Code, Camera, Action - Stories, software and strategies to help nonprofits do web 2.0+

March 11, 2010

Twitter turns on geolocation for twitter.com

via tweetie

For Twitter, location means a neighborhood, not venue. With a really clear location UI.

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Filed under // location twitter

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March 7, 2010

Photo: St Patrick's Day Parade, Alexandria

via flickr.com

Alexandria's St Patrick's Day parade comes early each year -- a warmup for the bigger parades in the weeks to come.

The light was sharp, but fantastic. And everybody was excited to get outside after all our snow.

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1
Lens: Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f1.5 Aspherical (Leica thread mount)
Adapter: John Milich LTM-G1

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Filed under // camera photos

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March 4, 2010

Photo: Chicagoland

via flickr.com

While Chicago wasn't particularly windy last night, it sure was big and bright.

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1
Lens: Voigtlander Ultron 28mm f1.9 Aspherical (Leica thread mount)
Adapter: John Milich LTM-G1

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Filed under // camera photos

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February 26, 2010

Photo: The Dojo

via flickr.com

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1
Lens: Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f1.5 Aspherical (Leica thread mount)
Adapter: John Milich LTM-G1

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Filed under // fridayfoto photos

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February 23, 2010

Post: Kung-fu techniques for getting DNGs to work in Aperture 3

Aperture 3 upgrade has given lots of folks reason to shout -- Nondestructive editing everywhere, yay! Grouped preset powers, yay! Lumix support, yay! But its first-release bugs have also given lots of us reason to curse and kick.

In an earlier post I talked about how to avoid some of the frustrations upgrading your library from Aperture 2 to 3 http://elstudio.us/upgrading-to-aperture-3-for-lumix-and-micro-4. Now that's done, let's look at some work-arounds for DNGs.

The problem seems to be that Aperture 3, like Aperture 2 before it, lacks support for lens corrections in Adobe DNG files. This is odd because for many cameras -- the Lumix G1, GH1 and LX-3 -- Aperture supports those same corrections in the native RW2 format. Let's hope it's a bug that the same corrections don't work in DNG.

Even stranger, Aperture 3 seems to bail out on DNGs from any camera that *can* do lens correction -- whether or not there's actually lens correction in a particular DNG. On micro 4/3 cameras like the G1, legacy lenses don't provide lens correction, and thus DNGs may not have it. If only Aperture 3 was clever enough to check.

If you had DNGs in your Aperture 2 library from Panasonic Lumix G1 or GH1 or GF1, or maybe an LX3, you'll find they convert just fine. But you can't adjust them at all. To make any changes, you must upgrade to the latest rendering engine, which renders garbage on the screen (and eventually crashes Aperture).

Here's what you can do to work around this problem.

Wait for RW2 support for your camera. For the GF1, or if you've shot with Panasonic micro 4/3 lenses, this is your best option. And save those RW2 files! Extract your original RW2 files from the DNGs or pull them from a backup (you did embed the the RW2, right?). It seems that Apple views DNG support in Aperture as a secondary priority, so the original raws are the way to go.
If your DNGs were shot with legacy lenses, there is a good work-around. Only native Panasonic (and maybe Olympus) micro 4/3 lenses add the lens metadata. If you haven't shot with those, the only thing keeping Aperture from recognizing your photos is the camera model name embedded in the DNGs. You can use something like exiftool to change it to one that doesn't do lens correction. Here's what I use to get my G1's legacy lens DNGs to work in Aperture 3. (This is not terribly dangerous, as exiftool can just as easily undo this change.)
exiftool -Model=DMC-L10 blah.dng
If your DNGs do have lens correction (as they must with the LX3) you could use a tool like DNGSanitize http://punainenkala.livejournal.com/588.html, which purports to strip the lens correction from the DNGs. This is a last-resort sort of thing to do, as you will lose that lens correction data. You would probably also have to change the camera model name, as in option 2 (try DMC-FZ50 for the LX3). Do keep backups. And, really, don't do this -- wait until the next release of Aperture when we'll find out if Apple intends to fix DNG support.

Whatever you do, test this with your DNGs. And keep backup copies. Just because option 2 works for me, that doesn't mean it will for you. And I've not had to try option 3. Also, pray you don't have linear DNGs, as only Adobe can help you then.

I can't believe that Apple would mess up DNG support this badly on purpose. In the meantime, please file a bug report to let Apple know that losing DNG support for these cameras is a big deal. You can do this from inside Aperture itself. Choose Aperture > Provide Aperture Feedback from the menu.

Good luck! And let us know how it works out.

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Filed under // apple aperture camera lumix G1 micro 4/3 photography post

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February 18, 2010

Notes on Aperture 3 and Panasonic GF1 RW2 and DNG files

Apple released Aperture 3 a few days ago with official support for the G1 and GH1, but for some unknown reason not for the GF1.
User helloniklas has posted instructions that allow using GF1 RW2 files directly in Aperture 3 on the Apple forum here. Note that this will break support for GH1 in your copy of Aperture and this will also need to be done with ever new RAW Compatibility Update until Apple gets around to adding official support (there is also a risk that a later update without official GF1 support will make this hack non-functional, leaving you with temporarily unusable raw files in your library).

It seems that modifying the RW2 file's exif tag to a supported model will also work. For example, "exiftool -Model=DMC-G1 foo.RW2" seems to make Aperture like the file.

via punainenkala.livejournal.com

The exiftool technique also works to get Aperture 3 to process DNGs made from my G1. These come over in the upgrade from Aperture 2 just as they were, but Aperture 3 won't allow me to re-process them or adjust them in any way. (Re-processing them turns them into graphic garbage on screen, and eventually crashes Aperture.)

However, changing the exif camera model to something that Aperture does support, like a Panasonic L10, allows the files to render properly, and I can adjust at will.

Here's the command for that using exiftool from the command line (this works for blah.dng -- export your dngs and substitute the name of your image).

exiftool -Model=DMC-L10 blah.dng

Rendering and raw development settings seem identical to what Aperture 2 applied to the DNG. That's less saturated than Aperture 3's rendering of RW2.

My guess is that it this technique would similarly fix DNG support for an Olympus EP-1 -- at least for photos shot with legacy lenses.

If you were smarter than me and saved your original RW2 files -- or had DNG Converter embed the original in the DNG -- extracting the RW2 is a better deal. But this exif modification will at least give you something to work with.

Let's hope that the next update to Aperture 3 is a bit smarter about DNG handling. It's unfortunate that DNGs that worked fine in Aperture 2 corrupt and crash Aperture 3. I hope that's a bug, not a feature.

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Filed under // apple aperture lumix G1 photography

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February 18, 2010

Cell phone subscriptions to hit 5 billion globally

On a planet with around 6.8 billion people, we're likely to see 5 billion cell phone subscriptions this year.

Reaching 4.6 billion at the end of 2009, the number of cell phone subscriptions across the globe will hit 5 billion sometime in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The explosion in cell phone use has been driven not only by developed countries, but by developing nations hungry for services like mobile banking and health care.

via reviews.cnet.com

John Gruber points out that just under 1 billion of those phones have internet access.

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Filed under // mobile

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February 13, 2010

DNG Adventures: Upgrading to Aperture 3 for Lumix & Micro 4/3s Users

Thinking of upgrading to the latest Aperture, version 3? It's a big improvement over the previous version, adding nondestructive editing, much improved importing and printing and a host of other stuff. And it adds support for several Micro Four-thirds format cameras -- including Panasonic's Lumix DMC-G1 and GH-1 (and also, finally, the LX-3).

In the upgrade from version 2 to 3, Aperture converts your library -- so there's no going back. The upgrade went well for me, but there are a couple of things that Lumix users would be well to keep in mind.

Aperture 3 does not support Adobe DNGs from the Lumix G1. Aperture 2 did, but Aperture 3 does not. It's unclear if this is a bug or a feature, but DNGs imported into Aperture 3 from my G1 appear as "Unsupported raw images." This is true of DNG versions 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, whether they include lens metadata or not (RW2 files shot with legacy lenses don't have lens metadata, Lumix lenses do -- neither DNGs work in Aperture 3).
But DNGs are supported for lots of cameras. Test by importing a DNG or two from your camera before you convert your library. If it fails, you'll see graphic garbage or "Raw image format not supported."

Even if you can't import new DNGs, upgrading your library to Aperture 3 will bring along existing DNGs just fine -- as long as you don't switch them to Aperture 3's new imaging engine. There's an option for that when you start the conversion.
DNG: If you've DNGs in your Aperture 2 library (perhaps from shooting raw with legacy lenses) -- Do not "Update all photos to use Aperture 3 imaging". Uncheck this box in the upgrade dialog --
Raw + JPEG: If, on the other hand, you've shot and imported RW2 + JPEG files into Aperture 2, you'll be pleasantly surprised. They work fine with Aperture 3 imaging update, once Aperture 3 processes them. The best way to do this to upgrade your library without the new imaging library (again, uncheck that box), then freshen up selected images after your library has been converted --
1. Photos > Reprocess Master...
Turn off Faces for now. The import will take long enough without face detection. You can turn it back on once you've got your library safely converted to Aperture 3.
1. Aperture > Preferences
2. Click the General tab
3. Un-check the option to Enable Faces
This Apple support document has more great advice about the upgrade process. A worthwhile read.
Your plugins will need to be updated. Frasier Speirs has already updated his excellent FlickrExport plugin with a beta 64-bit version for Aperture 3. Existing plugins should run just fine if you restart Aperture in 32-bit mode -- Aperture 3 prompts you to do this if necessary.