Jan201008

John

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My favorite TED talk

Keith Ferrazzi tweeted his favorite TED clip and asked others which one is their favorite. As you may know, I like many TED clips and post some of them on this blog. Keith’s favorite was Al Gore’s on climate change which instantly reminded me of the TED talk I like the most; John Doerr’s talk on climate change and Genentech. I replied back (2) with this talk, but I decided to take a few minutes and re-watch it and post it here as well.

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Jan201006

John

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365 project update

I’ve been on vacation for the last two plus weeks for the holidays and during that time I let my 365 project go by the wayside as well. I wanted to spend some quality time with my family and friends. I still managed to take a lot of pictures, especially with my new Cannon S90, but I really didn’t take pictures thinking about my 365 project not do I really feel like forcing one of these other photos into my 365 project (I’ll shortly be sharing a few of the slideshows of some of the interesting photos generated over my vacations). I did manage to take a few shots for my 365 and will be posting them later today. I will say, it was a nice break from making sure I got a shot everyday, but now I ready to start off the New Year trying to ensure I get my daily shot.


Jan201005

John

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How food shapes our cities – TED

The other day while on a flight I was catching up on some TED episode and watched this clip on how cities impact our thinking of food. While  I think everyone should read Omnivore’s Dilemma or at least watch Food, Inc., people should know more about their food and make whatever informed choices they want. This is a good clip which I encourage you to watch.

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Dec200914

John

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My new camera – Canon S90

Canon S90
Image by Pavel Tcholakov via Flickr
I just received my new camera, a Canon PowerShot S90, after much debate. Beginning a few months ago I started to think about a new camera. I was primarily looking for a smaller camera (as compared to my Canon 50D), something that I could cary around on a daily or near daily basis, with good image quality, and manual controls. The first question I faced was what type of camera to get. The options I considered were a point and shoot, micro four-thirds, or a specialized compact camera (basically a Sigma DP-1/2).
So for the last few months I’ve been going back and fourth on the type of camera I was looking for. Finally here is how I decided on a point and shoot:
* Micro four-thirds: When I started looking at these cameras there was only one on the market, the Olympus EP-1, now there are a few more on the market, the EP-2 and Panasonic GF-1. While I really like the fact these cameras have large sensors (not as large as my dSLR, but the next best thing) and the ability the change lenses. However, at the end of the day the camera, even with a pancake lens, is a large camera and not pocketable, something that I wouldn’t be able to cary around with me everyday, in fact it may only be useful during the times I would otherwise use my dSLR. Second, it’s a whole new system that may be an expensive system to invest in and I see how it would compete with my dSLR system for use. Additionally, this is a new platform and I see a lot of new development over the next year which, if I would have bought into the system now I may end up with buyers remorse as better cameras come out which may fix the issues people are having with these cameras (auto focus speed comes to mind).
* Specialized compacts (Sigma DP1/DP2): I think these are great little cameras with a huge FOVEON X3 sensor. And I really considered the DP-2. I would love to have a compact camera with a nearly APS-C sensor. In fact, I think the DP-2 (or newer version) may be my next camera. I decided against this model now because of its fixed focal length which is quite limiting for everyday shooting and the complaints over the auto-focus speed and noise and the controls. The body is a little large for carrying around everyday but I think its doable. I wish there was a place in the area (Metro DC) I could go and play with one of these.
* Point and shoot: compact point and shoot’s are often problematic due to their consumer driven appeal (often lacking the dSLR type manual controls) and their small sensor sizes. However, there are some high-end point and shoot cameras like the Canon G11, Canon S90, and Panasonic LX-3. Seeing as the Canon G11 and S90 as new I took a hard look at them. The G11 and S90 are nearly the same camera (sensor, processor, and controls) I decided on the S90 as I was looking for something more compact. Additionally, since its release there have been many great reviews, here, here, here. In the finial analysis, it came down to a camera was pretty good IQ, manual controls, and a very small size. The S90 is something that I can cary around with me everywhere.
I’m looking forward to playing with the S90 over the coming days. I’ll post some thoughts on it later.

I just received my new camera, a Canon PowerShot S90, after much debate. Beginning a few months ago I started to think about a new camera. I was primarily looking for a smaller camera (as compared to my Canon 50D), something that I could cary around on a daily or near daily basis, with good image quality, and manual controls. The first question I faced was what type of camera to get. The options I considered were a point and shoot, micro four-thirds, or a specialized compact camera (basically a Sigma DP-1/2).


Dec200913

John

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Unboxing of my latest toy Canon S90

Unboxing of my latest toy, Canon S90. I know I shouldn’t have, but couldn’t help myself. This means I’ll have to test I out some to see if it’s worth keeping. More posts to come.


Dec200912

John

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Flickr iPhone app

Wordmark of Flickr
Image via Wikipedia

I am really happy to see that Flickr.com released an iPhone app some time back. Since it’s release I’ve spent a little bit of time with it. The app is a great way to view other users pictures, and that is a plus. However, what continues to boggle my mind with this app, even in the latest release, is when you try to upload a photo from your own library the app replaces the time the photo was taken with the current date and time and will not upload the photos geolocation data (in the previous version it would always use the location you were uploading the photo from, now in the latest version you can turn that off, but it does not seem to use the embedded geolocation of the photo). So I am left wondering why on earth is Flickr’s app messing with the EXIF data of my photos? It makes absolutely no sense.

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Dec200903

John

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Auto capitalizing an “i” on a Mac

Since switching to a Mac as my personal PC more than a year ago I really haven’t looked back. The only thing I really miss is the auto correction, especially  of the “i”. Anyone know how to set up a Mac to auto capitalize an “I”?


Nov200930

John

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365 project update – looking for daily upload tips.

Lately I’ve been pretty bad about not only posting photos from my 365 but also taking the photos. So I’m trying to think of some ways to speed up my posting and enable quicker shots, even with a hectic schedule.

I think my first goal will be to try daily posting of shots, hoping that will keep me more up-to-date.  Starting today you should be seeing a post for each day, come up (there is some backlog to get through over the next few days).

However, I do find it to be a time-consuming process to complete the work-flow of uploading photos into Aperture, processing, and then to the web.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to create a more efficient work-flow?

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Nov200929

John

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Aperture on MacBook Air

This past week I visited family, knowing that I needed to do some major clean up to my Aperture library I went through the painstaking process of removing previews and consolidating the projects I wanted to use and transferring a new library to my MacBook Air, which I was taking with me (I will note, when I normally travel it’s for work so I don’t get to take Aperture or my Air with me which is why this was sort of foreign to me). Needless to say that who process took a few hours.

When I finally sat down over the Thanksgiving holiday to work on some photos my Air basically ground to a halt running Aperture, appearing to be a CPU limitation. I knew from past experiences that my MacBook Air doesn’t run aperture very well, I’ve primarily used it to dump and do triage on photos in a single project as I’m traveling. Running a library that was 40gb+ didn’t happen. Each action took forever. Needless to say I am a little disappointed I spent the time getting everything running to only fail, but I guess I should have seen this coming.

No, I’m not going to run out and buy a MacBook Pro, as much as I would like too, but now I need to figure out someway to work on photos while I am traveling with my Air. Any suggestions?

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Nov200924

John

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The peace & quiet of air travel

I don’t travel as much as some, but I do travel more than many people. For as much trouble as it is, I really do find that my time on a plane, disconnected from the world, is quite productive. Even with just my iPhone I’m able to get through masses of email. Google reader and the like. Only problem are the occasional typos which increase with each hour in the air (going on 5 now). However, it does sucks when you touch down and sync up. Oh well. Well it’s not so bad at 1am.