Some new photo galleries
11/Jul/09 20:00 Filed in: Photo
Sorry for being so quiet for so long - but somehow I am fresh out of ideas on what to write currently. But I was out taking photos several times in the last few weeks and I added a link to the photo galleries with those photos in my photo album overview.
The galleries include:
Two galleries of visits to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. One with a normal Macro lens and one with my Lensbaby.
One gallery with photos from a visit to the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.
One gallery with photos from a special rose exhibit in the Palmengarten in Frankfurt.
One gallery with photos from a trip to the Opelzoo near Frankfurt.
Enjoy!
The galleries include:
Two galleries of visits to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. One with a normal Macro lens and one with my Lensbaby.
One gallery with photos from a visit to the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.
One gallery with photos from a special rose exhibit in the Palmengarten in Frankfurt.
One gallery with photos from a trip to the Opelzoo near Frankfurt.
Enjoy!
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Increasing your Flickr efficiency
As many of you probably know, I post a lot of photos on Flickr and when you start to use it a lot, you start to spent large amounts of time on it, since you have a lot of new photos by your contacts that you want to take a look at and you might also be spending a lot of time interacting with other users in the Flickr groups. This can suck up a lot of your time and while Flickr is already very easy to navigate, there are some things that could be better. For this there are some utilities that can make your life easier and your Flickr browsing easier/ more efficient. Today I want to focus on some Greasemonkey scripts that I have found very useful. If you don’t know what Greasemonkey is, it’s a Firefox extension that allows scripts to alter the way a website looks and/or behaves. If you are using Safari as your browser, you can try out GreaseKit, which allows you to run the with Safari but not all scripts work and none do with Safari 4 (at least non of mine).
Here are my favorite scripts:
- Flickr Refer Comment - this script will automatically add a line of text at the end of your comment on a photo stating where you found the photo (e.g. your Flickr homepage, a group page, etc.). This won’t help you but is very helpful for the person you leave the comment. For other browsers you can find a little bookmarklet for doing the same thing by clicking here.
- Flickr Rich Edit - this script will add little buttons to your comment box so that you can access bold, italic, link and quote with the click of a button instead of having to add the HTML code.
- Flickr - Move commet form up - this script is one of my favorites - it will move the comment box under the photo instead of having it at the end of the page. This means that you won’t have to scroll down all the way to leave a comment. I tend to leave a lot more comments with this enabled.
- Flickr Auto Page - another one of my favorites. This script eliminates the need to click on the next page link when you are viewing photos in Flickr, it will automatically load the next page beneath the current one in the same window/ on the same page. With this enabled I breeze through 10 pages of photos without even realizing it.
- FlickrPM - this script will add several links/icons next to a username. These will allow you to access their photostream, their profile, their favorites etc. with the click of a button.
- Flickr Buddy Icon Reply - this script is especially useful when you interact with a lot of users in the Flickr groups. With this you can either add a users name to your comment box or their little avatar, so that you don’t have to type the name when you are replying directly to someone.
- Flickr AllSize+ - this script is pretty useful if you either post in a lot of groups or like to share your photos outside of flickr using your flickr photos. The magnifying glass will bring you to an intermediate screen including all the links to the different sizes of your photo - making it way faster to access them.
- Flickr On Black Buttons - This script will add two buttons allowing you to show the photo on a black background instead of the standard white one of Flickr - a lot of them really pop on black.
if you want some more scripts to check out, here are some more links:
Best Flickr Greasemonkey Scripts
10 Must Have Flickr Greasemonkey Scripts
10 Really Useful Flickr Greasemonkey Userscripts
Scripts tagged Flickr on userscripts.org
Am I missing any essentials? What are you doing to increase your efficiency?
Trying my Christmas present
No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, I am talking about my christmas present, which I tried out last week for the first time (don’t even ask....). For Christmas I got a Lensbaby Muse. If you don’t know what a Lensbaby is, it is a special lens that you can use with an SLR camera that has a special optics in it, so that you can take photos in a way that only part of the photo are in sharp focus. An example would be a focussed middle section with everything blurred out towards the edges. The great thing with this lens is that you can have the sharp part anywhere in the frame that you want to have it, you just have to tilt the lens in that direction.
I first wanted to get a Lensbaby Composer, which is the newest version of the Lensbaby lenses and allows you to lock the lens once you have decided on a sweet spot and has a regular ring for shifting focus. But the problem was that the Composer is a lot more expensive (even though Lensbaby lenses are far less expensive than your regular DSLR lenses) and that no shop in Germany had them in stock and I needed to get it before I went back to the US the week after Christmas. So I went for the Muse, which is the classic version of their lens and a lot of fun to work with. The hardest parts are that you need to shift your sweet spot with your hands and by doing so you also focus the lens. As you can imagine, I am getting a lot of out of focus photos at the moment
The Lensbaby lenses are very much manual - its not just that you have to focus the lens, but you also have to use the lens in manual mode or Aperture Priority mode, since you have to set the Aperture into the lens with your hand. You get 5 or 6 different aperture rings with the lens and can buy additional ones that you can cut to your liking (for example using a star shape instead of a circle). Depending on the aperture you will get a different level of blurring from the sides.
In addition I also got the Macro kit for it, which is a fancy way of saying that I got two close-up filters They are specifically made for the lensbaby and get screwed onto the top of the lensbaby, like they would on a normal lens. With my obsession with flowers I had to have them 
Now, my first try with the lens... I decided to take the lens with me for a trip to the Botanical Garden here in Atlanta. It was very different and strange at first because I hadn’t tried the lens much before this but I soon got into it and found out how to take photos I liked. Even though I had a „What now?“ moment in there, as well: Somehow I thought I couldn’t find a focussed sweet spot with the lens, so I thought that the wheel for adjusting for your eyesight had been somehow gotten changed, which happens to me from time to time. So I started changing the wheel - until I thought about it and realized I did not have any Autofocus-able lens with me... What to do? I tied to take photos that I thought were sharp and then checked them at a zoom level on my display till I felt that the sharpness was okay in the photos. Took me a while....
Overall, I really, really liked my first experience with my new lensbaby and have, in fact, already gone out again for a second try with it - to the Georgia Aquarium. I think, I am getting addicted to it....
I first wanted to get a Lensbaby Composer, which is the newest version of the Lensbaby lenses and allows you to lock the lens once you have decided on a sweet spot and has a regular ring for shifting focus. But the problem was that the Composer is a lot more expensive (even though Lensbaby lenses are far less expensive than your regular DSLR lenses) and that no shop in Germany had them in stock and I needed to get it before I went back to the US the week after Christmas. So I went for the Muse, which is the classic version of their lens and a lot of fun to work with. The hardest parts are that you need to shift your sweet spot with your hands and by doing so you also focus the lens. As you can imagine, I am getting a lot of out of focus photos at the moment
The Lensbaby lenses are very much manual - its not just that you have to focus the lens, but you also have to use the lens in manual mode or Aperture Priority mode, since you have to set the Aperture into the lens with your hand. You get 5 or 6 different aperture rings with the lens and can buy additional ones that you can cut to your liking (for example using a star shape instead of a circle). Depending on the aperture you will get a different level of blurring from the sides.
In addition I also got the Macro kit for it, which is a fancy way of saying that I got two close-up filters
They are specifically made for the lensbaby and get screwed onto the top of the lensbaby, like they would on a normal lens. With my obsession with flowers I had to have them Now, my first try with the lens... I decided to take the lens with me for a trip to the Botanical Garden here in Atlanta. It was very different and strange at first because I hadn’t tried the lens much before this but I soon got into it and found out how to take photos I liked. Even though I had a „What now?“ moment in there, as well: Somehow I thought I couldn’t find a focussed sweet spot with the lens, so I thought that the wheel for adjusting for your eyesight had been somehow gotten changed, which happens to me from time to time. So I started changing the wheel - until I thought about it and realized I did not have any Autofocus-able lens with me... What to do? I tied to take photos that I thought were sharp and then checked them at a zoom level on my display till I felt that the sharpness was okay in the photos. Took me a while....
Overall, I really, really liked my first experience with my new lensbaby and have, in fact, already gone out again for a second try with it - to the Georgia Aquarium. I think, I am getting addicted to it....
First observations: AMOD GPS tracker
02/May/09 04:32 Filed in: Hardware
In my last post I talked about the GPS tracker I bought recently. By now I have had the chance to take it out on three trips 
So I have definitely had time to test it.
The device takes three AAA batteries for tagging your location for 15 hours, so it is best to buy some rechargable batteries for it. After you put the batteries in, you just need to push the button to power it on and you are ready to go! So very easy. The only downside: the device takes several minutes to find your location initially, so if you want to tag all photos, be sure to turn it on a few minutes in advance.
The AMOD came with a little band so you can clip the tracker to your belt or to a bag. I clipped it onto a belt loop when i went out. It’s neither heavy nor big enough to get in the way, which is a plus.
Once you have turned it on, you can basically forget about it. It has three lights on the front to show you that it is turned on and working and also to let you know if the signal is not strong enough (which can happen inside) or the memory of the AMOD is full. It has 128MB memory, which does not sound like much but is enough for 72 hours of tracking data! You can increase that timeframe by letting it only record your location every 5 or 10 seconds instead of every second.
it gets a bit more complicated once you are back home from your photo trip: the AMOD comes with a software you can use to embed the GPS data into your images but I haven’t tried that software yet. What I have been doing is the following: I import my photos into Aperture like normal and then use Ovolab Geophoto to match the photos to the GPS track, which is pretty easy. The AMOD records the time on GMT, so you just need to tell it the time zone your camera uses and any time your photo is off from the „official“ time (mine is off by 29 seconds). Then I just need to hit a button to embed the longitude and latitude in the EXIF of my RAW file and simply update the EXIF in Aperture. And voilá, my photos have GPS locations
I only checked the locations on a few photos from my first try and they were off by a few meters but that could be due to the device not being calibrated (which also just takes the push of a button) or my reading the time difference from my camera wrong.
Overall, I really, really like the device and how relatively easy it is to embed the data. Of course, it adds some extra steps to my workflow but the way I have set it up currently, I could add the locations any time after importing, it is not the first thing I have to do and I can go back and add locations for edited versions of photos (e.g., HDRs or Panoramas). Definitely a great option till I get a camera and/or memory card with a GPS chip embedded.
So I have definitely had time to test it.The device takes three AAA batteries for tagging your location for 15 hours, so it is best to buy some rechargable batteries for it. After you put the batteries in, you just need to push the button to power it on and you are ready to go! So very easy. The only downside: the device takes several minutes to find your location initially, so if you want to tag all photos, be sure to turn it on a few minutes in advance.
The AMOD came with a little band so you can clip the tracker to your belt or to a bag. I clipped it onto a belt loop when i went out. It’s neither heavy nor big enough to get in the way, which is a plus.
Once you have turned it on, you can basically forget about it. It has three lights on the front to show you that it is turned on and working and also to let you know if the signal is not strong enough (which can happen inside) or the memory of the AMOD is full. It has 128MB memory, which does not sound like much but is enough for 72 hours of tracking data! You can increase that timeframe by letting it only record your location every 5 or 10 seconds instead of every second.
it gets a bit more complicated once you are back home from your photo trip: the AMOD comes with a software you can use to embed the GPS data into your images but I haven’t tried that software yet. What I have been doing is the following: I import my photos into Aperture like normal and then use Ovolab Geophoto to match the photos to the GPS track, which is pretty easy. The AMOD records the time on GMT, so you just need to tell it the time zone your camera uses and any time your photo is off from the „official“ time (mine is off by 29 seconds). Then I just need to hit a button to embed the longitude and latitude in the EXIF of my RAW file and simply update the EXIF in Aperture. And voilá, my photos have GPS locations
I only checked the locations on a few photos from my first try and they were off by a few meters but that could be due to the device not being calibrated (which also just takes the push of a button) or my reading the time difference from my camera wrong.
Overall, I really, really like the device and how relatively easy it is to embed the data. Of course, it adds some extra steps to my workflow but the way I have set it up currently, I could add the locations any time after importing, it is not the first thing I have to do and I can go back and add locations for edited versions of photos (e.g., HDRs or Panoramas). Definitely a great option till I get a camera and/or memory card with a GPS chip embedded.
Where was I or My search for a GPS device
10/Apr/09 04:52 Filed in: Hardware
A trend in photography has been to add the GPS data to photos - be it on Flickr or in the newest version of iPhoto. Until recently I did my Geo-Tagging only for parts of my photos on Flickr (using Flickr Export for Aperture and Google Earth) but then I did a roadtrip, taking me to five different US states, with lots of photos in every city we visited and even more photos on the road. I know which photos were taken in which city but it would be cool to also know the street/actual location. It would be even more great for the pictures taken on the road... but like most cameras, mine does not have a GPS chip in it but I knew that there were external options, so I decided to take a first look at prices. When I was in Germany over Christmas someone showed me their Jobo photoGPS tracker, which gets attached to the flash mount but uses its own batteries and still forces you to use a software to attach the GPS data to your photos. When I looked up the price, I decided against any immediate purchases... Then a few weeks back, Scott Kelby posted a review of the Jobo photoGPS on his Photoshop Insider blog. That one brought me even further away from buying it - but he recommended another option, the di-GPS, which I found relatively easily on the Internet. Then Macworld posted an article on Geo-Tagging your photos, listing a whole bunch of options, including a small device (Gisteq PhotoTrackr) you can put into your backpack/bag and then use with a software to add the GPS data to your Metatags. I thought about going with that one but then I saw on their website that their Mac software does not allow you to embed the GPS data into RAW files - and lets be honest, that is the main thing I want to do... before I found that, I saw on amazon that there is another, similar device (Amod AGL3080 GPS DataLogger) that will work with both Mac and Windows since it saves the GPS data in a standard open-source format, so that you only need a software that can read this file format. Since it was also cheaper than the other options, I decided to buy this one.
I received it on Friday and can’t wait to try it out. But the main thing I wanted to say with this article is: Read very careful before buying a GPS tracker to see that it actually does what you need it to. Important criteria might be that it can write the GPS to the existing metadata (and does not create its own sidecart file or overwrites your metadata) in your most used format (jpg will work almost always but be sure to check for your RAW-File type before buying!) and what kind of power it needs and how/if it needs to be connected to your camera. Also, if you need to use their software and how easy it is to get the files back to your photo app/organizing system.
I received it on Friday and can’t wait to try it out. But the main thing I wanted to say with this article is: Read very careful before buying a GPS tracker to see that it actually does what you need it to. Important criteria might be that it can write the GPS to the existing metadata (and does not create its own sidecart file or overwrites your metadata) in your most used format (jpg will work almost always but be sure to check for your RAW-File type before buying!) and what kind of power it needs and how/if it needs to be connected to your camera. Also, if you need to use their software and how easy it is to get the files back to your photo app/organizing system.
Project: Edit my Picture
Another blog project: This time the project initiator, Phil Price, asks participants to edit his photo, which you see pictured here, and to submit their results to him. In this post you’ll find most of my edited versions of this photo, including what I did and what I liked and disliked about each one. Of course, at the end of the post you’ll also find the photo I am submitting to his project Lesen Sie mehr...