Month: April 2010

Creating a bootable external drive in OSX and why you should think about doing it.

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usbleopardCatchy title huh? This is a short post but one that I hope might help a few people out. Firstly, if you are a PC user then i’m afraid I can’t help you with all the details, but at least read the first few paragraphs to find out why you might want to do this. In the past 18 months I have had three hard drive failures, 2 in laptops and one in an external USB drive on my desk. It happens and I hope by now we all know that. I’m not going to preach on backing up your files, that’s for another time…..

A few times in the last few months I have found myself working in a location that is fairly remote. No Apple store or computer parts store within a thousand miles, and not somewhere that gets any kind of speedy mail-order servicing either. So what would happen if one of my laptop hard drives had failed in one of those locations? This is mostly relevant to photographers who travel a lot, and especially those who visit remote locations, but the solution is actually fairly simple and remarkably cheap. A bootable external drive that can run Mac OSX is the answer. It doesn’t even need to be a 2.5″ hard drive, you can actually boot to Snow Leopard directly off a USB keyring as long as its big enough!

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Snow Photos 101 – Long lens selection

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So you’ve mastered you wide-angle lenses and medium telephoto zooms like the ubiquitous 70-200. The next step is inevitably looking at longer lenses in the 300mm and up range. Firstly, be prepared for your wallet to take a bit of a hit For the most part, once you start heading north of 200mm the price of lenses can take a bit of a jump for the higher quality ones. I can’t cover every lens option but here’s a few thoughts on some of your options from the main two manufacturers. During my years shooting skiing I have rarely needed a

Nikon Announces the new 200-400mm F4 ED VRII

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Nikon has today announced a brand new version of their beautiful 200-400mm F4 zoom lens. Everyone knows I shoot Canon, but I appreciate a good lens and this is one! The original 200-400 was a highly regarded lens and this new version adds Nikons VRII image stabilization (equivalent to roughly 4 stops) and also the new Nano Crystal Coating that we have seen on their latest 300mm f2.8 lens. The new AF-S NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II lens weighs in at 7.4 lbs (3.4 kg), and it will retail for $6999.95 (USD) If I was a Nikon shooter this

Geotagging in Aperture 3

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6a00d8341ce76f53ef012876db2b3a970c-800wiPicture 7This sort of follows on from the review I did a few days ago of the Gisteq PhotoTrackr. I was not overly enamored with the software that came in the box with the PhotoTrackr but it did allow you to export the GPS track to a .gpx file and that meant you can upload it to other software. With the introduction of Aperture 3.0, Apple added compatibility with geotagging to the popular photographic organizational tool. The new “places” tool in Aperture 3 lets you sort and view your photos by location, and also lets you geotag your photos either by uploading a .gpx file from a third party tracking device or by syncing with information in your iPhone photos.

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News from NAB 2010

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I know a lot of people who check out this blog are interested in video as well as photography, and especially in the current convergence between the two. This years NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show has just wrapped up, and even more than last year the buzz about the show was all about DSLR video technology. There were many noteworthy announcements at the show but these are a couple that caught my attention. Carl Zeiss Compact Primes II When major cine lens manufactures start producing a lineup specifically designed for shooting video with a DSLR the whole industry sits

Gisteq PhotoTrackr review

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phototrackr-mini-dpl900-1I’ve had a mild curiosity in geotagging for a while. Years from now, i’ve always thought that it wold be very cool to know exactly where some of my photos were taken. Especially my backcountry skiing photos where they are not necessarily taken near any recognizable landmarks. As I travel more and more to other parts of the world too, it would be nice to look back at that in the future and see exactly where I was.

For Canon shooters you instantly run into a problem though. So far Canon has refused to add geotagging to any of their cameras and they have also refused to add the ability for third-party developers to come up with their own solution. Nikon users have it pretty easy by comparison with their G-P1. It connects directly to the camera and writes the GPS location of the photo straight into the metadata. If you shoot Canon though you are going to need to do a little extra work and I was intrigued to find out how much effort it would be to integrate this into my current workflow, especially now that Apple have integrated geotagging into Aperture 3.0. A bit of research led me to the Gisteq PhotoTrackr mini.

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Industry news for April

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There has been a few announcements in the last week that are worth of note for photo and video people out there. Here is a quick summary. Adobe Creative Suite 5 Today Adobe announced the 5th version of their Creative Suite. I will concentrate on Photoshop CS5 as that is the most relevant to most readers. Notable new features: Revised lens correction interface with specific profiles for different lenses. Camera Raw updated to V6.0 Content aware fill. Check out the very impressive video demonstrating content aware fill HERE This feature looks like it could be a huge time saver in

So you want to go and shoot skiing in Alaska ……..?

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I’m becoming very very familiar with the interior of the hotel room in which I’m currently sitting. The front door is a portal to the 1970s, wood paneled walls that creak in the night, vinyl flooring and a selection of electrical appliances that would make an interesting museum exhibit. They call it the “slow roast” here in Haines, Alaska, and nobody knows how long it will last. When I first arrived in town 2 weeks ago the skies were blue for a couple of days and we got right into it. But since then our fortune has changed. We have flown for 1 run in the last 7 days….. and its beginning to drive us insane. The weather patterns seem totally unpredictable, even by the most seasoned of Alaskan forecasters. We have given up even checking on them, the only way to go is to look out of the window.

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