Looking up in Toranomon

Lunch break photo walks are hard; almost nothing looks good with the midday sun directly overhead. I started doing these because I think I need more time behind the camera and finding a good photo in a limited amount of time in difficult lighting conditions with only one lens to choose from can be good practice.

(I bring only a single prime lens for my week-day practice shoots. Usually it's the EF 24mm f/2.8 because that lens is small and light and fits in my bag nicely, but today I brought my EF 35mm f/1.4L)

But I've already walked all over Akasaka, and taken pretty much every photo that can be taken within walking distance from my building on a one hour lunch break. The images are starting to blur together and I'm beginning to hate myself for taking so many pictures of flowers.

So I decided to hop a train and go somewhere close and within the range of my commuter pass. I took the Ginza line to Toranomon. I never go to Toranomon these days, but it sounds cool so I decided to give it a try.

I wandered off the main drag and into the side streets. The stories of a city are told in the side streets. And even in the middle of the day, side streets are dark - hiding in the shadows of tall buildings. If there's a cool photo to be found in the middle of the day, you can bet that its hiding down a side street.

But this time I really couldn't find anything interesting.  And then I looked up.  Apparently, some of the most interesting views in Toranomon are straight up.  There are all kinds of options for playing with geometric shapes and lines when you have tall buildings, and a cloudless sky.  Cool.

All images © 2010 by Jason Weddington. Contact me at the_wandering_eye [at] yahoo [dot] com for usage or licensing requests.

Skype for iPhone works on 3G networks!

I just installed the updated Skype for iPhone and got a nice surprise. You can now make voice calls over 3G networks! This was clearly stated in the details for the update, and a pop-up message in the app gives more info.

I installed the update and made a test call to the Skype call testing service. Flawless!

This never used to work. In fact none of the VoIP apps worked over a 3G connection, only on WiFi. What's going on here? I assumed this was a restriction that Apple placed on the device to keep the carriers happy. A quick Google came up with nothing on this recent change, only old articles on how to jailbreak and get VoIP apps to work.

Clicking on details reveals the page below. It seems that Skype-to-Skype calls will be free "at least" until August 2010, and after that there will be a fee. Fee for what? Skype-to-Skype calls are already free, but never worked on a 3G network.

Just speculating wildly here, but maybe Skype will give some of the mentioned monthly feel to Apple, who will then toss a stipend to their carriers to get them to stop crying about VoIP calls killing their (already crumbling) business models?

I logged into my account online and couldn't find any details on the mentioned "mobile subscription." Comment if you know something.

iPad First Impressions

Ok, I've had an iPad for just over two weeks now, so I guess it's time for some first impressions.

Let's start at the very beginning.  The very first thought than ran through my mind when I pulled the thing out of the box was "oh, that's heavy!"  I'd seen the keynote video of Steve Jobs flipping flipping his iPad around like it's a feather.  He either practiced that, or they made a special lightweight version for him to play with.  It's not like it's super heavy, but a little to heavy for comfortable reading while standing up on the train.  I suppose that half of the weight is battery though.  And I'm not sure I'd sacrifice the amazing battery life for a lighter device.

But on to more substantive concerns...  The iPad is basically a big iPod Touch right?  How come the iPod Touch comes with so many built-in apps that were just plain left out of the iPad?

Apps that come with iPod Touch but not iPad:

• Stocks
• Weather
• Voice Memos
• Clock
• Calculator
• Uno (just kidding, I bought that one.  Cool game though)

So what gives?  I'd gotten used to these as staples of iPhone OS.  I'm used to seeing them on my iPod Touch and iPhone.  Why did Apple leave them out of iPad?  I suppose you could argue that with a fuller web browsing experience, you don't really need these apps, or that they spent all their time working on the new YouTube app and didn't have time to re-vamp these once.

Ikegami Honmonji (池上本門寺)

This morning we jumped on the bikes and took a ride to Ikegami Honmonji (池上本門寺). My goal was to make some good photos, but it was also a family outing of sorts. I dragged along the 5D Mark II and two lenses: 24mm-70mm f/2.8 and 70mm-200mm f/2.8.

Japanese temples are interesting places. In Tokyo they are an oasis of peace in the middle of a crazy, crowded, and sometimes insane city. We went early enough in the morning that there were still very few people there. It was a nice break from the crowded trains and tired people that I see on a daily basis.

I'm never sure about taking pictures in cemeteries. I've been here long enough that I no longer feel like a tourist. When you're a tourist you point your camera at anything and everything, and think nothing of it. Everything is new and foreign, and photo-worthy. And the locals just think "stupid tourist" and go about their lives. But once you're not a tourist anymore you start to worry about things like "is it OK to take pictures here?" And I assume that the locals, instead of thinking "stupid tourist" instead think "why is that guy taking pictures here?" I don't know, probably I worry too much. People tell me I'm too serious.

But Japanese cemeteries are fascinating places. First of all, people are cremated in Japan, not buried in the ground. So these are not grave markers per se. I'm not sure if tombstone is really the right word either.

If you look up 墓 (haka) in a Japanese-English dictionary, you get gravesite or tomb. But for some reason those words to me feel like there should be a dead body in there somewhere. The important thing is this is a memorial to those who have passed, and people come here to remember them. So in that sense it's not that different from a western graveyard. Actually I often think that cultural differences are in the details. It's common to see cups of sake placed on graves in Japan for example.

LightTrac for iPad

LightTrac for iPad is a simple application that shows the sun angle at a given location at a specified time of day. Colored lines showing sun angle at sunrise, sunset, and the specified time are superimposed onto a Google map. The map can be toggled from regular to satellite mode.

This is a great tool for anyone shooting outdoors or indoors with available light. I recently used this to plan ahead for a wedding shoot. I knew the time and location of the wedding, and pulled the scene up in LightTrac to get a feel for where the shadows would be, and where to place my strobes. Of course I also visited the site before the wedding, but getting a top-down view of the setting before going onsite was very helpful.

At USD $3.99, outdoor shooters can't go wrong with this app!

Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2

I couple weeks ago I bought the Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2.  I'd just finished reading Lighting 101 over at Strobist (which if you haven't read, you need to stop reading this and go read that instead) and was itching to get my flash off the camera and start lighting stuff remotely.  

I have an old Speedlite 420ex from about 8 years ago.  So all I really needed was the transmitter.  Pocket Wizard definately offers more flexibility, but I decided to go with the ST-E2 as a cheap way to get started with my existing flash.  (the old 420ex has no manual mode, though its replacement, the 430ex does) 

Also, I was shooting my sister's wedding the following weekend and I was not comfortable learning manual flash in the time I had to prepare.  I wanted to leave it up to ETTL flash metering and tweak the power with the flash ex comp controls on the camera.  While a little hit or miss, this is a technique I am comfortable with, and a wedding is not the place to cut your teeth on a new lighting technique.

Penultimate for IPad - Just like real paper... Unfortunately.

(this is a copy of an app review that I posted to the iTunes AppStore a day or so ago)

Penultimate for iPad is an amazing digital rendition of the traditional paper notebook. The on-screen writing is smoother than any other handwriting or drawing app I've tried, and I've tired several. This is the only app in which writing and scribbles actually look acceptable. No straight lines or blockiness, even when you write fast. Other apps seems to have trouble keeping up with the speed of on-screen writing or drawing. After trying several drawing and writing apps I thought that this was a hardware problem, but this app manages brilliantly so obviously this is a challenge that solid development can overcome. Really great job with the handwriting part!

The line thickness gets thinner when you write faster. The is a very nice touch and looks like real pen strokes on paper.

If I was rating the handwriting function alone, this would be a five-star app. But the overall usability is somewhat lacking, so I have to give it 3 stars. The problem is that this app functions just like paper notebooks, and replicates all the problems inherent in it's analog counterpart. This would be a 5-star killer app if the developers could combine the smooth handwriting with digital features like thumbnails.

Aperture 3 Woes

I started using Aperture 3 about two months ago. There were a few performance issues and quirks from the beginning, but in general the software worked, and the very attractive feature set kept me from going elsewhere.

But I've hit a show-stopper. Actually, two. First, exporting edited RAW files takes a long time. Second, exporting a project to a new library from a library that contains referenced masters mysteriously fails.