Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

Nikon GP-1 is a GPS unit for geotagging your images with latitude, longitude, altitude, and time information when you press the shutter release button. It attaches to camera’s accessory shoe or a camera strap and connects to camera’s accessory terminal. Two different connection cables will be provided so it is compatible with all the latest Nikon DSLR cameras: D90, D3, D300, D700, D2Xs and D200. Read More…

Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude, bearing, accuracy data, and place names. – [Wikipedia]

Previously, I did a research on geotagging hardwares for Nikon DSLRs and found that most of them are quite expensive, except the $149.99 Geomet’r GPS Receiver Adapter (GNC-35). Here is an user review posted on flickr in the GeoTagging Flickr group. From the comments posted after the review, The GNC-35 seems to work well. Read More…

The UV filter is supposed to block ultraviolet rays. This was perhaps important for shooting film but most today’s digital image sensors are not very sensitive to UV. Most of the UV is blocked by the glass in the lens anyway. So often these UV filters are recommended by people as a lens protection mechanism.

At beginning, I bought into this. After all, it costs more to repair a scratched front element than a filter. I have never bumped my lens into anything or gotten a scratch of any significance but the filter really kept the front element particle free. I found myself comfortable wiping down the filter even with my shirt sleeves  when I cannot find lens tissue or lens pen. I wouldn’t do that with the lens front element. I know that small scratches will hardly cause any image degradation. However I may have trouble selling my lens with scratches on the front element because not everyone understand this… Read More…

Pretec, the leader in CompactFlash card capacity and speed, has done it again with the announcement of 64GB and 100GB CF cards at Photokina 2008. According to DPReview, the new 233X CF cards can write up to 35MB/s. If that isn’t fast enough for you, they have slightly smaller capacity 32GB and 50GB CF cards that can do 50MB/s.

These cards sound really sweet for the new DSLRs that shoots 20+ MP and/or HD videos, such as Sony A900, Canon EOS-5D Mark II, and Nikon D90. Before you buy one of those though, check with your camera’s manufacturer to make sure your camera supports it. Pretec 233X 64GB and 333X 32GB CF cards are slated to start delivery by Photokina 2008 with suggested retail price of $399 and $630, and 233X 100GB and 333X 50GB are expected to become available by the end of 2008.

If you have just started digital photography with a digital SLR camera, you may be wondering what accessories you need besides the camera and lens. Digital photography can be a very expensive hobby, especially if you want to buy everything you want. So I am going to focus on what a typical DSLR shooter needs. Here is a list of some must-have accessories. Read More…

Do you know that more than 350 million digital images are captured every day, and four out of five of those images are never shared? Wow… think about all those dormant photos on your hard-drive! Some innovative companies have thought about this and created some really nice products. Heard about the Eye-Fi? Now you can set free your photos with the Lexar Shoot-n-Sync Wi-Fi® Memory Card, which uses the same innovative wireless technology as in Eye-Fi cards for uploading digital photos to computers as well as sharing them via social networking and photo-sharing websites. Read More…

The Eye-Fi is a secure digital (SD) format memory card with Wi-Fi (802.11g, 54mbps) that can wirelessly send photos from a digital camera to a computer or photo sharing service of your choice. It has generated quite some buzz on gadget blogs (Engadget, Gizmodo, CrunchGear) but some mixed reviews (Post-Bulletin, PC World, DPReview) since its launch.

Overall, it works as advertised but comes with some limitations. For example,

• It only transmits JPEG photos, raw shooters are out of luck (The company says other formats and raw support are coming).
• It has limited range (< 45ft, and practically <20ft).
• It only works on trusted, encrypted, pre-configured wireless network but not open access points.
• It is only in SD format (some have reported it works with a SD-to-CF adapter).
• It is slow to start and slow to upload especially when uploading to online photo sharing sites.
• It uploads everything, no way of selecting images for upload.

Despite the limitations, it does come with a reasonable price of $100. If you find it fun or useful for you (with the limitations), you may want to give it a try.

In my previous post Fall foliage shooting tips, I have recommended the use of a polarizer and stated the benefits of a polarizer, especially in bright sun light. Here is an good example of using a polarizer for fall foliage shooting.

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