Red Yeti's Blog

10 Aug, 2007

For me, creating pictures of what we see when we wander about in the mountains is a large part of the enjoyment. Obviously you can take very nice pictures using amazingly small digital cameras, I used to. But to get the control over the image that I want I need a DSLR camera.

Power

Spare batteries are going to be more reliable than carrying a charger and hoping to find somewhere to plug it in. I’ve found that five batteries will last me more than ten days in an EOS 350D with the camera being on all day. However it was set to enter standby within thirty seconds and consumes little power that way. Other cameras may be more power hungry.

This year I’m carrying a 400D (the 350D was written off by salt damage) and one of the lenses is an IS (image stabiliser) which also takes some battery power. I’m planning to stick with the five batteries on the assumption that they might last but I should be able to find a couple of places to charge them along the way. So obviously I’ll be carrying a charger, with a continental plug and the flex cut down and joined with a special joint intended for the purpose.

Original Canon batteries are extremely expensive. Around £40 (60€/$80). Copies that appear to work perfectly well can be had on ebay for around £5 to £7 (7€/$10 to 10€/$14).

Memory

I shoot in RAW because it gives me the most latitude to “develop” the image on the computer at home. So each image is over 10Mbs. I also only keep around ten percent of what I take meaning I can happily bash through 1600 frames in a week of walking. So I’m carrying a total of 22Gbs of memory cards with me.

Some people like to use some kind of large capacity mini hard drive, like an Archos for example, to backup photos onto. But I’m very wary of relying on a hard drive since hard drives will fail. It’s not that they might fail, it’s that they will fail eventually, rather like light bulbs. I’m sure many people don’t realise that by keeping pictures on one hard drive at home they are not exactly risking that they might lose them but are really risking when that will happen.

Of course flash memory will fail as well, but it’s solid state, no moving parts, and so is far less prone to feeling unwell after being shaken about in a pack for a fortnight.

Beware when buying memory cards that there are many, many fakes out there and they can be very hard to spot until you receive them. I now only buy from large, respected, on-line retailers like Amazon or Pixmania whose prices are quite comparable to the fakes that often appear on ebay.

Waterproofing

I’d probably use an Exped for a smaller camera but for a DSLR I’ve found the Ortleib Aquazoom is perfect.

Without the shoulder strap it weighs 224gms making it around 20gms lighter than the much smaller Lowe Pro case combined with an Exped bag that I used with the 350D and the standard 18-55 lens.

It’s completely waterproof. I recently tested it out (deliberately!) in a Swedish lake and found that it floated and was 100% watertight.

It comes with a wide shoulder strap that has a good shoulder pad with a scoop to go around your neck. I don’t usually use the shoulder strap though, but instead thread the load stabiliser strap on the hip belt of the rucksack through the belt loops on the back and have it at my side. It means I can put away the camera quickly when it rains and get it out speedily once it stops. However it can take some getting used to since it prevents you swinging an arm while you walk as it gets in the way.

I got mine from Needle Sports (shown wrongly as “Aquacam” at the moment) who have to order it from Germany but it took less than two weeks to get to me. (I had the Aquazoom Plus at first but the lid would allow wind to blow rain up under it so it went back).

Lenses

I started out using the standard 18-55 Canon lens but although it’s a really nice lens, when taking landscapes it conveys so much more to be able to use a wider angle. Hence I recently bought a Canon 10-22 EF USM. I’m very pleased with what I can now show of the mountains but the real surprise was how well it works when taking pictures of groups of people. Because you’re often quite close to your subjects you can’t always fit everyone in with a normal lens, but with the 10-22 you can almost see both the people sitting either side of you at once. Almost.

The other lens is a Canon EF-S 10-22mm USM. This moves the actual lens about, as fast as your hand shakes, to keep an image stable. Which nearly removes the most common cause of blurry images; camera shake.

I find it very useful in low light because it allows you to use a longer exposure time that would normally require a tripod, without having to carry a tripod.

It’s zoom is also coming in handy for picking out things like wild horses in the Welsh hills without getting close enough to scare them.

Lens Cloth

Microfibre lens cloths work extraordinarily well. I cut out about a 6X6cm square and keep it in the bottom of the Aquazoom bag. It only weighs about a gram. I’ve been thinking recently that I ought to keep it in an Integral Designs silnylon stuffsac (4gms) to stop it picking up grit with which to scratch the lens but dislike the extra messing about.

12 Sep, 2007

There’s always room for improving gear! But apart from a couple of things which I’ll post next, all the walking related gear worked really well. And so it should considering the effort that went into choosing it.

One bit of kit that worked well but in some cases needs improvement (not by me!) are the Aloksaks. Rather like Lighthiker, I’ve had mixed success with them. Mostly they’re great but just occasionally one will tear apart just below the seal after very little use. I’ll be mentioning this to the European importer, Dampire at some point to see what they say.

The main area that I need to re-think is the way I carry my camera gear. Although the Aquazoom camera bag is excellent and I can’t see anything replacing it for carrying the camera and keeping it dry, having it attached to the waist belt of the rucksack does stop my arm swinging naturally as I walk. Which is not doing my gait pattern any good and therefore possibly leading to injuries.

I don’t like using a neck strap with a camera and so use a Canon E1 Hand Strap. But the E1 strap usually needs to have a battery adapter fitted before it can be connected. So I got hold of a Camdapter that solves the problem.

But, although I still prefer the hand strap, the weight of the larger lens meant that after a few days I had a sore patch across the back of my right hand where all the weight was taken. Plus, falling over with a camera strapped firmly to your hand is not healthy for the camera or your bones. Though I have got away with on a couple of occasions, avoiding even scratches to the camera or myself, I’d rather not take the risk any more.

I think I will have to come up with some kind of rig attaching the camera to my rucksack straps for sunny days but reverting to stowing it in the very waterproof and quick to access Aquazoom bag on wet days. Another posting on that once I’ve worked it out!

15 Sep, 2007

I thought I’d put up a few pictures from the route on the excellent google Picasa web site. Considering I took 1300 and edited those down to 250 it was pretty hard to edit them down to a fairly representative 25!

2007 08 Walker’s Haute Route

Tip: When looking at the slideshow press the F11 key to change the web browser to full screen mode. Just press it again to swap back to normal viewing. It works in Firefox and IE – if you’re using another browser you’re probably savvy enough to work this out for yourself!

All taken with a Canon EOS 400D with either a Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.4 USM Zoom Lens or a Canon Lens EF-S 17-85 f4-5.6 IS USM (both from Martin’s Camera Shop, excellent service and price). They were taken as RAW and then “developed” using by far the best RAW editor I’ve found (and I’ve tried all I can find): Capture One 4 (Beta).

Capture One 3.7 was the best I had found previously, somehow I preferred it to the equally powerful Bibble.

3.7 had one feature missing that I loved when using the free Pixmantex Rawshooter; the ability to clone images to compare adjustments. I might still be using Rawshooter but for the fact it doesn’t support EOS 400D RAW files and it’s now been subsumed into the rather bloated, but never the less very powerful Adobe Lightroom. But Capture One 4 has introduced image cloning and other features that Rawshooter didn’t have like rotation correction and a basic High Dynamic Range tool that works pretty well.

The 4 Beta version seems stable and is free for the moment. Assuming it’s priced the same as 3.7 it isn’t too expensive to buy. In fact, a license for 3.7, that apparently is good for version 4, currently comes with many Sandisk Compact Flash cards.

Considering some of those cards can be had for around £12 ($25) and Capture One 3.7 costs $100 you can grab a real bargain. Especially if you actually need a CF card! It’s worth checking that the card you’re buying does come with the license of course, since some sellers hold stock that doesn’t. Also beware of the many, many fakes there are out there. I’d now always buy from a large, reputable online supplier like Amazon or Pixmania.

05 Oct, 2008

Well we came back from Iceland. And then LB’s folks were over for a few days for her graduation from her Master’s Degree (Distinction – well done LB!) in Scandinavian Translation from UCL.

Then we were off again for a very few days on part of the TMB that LB hadn’t done. Where I did the whole one-knee-with-a-ring thing on a snowy balcony of my favourite Alpine hut – the Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme. It came as no surprise to her, we’ve been planning the party for months (and the honeymoon for longer – the GR5). And she didn’t even want a ring. But I thought what the heck…

And then we were back again to more work (it does rather get in the way doesn’t it?) and trying to get all the gear packed away at last – before going off for a weekend in my old friend and ex-business partner’s huge house and swimming pool. Which always has me grinning because we met as a couple of sixteen year-olds on the Royal Park’s Apprenticeship scheme. Who then would have guessed where we’d end up?

Well – we did guess to be honest but only he was completely right. It didn’t just “happen” though. It took a lot of work to get there. We started out in business together but after a few years I chose the more standard university/career route whilst he continued the running-a-firm route. We both have our regrets but at the same time are also both happy.

And then – there was still no time for blog entries as I had thousands (literally) of images to sort through and develop. And that really does take time!

But I will write up the Iceland trip (and in fact have started) – I promise!

But with all the time I’ve spent developing the RAW files, I’ve created a nice “workflow” (as the pro’s call it). So I thought I’d write it down. And then I found myself wishing that someone else had written it down as they would have saved me hours of working it out. Sure, there’s a manual that describes all the tools in Capture One but I wanted a quick recipe.

UPDATE: I no longer use Capture One – Adobe Lightroom 2 has completely out-classed it. There’s no contest between them for me!

So, for anyone who’s using Capture One 4 this might be helpful (and I’d very much welcome comments from anyone that is). But for anyone else, I’m quite sure this will be of no interest – sorry!

Note that if I wasn’t taking RAW, I’d only be using Picasa. In fact I do use Picasa as my “photo library” tool for all the results of my developing and all the images LB takes. She doesn’t take RAW. She has better things to do with her time.

So RAW development in Capture One 4: This is the way I work. There may be better ways, I may yet find them, but as of today this is it.

Although the following looks very long winded when written out, it’s far faster in reality!
Continue reading »

28 Oct, 2008

You’d be mad not to take a camera to Iceland. There are simply too many spectacular things to point one at. The main thing to bear in mind is the sharp, insidious, volcanic dust. We were “lucky” that it rained (and rained, and rained) and so had none blown at us. At the end of the walk we met a French father and son who’d just completed a North to South trek that finished along our route (I imagine it was similar to Jonathan Ley’s).

They had walked through the tail-end of the hottest summer on record for Iceland and showed me a very nice lens that, despite precautions, had suffered from dust ingression and made a horrible grinding noise as you adjusted it.

We met many people who were carrying large, expensive cameras but in some cases only barely adequate waterproofing. You need to be able to submerge the camera without damage. Imagine dropping your pack if you stumble during a river crossing. And the rain often comes from all directions at once and will find its way up under the soft, padded lid of even the best Lowe Pro case.

The next time I will also consider taking something to shield the camera from rain and dust whilst in use. The OP Tech Rainsleeve looks very interesting.

The other issue was batteries. One of us actually ran out before the end of the walk which was frustrating since we had lots of spare batteries between us but none that fitted his camera.

The EOS 400D that I use lasted roughly three days or more on a single battery whilst I knocked off around 600 frames during that time. The main thing to bear in mind is that there is simply nowhere to charge them on this route.

The one thing I very much regret was not carrying the extra weight of a proper tripod. Balancing the camera on top of the pack helped but it’s no substitute of course.

I’m considering a Gitzo Mountaineer but the extra weight is almost as frightening as the price (bear in mind that it also needs a head to actually attach the camera – thereby increasing the weight, and price).

But, never mind the kit -what about the pictures?

Here’s a very small selection of the pictures that LB and I took on the trip.

2008 08 Iceland Fast Forward

Or if you prefer, a slightly larger set (which includes all the above).

08 Iceland

23 Jan, 2010

It’s been a while – but heck, developing this lot took me until some time in November. And then I was waiting until I’d had time to play with AutoPano… then I was busy writing up the diary – but that’s a whole other story. Today – at last – the pictures!

We came back with fewer than we expected. Since we were rather concerned that we’d have to spend days and days just deleting the duds, we deleted many of them in the camera, as we went. Which really paid off. I only came back with 1600 images and LB 900. They’ve been pruned down considerably and then pruned further for different audiences (with different levels of interest) using Picasa’s excellent “Albums” feature that lets you create virtual folders of the images and then upload them, so you don’t end up with multiple copies of each image on your machine. (Note that Picasa is an application – it runs on your machine where you can edit and organise your images – it’s not a web site. But, somewhat confusingly, there is a Picasa web site that it can upload your images to).

One hot tip if on a trip with others – get everyone to synch the clocks on their cameras so that if you want to put the images into one album, they all sit in the right order.

On that note, I’d avoid using any “Time Zone Offset” feature of a digital camera in future and instead just set it directly to local time. Having that feature set on LB’s camera effectively meant all her images were out of kilter with mine since they were time stamped in GMT with a local offset that seems to be ignored by image library software. Edit 25/02/2010: Apparently the timezone is not a standard EXIF field – no wonder it doesn’t work properly!

I further compounded the problem by somehow knocking the date in my camera back by a whole day a few days into the trip!

Luckily both Lightroom and Picasa can change the dates in image files using one image as a base-line and setting every other image relative to it.

Without Lightroom and Picasa it wouldn’t just have been a harder job to polish up the images – it wouldn’t have been possible to create a collection of images that invoke the memories quite as well as they do. They’re both excellent pieces of software.

Picasa is all most people need for photo editing and library. It’s also free. Whereas Lightroom isn’t free and does take some practice to get the full power from it (and what power!), but I discovered something that I simply wouldn’t be without if using Lightroom: The Missing FAQ by Victoria Bampton. So many questions, so well answered.

Once the images were developed…it was time to work on the panoramas…

In the past I’ve used the Autostitch (free) for making panoramas but both Duncan MacArthur and Antoine, who we met along the way, mentioned AutoPano Pro (not free!).

It’s incomparable. It makes creating panoramas incredibly easy. Though I would say that I disagree with the instructions and personally prefer the results I get from developing in Lightroom first before using AutoPano. As does Duncan – who am I to argue!

Of course I got more and more interested and ended up buying the Giga version to get AutoPano Tour and then the KRPano Viewer on top of that (of which – more below).

You’ll notice the images are geotagged; you can see where each one is taken as you view them. As we walked we used a Spot tracker to record our progress. We logged in once during the trip to download the tracks (since they are only saved on the Spot web site for 30 days). Luckily we downloaded them in all the formats available because the following recipe requires a gpx file, though I’m sure you can find converters for the other formats online.

So, here’s my recipe for geotagging a set of images with very little effort:

• Get GeoSetter (it’s donation-ware, and well worth a donation in my opinion).
• Navigate to the images in the main view.
• Select them all (Ctrl+A).
• Hit Ctrl+G to bring up the “Synchronise with GPS Data Files” dialog.
• Select “Synchronise with a Directory containing Data Files” and navigate to the directory where you have the GPS track logs.
• Select “Interpolate regarding Shoot Time with Last or Next Position” to have it take a good guess at where you were.
• I also set the “Maximum Time Difference Between Take Dates and Track Points” to 10 hours: 36000 to get the best chance of a guessed position even when the image was taken well after I turned off the tracker. I could then edit it later (see below).
• For “TimeZone” I left it at “Local Windows Settings” and that worked fine. But try it on a copy of some of the images and check to see if the timestamps are okay afterwards (Picasa shows them under the image).
• Hit “OK” and then save all the changed files (they appear in red until saved, when they turn blue). Note that the JPEG images are not re-compressed – so there’s no loss of quality. Only the EXIF data is updated (I checked this myself with a binary file comparison tool – what can I say – I’m an IT consultant…).
• I then selected a couple of days’ worth at a time in Picasa and went to “Tools” -> “GeoTag” -> “GeoTag With Google Earth” and scrolled through them all looking for any anomalies to edit.

The whole task took less than two hours, even though I was working it all out from scratch, for nearly a thousand images.

So, enough about how they were created, here are the images from the GR5 Honeymoon:

GR5 Honeymoon Super Fast Forward

And, the panoramas generated from AutoPano Tour (currently packaged as part of AutoPano Giga) and then turned into Flash presentations using KRPano Viewer:

GR5 Honeymoon Panorama Flash Presentations

Currently there are no instructions for AutoPano Tour (they’re writing them!) so in case it helps anyone – here are mine:

• Make sure it’s Registered (My version keeps un-registering itself – which is annoying)
  • “Register” menu (top-right) will be visible if it’s not registered!
  • Browse to the license file and open it
• Drag in each panorama and arrange in some sort of logical pattern
• For each panorama, using the Panorama tab:
  • Set the JPEG quality to 9 (makes a reasonable difference in file size but seems to affect quality very little)
  • If you want better quality output, up the Partial Panorama Width, 5000 seems good
  • Pressing the “Calculate Optimal Size” button makes it the best resolution possible (at the expense of increasing the size of course!)
• If you want, create hotspots in each image, using the Hotspot Editor (I think this works best if you have doors in the images to move between)
  • Select the image
  • Full screen button (in the Hotspot Editor)
  • Use the right and left arrow icon (far left) to move the editable area and place your hotspot
  • (Right click them and select Delete if you make a mistake)
  • Back on the main window, drag each hotspot to the image you wish to link to
  • Press Ctrl+A to select all so that you can see all the links and check it all flows properly
• Adjust each image’s Field Of View with the 3D Editor
  • Full screen button (in the 3D Editor)
  • Get the FOV as you want it by clicking and dragging with the mouse and using the mouse-wheel to zoom
  • Right-click -> set as start position
• Project Properties tab
  • You probably don’t embed all files (it makes a monolithic file to download instead of loading sections on demand)
  • Tick Embed XML
  • Select simpleWithFullScreen.html
  • Select the starting panorama
  • Set the rest of the settings as you like!
• Export…
• Upload somewhere!

The friendly dialog box on my site that appears before the panoramas load I wrote myself – the code is easily whipped from my site if you want it! (Though you may have a fun time of it if you’re not fairly familiar with JavaScript/JQuery…).