Canon 1D Mk.IV "launch"

Well, not exactly a launch - more of a preview - today at Pro Photo Solutions, held at the Design Business Center in London. All courtesy of the nice people (Colin) at SimplyDV.

I was hoping for a proper "hands on", particularly to do a proper test of the flash metering - which to date on Canon is complete pants. Unfortunately Canon UK only had two pre-production samples of the new camera, both tied very firmly to the deck and with card doors sealed, so you couldn't actually take any photos. All very disappointing.

Due to catching too late a train, I missed most of the initial press briefing, but attended a half-hour seminar later in the day. I was a bit worried what Canon UK were saying about the camera being more "susceptible" to blurred photos due to the resolution being so high and the pixels so densely packed. Not sure I entirely believe their argument - if it happens with this camera, why not also on the D1S Mk.III ?

There was much talk about the various Custom Functions that can be used to tailor the operation of the AF system. You can control how fast the AF reacts to changes, how many of the 45 AF sensors are used, how the selected AF point can be expanded, how large the AF areas are (that's a new one), etc. etc. "Do read the manual", the Canon UK man says, as you can basically duff up the AF operation completely. Let just hope all the AF issues that plagued the Mk.III (and some - including my - Mk.IIn) bodies are firmly behind us now.

Much was also made of the hiked ISO range. The standard range available without recourse to yet further custom functions is 100 to 12800. With a bit of fiddling, however, this can be expanded to 50 to a staggering 102400! Canon reckon the quality is "two stops better" than the already impressive Mk.III - meaning that if you were happy to work with ISO 800, you'd be equally happy with 3200 on the new body. Why hide this extra range away? Canon say its because the quality isn't really what they consider acceptable - I can live with that. Of course, the proof is in the pudding and I was miffed I couldn't see the quality for myself.

I asked, for the benefit of SimplyDV, about the camera's HD video capabilities. Via custom function (there are a lot of them) you can pick between full HD at 25fps or lower the resolution to 720 pixels or even VGA to get 50fps - could be useful for scientific or educational applications,as well as straight-forward slow motion. You can also switch from PAL to NTSC to get different frame rates.

Sadly, in the questions section at the end, predictable - and pointless - questions came from the floor regarding the camera's crop factor and the choice of resolution. Why is it that people cannot understand that if you want a "full frame" (35mm-sized) sensor, you simply buy a different camera? This new body is aimed primarily at sports, news and wildlife photographer who need the extra reach that a crop sensor body provides.

So, what's my verdict? Well, sadly I can't give one. Nowhere near enough real hands-on for my liking - the lack of real cameras for us media types to play with rendered the whole exercise somewhat pointless.

Lexar Launch SD WiFi card

Lexar have now launched an SD card with built-in 802.11 wireless so you can send images directly from any SD-equipped digital camera via a wireless network. How do they get it all in such a tiny package - when it was introduced for Compact Flash, it was surprising enough!

Whether they just took over the company that developed this approach or have simply licensed the technology from them, I don't know. Unfortunately its only available in the USA at the moment, but I'm sure it will be here soon.

Lexar – Shoot-n-Sync Wi-Fi Memory Card

NMCC Motocross, Crick

The Northampton motorcycle club finally managed to host a race, this time at Crick near J18 of the M1. This summer's weather has been so poor, at least one event had to be cancelled - this time, it was ideal.


Technorati Tags: motocross, sport, action, photography

Multi-camera photography

Fiver's program 'The Shot' (reality competition to find a fashion photographer) this afternoon included a session using a 90-camera setup allegedly to shoot photos for a feature on hair. Not surprisingly, the judges were pretty scathing about all the results - but the equipment was never going to suit the subject. The program would have been far more interesting if it had focussed on the technology and techniques instead of the competitors whinging and moaning about each other. But then I guess that's what reality TV is all about - especially if its American.

Who is selling your photos online?

"A man goes to an REM concert. The conditions on the ticket banned taking photographs, but Steve Miller and his wife, who were conveniently seated in the middle of the front row in the Royal Albert Hall in March, noticed that everyone around them was taking photographs and the staff weren't stopping them. So they took some, too - about a dozen nice, bright, clear, good-quality concert photographs. Miller put them up on Flickr, as you do, and thought little more about it.

Then one day in mid-May Alison Clarke, another Flickr user, contacted him to let him know that his photographs were up for sale on eBay."

So the photographer is complaining because someone is selling images he wasn't actually supposed to have taken in the first place?

Being a part-time freelance photographer, I'm all for protection of peoples' rights, but in this particular instance, the photographer was well aware they had broken copyright law themselves in the first place.

Who is selling your photos online? | Technology | The Guardian

Wakeboarding

Attended the European Cable Wakeboard Tour today as it visited Willen Lake in Milton Keynes for three days. Managed to get some decent shots despite the sun not wanting to stay out for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Click the image to visit the gallery.

Photo competition

This evening saw the awards presentation for the first annual Walton High photographic competition, with first second and third prizes awarded in Under 16s and Over 16s categories, plus a rather smart trophy for the overall photographer of the year. The quality of all of the finalists' images were very impressive and you certainly couldn't tell which photos had been submitted by the younger group of students.

Competition Home

Photo competition

This evening saw the judging of all 198 entries to the 2008 OU Camera Club annual photographic competition. I didn't win anything myself, but did have one photo shortlisted in the Architecture gallery. As Chairman, it was good to see so many images entered - I had been concerned that we wouldn't get enough. Thanks to the visiting judge Derek Larkin from the Wellingborough Camera Club.

More on the ATP Photofinder:
We bought ours from easydevices.co.uk for about £80, together with a card reader which you need if you want to tag images on Compact Flash cards. The USB socket on the ATP reader is mini-USB2, so you need to use the included dongle in order to connect most USB card readers.

The ATP does the job, but there are shortcomings:

1. the battery life can be pretty dire. I managed to record about an hour's track with a pair of new alkaline AAAs from Superdrug, but there wasn't enough juice when I got back to geotag the files. I thoroughly recommend the use of top-brand batteries, like Duracell, or get yourself some high capacity NiMHs from the likes of play.com

2. the display is extremely difficult to see. In order to save power, the backlight goes off about about five seconds. If you've taken a lot of photos, the geotagging process can take a long time and without the display on, you have no idea that its still working.

3. time for GPS acquisition from cold is very long - you have to wait a good five minutes before the device will start logging your position.

4. the KML track files that the device creates are not correctly date-stamped. Given the device has such a large storage capacity, you can end up with a lot of track files in the device (which you can then copy to your SD card), but they are all datestamped 1st Jan 2007.

I think the GPS accuracy issue is common to all small, portable GPS devices - they've never going to work that well in built-up environments since the receivers all require a clear view of the sky to operate properly.

So, although it might be a clever product, I'm afraid the "user experience" leaves a bit to be desired.

Here's a gallery of photos I geotagged using the ATP Photofinder. Picasa does a much better job of handling geotagged photos than Flickr, helped by the use of Google Maps, of course.

Technorati tags: GPS ATP Photofinder review opinion geotagging

Trevor with the ATP Photofinder,
originally uploaded by hockeyshooter.

This clever little device performs two functions. Firstly it records a track of GPS locations, saved every 5 seconds to a KML-format file.

Secondly, and much more clever, is that you can take an SD card from a digital camera, and it will geotag (correctly, in the EXIF header) with the location the photo was taken at the time it was taken.

Like the little Garmin units, it runs off two AAA batteries with an expected life of about 8 hours. Takes quite a while to acquire the GPS signal.

Its quite well built, feels robust, the SD slot and mini-USB2 slot are behind a little rubber flap and the battery cover is a tight fit. Controls are minimal (just three buttons) and there is a tiny LCD display - but this is extremely difficult to read in bright light.

Overall, its an excellent idea and very useful for doing site surveys and the like.

The T189 course team, plus myself (not officially on the course team), pose with their OU Teaching Award.

This evening's Art and Architecture walk for the work's camera club was successful - as well as a few club members, we hosted around 9 regulars of a Flickr group called the MK Flickrites. I concentrated on the architecture as the light was better for that.

"Yahoo 'censored' Flickr comments
Yahoo has been accused of censorship on its popular photo website Flickr, in a row that has highlighted the issue of copyright in the online age. Earlier this month photographer Rebekka Gudleifsdóttir discovered that seven of her pictures were reportedly being sold by a UK-based online gallery. She raised the issue on Flickr but a photo and comments were deleted."

This is precisely why I watermark and add additional copyright statements to all my images.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Yahoo 'censored' Flickr comments

The copyright violators in question are only-dreemin and you'll find that they are already mentioned on quite a few blogs. At time of writing, the photographer was not able to persue them through the UK courts as she couldn't afford to do so - so they get away with it.

The moral of the story is: never upload full-resolution images to the web, and watermark any images you do upload, preferably place in areas that would make it very difficult or impossible to edit out.

Technorati tags: copyright violation Flickr Yahoo only-dreemin