Virtual Sets

I like to take pictures. I like to take pictures a lot. When I'm out taking pictures, I try to encompass as many different kinds of photography as possible, for I believe that having the skills and experience to capture a respectably competent photo when it presents itself, regardless of genre, is the most useful tool in your camera bag. Whether it's nature photography, architecture, portraits, sports, panoramic, long exposure, landscape, macro etc., you should know the basics of all of them.

But in taking all these different kinds of pictures, I find that I'm drawn to some styles and subjects more than others. The recurring patterns that appear in my photo catalog almost suggest a logical grouping of their own. Virtual photo sets, if you will. So here are some of my virtual sets that I must get around to creating on Zooomr and Flickr.

Pictures of Cute Chicks Taking Pictures

This is so meta. Buckingham Palace


Or maybe this one should be in a "Pictures of Cute Chicks Having Their Picture Taken by Someone Other Than Me" set. Magic Kingdom


And here's one that's kind of both. (The photographer was also cute, I assure you.) Some Palace, Seoul

another set could be. . .

Pictures of Strangely Flavored Potato Chips

Roasted Chicken and Thyme (as far as I know.) Morocco


Worcester Sauce. England, which makes this "Potato Crisps," technically.


Oriental Ribs. England, so the use of the adjective "Oriental" is not passe and offensive.


Sizzling King Prawn, which is a much more awesome name than "Shrimp". England, some bowling alley.

So that's what I have for starters. Let's see what other virtual sets naturally assemble themselves.

My Photography Bucket List

While perusing Zooomr one day recently, and appreciating all the great photography that is being posted there and elsewhere, I found myself thinking about all the things I was seeing, and how I would like to get some of the same shots. As you can see from this snippet of the best photography on Zooomr in the past year, there's a wide variety of subjects there; wildlife, architecture, landscapes, macros, etc. The more I thought about what I'd like to shoot, the more I realized that I was building an unwritten list in my mind. My photography "bucket list," as it were.

So I got out a pen and some paper, and started brainstorming all the things I'd like to photograph in my lifetime. Here's what I came up with, grouped into a few categories.

ACTS OF GOD

• Tornado
• Lightning
• Snowflake macro
• Volcano eruption
• Glacier calving
• Northern Lights

ARCHITECTURE

• Eiffel Tower (again, now that I know what I'm doing, somewhat)
• Taj Mahal
• Sydney Harbor
• Golden Gate Bridge
• Pyramids/Sphynx
• Mohammed's Tomb
• Great Wall of China
• Acropolis/Parthenon (again, see Eiffel Tower)

GEOGRAPHY

• North Pole/South Pole
• Redwoods
• Mt. Fuji
• Matterhorn (again, it was cloudy the only time I've been to Zermatt)
• Niagara Falls

Historical/Other

• Shark
• Blue Band, in Beaver Stadium, at field level
• Auschwitz-Birkenau/Bergen-Belsen
• Space Shuttle Launch
• My Great-Grandchildren

So that's my first draft, and it's a living document. I'm sure I have glaring omissions, and that's okay.

What's on your bucket list?

Here where the Lens is Wide

I need some advice from my photographer friends.

The question: What should my next lens purchase be?

The background: The TravelingRoths are going to France and North Africa this summer, and I want to make sure I'm as prepared as I can be for the trip, lens-wise.

Currently, I have two lenses for my Canon 40D:

• 50mm f/1.8
• 28 - 135mm IS

Here's what I'm thinking right now: the next lens should either be the 28mm f/1.8 or a 70 - 300 mm zoom. I love my current 50mm prime because it's wicked fast, and I can get by without a flash nearly all the time. I'm thinking of the 28mm prime because sometimes my 50mm is too tight (my camera has an APS-C sensor with a crop factor of 1.6, making the 5omm on my camera behave more like an 80mm in traditional 35mm terms.), plus it's also a wicked fast lens. I'm thinking of the 70 - 300 mm zoom mainly so I'll have a decent long zoom in my bag. In addition to this summer's trip, I think it'll be handy for the kids' soccer games.

So if you have an opinion about either of these lenses, or any other lens you think would be good for this summer's trip and beyond, please leave some feedback in the comments. Thanks in advance.

I Am a Camera

Photography is a huge hobby of mine, and has been for some time. Not only is it a big hobby for all the Roth Brothers, Tom actually makes his living behind the lens. I think we all have Mom and Dad to thank for that (as well as our computer skills and music skills), because of the wise choices they made many years ago when we were young.

As young kids, in the 1970s, we had various cheap cameras about the house. . . 126 and 110 Instamatics, nothing special. The Roths were not shutterbugs by any stretch, and our collective childhood went largely undocumented. Until 1980, when in preparation for our six-week trip around the country, the folks bought a Minolta XG-7.
It came with a 50mm kit lens, plus they bought a Sigma or Tamron Zoom, probably in the 70-200mm range. Not only did they get the camera, they also taught us how to use it, and let us take our own pictures. Granted, at that time our picture taking skills consisted of getting the shot framed, focused, and adjusting the aperture to try go get a 1/60 shutter speed (I don't know where that rule of thumb came from.) Dad was big on slide film, which added an extra step to the whole process. So a few years later, Andy and I ended up getting our own 110 Instamatics. . . with built-in flash! (Flash cubes and flash bars were very common in those days.) We wanted prints, 3.5" x 5"

We took decent pictures with those for a while, until probably in early high school, 1985-86 or so, Andy bought a Mamiya point-and-shoot 35mm film camera. Wow! forget 110 film. We couldn't even look at prints from those tiny 110 negatives after that. Of course, it was Andy's camera, so I was relegated to occasionally borrowing it, or the XG-7 when others weren't using it.

In 1990, after reading Consumer Reports, I bought a Fuji DL-400 point-and-shoot film camera from some New York camera store with an ad in the back of Popular Photography.
I loved this camera. Not only did it have a zoom lens, it also had a data back for date imprinting, drop-in loading, and an LCD display. It did a fantastic job at metering, and nearly always got the focus right. Does, actually. I still have this camera. This is a great camera. It traveled extensively with Jennifer and me, and I have quite the collection of pictures with the inadvertent inclusion of its ubiquitous red camera bag in them. Camera bag in Mexico, Canada, Denmark, Greece, France. . . Even with the few "extra" creative controls it had, my photography skills eventually surpassed the abilities of the camera. Around the time Tristan was born (1998), it was time to move back to an SLR.

I'd been completely captivated with the Minolta Maxxum series of full-auto SLRs since the mid-80's, plus my experience with Dad's Minolta meant that I was going to be a Minolta guy too. I got a Minolta XTsi.

The Maxxums were awesome. Not only could you do things like choose the shutter speed and let the camera choose the correct aperture to get the right exposure, you could choose the aperture and let the camera set shutter speed. You could do full manual and set everything yourself if you wanted to, or with the press of one (panic) button, you could instantly switch back to full auto, where the camera does everything. . . so you'd never miss a shot. You could even change lenses. I never got an additional lens, but that was once the plan. I really enjoyed this camera, and took many pictures that I'm still proud of. This camera went with us to France, Italy, and Switzerland, among many places in the US.

Until digital photography became mainstream. I resisted going digital at first. I wanted to use my Minolta stuff on a digital camera, but nearly everything was point-and-shoot at the time. I was holding out for a DSLR with at least 5 megapixels that could use my lenses (lens, actually). But DSLRs were slow in coming.

By 2004, I could hold out no longer. I went digital with the Minolta Dimage 7Hi.

It didn't have interchangeable lenses, but it did a ton of cool stuff, plus the Minolta controls were very familiar. You could shoot full manual, partial automatic, or fully automatic, and still have the panic button to go back to full auto instantly. I really liked this camera, and slowly made the paradigm shift from being stingy with film shots to being liberal with digital ones. The camera had a few issues. . . it tended to overexpose, and the autofocus missed more than it should have. It really went through the rechargeable batteries, and it was also a lot to carry around at times. Plus with parts of the family being in different places at the same time, we needed a second camera.

Based on recommendations of people whose photos I admired, we picked up the ultra portable Canon Powershot SD450.
This camera is awesome! I wouldn't change a single thing about it. It takes great pictures, has long battery life, easily fits in your pocket for total portability, and has some fun features like color swap and Stitch Assist for building panoramic portraits.

So it was the Dimage and the Poweshot for flexibility and portability. . . until the sensor on the Dimage went faulty, and the camera turned into a brick. Fortunately, Sony (the manufacturer of the faulty sensor) agreed to replace my camera, despite it being way out of warranty.

The Sony equivalent of my Dimage at the time was the Sony DSC-H2
This camera lacked a few cool features of the Dimage, but added a few others. It has a tremendous lens. . . over a 400mm equivalent (in SLR terms), does a great job of metering and focus, and runs on half as many batteries. It also has one additional megapixel. It gives the shooter plenty of creative control. And other than a warranty repair for a faulty shutter release button that kept the camera out of my hands over Christmas, this camera has been great.

I started sharing my photos on Zooomr last year, and with all the interaction with some great photographers, and the awesome sense of community there, my photography skills, as well as my passion for photography, have increased dramatically. But once again, my skills have surpassed the abilities of the camera. Both Andy and Tom have been shooting DSLRs for a while now, and they've kindly let me use their cameras on occasion. I was growing increasingly frustrated at my inability to get the shots I was picturing in my head due to the limitations of my camera. I knew a DSLR was not far off.

Then in March of this year, the possibility of a trip to Korea became a reality. This is a once-in-a-lifetime trip, and I knew how much I would regret not being able to get the pictures I knew I was capable of taking because I didn't have the right camera for the job. We're also planning a family trip to Africa next summer. . . another once-in-a-lifetime trip. A DSLR was quickly moving up the priority list.

Based on my experience with my Powershot, plus the recommendations from Tom, I knew I wanted a Canon. I was looking at the Digital Rebel Xti for a while. . . until a month ago when the Canon 40D was released. This was a camera that could do everything I needed it to to get the pictures I have in my head, plus it's flexible enough that I'm not going to outgrow it anytime soon.

I took the plunge last Thursday, and bought my Canon EOS 40D, with the 28-135mm Image Stabilized lens, also on the recommendation of Tom.

The issue du jour is, because this camera model is brand new, and very popular, many retailers are having trouble keeping it in stock. I ordered mine from Ritz Camera, (where Dad's XG-7 came from, coincidentally) initially, but when they couldn't even tell me when it would ship, I ordered from ProFeelVideo, and canceled the Ritz order. ProFeel said they could ship the body immediately, and the lens would ship the next week. So I ordered the camera kit on Thursday, and the body arrived Monday. This was maddening because I had this awesome new camera that I couldn't do a thing with, other than set the clock, due to my lack of glass. (We photographers don't say lens, we say glass.) I'm pretty comfortable that the kit lens will arrive before I leave for Korea on October 5th, but just to hedge my bets, I bought what would've been my second lens anyway, a 50mm 1.8 prime, used, on eBay. It arrived Tuesday. Also arriving are a spare battery, filters for the good lens, and a replacement GPS datalogger for the one I lost in Las Vegas.

So now my mission is to get up to speed on using the camera as quickly as possible, since I only have a little over a week before I want to be taking shots that count. I constantly have a photography book or camera manual in my hand, and I've been using the kids' soccer practices to fire as many frames, with as many different settings as I can muster, in hopes of really knowing how to make the camera do what I want it to.

Here are a few examples.




I've even let Tristan and Zoe start taking their own pictures with it, and learn how to frame and focus (aperture and shutter speed are handled by the camera. . . for now.) You're never too young to start a lifelong passion for photography.

Thanks Mom and Dad.


(Zoe's pictures can be seen here.)

Geotagging 101

I take a lot of pictures in a lot of different places, especially since going digital three years ago. I don't always remember exactly where I was when a particular photo was taken.

In the bad old days of film, I would use the date imprint function of both my film SLR and my film point-and-shoot cameras to capture the date a photo was taken. It really ruined any artistic value the picture may have had (which, admittedly, was pretty minimal in those days,) but at least knowing when the photo was taken, I could usually deduce the occasion/location of the subject.

For example, here's an otherwise good picture of the harbor in Vernazza, Italy.

That imprint showing that the photo was taken on April 2, 2003 sure is distracting.

With digital photography there is no need to print dates on photos, because that information, plus a whole lot more, is encoded into the file in the Exif information, which is saved with the digital picture file. Exif stands for Exchangeable image file format, and is part and parcel to all digital photography these days. Your camera is recording it whether you know it or not. Some of the information in the Exif data includes date and time information, camera settings (including aperture, shutter speed, focal length, metering mode, and ISO setting, et al.,) a thumbnail, copyright, and other information.

As an example, here's a picture I took of the moon.


And here's some of the Exif information on that picture.


I can see that I took this picture on January 2nd around 6 pm. It sure gets dark early in January. So that takes care of the when, but what about the where? In the harbor picture above, I know it's in Vernazza based on the date, plus the fact that I have travel journals that correlate the dates to the places. That's fine if you're in a few, very specific places, but that won't work in all situations.

As an example, I shot a lot of pictures around Manhattan last year at Christmas time. New York City is a photographer's dream, as there is an endless supply of photographic subjects everywhere you look. Too much to keep mental track of, actually. I shot one day, and then struggled that night to remember where exactly where each picture was taken. The next day I went out, and when I'd photograph something, I'd immediately take a shot of the nearest street sign so that I could use that as a geo reference. That may work for alright for NYC, but most places it wouldn't, plus it's not very efficient.

Why do you need to know where a photo was taken, anyway? I guess you don't, but to me it sure makes viewing pictures, especially other people's pictures, far more interesting. When I see something really cool in a photo, I want to know where it was taken. Maybe I'd like to go there myself someday.

The best photo sharing sites allow you to incorporate this information into your photos, and then display them on a map. Conversely, you can surf to a particular location on a world map, and get a quick overview of all the photos taken there. It's a traveler's dream.

For example, here's the map view on Zooomr of L'il Saint Louis in Paris, one of my favorite places in the world. (BTW, the island just to the left is L'il de Cite, where Notre Dame cathedral is located. You've definitely seen pictures of that.)

As you can see, there are three pictures taken on different places on the island (all taken by me, incidentally). You can click on any of the thumbnails to get a full-sized version. What a great way to see what's where.

Now there's two ways to get that location information into the Exif data of your photos: after uploading your pictures to Zooomr, or some other, lesser site, you can point to the right spot on a map, and associate that spot with the picture, or you can tag your pictures before you upload. Google's Picasa (free) software allows you to geotag your pictures with the help of Google Earth, but you still have to remember where each photo was taken. Too much of a hassle. I do it the easy way.

I have a Sony GPS-CS1. It's a GPS (Global Positioning System receiver) that you clip on your camera bag, or strap, or belt, or wherever. . . and it records where you are and when. . . that's it. There's no display. You can't go Geocaching with it or use it to navigate in your car. It has three status LED's, runs for about 12 hours on one AA battery, can hold roughly 160 hours of track logs before you'll have to offload, and is about the size of half a bratwurst. (Ever notice that it always comes back to food with me?). I got mine for about 75 bucks, US.

With the GPS on, you just shoot away with your camera, never worrying about trying to remember where you were when you got "the shot." (Make sure your camera's time setting is correct though. This will be very important later.) When you get back to your computer, you connect the GPS via a USB cable, tell the software what time zone you were in, and offload the time/location data. . . which is just a text file, basically. From there you tell the software what photos were taken in the time frame that the log covers, and it automagically tags the photos with the geo lattitude/longitude data. Even if you lost GPS signal for a while when you were out shooting, the software is smart enough to interpolate your position with pretty decent accuracy. When you upload your photos to Zooomr, the Exif geo data carries through, and Zooomr marks the photo on a world map. Officially, this unit only works with Sony Cybershot cameras. Unofficially, it works great with my Canon too.

So there you have it. Now go out and geotag your pictures. Do it the hard way, or the easy way, but do it. You. . . and the world. . . will be glad you did.