Category Archives: Photography

Improved Nikon GPS

Nikon bodies

A new integrated unit.

I have had great success with the Aoka GPS receivers attached to my two Nikons – the D2X and D700. You can read all about the technology here, where you will see that a separate data logger must be used. This goes in your pocket and receives GPS data from the satellite and passes it to the device on the camera’s body. The logger has a small rechargeable battery which can be recharged from any USB socket on your computer.

The new integrated Aoka GPS receiver.

The new receiver integrates the data logger and receiver which I use. It’s a little wider but has the advantage that it’s impossible to forget to take the logger along with you, something I have managed once or twice. The drawback is that it drains more power from the camera’s battery as there is no separate logger battery to recharge. While I have not used it, the price is attractive. eBay asks $80, Amazon has it for more. One Amazon review has some useful battery drain metrics.

The device (model AK-G1) fits the Nikon D4/3/2 in all their iterations, D800/800E, D200/300/300s, D700 and Fujifilm S5Pro. There are other models to fit the Nikon D3100, D5000, D5100, D3200, D600 (model AK-G2), and the AK-G7 for the Nikon D7000, both costing $80 on eBay. The AK-G9 for the Nikon D90 has no integrated data logger ($40 – eBay) so a separate logger would have to be used.

The only failures I have had with mine result from ‘canyons’ in the city shading the satellite or not giving the device the 2-3 seconds to wake from sleep after a period of inactivity. I have also found that the older D2X is far faster at re-displaying the ‘GPS’ flag on the top LCD display than is the D700. So much for progress. The new device looks like a better mousetrap, especially as my separate logger can only support one camera at a time. Switch the D2X and the D700 on simultaneously and the D2X grabs and hogs the signal every time. The one logger cannot simultaneously drive two camera receivers.

Here’s the device on a Nikon DSLR – stock photo from the maker; I’m guessing it’s a D300:

As a friend of the blog and GPS expert points out, as GPS technology improves the advantage of these devices is that they can be inexpensively upgraded rather than having to buy a new camera body.

For comparison, here’s the earlier unit attached to the D2X, along with the small, separate data logger.

D2X with receiver and data logger.

I cannot find inexpensive aftermarket devices for Canon DSLRs. The factory units run $195 for a Nikon shoe-mounted unit with a clunky cord connection to the socket and $250-279 for the various Canon units. Both seem ridiculously over-priced to me.

EyeOne revisited with Mountain Lion

Displays, Photographs

A great tool.

When FU Steve installed the latest nVidia GTX 660 graphics card in my HP100+ Hackintosh, he also did a fresh install of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2. When it came to printing from Lightroom yesterday, I found the driver for my HP DesignJet 90 was AWOL, so I quickly reinstalled it. At the same time, I re-profiled all three Dell displays using the EyeOne colorimeter and the (not so) current EyeOne DisplayOne Lion software, the makers at Xrite as usual taking their time with the upgrade to Mountain Lion. While the software reminds you to make monthly profile updates, I find that three or four times a year is fine as my three year old Dell 2209WA monitors are now very stable and exhibit minimal drift. The application logs and charts drift which is handy.

My Dells are set to a brightness of 120cd/m2, gamma=2.2 and color temperature of 6500K. That brightness setting is very low – something like a setting of 14 out of 100 on the Dell’s on-screen controls. If your prints are always coming out darker than you like, chances are you have the display set too bright, which is how Apple and just about every other display maker wants it, to show off their products. And Apple’s displays – built-in or separate – are some of the worst a photographer can use. In addition to having a far smaller color gamut (range) than your photographs and your (good) printer they are glossy, to add insult to injury. But boy, do they look ‘insanely great’ in the Apple Store or what?

While the EyeOne DisplayOne I use appears to have been discontinued – I would encourage any photographer to pick up a used one ($75-100) as there are no moving parts to go wrong in the device – the current model is the EyeOne DisplayPro, retailing for the same price I paid a few years ago for my model:

Click the picture to go to B&H USA. I get no click-through payment.

I have no idea what software is included, but you can download the Lion version of the app from Xrite and it works fine with Mountain Lion. Profile creation takes 8 minutes per display and the profile is automatically saved in the right place. I generally know when I am due for re-profiling as with three adjacent displays any changes from one to another are immediately obvious. If you use one display, a monthly profile run might make sense in the first year of a new display’s life, with quarterly ones thereafter. I always make sure my displays have been on for at least 30 minutes before making a new profile, to make sure they have settled.

When I took our son to lunch in San Francisco the other day – he was off school for Veterans’ Day – I made sure to bring the Nikon D2X with the 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor-S MF lens along, and encouraged him to play with the camera on the trip. It’s too heavy for him to use, as he is only 10 years old, but it was a joy watching him experiment with the various buttons and levers which exist in abundance on this complex camera’s body. I chose the MF lens for two reasons. One to teach him manual focusing, a rarity in the world he inhabits, and the second to take a snap of him over lunch. On the APS-C sensor in the D2X the 50mm lens takes on an effective 75mm focal length which is ideal for head and shoulders portraits, and nicely isolates the subject from the background.

Winston at Sinbad’s, at the ferry landing, San Francisco.
Click the picture for the map. Nikon D2X, 50mm f/1.4 at f/5.6. ISO 400.

The GPS data comes courtesy of the Aoka receiver illustrated here. The same one which fits on the D700 works every bit as well on the D2X. Actually, the receiver works better on the D2X which is quicker to pick up the GPS signal from sleep than the D700. I use the i-Blue MobileMate GPS sender illustrated in that linked piece but any of a number of alternative senders works. Check Aoka’s instructions.

The old 50mm lens, made some 40 years ago, is as good as it gets. No, it’s better, as I have added a CPU for proper loading of a lens correction profile in Lightroom as well as proper recording of EXIF data. The CPU also allows matrix metering to work with old MF Nikkors. In fact, in the case of the above portrait, the old Nikkor lens is too good. Despite the gentle window natural lighting, every last blemish in Winston’s face, despite his tender age, is laid bare in the original print. So when processing the image in Lightroom, I moved the Clarity slider to minus 20, which nicely softens things up without losing too much detail. The sensor in the D2X may be dated by modern standards and may start creaking at anything over 400 ISO, but the rendering of color in the large wall print I just made, with color fidelity made perfect by the calibrated monitor, is stunning.

A good colorimeter is a must have for any photographer, but especially for one who regularly makes prints. I think there may be five of us left in that category in the United States.

Perfectly balanced. The Nikon D2X with the 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor-S manual focus lens.
A dental floss (!) tether protects the GPS receiver against loss.

For more from the stellar 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor, click here.

Monochrome cop out

Photography

Black and white seldom helps.

Joel Meyerowitz writes compellingly:

“From my first moments as a photographer — the very first roll of film, actually — I worked in color and believed in its potential. Why wouldn’t I? The world was in color! There was no question about what film to use and, besides, in that passionate first moment of discovering photography I wanted to see what I had made photographs of as fast as I could get them back from the lab.”

And while I find his color work as trite and banal as the monochrome meanderings of a clientless minority claiming art status for their black and white snaps, there’s no disagreeing with his sentiment.

Meyerowitz compares colors. © Joel Meyerowitz.

You can read more here.

These are hardly original thoughts. Eliot Porter put it far more eloquently when he had his color conversion decades earlier.

Monochrome is seldom justified, mainly used as a crutch to make something passable from something awful. The height of this pretentiousness is manifested in Leica’s Monochrome M body which – wait for it – delivers black and white images only from its digital sensor. Now you too can be Cartier-Bresson, as long as you can afford the $8,000 entry fee. And you still get no lens for that money. Ridiculous. What’s wrong with pressing the ‘Monochrome’ button in Photoshop?

Idiocy redefined. The ‘There’s one born every minute’ camera.
Back-ordered, needless to add.

Here’s a rare example of photography where only monochrome will do but, then again, this is the work of a very great photographer indeed.

The iPad Mini – Part II

iPad

OK, but hardly innovative.

Part I is here.

Let’s look at some not so great things about the iPad Mini.

First, it’s not remotely innovative. The innards of the iPad 2 with a smaller screen is hardly innovation. There’s no new great UI enhancements and the black version I bought makes it very difficult to insert the (otherwise great) ‘Lightning’ connector as the small black socket disappears in the bezel. The slope of the latter makes it even harder to insert the connector in a perpendicular manner. The iPad 3 suffers from the same issues with the older 30-pin connector but at least there the bezel is unpainted aluminum so you can half see what you are doing. Apple should add a perpendicular shelf in the way the Kindle Paperwhite does, making it easier to find the socket and insert the connector. The Paperwhite is not all joy, by the way. It uses the awful non-reversible USB3 connector, an exercise in fragility and poor design.

Second, it is wildly overpriced. iHS Supply, the reliable Bill Of Materials/teardown site estimates component cost at $198. So for a 34% gross margin, same as on the iPad Maxi, Apple should be charging $300 – call it $299. That accomplishes two things. It gets them under the magic $300 number and it earns a non-dilutive margin. The $329 asked is a canyon away in perception and impulse purchase power. Just plain dumb. $30 is a lot more than $30 sounds when the result is $329, if you get my drift.

Third, the screen remains glossy, with all the attendant issue of reflections, though the smaller size mitigates issues owing to the ease with which the display can be reoriented.

Fourth, the black anodized back is going to be a scratch magnet, yet buying a protector argues against the whole compact and light design brief.

Fifth, the volume control has made a significantly retrograde design step. The toggle heretofore used on iPads has become two separate buttons, meaning if your right index finger finds the wrong one by touch you end up searching for the other. Of course, the direction of your finger movement will be wrong half the time. With the toggle design there was no such issue.

Sixth, I really dislike the sloped sides Apple is using on current iPads. This is nothing more or less than a fake to make the device look slimmer, but every single ergonomic aspect of that is retrograde. iPad 1 simply rules here, with its perpendicular sides which don’t present a sharp edge to your hands and make operation of the various buttons and sockets far easier.

Seventh, the screen remains useless outdoors in bright light. Only the eInk Kindles can be used on the beach or in the California sun, which is why I own one.

Eighth, the camera is a major disappointment. It’s the same one found in iPad2 and iPhone4, meaning 5 megapixels, fixed ISO. iPhone4S added an 8 megapixel sensor which is really excellent, as I have shown here many times and as 13″ x 19″ prints on my walls testify. iPhone5 uses the same Sony sensor but with a far greater auto ISO range which enhances performance in poor light. iPad Mini has neither of these attributes. Disappointing. And the panorama mode from iPhone 4S and 5 is missing. Cynical cost saving ($2?) for a device which is going to cannibalize iPad Maxi sales whether you like it or not.

Finally, I am really beginning to wonder whether Tim Cook is the right man to lead Apple. His presentation skills make Donald Duck seem a gifted orator by comparison and he has made massive strategic errors in Q4 2012. Every main seller in Apple’s product line has been redesigned in Q3 and is now unavailable in the key shopping season – iPad, iPad Mini, iMac and, worst of all, iPhone 5. Further, manufacturing difficulties aside, by placing Apple on a calendar Q4 product replacement cycle Cook has significantly compounded the volatility in the stock. Now Wall Street will be looking to Q4 more than ever to deliver earnings and you can bet the stock will sell off massively after the earnings release until …. Q4 of next year. Just plain dumb. Business 101. To add insult to injury, Cook’s recent pogrom where he fired the smartest man Apple had – the inventor of NeXT’s OS, the inventor of OS X, the inventor of the awesome iOS and a polished speaker and presenter – Scott Forstall, does not bode well. Sure Forstall wanted the CEO job. He saw a weak guy in charge with no ideas, skilled solely in production engineering. And Forstall was a massive threat to a modestly skilled CEO who professes to prefer harmony to creative tension. Business is not a glee club. Business is about competition, external and internal and the weak should not survive. That does not mean you fire abrasive, ambitious leaders.

Jony Ive’s worst design ever, created before Steve Jobs rejoined Apple.

Then putting a design guy in charge of software interfaces is likely to prove another bad move. Jony Ive manages at most a dozen people making a few designs of a few devices using programmable milling mahines. Once someone approves his ideas, off they go to the production engineers to see how they can be manufactured in quantity. As the current designs show, there are major issues with this. And can you remember a memorable Ive design before Jobs rejoined Apple? Yes, I can remember many. Without exception they were execrable, the last being the Bondi Blue iMac, released shortly after Jobs rejoined, but designed earlier. Without doubt the single most awful Mac design ever, right down to the idiotic puck-like mouse. You can accuse Ive of variety but not of good taste. And his disdain for UI at the expense of looks seems exactly the wrong skill set for a software interface leader. Ever used a Magic Mouse? Or a Mighty Mouse? Or any of its predecessors? Shockers all. I have used the lot. Without exception the worst mice ever, from anyone. And don’t get me going on the iMac. Someone else needs to choose the right design from Ive’s mental meanderings. Form over function in extremis. Sir Jony is a basement player who needs to remain in the basement surrounded by his German high tech machines, not managing large teams of brilliant and argumentative software engineers, something Forstall clearly did with aplomb.

Right now Tim Cook is looking more like Gil Amelio than Steve Jobs.

And forget all the claptrap about skeumorphism. Most users have never heard the word and the frou-frou design elements in OS X can be easily removed with apps like Mountain Tweaks. If it’s really an issue Apple can add an on-off switch in Settings with a few lines of code. Indeed, for all but geek users, making things look on the screen like the things in your home is a welcome feature. Granny, with her first iPad, is more likely to say “Daddy, look at this Books app, just like the bookselves at home!” than she is going to start cussing out skeumorphism. A non-event.

Now some good things.

The Mini will – just – fit the pocket of your Harris Tweed jacket. It most certainly will not fit the one in your business suit. It’s so light that taking it along merits no second thoughts. The screen, which squeezes in all the iPad 1/2’s pixels into a much smaller display – is outstanding. Side by side with the Retina Display (how I dislike that fake description) of the iPad 3 there are no grounds for complaint. All the fan boys saying it’s clearly different must be on drugs. It’s identical to all intents and purposes.

The faster CPU in the iPad 3 not missed. The Mini is every bit as responsive and clearly faster than the occasionally sluggish iPad 1, which can only run up to iOS5, unlike the iOS6 in the Mini and current iPads. My guess is that the great demands placed on the GPU by the Retina Display more than negate the benefits of the iPad 3/4’s faster CPU.

I have had occasional issues with slow tethered Verizon cellular connections to my iPhone 5 but do not have enough data to say whether this is a design issue yet.

For the rest of the testing I gave the Mini to our 10-year-old son, Winston, who loves it. It’s an excellent gaming machine and much easier for him to hold than the heavier Maxi. He does not miss the added screen space and loves how easy it is to take along. Not a single performance issue cropped up in serious game play with the most taxing applications, far more demanding on performance than anything I would ever do. Even with demanding games the battery life is outstanding – 10 hours at a pop. The Mini remains barely warm to the touch after serious gaming unlike the iPad 3 which becomes uncomfortably warm, probably owing to the higher power consumption of the Retina Display iPad3 uses.

On the GPS front, a knowledgable friend of the blog points out that the cellular iPad Mini (unobtainable, needless to add) will be the first mobile tablet to have both US and Russian (GLONASS, when it works) GPS built-in. Thank you Qualcomm and doubtless heart warming news for all those Russian oligarchs.

So the iPad Mini is a mixed bag. It’s a pure consumption machine, creation on the small display being largely out of the question. The camera is dated, the ergonomics compromised. It’s overpriced and hard to make. It’s a featherweight but the display remains useless in bright sun. It cannibalizes iPad 2/4 sales yet long-term reading on it is an eye strain owing to the smaller font. Turn it to landscape mode and the fonts revert to iPad Maxi size unless the app insists on displaying a side bar in this mode – unfortunately like this site on an iPad, and I cannot turn that off – when the eyestrain remains the same.

Disclosure: Long 2014 AAPL bull call spreads, albeit with growing trepidation.

Update August, 2013:

I have sold the iPad Mini (Cost: $329, Sold for: $279) and replaced it with the 2013 Nexus 7. The Nexus ran a mere $229 and is superior in every way with a far higher resolution display, better form factor, higher speed, GPS, NFC, Qi recharging and a robust OS in Android JellyBean 4.3, which allows easy connection to all your data in Apple’s iCloud. The iPad Mini remains crazily overpriced for what you get and the high resale value it still commands means that I got almost one year’s use for just $50. That may be the Mini’s best feature of all.

Nikon MB-D10 battery grip

Nikon bodies

A ‘handy’ accessory.

The Nikon MB-D10 mounted on the D700. Vertical shutter release and switch are at lower left.

My delight in discovering the superior handling of the Nikon D2X pro body with its built-in vertical handgrip and shutter release led me to track down the detachable handgrip for my D700, the MB-D10. It fits the D300, D300S and the D700 and is quite exceptionally well made. I found mine on the Fred Miranda Buy/Sell forum and some care is called for in this case. It seems there are many aftermarket knockoffs out there of varying quality and performance so it’s important to pre-clear the one of your choice as the genuine article before paying up. Mine arrived in mint condition and cost $125, half the price of a new one, and included both the Nikon and 8 x AA battery holders.

The battery versatility is exceptional. You can have the following combinations:

  • Nikon EN-EL3e in the D700, nothing in the grip
  • Nikon EN-EL3e in the D700, a second EN-EL3e in the grip
  • Nikon EN-EL3e in the D700, 8 AAs in the grip
  • Nikon EN-EL3e in the D700, Nikon EN-EL4 or EN-EL4a in the grip with the appropriate end piece
  • Nothing in the D700, Nikon EN-EL3e in the grip
  • Nothing in the D700, Nikon EN-EL4 or EN-EL4a in the grip with the appropriate end piece
  • Nothing in the D700, 8 x AA in the grip

The EN-EL3e is the standard D700 battery, the EN-EL4 (or the higher capacity 4a) is the standard battery used in the D2X/D3/D4 pro bodies.

It gets better. If you have batteries in both the D700 and the grip, you can tell the D700 to use the in-camera batteries first or the in-grip ones first. This is in the Custom Setting Menu->d->d11->Battery order. When the camera is using the grip batteries or if only grip batteries are fitted, then the battery indicator on the top plate of the D700 is preceded by a small icon stating ‘BP’. Further, if you use AA batteries in the grip, you can tell the D700 whether these are AA alkaline, AA Ni-MH, AA lithium or AA Ni-Mn. This is in the Custom Setting Menu->d->d10->MB-D10 battery type. Best of all, if you use two sets of batteries the D700 will report on the remaining battery life and battery condition for both the in-camera and in-grip batteries. This is in the Setup menu. Phew! Nikon simply will not allow battery drain and charge reporting to go unnoticed. Extraordinary.

After sifting through all the possibilities, I discarded the idea of 8 AA cells in the MB-D10. Too heavy and prone to leaking if heavily discharged. I don’t need the vast shooting capacity which comes with using batteries in both the body and the grip so I decided on one Nikon EN-EL3e only. Finally, because the MB-D10 has to be removed to access the in-camera battery, I decided on using the EN-EL3e in the MB-D10 only, where removal and replacement are simple.

To fit the MB-D10 to the D700 a rubber contact cover on the base of the D700 is removed and the MB-D10 simply screwed to the body with a large, well serrated dial screw. Thereafter you have all the functionality of the integrated vertical grip on the D2X/D3/D4. The MB-D10 adds a vertical shutter release which can be turned off to prevent accidental use, and both front and rear control dials. The vertical grip is well contoured for the right hand and adds materially to the ease of hand-holding the camera in portrait orientation. The CF card can be accessed in the usual way through the side cover and the MB-D10 can remain in place while this is done.

The base of the MB-D10 replicates the centrally placed tripod socket of the D700 body. While the MB-D10 adds heft and bulk, it actually makes for a much better balanced camera which really comes into its own with lenses like the 180, 200 or 300mm Nikkors.

To add icing to the cake, the battery grip increases the maximum shooting rate from 5 fps to 8 fps, if that’s your thing.

Highly recommended, but don’t waste money on new retail ones or on cheap knockoffs, some of which fail to even work properly. There are many of these, the genuine Nikon versions, lightly used on the secondhand market. Just make sure you get the real thing which is distinguished by an embossed ‘Nikon’ logo on the rubber base and says ‘Nikon’ on the box. Also, if you contemplate using AA cells, make sure that the MB-D10 you buy comes with the separate AA cell holder, or be prepared to pay some $40 for the accessory.

If you are a Nikon D800/D800E user, prepare to be upset. Nikon wants $400 for a like accessory and designing the D800 body to use a different battery grip must qualify as the height of cynicism. Not good, Nikon. And most certainly not British.