Category Archives: Photography

The iPad Mini – Part 1

iPad

An affordable, impulse purchase.

While ‘pick up in store’ ordering was not working on Apple’s web site yesterday, I swung by the local Apple Store today at what I thought was the 10am opening hour only to find they opened two hours early and that all the white models had been sold. We macho Hemingway fans have no use for white accoutrements in our lives, so I leave those to the feminine and effeminate set. I was happy to buy a black 16GB model. Judging from the number of tickets the clerk was holding for distribution to walk-in buyers, the store had maybe 50 black variants left. I was one of only five shoppers in the store and we were outnumbered by blue shirts four to one.

José lays on the sales pitch. I was obviously so thrilled that camera shake ensued.

Surprisingly I was subjected to a big sales pitch on covers (real men do not use covers) and on the AppleCare warranty. To read my take on warranties, click here and enjoy the math. I guess the falling margins at Apple Corp. have to be made up somehow.

Both subjectively and objectively I find the price to be too high. Subjectively it prices the Apple ecosystem at $129, as capable – if a tad smaller – competitors’ tablets come in at $199. Objectively I have yet to see a Bill of Materials analysis for the Mini, but given that it uses the A5X CPU from the iPad2 and like innards, with a smaller battery display, $329 is a stretch. Further Tim Cook stated in the fiscal Q4 AAPL earnings call that in the near term margins on the Mini will be below those usually commanded by Apple which rather mystified me. One cause, I am sure, is the costly Lightning connector. This seemingly simple, reversible device – and a vast improvement on the awful 30 pin one in use the past decade – includes a miniature DAC (Digital to Analog Converter). This DAC makes use of older analog accessories possible, though there is still some uncertainty over which ones will work. Any buyer of, say, external powered speakers would do well to wait until his chosen model comes with the new connector. Thus compatibility will be assured and clunky adapters avoided.

One reassuring part of the Apple ecosystem.

While non-Apple users may find it difficult to stomach the $129 premium for entry to the Apple ecosystem, emails like the one above, generated when I was setting the Mini up, are a mighty comfort. That and the knowledge that Apple is not selling your ID and tracking your activity the way the ethically challenged mob at Google does. I typed all the above while restoring my iPad Mini from the iPad 3 backup I had made to iCloud. It took some 12 minutes to setup the Mini to where I could start using it (10MBs broadband), whereupon I was asked whether I wanted to restore all my apps, as used on the iPad 3, to the iPad Mini. (They mean ‘copy’ not ‘restore’ but I let it go). The timing here is a function of app numbers and sizes as well as broadband speed, so there’s no point in reporting that here. The iPad Mini reported 95% charge once it came live. Nice.

The engineering of the backup/restore function would be hard to improve. The directions are clear, the process very simple, the results perfect. That alone is worth the $129 ecosystem entrance price in my book, but good luck convincing an Android user of that. He’s in the “What you never had you never missed” class. Even my home screen picture of Bert T. Border (currently running for the Presidency on a truth and honesty ticket) came over perfectly scaled.

Is 16GB enough? Depends on how many games you load, as these tend to be the biggest users of memory. Some of the more recent offerings (Infinity Blade, Nova) use over 1GB each – but you would have to confer with my ten year old son as to which ones should be on the Mini! I do not play games so cannot advise.

First impressions? A beautifully made device which feels far better in the hand than the chintzy and insubstantial iPhone 5. The iPhone 4/4S has the Leica feel; the 5 is a point-and-shoot by comparison. The Mini is very much in the Leica/pro-Nikon class of build. It’s easily held in a hand span when in portrait mode and the fit and finish are a delight. Weight is half that of iPad 3.

Screen definition is excellent – the same number of pixels as iPad 1/2 crammed into the smaller display, meaning excellent definition and allowing all existing apps to run unmodified. The font sizing in default apps like Mail is a tad small for these tired, old eyes (I’m 60, going on 20). Is the screen noticeably worse than the Retina Display in iPad3? Not to my eyes. Pixels are invisible on both.

Do you need to wait for the cellular model to reach stores? Depends. If you have an AT&T or Verizon (not sure about Sprint) iPhone you can use it as a cellular hotspot ($10/month AT&T, free on VZ with the base data plan, both support up to five devices simultaneously) to broadcast a cellular broadband signal, allowing any ‘tethered’ device like an iPad or MacBook to get on the web using the iPhone’s data plan. In that case a cellular version of the iPad is a waste of money. If, however, you have no hotspot access – and despite what you read wi-fi is still only sporadically available in civilization and not at all in the deep South – then a cellular model is the right choice. But you can wait for that as the acclaimed master of the Apple supply chain has made sure they are not available. Just like iPhone 5 and the new iMac. Nice work, Mr. Cook. The iPhone’s hotspot is turned on in Settings->General->Cellular->Personal Hotspot->On. You can choose your own password if the supplied one does not meet with your approval. On the iPad go to Settings->Wi-Fi and choose iPhone as your Wi-Fi source. For use on the road remember to turn Bluetooth on. When thus ‘tethered’ the usual Wi-Fi fan symbol will change to a pair of chain links in the status bar atop the display.

The iPhone’s hotspot in use on the iPad Mini.

In figuring how much memory you need in your iPad or iPad Mini, remember to allow 2.3GB for the operating system. The 16GB version has 13.7GB of storage available. If you buy a Microsoft Surface RT (that’s the crippled one, the full one remains unobtainable – Cook must be moonlighting) you will need some 14GB of space which is why the base model is 32GB. Nothing changes in Redmond, it seems, and code bloat remains the order of the day.

What this review cannot cover is any comparison with other makers’ tablets. I am tied into the Apple ecosystem with all my devices so have zero incentive to use Android, and know nothing about it. The value of the Apple ecosystem far exceeds any savings on cheaper Android devices. Further, it will be a cold day in hell before I use any tablet running a Microsoft operating system.

In Part II I cover cannibalization issues with the full sized iPads, performance and, of course, the cameras (like iPad2 and 3, there’s a front facing one for video calling and a rear facing one for taking pictures. It’s the latter that is of interest). I also address many of the things which are wrong with the iPad Mini. Suffice it to say that on a first acquaintance the iPad Mini fills a valid place in the product line from Apple and is a whole lot easier to carry than the already slim and slender full-sized device.

Leicameter

Hardware

As hood ornament.

Spotted on Harrison Street in the Mission District the other day:

D2X, 16-35 AF-S lens.

One of the more unusual hood ornaments but irresistible given that a like device had found a home on my Leica M3 for some 35 years while I struggled with exposure before the days of automation. It never let me down, and as it used a selenium photovoltaic cell which needed no batteries, it never ran out of juice either.

Here’s mine just before I sold it in 2006, in rather better shape. These were made by Metrawatt under contract to Ernst Leitz.

I recall paying GBP 7.50 (ca. $18) for mine at the Wallace Heaton store on Old Bond Street in Mayfair in 1971, and sold it in 2006 for some $50. Mustn’t grumble. The store to the gentry, Wallace Heaton is long gone, but I’m sure my Leicameter is making a Leica M user happy to this day. Contrary to popular opinion, selenium cells do not die from too much light exposure. Their biggest killer is moisture seeping in past cracked rubber seals in the innards. A fine technology.

Hurricane Sandy

Photography

Live image

From the New York Times comes this live image from the 51st floor of the NYT building, in what is still very much the center of the world as we know it. An intensely dramatic image of Hurricane Sandy rolling in at 12:05 am EST, October 29, 2012:

Best of luck, New York.

For some great photojournalism from America’s newspaper of record, click here.

MacMini 2012

Macintosh

Barely acceptable.

A year ago I warned against the MacMini 2011 for photographic use. Modestly powered and horribly overpriced, you could build a far more robust and expandable Hackintosh for less. Much less.

The main changes in the 2012 model are that it’s $200 less for the i5 base model, the cooler Ivy Bridge CPU has replaced the Sandy Bridge and the competent HD4000 integrated GPU drives the graphics. You still need to add a keyboard, mouse and Display Port-to-DVI cable. Buying Apple’s Dual Link (30″ displays) at $99/Single Link $29 is insanity, when you can buy one from Amazon for $12/$10 – I use one with my MacBook Air and confirm it works perfectly. You also need to max out the RAM, the Mini coming with a paltry 4GB of 1600GHz, up from 1333GHz from last year. The removable base plate in the Mini makes RAM swapping easy and Crucial will charge you $85 for 16GB whereas Apple will get $300 from fools. Looks like RAM gouging, an old habit of Apple’s which had gone away for a while, is back.

But the best news about the Mini is that it comes without Apple’s ghastly glossy screen known to every iMac user since 2007. You can have your pick of displays from decent 1920×1280 21.5″ versions from the likes of Assus and Acer at $140 to megabuck 27″ displays where the Dell Ultrasharp U2711 2560×1440 remains the best value at $800. All cheaper than Apple’s glossy 27″ abomination at $1,000.

The other significant enhancement is to replace the chintzy 500GB internal HDD with a $100 128GB SSD to store the OS and applications, which will return a significant increase in operating speed. Forget cockamamie dual internal drive cradles. That will simply make your machine hotter. Use an USB3 external enclosure for the 500GB drive you just removed. Drive replacement in the Mini is a tad tougher than RAM replacement, but reference to the excellent iFixit guide will get you there. Geekbench64 for the 2012 MacMini comes in at 7,500. For comparison my HackPro HP100 comes in at 12,000 with the i5 and 16,000 with the i7, both scores with the older Sandy Bridge CPU modestly overclocked and a five year old Nvidia GTX9800+ discrete GPU. That machine runs cool as a cucumber compared to any Mac. The poor scores of the 2012 Mac Mini are accounted for by the fact that Apple is using the compromised mobile version of the i5 CPU rather than the full desktop version used in my Hack Pro. The same i5 CPU in my 2012 MacBook Air (4GB RAM) comes in at 6,300 or so, for comparison. Bottom line? the performance of the 2012 Mac Mini is on a par with that of a four year old using the three generations old Core2Quad CPU.

AppleCare? Sure, go ahead and pay $149 more to insure the Mini for two more years. Probably a wise move given the egregious out-of-warranty repair costs. The parts in the Hackintosh mostly come with 3-5 warranties, the exception being the Intel CPU which is covered for one year. Then again, I have yet to have anything in my three Hackintoshes fail. Oh! wait, the clips on the Antec Sonata III case’s dust filter fractured and Antec sent me a new one free after some 30 months of service. Toyota reliability.

So $600 + $85 for proper RAM gets you a 2.5GHz Ivy Bridge machine which will work fine with Photoshop and Lightroom but is likely marginal with video processing. For the latter, I would remove the base plate, mount the Mini vertically, and point an external fan at the innards. A 5″ $10 external fan should fit the space nicely and is easily powered off a 12 volt power adapter of which you likely have three dozen in the cardboard box under the stairs. The sub-optimal cooling of the enclosure will be greatly enhanced. For that matter there are even USB-powered fans available for some $12. Forget about trying to upgrade the i5 CPU for an i7. It’s soldered in, and Apple’s $200 premium for the i7 makes no sense.

Typical USB powered 5″ add-on fan.

However, last year’s advice remains sound – for this sort of money and a little effort (and it’s easier every year) a Hackintosh will make for a superior machine in every way except maybe looks. And when you decide to upgrade to an i7 CPU for heavy video processing, lots of internal drives, and so on, the Hack rules. Click on Sitemap->Photography->Hackintosh, above, to learn more.

Alternatives? Nothing could be worse than the new iMac for seriously hard photographic use, and Apple has abandoned the dated and overpriced MacPro. They have made noises about refreshing the MacPro in 2013 but I’ll believe that when I see it.

Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 AF ED-IF lens

Nikon lenses

Wonderfully sharp.

The 180mm Nikkor f/2.8 on the Nikon D700.

I confess I miss the superb 200mm f/2.8 Canon EF autofocus lens I used to use on my 5D body, so when an opportunity arose to buy a used 180mm f/2.8 ED Nikkor AF-D on the estimable Fred Miranda forum (unlike eBay, it’s home to sellers with integrity) for just $375, I snapped it up. The lens retails new for $900. Mine has some superficial wear on the crinkle finish but the mechanics and optics are fine, and that’s what matters to me. At 27 ounces (same as the Canon) it’s 6 ounces heavier than the gorgeous 200mm f/4 Nikkor I own but a stop faster and with auto focusing. Worth the difference so long as you need f/2.8!

The lens, as with all Nikon AF-D lenses, uses the ‘screwdriver’ focus mechanism. A slotted pinion in the lens drives the focus rack and is in turn driven by a screwdriver attached to a motor in the bayonet flange on the body. A bit Rube Goldberg, perhaps, but it does assure compatibility with a large number of older Nikon bodies back to the film era. For digital users, screwdriver focus is still included in pro/prosumer bodies (Like the D2/3/4, D800/700/600) and in the better amateur ones (D300/300S/7000 etc)


The screwdriver pinion in the flange of the lens.

The drawback of screwdriver focus is that it is slower than the linear in-lens motors found in Nikon’s latest AF-S lenses and, incidentally, in all Canon auto focus digital lenses in various guises. As Nikon does not offer this lens in an AF-S version, if you want a Nikon 180 f/2.8 you have two choices – this lens or the much costlier and heavier 70-200 f/2.8 for some $2,400, weighing in at a porky 54 ounces. However, the zoom adds Vibration Reduction, sadly missing from the 180mm optic.

Balance on the heavy D700 body is excellent and makes for an easily hand-held combination. It’s even better on the larger D2X with it superior ergonomics. With the APS-C frame in the D2X the lens becomes 270mm long. The lens is light enough that no tripod collar is required for tripod use. The black crinkle alloy barrel is functional enough (as in functional-ugly) and cannot hold a candle to the machined, mechanical beauty of the early 200mm f/4 MF lens. Then again, nothing can.

As with the 300mm ED IF MF Nikkor, there is no glass between the rear of the diaphragm and the lens mount, so keeping a lens cap on the rear when not in use is probably a wise precaution to prevent debris interfering with the aperture blades.

Minimum focus distance is 5 feet, which is like a 50mm focusing down to 17 inches. Frame filling portraits are not a problem. The focus barrel has an M-F switch but it’s a bit funky design wise. Switch it to A and it’s locked, operable solely by the motor in the camera. Switch it to M and you can focus manually but the focus confirmation light (D700 and D2X) remains fixed and unvarying. Only when you change the C/S/M control on the camera’s escutcheon to ‘M’ does the focus confirmation light come into play and the screwdriver connection is de-clutched, evidenced by the smooth turning of the focus collar on the lens. Still, that sounds worse than it is because, for all except photography of fast-moving objects coming at the camera, the AF in this Nikkor is fast enough and is absolutely dead on accurate on my two bodies. The latest AF-S lenses have none of this MF complexity – just grab and twist the focus ring to override AF.

ED in the designation denotes the use of high refractive index glass for selected elements and IF means Internal Focus, the length of the lens remaining unchanged as it is focused. No external part of the lens rotates during autofocus for those into polarizing filters and the like. The extensible lens hood is built-in and does not wobble once extended.

The real beauty of this lens is to be found at f/2.8. What little vignetting there is can be automatically corrected in Lightroom which ships with the lens profile for the 180mm. My lens was recognized correctly and the profile automatically corrected both vignetting and minor pincushion distortion.

This is very much a ‘glamor lens’ and one you want to use fully open all the time. Backgrounds are massively blurred making the subject simply pop – these are all at full aperture on the D700 snapped while taking the pup for his evening ramble around the ‘hood:

Tar truck. Molten tar is poured into the seams where new road work joins the old.
This prevents the entry of water and slows erosion at the seams.

Leaf blower. Needless to add I got something in my eye….

Even apartment buildings can be pretty. This one is done in southern plantation style.

Typical 180mm full aperture rendering.

Last growth.

Autumn.

Should you opt for the AF or earlier MF optic? Both have stellar reputations. The answer is that the decision depends on what your uses are. Certainly focusing a lens this long and bright manually is easy. Objects snap in and out of focus with authority. If your persuasion is more on the candid/people side, as is mine, then AF makes better sense. If a more contemplative approach suits you, such as with architecture and landscapes, then MF is fine, and the lens will likely be cheaper. Good used AI-S versions may be found for $200-300 and adding a CPU means another $29 or so. Be warned though that CPU installation will require similar machining to that I adopted for the 300mm – see the link above. It’s not a simple ‘glue on’ job as there’s insufficient clearance between the baffle and the camera’s CPU contacts. It’s not difficult but if you are not handy with a Dremel and a file then this is not for you. And a CPU greatly enhances the functionality of the MF lens. The AI-S version is a couple of ounces heavier and the even earlier AI variant is 4 ounces heavier than the AF-D version. All have built-in hoods. There are also a pair of ‘non-D’ AF versions (the earlier with a plastic barrel which scratches easily, the later with the current crinkle finish) which do not sync up as well with Nikon flash units, but if flash is not a big deal for you everything else about it is identical to the current AF-D lens. The plastic barrel AF ‘non-D’ version is probably the best bargain if you can live with worn cosmetics.

Want to make your photography instantly better? Get a fast 180mm lens.

For snaps from my first serious outing with this lens, click here.