the things we think but do not say

UPDATE! Just in the nick of time too. I heard for a while that prices for Nikon bodies and lens were on the rise across the world, starting in Australia, then Europe, and now the US. Starting Feb 1st, 2009, prices are rumoured to rise some 10-15%. Via, Nikon Rumous and Thom Hogan.

After an excruciatingly long wait, I’ve finally come full circle on the process I started a few months back: realising the I’m not shooting, looking hard at the gear I was currently not using, deciding on what gear I needed instead, and then selling it all off. Then the time came to decide what to replace my previous camera (the Canon 1D Mark III) with and I was in two minds.

Do I go with the maximizer’s dream and new best all-rounder (the Canon 5D Mark II) or do I go with the focussed, single purpose photographers tool of choice (the Nikon D700)?

As I wrote about most recently, the Canon is a great camera that’s getting a whole lot of attention but really, I don’t need the 21MP of resolution. I don’t need HD video (yet) and when I can’t even get autofocus that’s a nuisance, or any decent audio without an external mic… One day, I might well find myself where every DSLR has amazing video capability, but for now, I’m good. Frankly 12MP is all I need for making prints as big as 17x22 which is the largest I can print to at home anyways.

And after learning a few things about lugging lots of gear around the last couple of years, I went with a very small, light lens and my old favourite the Nikkor 35mm f2. I really should never have sold it! Doh! But this time round it’s going to a real 35mm rather than the kludgy 52.5mm that it was on my D70 (with the x1.5 cropping factor).

I did a lot of soul searching to think harder about what photography meant to me and I remembered that cameras are a function of photography, not the other way around. So when it came down to it, there was really only one choice. I’m extremely excited to get this camera and I’ll be giving occasional updates as I go.

With the announcement of the Canon 5D Mark II the convergence of digital SLRs as video making tools grow. It’s really here and it’s not going away. I still feel on the fence about the whole thing but some background first if I may.

Still picture cameras (including film and digital) are basically boxes that let in light through a lens and take pictures. One at a time.
Moving picture cameras (including film and digital) are basically boxes that let in light through a lens to take pictures continuously.

Sorry to be so childishly pedantic with the descriptions but with the convergence of these devices and their technology, there’s becoming fewer actual differences between the functions and operations of the two kinds of camera. Since there’s so much time honoured process, legacy, tradition and history, how one perceives one kind of camera versus the other is quite different.

Soon enough, that’s all that that will be left: our perceptions of what these tools are and how they should be used.

But before I get all wistful, there’s a very exciting world emerging that even one as “Gizmodo RSS feed breathing” as I am, I was surprised to see how fast its developing.

From what’s I can tell, the Nikon D90 was the first digital SLR to allow for recording at a HD resolution (”720p24″ which means, 1280 x 720 pixels per second at 24 frames a second). The Canon 5D Mark II, is the second digital SLR to allow HD resolution but it one-ups the D90 with a higher HD spec (1080p30 which means, 1920×1080 pixels per second at 30 frames a second). Both are aimed at two very different buyers at two very different price points (D90 street price is $1300, 5DMkII at $2700) both are clearly capable of recording video at a rate that challenges a lot of preconceived notions about what a still camera can do. It makes a lot of people nervous about their industry and more importantly, their learnings and experience with that field.

One could say that this is as worrying to film photographers when digital photography was reshaping the industry. “What about all the years I spent learning how to use all this stuff? What about all the times I screwed up and learnt from those mistakes? Do I have to go through all that again”

And now similar to the ‘invasion’ of digital photography unto film photography’s turf, digital SLRs becoming movie making tools, traditional movie making folk are starting to worry that still photographers are going to be taking over.

Ok, I don’t know if anyone is all that worried since it still takes a lot of work to make a still image to come to life. And you could argue it takes even more to make a whole series of images in a sequence (like a movie) to look great too.

Vincent Lafloret is an awarding winning photographer who shoots for the NY Times amongst others, made a video, Reverie, with pre-production the Canon 5D Mark II over 72 hrs period, single-handedly created a marketing campaign for Canon overnight. The excitement and inspiration brought about Mr. Lafloret gave this camera all the credibility it needed. But outside of the hands of a very talented and experienced photographer (and video editor) who really understands how to lighting sets mood through images (moving or not), the few early examples I’ve seen have been not so good.

Sure, the camera’s low light capability is astounding and the depth of field is now back to what’s film makers were looking for. But after all the slow focus pulls and the well framed shots of people walking through an urban scene set to ambient music… isn’t it just a bit boring to look at?

Its no coincidence that the person behind the camera on a movie set is called the Director of Photography. The DOP really is an expert in taking photographs (usually at a rate of 24 a second). All the visual interest is created using all the sames techniques photographers use and understand every day. Thankfully, in Mr. Lafloret’s case he finally found a tool that suited him and his vast understanding of the principles of visual storytelling. In an interview with him he mentions that he tried to make videos before using the current best video cameras around, but found it to be a less than pleasurable experience. But since this is an SLR and uses all the same lenses that he’s worked with for years, he was immediately at home with it.

The amazing thing is that in a fairly short amount of time an industry is emerging. New films makers (good and bad) are using these new tools in new ways. These guys make rigs for aspiring movie makers using this very same gear we’re talking about. There’s even a forum for the movie making functions the Canon 5D Mark II alone!

Happening alongside this, is the movement of converting relatively low cost video cameras (under $6k) into more movie-like cameras with all sorts of knobs for smooth manual focus on adapated Nikon lens. These rigs by Redrock Micro look the coolest IMHO. And yes, they’re all over the DSLR buzz too.

And before I’m finished, I can’t talk about the convergence of these tools without mentioning Red. Founded by the camera obsessed Jim Jannard (founder of Oakley who sold it to Luxottica for a boat load of cash) he created a movement of his own by making a digital movie making camera from scratch. The Red One camera (and the Scarlet and the Epic to come) are built for recording full cinema-ready resolution images at a cinema-ready rate. Nothing comes close to that much data throughput.

These babies are pumping out full RAW images off their digital sensors at anywhere from 1-100 frames a second (for super smooth slow motion recordings). Not all of them are the same exact dimensions of film (24x36mm) but are close giving movie makers that sexy ‘film’ like depth of field. The Canon 5D MkII for comparison does have a full 24x36mm sensor but it’s video is compressed using Quicktime H264 at a fixed 30 frames a second. Remember, movies recorded to play at a cinema is massively more demanding than movies recorded to be played back on a TV, even one that’s High Definition.

It’s unfair to really compare them both as the difference in financial and training investment between Red One (and their brethren) and the 5D MII is huge. A commonly quote Red One setup is around $25-40k. Which it’s still a bargain compared to a rental of a Panavision setup which I can only guess is about $5k a day.

So where does that leave the lowly, amateur photographer? The guy that likes shoot when he can? I’m considering a new camera body right now and with all the buzz around video capable SLRs, am I interested in taking part in this new movement?

I don’t really know.

For someone that’s on a cleansing kick where clutter and gear are the opposites of what I want in my life, then no, I can’t see where integrating video into a digital camera helps me. “No good can come from this” is an overly dramatic phrase I’ve been kicking around lately (I like to point a shaky finger in the air when I do) and with the 5D MkII making everyone pre-order like crazy, I say to myself, “No good can come of this”.

The uneasy feeling that I get when reading about the Canon’s video capability (and for the D90’s for that matter) is that it’s a hack. It just feels kludgy. Canon and have essentially pressed ‘record’ while the camera is set to ‘Live view’ which is itself a natural extension of the digital sensor technology these companies have implemented on their consumer pocket point and shoots. Even those little cameras have a working AF! Here’s a list of the known issues and workarounds for making video with the 5D MkII. There’s even a problem in the there’s a 12 minute limit to the amount of data that can be recorded at a time, due to the limits of a FAT32 file structure of most memory cards. Perhaps this could be remedied with some form of continuous recording to a hard drive but the FAT 32 issue may well come up again.

But the most worrying part about how the Live View has been shoe horned into a HD resolution camera, there’s been a lot of discussion over how the exposure control has been handled. Normally, for a still image to be made, there’s several factors that give a photographer control over the exposure; aperture, shutter speed and ISO. But due to how Canon has implemented this well touted video capability it’s been crippled by this kludgy implementation. There’s already been a lot of confusion over just how much control is being offered by the 5D MkII. Perhaps all this lack of control is solvable through later firmware releases, but I think it’s odd that this camera offers so much with one hand, then takes away with the other. There’s even talk of using F-Mount to EF adapters just to give you these would-be cinematographers the control they’re seeking.

The 5D Mark II might be the most exciting implementation of high resolution video in a camera so far with its attention grabbing low light capability, but I can’t help but feel that this is no where near as good as it can get. It needs to be simpler, with less caveats and fewer gotchas. I feel that for me to make best use of it I’d have to invest in even more gear and therefore create even more barriers to just simply going out and shooting photos or video. I’ll need more hard drive space, better processors, a new Mac, more lens, more lights, more sound recording gear, more tripods, more training… ugh.

I’m sorry to say it, but I just want it to be simpler.

I want less stuff.

There. I said it.

I want less stuff and adding video to a digital SLR can only mean one thing. More stuff.

Dammit. I was really looking forward to all that new gear too

After a year of enjoying my Canon 1D Mark III, I’ve finally given in to the reality that I’m not shooting for the New York Times. Nor am I shooting for Time magazine, National Geographic or even People magazine for that matter.

And while I did become a published photographer this year, through the books I helped design and did the photography for (IDEO: Eyes Open London and IDEO: Eyes Open New York), I’m not going to become a full time photographer any time soon. In fact the closest I’ve come to the rush of being a photojournalist was at the last two Pitchfork Music Festivals, shooting for the best Chicago culture and commentary site, Gapers Block. The shows were perfect for so many reasons: tons of great bands, great live music, great access to the stage and the sense of urgency of wanting to get the best shot you can. See the photos from Pitchfork 2007 and Pitchfork 2008 here. In fact if I had a choice I’d love to shoot music shows a lot more than once a year…

So where does that leave me? It leaves me being very busy working on all sorts of projects that don’t have much photography in them. In my new job as the Lead Designer for the Chicago Transit Authority, I’m designing the new buses for Chicago. Not a small feat and one that takes up almost all my daylight hours. I just gave a presentation about it at the World Usability Conference in Chicago. Then there is of course the latest class at the School of the Art Institute, “Innovation Workshop”, with my ever faithful partner-in-all-ventures, Sara (my new wife!!!!). We’re working on a project for the Chicago Public Library and our client and our students have been great to work with.

With all that’s going on, photographically speaking, it leaves me with a very small number of actual exposed frames, and a lot of expensive photographic equipment sitting around gathering dust. Well, to be honest, it would be if the dust could in fact get past the hard shell of a near indestructible Pelican case and the layers of foam within. What this case is protecting my gear from is anyone’s guess.

The simple lesson is that even with the careful road to learning and path of experience, professional gear does not a professional photographer make.

I think that somewhere in my quest for photographic fame and fortune, I got lost in the pursuit of photographic equipment. More stuff, less photos. More things to manage, less things actually being shot. More gear that needs other gear to support it, instead of just going out and shooting like I used to do.

I swear, I used to enjoy photography much more, the less I knew about it. Back when I was just knocking around with my trusty old Nikon D70 and one 35mm f/2 lens, I carried a spare battery and a few memory cards and thought less about the stuff and way more about the shot. It was as simple a logic as that.

So in an effort to rethink and revive my photography, I’m selling off almost all of my gear in favour of a camera with a smaller than full sized professional body and possibly one lens of a single fixed lens length. And here’s where I caught myself out… If and when I need to shoot a proper gig (wedding, concert, event) I’ll rent what I need instead of having the gear on tap underutilized for 95% of the time.

Coinciding with this recent change of heart about owning so much photo gear is a new emphasis in owning less stuff in general. I’ve found that there’s been more than a few purchases over the years that have been driven from a tiny dream of an idea, that warranted me getting the best stuff. Well, I’ve found that unless I really use it more than 4 times a year, I probably don’t need it all that much.

In an effort to cleanse and reduce clutter, I’ve been selling off all sorts of stuff on Craigslist. It’s been really cathartic.

Less stuff = less waste = less work to maintain = less things to worry about and fix = less things to upgrade = less things to buy and start the cycle of madness all over again.

++++++++++++
FOR SALE. Email if interested (georgeaye [at] gee mail dot com). Prices are negotiable.

Canon 1D Mark III: excellent condition, full size professional camera body, 10.1 MP, 10 frames a second, boxed - $3000

Kirk L bracket for Canon 1D Mark III: good condition, precision machined aluminium, Really Right Stuff compatible - $120

Gitzo GT1540 6X carbon fibre tripod: perfect condition, indestructible, incredibly light - $450

Pelican case 1500, with removable velcro dividers, fits full size camera body and lens with to spare, (Interior Dimensions: 16.75″ x 11.18″ x 6.12″ (42.5 x 28.4 x 15.5 cm): great condition - $70

Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L lens: excellent condition, professional mid range zoom. - $800
Nikon SB-800 flash: excellent condition - $200
Nikon SB-800 flash: excellent condition - $200
Nikon SB-600 flash: excellent condition - $135
Pocket Wizard II transceiver: in perfect shape, with cabling - $160
Pocket Wizard II transceiver: in perfect shape, with cabling - $160
Pocket Wizard II transceiver: in perfect shape, with cabling - $160
Manfrotto 3373 folding light stands and jointed flash/umbrella adapters (plus a bonus shoot through umbrella) - great condition, light, durable - $50
Manfrotto 3373 folding light stands and jointed flash/umbrella adapters (plus a bonus shoot through umbrella) - great condition, light, durable - $50
Really right stuff BH 40 Ball head with quick release LR lever: good condition, beautifully machined, with neoprene pouch - $300
+++++++

When I get a replacement, I’ll let you know! I’m looking at the Nikon D700 and the Canon 5D Mark II and as far as the lens goes, a simple 50mm prime lens sound good right now.

Hubwear is nearing the close of its second year and it’s been a thrilling ride. But let me back up a second since some of you might not know what I’m talking about.

Hubwear is the project that I created with my finacee and partner Sara just under 2 years ago. It’s a website that sells t-shirts (currently) to urban travelers that have a story to tell. And watching it happen right in front of my very eyes, it’s grown and grown and become a real business, with real products and real customers.

Back at the beginning in April 2006, it grew from a tiny stem cell to what’s now a rather healthy young kid. And to take the child analogy even further, when I started working on Hubwear at the beginning without anyones help, it was a scrawny, ugly kid with little to no sense-of-self or direction. It was a spotty, acned pre-teen. But once Sara got on board, the rebellious brat got a rude awakening and got sent to Excel boot camp! Suddenly, orders were being recorded in a timely fashion! Shipments of shirts from American Apparel were flying in just in time for finishing. Rigorous quality control was finally in place and there was a dramatic drop in errors and wasted product. Our spotty pre-teen was finally growing up and getting ready for high school.

Last year we got a lot of good blog links, referalls and endorsements (most notable was by Springwise ) and this year has seen more of the same. But just in the last week, we got our first major, printed publication!

Chicago Magazine included us in their Christmas Gift Guide this year and we’ve been bombarded with orders. (Irconically enough, here’s a link to the feature on their magazine’s site

There’s just something about being printed, on paper, in a real magazine that somehow gives any product legitimacy. Even in a time where Web 2.0 interconnectivity is everything, having our t-shirts in magazine means we can reach an audience that might never have seen our concept before. This year, Chicago Magazine. Next year, Lucky!

So, Horray for Hubwear! Horray for good press! And here’s to a thrilling 2008!

This post comes in the very recent wake of my new iPod touch. It prompted me to pay more attention to my current media consumption methods and it brought light to the question of how to integrate such a unique device into my life.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my life is pretty full and it seems that since we cut out TV from our lives, my consumption of media has become… ’strategic’ for want of a better word. I have to plan for it. Since losing TV, I’m no longer passively just absorbing TV and letting it wash over me like a fog. For better or for worse I now have to seek it out and be very specific about what I watch, how I watch it and when I watch it. For the most part, this post is about visual media (TV shows, movies, video podcasts) and less about music.

So if I take casual TV enjoyment off the table for a second, how, you might ask, do you keep up with water cooler conversations? Well, I don’t. Or rather, I do a very bad job of it and I’m constantly going, “Who yo talking about?”. Quite honestly, the one thing I miss the most is TV commercials. And then that was only 1 in 10.

“But what about the news? How do you know what’s happening with Brittney’s custody case?” Well, to keep up with these hot news stories I usually just read the New York Times website and since setting it to my default home page on my browser, I’m about a hundred times more current with my affairs than I was even before I lost TV.

You see, now that I know that I’m missing out on TV (and all the secondary benefits) I’m now more conscious of getting what I need from it. Maybe there’s something inherent in reading news that’s written with a sense of perspective or had a moment of reflection that I like (NY Times) that’s never appealed to me when I watch reporting of something that’s happening as it happens. I just think the commentary is better.

And one unexpected outcome is the recent realisation that the mobile NY Times is really good. It’s the same content formatted into a single column for viewing on crappy smart phones. While I appreciate the effort it took to make the ‘real internet’ on my iPod touch, the ‘mobile internet’ works pretty well too. I might start to read the mobile Times on my Touch now. It just loads faster.

So, News is taken care of. Done.

What about TV shows? “How do you know what’s happening on Grey’s Anatomy?”

For this, I had an one word answer, Netflix. But after all our best intentions, Sara and I haven’t sat down to watch a DVD in weeks. Our current queue is sitting still and it’s no one’s fault, but getting both of us to sit down and chill out to watch a TV show is harder that it sounds.

I know that once our class is finished we’ll have more than a few minutes free, but it’ll quickly get filled up with things to do for our new house. But you see… this is where my iPod touch comes in handy.

I finally found a great, reliable method* to rip the DVDs from Netflix which makes it now perfectly possible for me to watch a movie/TV show/documentary or podcast in the two 30 mins commutes I make each day. It also means that I can turn around a DVD in a day since I can rip the DVD that night and watch it at my leisure. It’s like taking a laxative for our Netflix queue.

A very new tool that I’ve came across recently was the “Watch Instantly” service from Netflix. It’s amazing. Seriously cool and very addictive. I watched a marathon, back to back, almost full 48hrs of NBC’s Heroes Season 1 using this streaming service and I’m now hooked. Using IE (not Firefox) it streams DVD quality streaming content(using fancy Active X controls) to your laptop within 20 seconds. Not bad just as long as you can find the content you want, since the selection is a fraction of what you can find in their physical DVD library.

So as far as I’m concerned, that takes care of TV and movies. Which leaves me with music.

Well, I’m a self proclaimed music whore and I’m the kind of person where I consume music constantly and voraciously. (Does anyone voraciously do anything other than ‘read’?) I think I listen to about 3-5 new albums a week which for years just meant walking into Reckless records (in Chicago) and walking out with a stack of CDs. Now, I have to admit that my physical consumption of CDs has fallen over the years to a near drizzle when it was a down pour. But I’m listening to as much if not more as I ever did. And with every good or great album I listen to, I’m tell everyone I can to get the word out.

In this age of multiplicity in tastes and channels for the distribution, keeping abreast of your passions is harder than ever. You’d think it’d be easier, for me, the sense of ‘oooh man, I’m missed this gem of a band” is ever present in my mind. Between two friends who are way more on top of the scene than me (shout outs to Craig and Lucas!), Bleep.com, russian mp3 sites, Soulseek, Epitonic.com, myspace, Pitchfork, BBC 1Xtra and the iTunes music store (not for buying just browsing thanks), I can barely keep up.

For instance, I only just heard, “Some loud thunder” by ‘Clap your hands and say yeah’ for the first time today. For some indierockanistas (I just made that up), this is probably unthinkable to have slept on such seminal work… but then maybe ‘they’ think it’s all so derivative anyway…

I’m getting off topic here, um…

The point is that I’m still consuming music and I still love it. My last three iPods plus the new Touch have all supported my addiction and I’m sure that it’s not going to get any easier. Even before I carried an iPod, I used to rock a CD player that played mp3s (a full 650 megs worth!) I don’t expect that I’ll stop buying, recommending, and listening to new music any time soon.

On a side note, when I settle into my new house, I’m going finally plan, strategise, and roll out my long lived dream of a home music server. It’ll involve a fully working PC, with nothing else on it but iTunes, Firefox and a shit load of music. I think that somewhere in there, my Touch will act as a wi-fi remote control too. But more on that in the coming months.

So, in conclusion, while my Touch hasn’t completely changed the game in how I go about my media consumption, it certainly supports and extends what I do with it, how I do it and when I do it. Which I think is that name(s) of the game these days.

Give me control and I will consume it.

*Handbrake is a fantastic piece of open source, multiplatform software that makes this whole process super easy. It takes the DVD and makes Quicktime files where every works, with none of the issue of the usual issues, like, no audio or audio which skips. The best part is that the software has tons of handy presets, like iPod and iPhone. Neato.

I got a new iPod touch today and boy is it a sweet piece of tech..

Now the number one question that I expect to answer is this: “Why didn’t you get an iPhone dude?”

Well the answer is complicated. I have a a corporate phone from work and they’re unsurprisingly, not supporting them. For one, AT&T is holding up transfers of corporate work accounts from ‘personal’ phones like the iPhone (weird eh?) plus there’s no real MS Exchange server support for it either. This would mean that all I’d be carrying around in my pocket would be a cellular web browser to get my Outlook email and appointments. Not that smart, when really, my Blackjack does a very competent job of that.

For anyone that has a corporate email phone like the Blackberry, the iPhone just doesn’t quite handle it all that well. For everyone else, it’s bloody amazing.

Now, this leaves me with two possible iPhone routes: hack one OR get one and take myself off the corporate plan. And while I’m happy to give throw money at Apple, I’m less excited at giving money to AT&T again.

And hacking the iPhone is just too fraught with danger since there is now an established cat and mouse game between Apple and the hacking community to one-up each other.

While I could potentially live with a hacked iPod touch that didn’t work every now and, I couldn’t live with a temperamental cellphone. It’s just plain irresponsible of me to have an dodgy iPhone just because I wanted one so bad.

So the iPod touch it was for me.

Tragically for me, only a few weeks ago I was the happy owner of a recent, fully functioning iPod nano 8gb. It was black, tiny, and very easy to lose. Which is exactly what I did coming back from New York in the back of a cab leaving La Guardia. And not only that, I managed to lose in the same little bundle my pair of kick ass in-ear headphones by Shure which I got custom fitted ear molds. Ugh.

Clearly, losing two iPods in less that four months is not funny, so I have to be super vigilant with this one. Having your car broken into is not anyone fault, per se, but forgetting stuff in the back of a cab is.

I’ll give a better report of my findings as I learn them.

Incidentally, I bought this today and it came preloaded with the 1.1.1 firmware update.

NEW UPDATE:

The first real, full review of the iPod touch by PC Magazine is here. Still looks pretty solid. I wants it.

Oh thank God. I might not have to buy the iPhone anymore. The iPod Touch has every feature I’d want from the iPhone without the phone part!
WiFi web browsing, Google maps, NYTimes, Coverflow, multi touch photos…

iPod Touch FTW!

UPDATE!

Holy crap they’ve just leveled the pricing for the iPhone and the new iPod Touch. Argh! And the most shocking news was the price cut for the iPhone - $200 off. What a slap in the face for anyone that just bought one just yesterday.

UPDATE!

An open letter to early adopters of the iPhone have been written by Steve Jobs. The one letters asks that they be forgiving to Apple for screwing them over. A $100 free gift certificate to Apple stores has been offered as some form of compensation, but obviously, this mainly benefits Apple more than anyone. Hmmm.

Some more thoughts on the iPod touch:

For me, the iPod touch has pretty much everything I’d want from an iPhone without the need for a new cellphone bill. So as much as one converged device would be pretty sweet, paying about $1200 a year to AT&T is something I’m glad to do without. I’ve been very fortunate you see and recently joined the corporate cell phone plan through work.

I’m probably going to be rocking my Samsung Blackjack for the next 18 months, so in the mean time, the iPod touch awaits. For me, three major barriers exist for my iPhone adoption:

1. Microsoft Exchange Server support with full ‘Direct Push’ email is lacking for the iPhone. This could be fixed in the next few months.
2. I’d have to get a new account and phone no. with AT&T with the iPhone and then get that migrated over to the corporate plan. Probably doable.
3. I already have a freaking phone! And it’s being paid for! I want to throw my money at Apple, not AT&T. This one is hard to swallow. AT&T can go bite me as I’ve never had so many dropped calls until I moved to their networks.

One aspect to the iPod that makes me so personally excited for its release is its WiFi capability. For me, this could mean that from the comfort of my couch, I could read the NY Times, check in on my Flickr page, reply to my GMail and type into my blog. Most of what I use my laptop for at home is casual browsing. I don’t have a fully functional PC at home any more, so this little fella might just be all I need.

But earlier today it hit me! A killer app that I might actually kill someone for (at least gratuitously injure).

Can someone please write a application that lets me control iTunes remotely from the iPod touch. And I don’t mean, can I play my mp3s from my iPod. No. I mean, can I control the library of mp3s that’s sitting in my house, attached to a dumb PC, from my iPod touch? Please?

This would an incredibly compelling way to utilise the WiFi hooks and its massive touch screen! Most home owners have a stationary computer. Often it is hooked up to the main stereo system in your home. Currently, there’s been very few options to control your music library and have it play through your main stereo.

Apple released the AirPort Express which has AirTunes, which lets you use your laptop to control your music collection remotely as it sends the audio signal wirelessly to the stero. But a laptop is hardly that convenient to carry around your house. For a lot of people, your laptop is your only computer and then you’re back to square one again: controlling what’s playing by returning to the physical heart of the collection. I want to have something that lets me see my collection, control it, but not necessarily be standing right next to it.

Using an Apple remote to control your iTunes is simple and cheap solution, but your control is very limited to play, pause, next track. The only other solution that exists that I know of is the Sonos. This is the solution that I’d love to have but can’t afford. For $1000 (including the $400 remote) it gives the user the ability to see, control and direct what’s being played from your computer. And yes, its a luxury to have a colour screen just for your music remote control, but it’s bound to be a great experience. Your computer can now just sit still, chill out and pump mp3s to a stereo.

With the iPod touch, I might finally be able to have something as cool, as visual and as powerful as that Sonos without paying $1000 for this one experience. It means changing your perception of the iPod from being your entire music collection, to simply being a window into your library. A sexy, 3.5″ touchable window.

Another UPDATE!

I’m over the iPhone. For real.

For the weeks and months leading up to the release I was getting more and more convinced that my life would be pointless without the Jesus-phone in my hands.

Between the hype, the growing excitement, the slow leak of information and the tremendously in depth interaction videos released just days before it’s launch, the iPhone broke new ground all over the place.

I could blame the fact that I’m a designer or blame that fact that I have Golem-level desires for ‘precious’ objects, but I wanted this phone more than any other object in recent memory. It was getting unbearable to be without one in my possession.

But the weirdest thing happened. I got a chance to finally play with one the day after the launch, and I found myself realising a few things.

1. It’s amazing.
2. I don’t need it.
3. It’s amazing.

And then I took a breath and found myself totally over it. Honestly, I think that because I’d read and seen everything about it for so long the final meeting strangely held no more surprises for me. Somehow I’d over cooked my own enthusiasm for the damn thing.

I tried flicking my finger through iTunes album art, flicking my way through contacts, pinching and prising my way through photographs and Google maps. I even tried typing. They were all as amazing as I expected.

And while my argument for wanting it so bad, ‘it’s the most seamless integration of devices ever’, I realised that I just couldn’t get excited enough to replace all my current, separate devices. I have a phone. I have a music player, I even have crappy access to email through my phone too! Clearly with the iPhone the subtle, restrained industrial design makes it a pleasure to hold, but it’s really in the interaction design that makes this device come to life in your hands. But for me, $600 is a lot for me to pay to improve the ‘experience’.

While there has been a lot of research white papers and experimental prototypes shown of multi touch technology, more notable by Jeff Han from NYU, it was Apple who were the first to show how it could be really used and where the benefits were immediately obvious.

Let it be said, this is a totally landmark device here. It makes all other products that come anywhere near this category look so… pre-iPhone.

So while I happily recognise it’s immense awesomeness, for me I feel freed from its grasp. I’m over the iPhone. At least for the next few months…

ps.

Posing for me here is a friend’s iPhone. He was kind enough to let me take these closeups of this beautiful object. The full gallery is here. Enjoy!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I got myself a new camera body about a week ago and after some 5500 exposures I think I can give it a short assessment.

But before I get into that, I wanted to give a shout out to my favourite camera gear store in the city; Calumet Photographic. Not only do all their staff have a great amount of experience to impart, but they’re very good at scaling their knowledge appropriately, from teaching newbs like me, the basics of how to use a two head lighting kit to giving their recommendations on the latest pro gear. Plus they let you rent which makes things like $1700 lens seem a little more affordable.

Ok, back to the gear list:

Canon EOS 1D Mk III
Canon EF 16-35L f2.8 (rented)
Canon EF 24-70L f2.8 (rented)
Canon EF 70-200L f2.8 IS (rented)
Spare battery for 1DMk III
Four 4gb Lexar 133x CF memory cards
Domke F2 bag

So what worked and what didn’t? Actually, everything worked out great! The only time I had anything that was close to a equipment fault was due to my incompetence. I thought the auto focus on my 70-200 was broken, so I tried turning the body on and off a bunch of times, then mounting and unmounting the lens… then I remembered that there’s a switch on the lens itself that turns the AF off. Ugh.

After a full weekend of shooting, my favourite lens was the tremendously heavy 70-200L f2.8 IS. It had the reach I needed to get some great close ups of detailed facial expressions during the performance at Pitchfork but also has the added bonus of getting people to move out of your way, since it’s so freaking large. The lens is white and with the hood attached it’s about the length of my arm. Let me tell you, it’s very hard to dance along to De La Soul’s, “Rock Co.Kane Flow” with it hanging off your neck.

Ok, now onto the new body: it’s ridiculously good. I’ve never owned a tool that performed with such purpose and conviction. Almost every aspect of its design and operation has been optimized for the task at hand, and that task is always to get the shot: battery life is over 2500-3000 exposures per charge, ISO is readable in the viewfinder, the viewfinder is HUGE and bright, the vertical grip has a complete replication of the control layout, the blackout time in the viewfinder is a barely perceivable 80ms, and a huge array of custom functions to tweak and adjust the controls to your preferences.

Now there’s been a huge ruckus all over the internets about the new Auto Focus system built into the MKIII, and while I have yet to do any definitive tests, I am pretty satisfied with how it’s been behaving. A great source of relief to me so far, is how well placed many of the 45 AF points are laid out within the viewfinder.

How I learnt to focus on all my previous cameras is to find an element in the image that I want to focus on, then start the ‘Focus Lock and Recompose’ sequence. The focused element then doesn’t always fall in the dead centre of the image. I started using this process years ago and it’s totally instinctive now. But this technique just becomes a pain when you’re trying to compose a portrait where the subject isn’t used to holding still with a toothy grin on their face. I don’t want to be constantly, ‘Focus Lock and Recomposing’ on them either, as in that split second when I’m reorientating the camera, they might move their head and body and the shot will be thrown off. I just want there to be an AF point directly on the person’s eyes for a portrait and it want it to be placed so things look right proportionally when the camera is set into a vertical orientation. I guess that I could revert to manual focus to really make sure the AF doesn’t move around, but I don’t think that I could trust that I could react to a person’s movement quickly enough to guarantee that I got that tiny, subtle change in expression or glance of the eyes. The whole time I was shooting close ups of the artists at Pitchfork, I would change to the vertical grip, hit the ‘select AF point’ under my thumb then roll my index finger two clicks until it hits the upper most AF marker. Done. Shoot. Next shot.

One additional thing I noticed while using the Mk III was that I retrained my eyes to use a technique that I’d forgotten about since my first film camera, the Canon A1. Since there’s so much fast movement on stage at any one time it’s important to not be too blinkered looking through your viewfinder and miss something happening just out of the frame. My old film camera had a really expressive, bright viewfinder which I missed dearly when I moved to my Nikon D70. But since moving to the Mk III, I found that while I have this new viewfinder up against my right eye, I can once again open my left eye and let my mind blend the images together. This way I can ‘see’ through the lens while keeping a check on whatever else is happening on the stage with both eyes open quite naturally.

All in all, I’m very happy with the new body and when matched with some decent glass, it’s a formidable package.

A sad farewell this week. I finally said goodbye to my dear, dear camera which I only knew for six months.

Rangefinder cameras had a recent renaissance when the buzz around this camera broke out a few years ago, but it really got turned up to a white hot buzz when the Leica M8 was announced. The Epson was also limited to a production run of only 10,000 units.

Rangefinders and rangefinder photography is hard wired into photographic history and there’s no one that contributed more to this than a gentleman called Henri Cartier-Bresson. From the early part of the last century until his death in 2004, he was synonymous with three things: an enormous body of legendary work, being known for the phrase, ‘the decisive moment’, and for using Leica rangefinders.

No one I can think of is as tied to a brand as strongly as HCB and Leica. And so, in 2006 (when I started to think about the Epson RD-1) one can’t help but be wrapped up in all the romance and mystique of what these cameras offer.

A unique shooting style (manual pre-focussing) and a unique way of visualizing (through a separate viewfinder that shops crops marks of the field of view) all make up an experience that is difficult to describe without having one in your hands for a while. And truly when I bought this camera, I really wanted to give this style of photography an honest, through work out.

But sadly for me, I can say that this style just didn’t work for me. And how much of it was to do with this camera is sort of a moot point, as there is only one other digital rangefinder alternative available, the Lecia M8, which at $5000 for the body was way too expensive to ‘try out’. And after owning my first camera (a Canon A1) I’m not going to go back to shooting with film again to fully experience rangefinders.

Despite the awkwardness of my experiences with the camera, I found it to be one of the most exquisitely designed objects I’ve had in my hands. It was a great design exercise in melding analog, manual controls into a digital camera body. The Epson designers even integrated fully working, chronograph style dials to display the available space on the memory card, the white balance and the image resolution.

Ironically, the final nail in the coffin was my last assignment for some intense photography. The chance to photograph all over two cities was challenging enough, but when faced with this pressured assignment, I chose my trusty Nikon d70 instead. I just cannot afford to have a camera without auto focus anymore.

My Epson is now in the hands of a new owner and I’m sure that he’ll cherish it ten times more than I ever could.

In memory of this beautiful, romantic camera, here are some of my favourite photos taken with the Epson RD-1.