Some people lust for months, years or even decades over a Leica camera due to the huge expense involved in buying into that system. The idea of getting a Leica occurred to me in town on Saturday and today, Tuesday, it was finally in my hands. What’s more, it took just a minute to convince Hilary about the Leica idea. Most spouses would resist the Leica move, put up huge roadblocks or threaten all manner of dire consequences but — all credit to Hilary — she was the main facilitator in the Leica acquisition!

Here it is…

Ain’t it a beaut’? And, in fitting with the high-end Leica brand, the case is made from 100% natural silk yarn. Hilary has made a few of these iPhone “socks” at this stage (a strawberry, teddy bear, etc) which you can see if you’re on Ravelry (she’s ‘hilser’) or an early one in this Venture Beat article. If they wasn’t so labour-intensive I’d convince her to set up an Etsy shop… especially for the Leica version as Leica-owners probably have more money than sense and that’s exactly the sort of people you want as customers

Thanks Hilary, you’re an absolute gem and a very talented lady. I love you!

NEX-5

Just a quick note that I’ve started a new blog about Sony NEX cameras, called NEXtended. I’ll be concentrating on the various unique aspects of these cameras as well as the general aspects of photography. Hopefully, I’ll make it a regular publication and a lively community.

Sugru is awesomeness disguised as plasticine/playdoe/Mála/exercise putty. It’s a sticky putty substance that air-dries into a solid, hard (non-tacky) surface that remains stuck to whatever you stuck it to. If you can’t think of a million uses for something like this (shame on you!) then the Sugru blog has some ideas.

My immediate idea was to fix the ergonomics of my Sony a200 DLSR. You see, camera manufacturers think that cheap cameras should only be bought by people with small hands and the rest of us can just upgrade to their pro range of cameras. Or, you could sugru-ify your entry-level camera! I decided to improve the finger grip (particularly around the little finger) and fill out the palm rest to provide a bit more stability — I’m even more concerned about the ergonomics since my wrist is only out of a cast since last week.

Problem #1: Not enough support for the little finger

Problem #2: Space between the camera and palm

Stage 1: The hand grip

Stage 2: The palm rest
I left enough space to ensure that the battery and card compartment doors still worked.

“But… but… why did you use those colours? Didn’t you just ugly up your camera?”

Well, I could have used black but there’s no point in hacking something unless everyone notices it. I’m sure it’ll make a good ice-breaker at a photo walk (it also makes it damn obvious which camera is mine!).

Bonus Hack #1: The AF/MF button is waaayy too fiddling for a cold, dark night in the middle of a field.
I added a blob of sugru and made the grip surface using a cocktail stick

Bonus Hack #2: Replaced the missing feet off my laptop battery

In all, I used 20g of green sugru and another 10g of orange… so there’s still plenty left in my 75g multipack. I’ll be testing the durability of my hack over the coming weeks to see if the sugru starts to come apart, detach or get very marked but so far I’m really pleased. In fact, I think I might add a further piece around the thumb grip and base of my hand.

I have gallstones, as did my wife, and there’s a 1 in 5 chance that you will suffer from them during your lifetime. Basically, these little deposits can be a small as a grain of sand (mine are quite small) and happily sit in your gallbladder without generating any symptoms. However, when they do cause problems it often feels like this iconic scene from Alien:

Ultimately, the only real cure for gallstones is to have your gallbladder removed. However, in the meantime, you’re going to need to control your diet to avoid these devastating attacks and prepare for surgery (I believe surgeons won’t operate if the gallbladder is inflamed). Here’s some ideas for a gallstone-attack-avoidance diet:

The aim

A low fat diet which minimises the occurrence of gallstone attacks. Typically, you need to restrict yourself to items with less than 5g fat per 100g serving (i.e., < 5% fat). Do not be confused by product labelling which gives the fat content of a smaller serving or the percentage of your daily fat allowance — both will get you into trouble. Always check the label!

Things to avoid

• Any Butter
• Oil – if you need a little oil for frying use spray-on oil which is very efficient and actually contains an oil/water mix
• Chocolate
• Fatty meats such as duck and lamb
• Cream
• Cheese
• Some curry sauces (too creamy)
• Cheesy pasta sauces / Italian dishes such as lasagne
• Replace full-fat milk with semi-skimmed or skimmed (I seem to be fine on semi-skimmed milk)
• Breakfast / Energy bars
• Crisps
• Nuts

Main Courses

• Meat: Chicken, lean mined beef, white fish, pork rashers or ham with all the fat trimmed off
• Pasta sauces: Most tomato-based sauces contain very little fat (the “light” sauces are actually light on sugar). Make your own creamy pasta sauce with light or extra light Philadephia and some semi-skimmed milk —just remember to add plenty of herbs to taste!
• Stir fry: Most asian sauces are fine
• Spicy foods: Chilli and some curry sauces are fine (but not those which are based on coconut milk)
• Rice, potatoes and pasta will form the bulk of the meal
• Add plenty of interesting veg too!

Dessert / Treats / Snacks

• Yoghurt
• Yoghurt drinks like Yop!
• Low-fat flavoured milk
• Weight-watchers desserts (mousse things with < 5% fat)
• Jacobs Low-fat fig rolls
• Jaffa Cakes
• Toast and jam (no butter!)
• Fruit: anything and everything except avocados
• Fruit smoothies like Innocent drinks (just watch out for anything with cream or ice cream)
• Jelly sweets
• Mints
• Low-fat “diet” bars like Alpen and Fitnesse bars (a great way to sneak a little chocolate in!)
• Starbucks “skinny” muffins (and a no-fat banana & choc chip muffin recipe Hilary found) but beware because the regular muffins ruined a perfectly good Friday!

Today I got a very polite letter informing me that one of my photos has been selected for the 2008 calendar (although I don’t yet know which one, or for which month). I don’t know whether to count this as my first publication or first competition win. Hell, I’ll go with both! Previously, I’d complained that the 2007 calendar was full of out-of-focus, overexposed rubbish but of course the 2008 calendar will now be the pinnacle of Irish canine photography

The calendar will be widely available for sale towards the end of the year. The three entries I’d submitted are below:

Until I’ve found a suitable workaround, the best option seems to be to change the ImageDescription tag to something more useful, like the filename. Enter ExifTool, a utility for reading and modifying the EXIF data in photos. After a little playing around with the compiled Windows .exe, I figured out that this command will change the value of the ImageDescription tag to the filename of each photo in the directory:

exiftool "-ImageDescription<$filename" *.jpg

Now, I can process a whole directory of images, upload them to Smugmug and the comments below each image become something useful.

Flickr

As the grand-daddy of decent photo sharing sites, Flickr is the obvious and popular choice. It has a clean look, plenty of sociable features (like friends, groups, keeping track of your favourite photos, etc.) and a simple but effective upload client. It’s popularity also means that there are lots of widgets and services available which exploit the Flickr API. However, it doesn’t really have albums (preferring to call them “sets”) and the interface terminology can be quite confusing to non-technical users.

Smugmug

Smugmug is a fairly recent newcomer but it’s a independent, profitable company with lots of enthusiastic users and a more traditional/professional approach compared to Flickr’s sociability. One of the best features of Smugmug is the ability to password-protect an album and to supply a password hint. I’ve long wanted the ability to protect an album with a “shared secret”, like the name of my mother’s dog, which most friends and family would know but strangers wouldn’t and this provides the perfect mechanism. There’s no special links to follow or sign-up process for guests to go through. Smugmug also seems a little nicer in operation: it has traditional style albums, AJAX-implemented effects and a selection of nicely presented themes. The biggest downside is the upload support: a simple Java applet (which uses the default L&F!), an Internet Explorer version (no thanks!), a third-party uploader for Windows that doesn’t let you select the photos by thumbnail and a standard “Browse to find” upload form. This aspect needs some serious work!

Picasaweb

Picasaweb is Google’s online companion to the excellent Picasa photo application, which I use to manage/preview most of my photos (I also use Photoshop Elements for editing/cataloguing). Google really have to whole uploading thing down to perfection: just select the photos you want in Picasa, click the Web Album button and the images are uploaded efficiently with any corrections applied (rotation, red eye, etc). You can’t password-protect albums but you can make them invisible and just provide a secret URL, and you can now also link to your photos in blogs and forums (which you couldn’t previously). Also, the albums aren’t terribly customisable

Comparison

Below is a work-in-progress comparison (full version here) between the 3 sites across a number of features (not all of which are important to me):

Conclusions

Summary: Picasaweb is great for uploading, Flickr is great for sharing with strangers and Smugmug is the easiest for friends/family to use.

None of the sites provide physical prints for non-U.S. customers (i.e., most of the world) and I suppose I can only dream that they’d let my visitors directly order prints through Photobox. I’m fully intending to pay for a subscription and the prices range from $25 -50 annually, which seems reasonable. Both Flickr and Smugmug offer unlimited storage which is one less thing to worry about. I also got a good response from Smugmug customer service when I asked about auto-rotation of photos, even though the answer is currently negative.

So far there’s no clear winner but the look of Smugmug and the password-hint feature are really big points in it’s favour, although the upload process needs to get much, much better. I’ve got about another 10 days to figure out if Smugmug is the right place for my photos…

Updates

12/06/07: I’ve updated the spreadsheet after some feedback from Smugmug — they do sell prints worldwide but they’re shipped from the US, so local UK/Irish services like Photobox still work out cheaper.

I’d emailed Smugmug to let them know about this post and got a very sincere reply agreeing with some of my criticisms and pointing out other areas where Smugmug excels that I hadn’t considered (no bandwidth limitations and they store your unprocessed originals). I’d heard that Smugmug are proud of their customer service and it was nice to experience it.

Why didn’t I email Flickr and Picasaweb? Well, perhaps because I felt that they were too big to care or perhaps I only emailed Smugmug because they’d made such a big deal about being there for their customers. Plus, I’ll admit that have a natural affinity for the underdog so I’d like to think that Smugmug could make it against the big boys (Yahoo & Google).

The Crumpler “Stunner” is small photo bag capable of holding a DLSR and one or two lenses.

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I’d previously used a Lowepro Mini TLZ bag, which snuggly fitted my Dynax 5D and 18-70mm kit lens. However, the arrival of a Sigma 70-300 lens necesitated the purchase of a new bag which would hold the 5D with the 70-300 lens attached, and the 18-70 in the bag (or vice versa). I’d been interested in the Lowepro Slingshot 100 because it’s still a small bag, but behaves like a backpack. However, it was just a little too small to fit the Sigma lens. Instead, I noticed the Crumpler “Stunner” on sale and eventually decided to buy it.

h2. Overview

The bag is a basic shoulder bag with large flap which lifts to allow access to the photo compartment. This compartment is protected by two lids, a small stiff lid that folds into the compartment, and then a larger flap that covers the whole top and front of the bag. Both flaps are secured by velcro and the outer flap can also use an optional buckle. At the front of the bag, underneath the outer flap, is a generous accessory pocket.

h2. Construction

The bag has the same tough material and large zip present in the “Formal Lounge”:http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/notebook/pages/crumpler-formal-lounge-review backpack.

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The interior is the common “soft velcro” stuff that allows the interior dividers to be re-positioned. I’ve managed to arrange it so that the Dynax 5D will fit in with either the Sigma or kit lens attached, and the other in a side section. There’s still room in the other side section for some small accessories such as a body cap, strap or even a small 50mm lens. The inner flap is a little tight to close with the 5D & 70-300 but not uncomfortably so. And this inner lid can be velcro’d up to the outer flap so that they close together (nice design).

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The front section contains spare cards, batteries, cloth etc and has velcro and zipped sections if you need them.

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h2. Carrying

It has a large padded strap which makes it very comfortable to carry… particularly across your shoulders. There’s also a small attachment strap on either side of the bag for accessories (e.g. waterbottle), which I’ve used for a GPS receiver but probably isn’t ideal for a tripod. I found that the padded strap made the bag slip a little when carried on one shoulder like a handbag (possibly cured with the application of some sticky-substance like silicone sealant) and there’s no handle for carrying it by hand.

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h2. Conclusions

I’m fairly happy with the “Stunner”. It looks good (and not like a photo bag), it’s quite small but carries what I need (and _only_ what I need), it’s comfortable and (because it was on sale) cheap. If it had been there, for about the same price, I’d have been tempted to go for the slightly larger “Long Schlong” bag. Other reviews of the “Stunner” can be found on “the CamBags site”:http://www.cambags.com/canon/300d_10_20d/shoulder/crumpler_stunner_frames.htm.

Would I have bought it at full-RRP price? No, probably not but then I’m not flush with cash and neither would I have bought the much larger Slingshot 200 — I’d have probably ended up with a boring, black, “photo”-looking bag from Lowepro like the “Nova range”:http://lowepro.com/Products/Shoulder_Bags/allWeather/Nova_2_AW.aspx.

Jamie Lawrence, 4th August, 2006

*This is a small script to “locate” your photos in “Google Earth”:http://earth.google.com/. It takes a GPS tracklog and a collection of photos, and generated a KML or KMZ file that allows Google Earth to pin thumbnails of your photos at the location where they were taken*

!http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/notebook/images/35.jpg!

h2. Requirements

* Python 2.4 (tested on “ActiveState Python 2.4 for Windows”:http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePython/)
* Google Earth (v3 works fine, v4 should also work)
* “EasyGPS”:http://www.topografix.com/ (for generating .gpx files). Free.
* A GPS device (most work with EasyGPS, I used a Garmin 60C)

h2. Installation

Unzip this directory to any location. Done.

h2. Operation

* Make sure that your camera and GPS device are synchronised to exactly the same time
* Make sure that your GPS device is recording a track log whilst you are taking photos
* Load the tracklog into EasyGPS and save it as a GPX file
* From a command prompt, call PhotoPlanet as:

python PhotoPlanet.py -g <.gpx file> -p <photo dir> -o <output file> -z

e.g.
python PhotoPlanet.py -g test2.gpx -p "E:\Documents and Settings\Jamie\Desktop\Test\test2" -o test2.kmz -z
* Omit the -z switch if you just want a KML file (which link to the photos on your hard drive).
* Open the generated KML/KMZ file in Google Earth and your photos will be added
* An example .kmz file is included so you can see what the output is like

h2. Notes

* This script makes use of, and includes, the excellent “EXIF.py”:http://home.cfl.rr.com/genecash/digital_camera/EXIF.py. I didn’t write it.
* The script does NOT write to the photos, so it should be quite safe
* Having said that, I’m not responsible if it doesn’t work or breaks something

h2. Code

The code is reproduced below for information purposes only. You should download “the full archive”:http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/notebook/file_download/7 which includes all the necessary files, a README (mostly this document), and “example .KMZ file”:http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/notebook/file_download/8.

Alternate titles:

• I’m a Moron
• I stabbed the heart of my camera
• I cracked my sensor!

Left on my own for the weekend, I decided to occupy myself by going to Hurst Spit for a spot of evening coastal photography. I was reasonably pleased with the results but then I noticed this:

Damn. I really should have cleaned the lens whilst on the beach. “Oh well, not a problem”, I thought, “I’ll just clean it now”. So I meticulously cleaned the front on the lens — but this mark still came out on the photos. So I cleaned the back of the lens. No change. This is when I noticed that these marks were not present through the viewfinder and therefore… it was dust on the sensor. Arrggghhh…I’ve only changed lens twice since I got the camera but this was obviously enough to let some dust in.

I was rather offended by this dust, and certainly couldn’t face photoshopping every future photo I took (I don’t even own photoshop), so feeling far too gung-ho I recalled some advice I’d received from a Jessops salesman when I asked about dust. He suggested that lightly brushing a cotton bud across the sensor would be enough to pick up any dust. He also stressed that it was extremely fragile and could crack easily. I read the camera’s instruction booklet and opened up the mirror. With infinite gentleness I moved the tip of the bud across the sensor. I closed up, turned on the camera and took a test shot:

Arrrggghhhh!!!!! I’ve cracked the sensor. Oh my God! I’ve cracked the sensor. No! Sh*t! It’s still under warranty. No, this isn’t covered by the warranty. Can they replace CCD sensors? Nope, I don’t think so. Damn! I’ve just wasted a £450 camera. I couldn’t really afford it to start with, but I certainly can’t afford to buy another.

I sweated. I paced the floor. And finally I woke my fiancee up at midnight in Croatia to tell her the bad news. She thought someone had died; I felt as if they had. She managed to marginally calm me down and convince me to look online for the support phone numbers. Ah, typical, today is April 1st and Konica Minolta ceased their camera business on March 31st. I found some updated details thanks to Dyxum and Digital Dynax, wrote these down, resolved to call them on Monday morning and went to bed. I didn’t sleep. The cautions of the Jessops technician and a quote from “The digital photography handbook” kept floating back into my head: “If you have a D-SLR and can see dust on the sensor, never, ever clean it yourself. The CCD is very fragile and, despite the fact that you can buy CCD cleaners, if you touch the sensor, it will break.”

The next morning I was in a morbid mood. My one reckless action was going to have serious financial implications for me (I’m only a PhD student and I’m trying to save for our wedding in September). More drastically, it was going to rob me of a hobby I had only just started but which I enjoyed immensely. It was only last week that I was smuggly thinking how unique the Dynax 5D was now that Konica Minolta had ceased their camera business. Three months since I had bought the camera and there still is no other camera I would choose. Unfortunately, stocks of the 5D were depleted across the internet so it would be hard to buy another even if I had the ability. I had just killed a unique camera I couldn’t replace.

As it was a a new day I felt the need to survey the damage. I opened up the camera again and I could plainly see the damage that my inept surgery had caused: a crack ran vertically down the sensor. In a moment of pure optimism I blew on the sensor hoping that the crack was just an impossibly large fiber lying there. It moved. The crack moved. In fact, it disappeared somewhere else inside the camera. It had been a hair all along. I reassembled the camera. Click! No “crack”. Click! Click! Nothing. The camera is not destroyed! Alleluia!

The dust marks (or “dust bunnies” as I’ve heard them called) are still there but I’m not as bothered by them now. They’re most noticeable at very small aperatures . I’ve also bought a blower thing, and I might consider some of those specialist sensor cleaners, but I’m not going to be cleaning my sensor for a very long time. My nerves can’t take it. Does anyone know of a Minolta(or Sony)-approved service centre in the UK that will clean the sensor for me?!

P.S. Why are they called “Dust Bunnies” anyway? I can only assume it’s because the photographer has learned to leave them well alone for fear of consequences of their removal — like having a “pet” funnelweb spider in your bedroom and calling it “Funny”.