Here’s the highlight reel from this year’s slow motion filming session at the Bath Upchuck juggling and circus skills convention. More to follow, hopefully!
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With my current camera gear filling an entire carry-on bag, a laptop is too much extra bulk/weight, so on my last few trips I’ve been surviving on an ipod touch for limited web browsing, email access and so on. This got me wondering whether a tablet would be a good fit, especially if it gave me the ability to review, back-up and share photos on the move whilst also improving my internet experience and offering video/ebooks for when IFE doesn’t cut it. The launch of the latest ipad, with a screen resolution that puts even my desktop to shame, provided just the extra nudge I needed to explore the idea seriously. But in researching my options I found myself immediately confronted by a stack of conflicting information regarding what was or wasn’t possible with the ipad. Presumably to encourage uptake of the higher-capacity models, apple don’t include a memory card slot, nor standard USB sockets, on the ipad. Instead there’s an external connection kit, and establishing which permutations of ipad model / iOS version / camera brand / connection type would co-operate was not easy – perhaps not helped by the lack of tech savvy from some users, as many comments on apple’s site strongly suggested PEBCAK. A visit to the store didn’t allow for a practical test as they didn’t have adaptors in stock, but they were willing to accept a return of the ipad if it proved not to be suitable for purpose. Probably knowing that I’d really struggle to give it back after playing for a while, even if some sort of android tablet would be more useful for my needs! Well, mine arrived yesterday, and I’m pleased to report that for the Canon 550d (T2i) – and presumably their other sd card based models – it all plays together beautifully. But in trying it out, I stumbled into various other seas of online confusion regarding photo handling, so I thought I’d collect together what I’ve learnt so far (admittedly, in all of 24 hours) in the hopes it helps save others some time/effort. This is not a guide to taking photos with the ipad, which still strikes me as a ridiculous idea! Photo transfer: from camera to ipadApple’s camera connection kit supplies two adaptors – one for SD cards, the other for USB. Both are in theory viable options for accessing content from a 550d, and indeed both work in practice; I prefer using the card reader rather than trying to cable the camera to the pad. But whichever method you use, the effect is the same: on connection, the ipad’s Photos app launches, and you can select to import either all images or specific shots. Post import, you have the option to delete the originals from the card or keep them. The sorting is rather basic: you get new albums called “Last Import” and “All Imported”, and under the events tab you get collections by date. So there’s no way to go through and group photos by trip, for instance. However, despite the filing shortcomings, you do get the full 5148*3456 image, and RAW format is supported (if you shoot in RAW+JPEG, it imports both); so you get to take full advantage of that high-res screen. Even more surprising, it’ll import full-HD video too, as Canon provides footage in mp4, one of the few formats the ipad won’t turn its nose up at. Alternative: from USB memory stick to ipadYou can also import in exactly the same way from a USB stick, provided you mimic the file structure of a camera card: there must be a folder called DCIM, in which all the files (again RAW and JPEG both work, as does suitable video) must reside (sub-folders might be ok, I haven’t investigated that). The process is identical to above, and you get the full-resolution images, so that’s a quick and easy way to import from a computer without the overhead (or resolution drop, see below) of going through itunes. Photo transfer: from a computer via itunesIf you want to be able to showcase work that already resides on a computer, you can transfer it with itunes. This has the advantage of preserving directory structure: so instead of the date-sorted events, you can have thematic albums like Boston highlights 2012 or Mathematical Art or whatever. However, itunes (which is becoming an increasingly-clunky general file manager for idevices, rather than just handling music) has a fairly crude sync system: you can specify a root directory, then you either get everything within that (recursing all subdirectories) or can select a subset of its subdirectories – but no further. So, for instance, with my filing system of Pictures->life stage->home location->year->event name->subtheme it’s impossible for me to just pick out a few favoured subtheme folders without restricting to a single event; or to get one year from each of two locations. As a workaround, I’ve created a new folder called ipad selection which gets synced in its entirety, and I export desired content from picasa to subfolders of that; it means duplicating on the computer anything I want to have on the ipad, but desktop disk space is cheap! Photo transfer: from ipad as a storage device to a computerBeing able to back up photos as full-res JPEG and/or RAW to the ipad is only really of use if you can retrieve them in that state – especially if you’ve been using it to filter out the bad shots or do some basic corrections with iphoto, so you’ll be wanting to start your desktop workflow from that stage, rather than the card contents (you are keeping the files on the cards too whilst away, right?). Fortunately, if you connect via USB to a computer, the ipad appears just as a USB mass storage device would, with a DCIM folder containing any images that were imported to it; on windows this’ll trigger the usual autoplay options to import with your photo manager of choice, or browse manually. Note that this doesn’t include files that were synced across from another machine via itunes, just the contents of the ‘all imports’ folder or images created/saved with apps. Photo transfer: from ipad appsWith the photo app, you have options for email, message, tweet and print; you can also set an image as wallpaper or assign it to an address book contact. Other apps such as facebook can also access the photo library (both imports and synced content). iPhoto is another £2.50 (apple being annoyingly cheap and not including it out the box), but has a broader set of built-in sharing options: journal, the camera roll, itunes, email, beam, print, twitter, flickr and facebook. Plus you can do some basic editing first, and it offers information that the photo app really should, like image resolution and some exif data. It’s also possible to sync a buffer of images between apple devices / computers using icloud, but since I only have the pad (and would rather import manually as if it were a mass storage device, rather than try to pull RAW files through my internet connection) I’ve not really looked into it. Photo-viewing onlineHere’s where things get quite a bit messier. Although the retina display is 2048 by 1536, if you attempt to view a photo that’s too large in safari – or, it seems, any other browser – it’ll first get downsized to (at most) 1024 by 768. This makes sense on iOS platforms that can’t display more than that anyway, but on the ipad3 it’s a terrible idea, as to fill the real 2048-wide screen with the virtual 1024-wide window, the image then has to be interpolated back up! So you only use a quarter of the available pixels to construct an image on a screen that could have handled all of them… This effect has been documented and illustrated (if you’re using an ipad) here, where the meaning of ‘too large’ has been precisely pinned down: PNG format files aren’t affected, and using progressive jpg may be a workaround, provided everything in your workflow, such as picasa or flickr, preserves that. I ran into it whilst using flickr’s all-sizes mode, when I noticed that my 1800 by 1200 images were coming out physically smaller – and uglier – than the 1024 by 683 versions flickr was generating. What this means in practice is that, for viewing a JPEG on an ipad3, you’re better off supplying a 1773 by 1182 image to flickr (or elsewhere) that will be used in its entirety, rather than a 1800 by 1200 image that’ll drop to 900 by 600 then get interpolated to fill the real 1800 pixel width. This seems like a glitch – it wouldn’t even save any download time, as the image is presumably grabbed then decimated – but until/unless apple fix it, it’s worth knowing. Especially if you’re trying to show off your fancy new toy’s capabilities! Relatedly, websites that fit perfectly happy on a 1920 by 1080 display might not work as desired on mobile safari, even though it has a larger canvas to work with. Such as, erm, this site: my HD youtube embedd in the post below fits the central column when viewed from my desktop, but not the ipad. I assume its emulating a width of 1024 to avoid unreadably-small text, but there must be a better solution. Summary
I spent a couple of weeks in Canada at the end of the summer, and this weekend I finally got around to putting together a highlight reel from the footage I shot along the way, my first attempt at DSLR video. You can enjoy my efforts above; the clips at the end are not by me, but were filmed with a helmetcam by my guide for an activity called EdgeWalk. You can read my account of that on everything2, and there’s a longer video showing off my (sometimes less than confident!) attempts at the various challenges we were set along the way. If you prefer stills, there are flickr galleries for Montreal and Toronto (2011); as planned this has given me an opportunity to revisit my previous shots, so I’ve added further sets for Toronto (2009) and Niagara Falls. Finally, I also found the time to give a maths talk whilst I was out there, at the University of Waterloo – details and slides are in this Modulo Errors post.   One of Bristol’s summertime attractions is its Balloon Fiesta and, weather permitting, for a few days in August the skies above the city fill with balloons. One of the advantages of living in the village thesedays is that I can walk to the suspension bridge in a couple of minutes, so once the twitter feed confirmed the first launches I was able to catch then on their ascent from Ashton court. Here’s the set on flickr. A week later, I was lucky enough to be able to experience the reverse angle, taking to the skies with Bristol balloons for a flight across Bristol and beyond. Helping with the ropes during the inflation was a sufficient distraction from my pre-flight nerves, but I needn’t have worried, as it’s possibly the calmest method of transport I’ve encountered – until you ‘land’, at least! (In our case, ‘crash into a hillside’ would be a better description). We drifted up and over Clifton and the north of Bristol, before trading the city for rolling countryside, ending up (after about an hour) in a field near a place called Rangeworthy, about twelve miles from the take-off point. It really was an ideal evening: despite the day before and after being a wash-out, we were blessed with dry weather; it was windy enough to make swift progress but not enough to cause problems; there was plenty of scenery to admire, in gorgeous light due to the approaching sunset; and I had the company of good friends too. It’s not cheap, but I’d say it’s definitely worth it. Of course, I took a lot of photos whilst I was up there, and even grabbed a slow-motion video of the burners in action. I’ve completed a project I’ve been working on for far too long now – porting photographic highlights from my various foreign travels to flickr. Presumably in an attempt to ward off Russell’s Paradox, they have a strange distinction between sets and collections. So I’ve created a root collection – travel, with sub-collections for each trip, which contain sets for particular locations (cities or countries depending on the scale of the journey). Then tagging takes over below that, although their usefulness depends on how detailed an assortment of tags I’m prepared to use (and whether I’ve remembered to use them all where appropriate!). If all that sounds far too confusing, here’s a reverse-chronological summary:
That’s an almost-complete list of my wanderings since I got my own passport (suprisingly late in life): notable omissions are my very first trip (to Oslo, in 2004) due to a lack of decent camera kit then; and 2009′s Toronto trip, as I’m going back in September and will probably get better versions of some of my shots from then! There are a few locations I’ve neglected above, though, and I’ve a long way to go before the geo-tagging is even close to complete. I’m also wondering what to do with the stories that go with the pictures (or that don’t have a picture to go with)- for at least my own future benefit I’d like to keep track of them, whilst recognising that there’s nothing particularly special about my opinions on a given restaurant or tourist attraction. Whether I go for a full-fledged blog or more thoroughly annotate the flickr entries is something I’m still debating. The next big task, though, is to try and impose some order on all my photos of Scotland, then upload the best of those. |
         
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