One of the first things I shot with it was the Thrill the World event and was blown away by the results:

A few days later, I was fortunate enough to be on a tour of the Thompson Okanagan and got to witness the Adam’s River Salmon run near Chase, BC.

Using a camera extension, I was able to get a unique view of the fish in the river:

I’ve been messing around with it and mostly just getting used to all the options it has:

I haven’t shot anything worth posting yet but another great feature of the GoPro is that it can shoot 5 megapixel stills and timelapse photos. The intervals can go down to one shot every 2 seconds and the test results have been better than I imagined. I’ll hopefully have some footage to post soon.

My only issues so far with it is that it doesn’t do well in low light at all and the battery life. My battery actually died about 45 seconds after I started shooting the salmon and I didn’t have an extra one with me (totally poor planning on my part – I’ve since picked up a second battery).

To give you an idea of the potential of this camera, here’s a little video from the GoPro homepage that showcases some of the more extreme uses for it:

There are lots of places to get a GoPro…I bought mine in person from Launch Helmet Cams in North Vancouver. I bought the GoPro HD Hero Naked and added a bunch of accessories. For my purposes, it was cheaper than buying one of the kits that are for more specific uses like Helmet or Motorcycle purposes.

Update (Dec 2010): Here’s a zipline video from my recent trip to Whistler:

See also my mini-review of the LCD BacPac for the GoPro

Sneak Peak of Playstation’s Move Motion controller

John / September 15, 2010 / Hardware, Reviews, Videogames / 2 Comments

Today I had the chance to get a sneak peak at Sony’s new Move Motion control system for the Playstation 3.

Similar to the Nintendo Wii’s Wiimote, it’s a wireless controller that you use to control various types of videogames. Today, we got to play beach volleyball.

Unlike the Wii though, the Playstation controller also incorporates a camera that sits atop your tv that adds an additional level of accuracy to gameplay. This level of precision is what sets the Move control system apart from Nintendo’s offering, albeit a few years after the Wii system debuted.

Getting the chance to play with the Move system early is one thing, but getting to play beach volleyball against a professional volleyball player, Leah Allinger, who will be competing at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London is another. She completely killed me on the court but it was a lot of fun to try the game against someone like her, who seemed to really appreciate the simulation aspects of the game. The game experience was also a great workout…everyone that tried it worked up a sweat in no time.

We also played around with Start the Party which is a mini-game collection. What impressed me was the precision of the Move controller and combined with the camera, allowed for some pretty stunning augmented reality usage of the controller as you can see in this short clip:

Also unlike the Wiimote, the Move controller is completely cordless so you have more freedom to use the control that the cabled Nunchuk on the Wii.

I don’t own a Playstation 3 but I’d certainly consider the Move system if I did as it seems to add a level of gameplay not currently found on the Playstation 3. It, like many videogame accessories, will be interesting to see what third party developers create to take advantage of the system. This may be where Nintendo has the advantage (aside from being first in the motion control space) as the cost of the hardware is included in their console (albeit not as precise) but costs as much as $99 to add the camera and motion controller to a PS3. It will also be interesting to see how things play out with Microsoft’s upcoming Kinect camera control system that requires you to get off the couch as there is no handheld controller at all.

Thanks to Future Shop for hosting the preview.

iPad Camera Kit + CameraBag

John / June 5, 2010 / Photography, Reviews / 6 Comments

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been playing with the extremely hard to find iPad Camera Connection Kit and photos taken with my various cameras.

It’s a simple set of two dock connecting devices, one for SD cards and the other for USB, not unlike a USB SD card reader I have (in the middle):

When you first connect one of the adapters to the iPad, it automatically launches the Photos app and displays a new tab called ‘Camera’ and begins to load image thumbnail previews:

You’ll also notice that it there is also a ‘Places’ tab – I didn’t have this tab before connecting the camera kit and it plots all the geotagged photos on the iPad on a map:

Once the previews are loaded, you can select which photos to import or import all of them:

Once the import is done, you can then choose to keep or delete the photos:

The photos are now available in your camera roll in the ‘All imported’ album with the most recently imported batch in a ‘last import’ album. Any videos in your imports will also now be playable, as long as they are in the correct codec/format that the iPad can understand. I found that videos shot with my cameras varied but the files, while not playable, would be playable when I synced the iPad back to a computer, on the computer.

A side benefit of the video support, especially when travelling, is that you can load up a huge SD card with iPad playable movies and just import the ones you want. Once you watch them, delete and load more. It saves the steps of loading them into iTunes (assuming you made/ripped them yourself – DRM’d/rented movies won’t work this way) and having to allocate space for them during syncing. This also means you may not really need that 64GB iPad since you can literally just save a gig or two for movies and add/remove as necessary. This would have been handy during my trip to Hawaii but I didn’t have the camera kit yet.

From here, you can simply view and email your photos like normal. That’s pretty much all there is to it. But I’d like to be able to apply some post processing to some of the photos and have found that CameraBag for iPad is the most interesting app currently out. I first wrote about CameraBag for iPhone two years ago and have been very impressed with the new version for the iPad.

Once CameraBag is launched, you can select your camera roll to import photos via the top left icon:

Using the options on the bottom right, you can process the original photo in any of the preset modes:

as well, you can mix and match the borders and crops as you’d like or choose ‘Vary’ for a random effect combination:

The settings popup lets you choose the size of the saved image as well as modify the list of filter options:

I’m pretty happy with the results of this super portable combination:

If you’re into photography and have an iPad, you’ll definitely want to pick up a camera kit…it even supports RAW files. Too bad it doesn’t work with the current iPhone 3GS – it would be pretty awesome to be able to upload straight off the camera to the internet via just the iPhone.

Maybe the next OS update (or hardware revision expected to be announced next week) will allow this.

Opening Night for Madama Butterfly

John / May 30, 2010 / Photography, Reviews / 2 Comments

Last night, I was invited to attend the opening night performance of Vancouver Opera’s production of Madama Butterfly. This was my second Opera and the last production for the VO this season.

As I mentioned previously, I’m not an opera goer and was not familiar with the material. I was told that I would have probably heard some of the music used in Butterfly and that the plot shouldn’t be a big surprise as it’s a commonly occurring one (I won’t spoil it in case you don’t know what I’m talking about). Both these points turned out to be very true.

As before, we were given a backstage tour before the show which I quite enjoy.

The set this time around was quite different from Norma’s with its vertigo inducing lines and bold shapes and colours. On the tour, Kelsey suggested that it could easily be used as a set for a 60′s game show.

I love seeing the ‘craft’ that goes into a production of this scale after my humble beginnings producing plays in local *cough no budget cough* theatre.

Unlike my previous visit to the Opera, this time we had front row seats. I liked this A LOT. It dramatically improved my appreciation for what was unfolding on stage where I could see every nuance of the actors performances as well as a perfect view of the stage. If I stood up a little, I could even peer down into the orchestra pit:

Last time, I was fairly far back on the main floor. Not a horrible place to view the Opera from by any means, it’s just a much better experience in the front in my opinion.

Puccini’s music certainly was familiar to me. As had been suggested to me, it has been used in many movies before. It was nice to finally connect the dots on something like this so I now know where it came from.

Again, like last time, this Opera reminded me of a videogame. Due to it’s strikingly bold colours & costumes, strong visuals and somewhat nautical theme (thanks to Mr. Pinkerton), I was immediately thinking of the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The game contains many similar traits to Madama Butterfly with it’s family ties, bold colours, dramatic music and many simple characters. The musical interlude between the second and third acts even further strengthened this connection for me with the three panels of video projections that could have easily been produced for the videogame (this isn’t a bad thing).

Due to my seat in the front row, the surtitles above weren’t that readable without craning my neck but I found the story easy enough to follow along without too many looks upward.

I thoroughly enjoyed this performance. Clocking in at around 2 hours 40 minutes, I can’t recall a single time when I was thinking it was dragging or was slow. It actually seemed to be fairly quick and before I knew it, I was backstage afterwards meeting the cast.

One final thing that still surprises me that happens during the final bows at the end of both Opera’s I’ve attended is the extended ovation that gradually builds as the performers come out. For Butterfly, it went on for a long time and it was cool to see the passion the audience had for these performers. It’s not often you see an older gentleman hoot and holler while wearing a tux.

As a side note, this post and photos was mostly created on the iPad during the course of the evening…which in itself was fun thanks to a number of curious Opera goers inquiring about it during the intermission.

After finally obtaining the camera connection kit for the iPad, I thought it would be a good test to see if you could in fact, use an iPad completely in place of a laptop to photograph/process/upload photos, and write a blog post on the spot.

It almost worked.

I was able to shoot backstage photos, download them to the iPad, post-processed a few favs with the Camerabag for iPad app, upload them to Flickr/Twitter during the performance straight off the iPad.

Using the WordPress iPad app proved to be the weakest link unfortunately…I had to resort to my laptop (at home later since I didn’t bring it to the show) because the app was too flaky for my workflow and it was tedious to switch back and forth from Flickr to the app to paste in the photos (I rarely upload my photos directly into WordPress, but instead embed them from my Flickr account) – it probably would have better to simply use Safari for the WordPress side for this task.

That aside, I am impressed with how well the photo side of things worked out and look forward to being to upload photos on the go at other events.

Kodak PlaySport Zx3 HD Camera [review]

John / May 25, 2010 / Photography, Reviews, Video / 20 Comments

I just got back from a Hawaiian vacation. Before I left, I waffled on what camera gear to bring. I had previously purchased a waterproof ‘bag’ that would fit my Kodak Zx1 camera but wasn’t too jazzed about using it since the back of the bag was blue rather than clear so while I’d be able to use it, I wouldn’t be able to see the screen while shooting.

The day before I left, I decided that I’d buy Kodak’s latest HD camera in the Zx line, the PlaySport (aka Zx3) which has a lot of the same features of the Zx1, except that it’s waterproof (to 3m/10ft), shoots in 1080p (@30fps) and has electronic image stabilization.

I had read some reviews and everyone seemed to agree it was perfect for snorkelling and similar water sports. I was impressed with a few videos I came across so decided to pull the trigger and bought one just before we left.

I am SO glad I did. Take a look at these clips…ideally in 720p HD, which is how I shot them (at 60fps) to see why:

I’m still blown away by the quality of this ~$150 HD camera…especially since it’s waterproof…many point & shoot camera manufacturers sell waterproof housings for their cameras for that price (plus the camera cost).

I was also impressed by the quality of the 5 megapixel still images the camera took:

Considering it was always around my neck while I was in the water, I was able to get still shots I wouldn’t normally get to take with my regular cameras without some kind of expensive protection.

My only gripes with the camera are:

weird underwater audio – obviously, there isn’t much to record underwater, but there is a lot of strange digital noise mixed in with the recorded audio of my Darth Vader breathing and ocean gurgling
the ‘H2O’ mode doesn’t stick when set – this seems to improve the underwater audio quality but unless you leave the camera on the whole time, I had to manually set it to this mode every time I powered on the camera. Definitely not ideal.
battery life – didn’t seem to last as long as the AA’s in my Zx1 do. As it uses the KLIC-7004 Li-Ion battery pack, it wasn’t as convenient to swap batteries like the Zx1 – unless I bought a second battery
wrist strap – seems like it would have been better to include a neck strap for in water use – I just clipped the included wriststrap to a lanyard I had to accomplish the same thing

Despite the issues above, I still think it’s a great camera. Hopefully a firmware update can address the H2O mode audio issue.

I wish I had went with my original plan to just use this camera and my Nikon P6000 point and shoot camera on my trip…the one day that I decided to not ‘get wet’ and take my DSLR out for photo ops, I managed to slip on a rock on the shoreline and while trying to save my DSLR which was in my hand, my camera bag containing my 35mm and 10.5mm fisheye lenses went for a quick dip in the ocean…the 35mm is electronically dead and the fisheye will probably seize up soon. Also two batteries for the P6000 (also in the bag) got nuked in the salt water. Then, moments later, while I was assessing the damage done, a ‘rogue’ wave soaked me (I was still on the shoreline) and completely killed my iPhone 3GS.

Yeah, it was an expensive and depressing day. Next beach vacation, it’s the PlaySport only for me.

Update: Here’s another video (with clips from the above ones) with about 99% footage shot with the PlaySport (the turtle in the sand clip was shot with my P6000):

Two weeks with the iPad

John / April 28, 2010 / Hardware, Photography, Reviews, Technology / 12 Comments

As I mentioned previously, iCaved during the iPad launch weekend and drove down to Seattle and picked up a 32gb wifi iPad.

My decision to drive across the line to get one was further justified (to me) by the fact that Apple then had to delay the international release of the iPad over a month longer than originally planned (pushing it out to almost 2 months from US launch to Canadian availability). This delay, combined with my demo of the device, prompted a number of friends and coworkers to make their own track to Seattle to get their own units.

I have to say, after having it for a number of weeks now, the device keeps surprising me. For starters, the battery life has been amazing. Apple suggests that it lasts for about 10 hours on a charge. I’ve heard of people getting better than 12 hours of life out of the battery. Personally, I’ve gone for 3-4 days of heavy usage before having to plug it in. I never do stupid battery tests (playing a video loop until the battery dies for example) with any of my gear as they aren’t reflective of my actual usage. I can honestly say that the battery performs better than expected and that is awesome for a device like this.

Of course, since the iPad isn’t currently available in Canada, I get asked about it all the time. It’s been fun to have people come up to me at Starbucks for example and say “Is that THE iPad?”. Pretty much everyone has been impressed by seeing one in person, including many naysayers that start off their questioning with “so is it really just a big iPhone?”. It’s also been interesting seeing people that don’t have an iPhone or even a Mac play with it and intuitively figure out how it works without any prompting from me.

So here’s a few app highlights of why it’s outperformed my expectations:

The Photos app, as expected, is a fantastic way to view photos synced from my laptop. It can support thousands of photos and you can scroll through them REALLY fast.

I particularly like the option at the lockscreen to enable the Photoframe mode which is a nice touch for when it’s just sitting there or while charging:

Like Photos, the Movies app is equalling compelling to view movies…I’ve loaded up a bunch of my portfolio videos along with a number of feature films and combined with the crazy battery life, it’s truly a great media player.

I’ve collected a few books to read over the next little while and love that the iBooks app supports ePub formatted books. Combined with the opensource Calibre app (cross platform) conversion tool, you can pretty much put anything text based into the iBooks app. It’s also a nice touch that the entire Amazon Kindle library of books is available via the free Kindle app that has been updated with iPad support.

While considering the purchase of a magazine in a grocery store, I realized that this could be better read on the iPad. A quick check of the Zinio app and for about the price of two issues of a magazine (in this case Shutterbug), I could get a 12 issue subscription. This was a no-brainer. The iPad version includes a number of benefits over the printed version including text transcripts, in-app url viewing (all the ads have clickable links to product pages) and fast navigation through the magazine. I also get an email when the next issue is available.

GoodReader is another ‘reading’ app that allows you to view any PDF document along with a number of other supported file types. It also allows you to create a webserver on the iPad to allow you to wirelessly share files between your iPad, your computer and even other iPads without syncing. I currently have a pile of manuals and documents stored in GoodReader that is incredibly handy. Pretty slick for a $0.99 app.

The Google Maps app is blazingly fast and truly excels at showing the power of the iPad off. Despite not having built in GPS, I’ve found it worked incredibly well at locating me via wifi triangulation in a number of different locations around the province. It truly feels like something out of Minority Report when your are pinching and zooming such a large screen around. Streetview even works amazingly well.

At this point, I’ve got over 4 screens of iPad specific apps. Every day, more apps come up on the App Store and impress me. I can’t get into all of them in this post but will do future posts on some of the more impressive ones.

Gaming on the iPad
I have a bunch of games on the iPhone and have been really impressed with the quality of the iPad games that have been released that really take advantage of the iPad’s big screen. In particular, Scrabble has blown me away with some innovative game play options:

Basically, the party mode supports the notion that players have an iPhone/Touch. They download a free ‘Tile Rack’ app (currently only available on the US App Store) that lets players using their personal devices as view screens of their own tiles. You can arrange your tiles on your iPhone then when it’s your turn, you simply flick them onto the iPad’s game board and place them. You can even flip the iPad’s board orientation around to face you if desired.

Other games like 10 Pin Shuffle feel like games you’d see on a Nintendo Wii (or better) with fast gameplay and beautiful graphics.

Too bad it seems unlikely that Nintendo would ever port any games to the iPad…Zelda or Mario Kart would be amazing on a platform like this.

You’ll want the Apple Case (for now at least)
When I picked up my iPad, the Apple Store in Seattle had a wall of case options. I had already heard mixed reviews about the Apple branded one:

but opted to get it anyway since it was the only one that offered a cover over the screen along with a simple, yet innovative integrated stand that would work in either orientation as well as comfortable angle for typing on a lap or table surface:

Simply tucking the cover into the little flap on the backside quickly transforms the case into a sturdy stand. The only thing I don’t like about this case is the fact that it seems to pick up dirt/lint like crazy. Unavoidable I guess but it’s a pain to clean it constantly. Apparently this case has been wildly popular with it being sold out in all the Apple Stores and it has been spotted on ebay for more than twice the list price of $39.

Some things I don’t like or annoyed me

Like most people with an iPhone, the iPad could really benefit from over the air syncing. It would be great to be able to add some new movies on the fly without having to sync. I already have Mobile Me which works great but doesn’t allow me to add any kind of media over wifi sync.
I wish the VGA adaptor supported true video out…right now only a handful of apps support video out – I would have loved to been able to make a video demo of all the apps via the video out but it’s locked down unnecessarily
I keep finding myself reaching for the home button on the wrong side of the device since it’s orientation is always different depending on use. Only way around this would be a gesture system for getting home or putting a home button on all four sides of the bezel (not likely)

Like teenage vampires, the iPad apparently doesn’t like direct sunlight:

Using the iPad normally results in it never getting warm (unlike my iPhone or laptop)…it’s always cool. But take it outside and it starts to get warm when in direct sunlight and eventually will shut down after about 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. I’m not planning on taking it to the beach but it’s kind of a disappointment.

What I’m looking forward to
I soon hope to get my hands on the Camera Connector as it should open up some interesting options for a much more portable photo upload tool with its support for RAW images, selective uploads and video support. It also sounds like the usb dongle that is included supports things other than photo downloads from cameras so it will be interesting to see what apps take advantage of this option.

Considering the iPad has only been out for a few weeks with the development kit only being in the hands of developers for little more than a month, the potential for this device is still largely untapped. It truly is a game changer in my opinion and not just a ‘big iPhone’.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the 3G enabled iPad is released as well…I’m still not convinced the mobile carriers will offer a compelling package for data users that already pay for a data plan on their iPhones (or other smartphones) which was one of the reasons why I opted to get the wifi version and tether my iPhone to the iPad via an app…although this method does require a jailbroken iPhone, there are similar apps for Android devices as well.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments if you’re curious about the iPad and I’ll try to answer them.

UPDATE (May 10, 2010): Rogers has announced (or rather, Apple has announced it for them) their pricing for the 3G iPad data plans. $15 for 250mb (per month) or $35 for 5gb. ~~If you already have an existing data plan, you can add the iPad to your plan for $20/month. That means that it would cost me $50/month for my 6gb data plan that I can use with my iPhone & iPad~~ (Looks like Apple/Rogers has removed this option – due to negative response?). Um, no thanks, I’ll stick with my tethering option.

UPDATE #2: Keep an eye on Roger’s official blog for more details about iPad pricing…there still seems to be some confusion about how the plans will work and whether there is an addon option.

i-gotU GT-600 USB GPS Travel & Sports Logger

John / March 9, 2010 / Hardware, Photography, Reviews / 11 Comments

Just before the Olympics started, I was given a new GPS gadget to play with, called the i-gotU GT-600 USB GPS Travel & Sports Logger. Since I was planning on doing a lot of travelling around during the games, this seemed like a perfect way to test it out.

So what is it?
It’s basically a GPS receiver with onboard memory that tracks your current location via GPS and writes out some data to the device. You can then later download this data and do all kinds of cool things with it like plot your travels on a map, geotag any photos you took while on walkabout with the map data and export the geo data to other applications like Google Earth where you can make movies from your travels.

Wandering around Vancouver:

Taking the Alberta Train to Whistler:

My flight to Whitehorse:

I even took it dog sledding with me (the purple line is the trail we took along the river):

As you can see, the device is pretty tiny:

I just had it clipped onto my backpack for most of the games. Its onboard battery ran for days without recharging all the while it was downloading my location data.

The main thing I liked about this device over my other GPS photo gadgets is that it was always on, capturing data. My Nikon GP-1 needed a few minutes to acquire its satellite lock once I powered on my camera. It also has a motion detector so it goes into standby mode when you don’t move to conserve battery power.

What I didn’t like is the software support…unfortunately it only supports Windows XP and the 32 bit version of Windows 7 at the moment. No Mac support either. I have the 64 bit version of Windows installed on my MacBook Pro but had to use XP (under VMWare) to access the device and software. The good thing is the manufacturer is updating the software pretty regularly and once you do export the gps data, you can use it on anything. I’ve been playing around with my Whitehorse trip data file in Google Earth on my Mac. I haven’t had a chance to explore other gps apps that can accept the *.GPX data files. Also, while the geotagging option for photos is nice, I shoot RAW so I would have had to convert them down to jpegs then sync them with the software before being able to upload them somewhere like Flickr – a few too many steps for my workflow but I know lots of photogs that like the idea of being able to geotag without an expensive addon like the GP-1 (or they have a non-Nikon camera).

Overall I’m pretty happy with the device. I’ll be taking it with me to Austin later this week to track my SXSW attendance too.

UPDATE: Looks like a software update now allows the device to work with 64-bit Windows 7 and an open source tool called iGotu2gpx for direct access to the *.GPX files on a Mac or Linux machine (thanks Eric in the comments!)

Fat Gecko Mini-Mount

John / January 23, 2010 / Hardware, Photography, Reviews, Video / 9 Comments

Over the holidays, I got to check out a friend’s Go Pro HD which really blew me away since you can put it just about anywhere thanks to its numerous mount options, waterproof housing and wicked wide angle lens. Unfortunately it’s about $300 and I just can’t justify that right now but I still wanted to be able to have some fun with the cameras I already have and attach them to different things to shoot HD and timelapse videos.

So this weekend, I picked up a Delkin Fat Gecko Mini-Mount (Amazon link although I bought mine from London Drugs):

It’s a beefy suction cup mount for attaching your camera to all kinds of things…like your car:

I know what you’re thinking…but this mount is much more robust than the $12 mount I found on ebay (which I overloaded).

I wanted to try it out with some ‘safer’ positions first that I could keep an eye on but after spending some time today with it stuck all over my car, driving at different speeds (including taking it on the highway) I trust it to carry my smaller cameras like the Kodak Zx1 and even my trusty Nikon P6000 pretty much while attached in any position to my car, inside or out. Driving from my home to downtown (about 30 minutes on the highway) over all kinds of turns and bumps resulted in no problems with the mount…it’s solid.

Here’s a video showing some of the different angles I shot during my ‘test drive’ today:

The mount also comes with an extension arm which lets you get out and away from the attach point better so I’ll be trying that next. I also need to dig out my wide angle and fisheye lenses to make the field of view on the Zx1 even wider.

UPDATE: Found my fisheye lens and added the extension arm to the Fat Gecko….the results are pretty awesome:

Mophie Juice Pack Air for iPhone [Review]

John / December 29, 2009 / Hardware, Mobile, Reviews / 11 Comments

Over the holidays, I picked up a Mophie Juice Pack Air for my iPhone 3GS thanks to a great deal on Boxing Day ($48 @ London Drugs).

I’ve been considering one of these types of battery packs for my iPhone for awhile. I already have the Griffin Power Jolt which works really well when you just need a little more juice but sometimes you’re away from an outlet for longer than you’d like. The Power Jolt only gives you about 25% of your battery back on an iPhone 3G/3GS whereas the Mophie gives you one full charge back effectively doubling your battery power.

The form factor of the Juice Pack Air is very similar to the iPhone…it’s a similar shiny hard plastic case that completely envelops the iPhone. I kind of wish it wasn’t so shiny as for a case, it doesn’t offer any slip protection like most cases do. I’d prefer a matte finish or even a rubberized coating. All the iPhone’s buttons and switches are still accessible except the dock connector:

In its place is a micro USB port and a slider switch. The Juice Pack comes with the necessary micro USB cable that facilitates charging the Juice Pack and allows you to sync your iPhone while in the case. I wish it was a more common mini USB cable but at least it’s not a proprietary plug/cable although I don’t believe I have any other devices (or cables) that are micro USB so it’s one more cable you need to carry and hope you don’t lose. At least Mophie sells replacement cables inexpensively on their website.

The switch allows you to control when the iPhone receives its charge from the Juice Pack. You can charge it up and leave it in standby mode until you need it.

As I mentioned earlier, everyone on the iPhone is still available to use, including the camera as you can see above. The photo should also give you a good idea of how much extra bulk the case/battery adds to the iPhone. I have to say, when I first held a Juice Pack, it seemed bulky but after having this one for a couple of days, it’s really not a big deal.

The Juice Pack has a ‘fuel gauge’ and button on the back of the case:

This is similar to Apple laptops that display how much power is left in the battery. While charging, these light up and blink to indicate how far along the charge is. Press the button at any time and you’ll know how much juice is left in the case.

The only real shortcoming this device has is the inability to charge the iPhone battery directly through the case while plugged into your computer (or similar USB power port). You can only charge up the Juice Pack and then charge the iPhone by depleting the Juice Pack. I would have preferred to be able to charge up both (sequentially is fine) so that you have both fully charged up before heading out. The way it is now, you have to charge them separately. Removing the iPhone from the case is easy enough but it would be easier if you didn’t have to.

I don’t plan on using the case all the time, just on those days that I know I’ll be out for an extended time and don’t want to worry about my iPhone dying while using it heavily.

UPDATE (Jan 7, 2010): Thanks to C.K.’s suggestion in the comments, it does appear that the syncing while in the Juice Pack Air issue is related to a bad cable. I swapped cables and it worked fine. Contact Mophie’s support to get a replacement. Mine is on it’s way.