Mike's Blog » Photography

My best photos of 2010

mike — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:39:42 +0000

Thanks to Jim Goldstein for the idea of posting a best of. This is my submission for his 4th annual Best Photos of the Year Blog Project.

Photo: Sharp Edges

mike — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 23:21:32 +0000

Photo: Tower Bridge

mike — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 14:31:13 +0000

Captured on a late afternoon using the Canon 550D. Three exposures with basic tonemapping applied using the photomatix plugin for Aperture.

HDR photography

mike — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 22:03:37 +0000

Last friday evening I had the pleasure of joining Trey Ratcliff, together with at least 50 other people, on his Photowalk at the Southbank in London.
Although I couldn’t stay for the whole time due to other plans, it was a really enjoyable experience. Thanks Trey! I also took it as an opportunity to finally start creating some HDR (or better tone mapped) images myself.
Some examples are embedded below. They have all been taken with a Canon 550D and merged together using teh Photmatix plugin for Aperture.

Taking the GigaPan to Luxembourg

mike — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:49:26 +0000

I recently went back home to Luxembourg and decided to actually take the GigPan Epic with me on the trip.
I didn’t have a lot of time to take pictures, and the weather was also not helping, but I managed to create a couple of panoramas in Luxembourg City.
One of them is embedded below. Enjoy exploring the image.

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Import and view 1080p videos on the iPad directly from your Canon DSLR

mike — Sat, 08 May 2010 23:45:43 +0000

The Camera Connection Kit is currently the most useful accessory for the iPad. It opens a number of additional possibilities, far beyond the initial description.
A lot of these features have been described at many other places..i.e use it to connect USB keyboards and headsets.
But there is one more feature, which I use on a regular basis.
I tend to shoot a lot of HD video using Canon DSLRs. I currently own a Canon 550D and also a Canon 7D. Both cameras allow you to shoot video in 1080p. The format used by both camera is h.264, which is also one of the few formats which the iPad can play back without any issues. But according to the specification, only up to 720p. iTunes does not allow you to import higher definition clips. And in any case, if you are on a photo shoot outside your house, you do not always have computer running iTunes at hand, but I tend to have an iPad with me most of the time.

iPad Photo import showing imported Video

This is where the Camera connection kit enters the game.
When connecting the SD memory card straight from the camera into the Camera connection kit, you can view and import the pictures directly to your iPad for viewing and verification where ever you are. The same is true for the video clips, but unfortunately they are stored also in the Photo application on the iPad and can not be played back, as shown on the picture below.

This is where the fun begins. You will need to Jailbreak you iPad to proceed. There are plenty of guides explaining how to do this out there, and it is very easy. But of course, I do not take any responsibility if you screw up you iPad. Proceed at your own risk.
Once you have completed the jailbreak, and have Cydia installed, you have several options. My preferred option is to install iFile, which is a very nice Filemanager for the iPhone and iPad. It runs as root user, and as such has access to the whole filesystem, which is why Apple would never allow it in the Appstore.
Once you have installed iFile, navigate to “/var/mobile/Media/DCIM”. This is the folder used by the Photo application to store the imported pictures and any other data selected during the import, which means also the Video clips, as you can see below. Each import process will create a separate folder, containing the imported files.

iFile - /var/mobile/Media/DCIM/

As you can see above, I imported a single movie clip. Click on the .MOV file to launch the video viewer, and you will see the video in excellent quality. There might be some issues during playback for the first few seconds, but after that the video plays fine without any problems at all.

iPad showing 1080p directly from Canon DSLR

This is a perfect way to preview and verify your HD videos out in the field on a nice big screen without any need for conversion. Perfect for anybody with a Canon DSLR shooting Video.

The above works perfectly fine for 1080p videos created with the 550D (Rebel T2i) and also the Canon 7D. Since the 550D uses SD cards, you can directly stick them into the SD card adapter which is part of the Camera Connection kit. Since the 7D uses Compact Flash cards, you can simply connect a USB card reader to the USB adapter to import the Videos.

26C3: Street Photography – Das Recht am eigenen Bild

mike — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:32:25 +0000

Over the last days, the annual CCC congress (Chaos Computer Club) (26th Chaos Communication Congress) happened in Berlin. As every year, it is an event that should not be missed.
Most of the presentations have been streamed live.

Most of the topics were in one way or the other linked to privacy and technology. This was not different for the presentation from Axel Schmidt, titled “Das Recht am eigenen Bild und das Ende der “Street Photography”

During the first half of the presentation he is covering the day to day live of a press photographer, while the second half focuses more on the issues of Street photography. Certainly an interesting topic.
You can download a capture of the Live stream on a number of sites, but to make it easier, I created a flash version of the capture and added it below for the ease of viewing.

The presentation is done in German.