Posts Tagged photography
Better Pictures with the Nikon SB-600 Flash
If you’ve moved up from a simple point-and-shoot camera to a digital SLR, there’s one more piece of gear you should always carry on the road—an external flash. Inside my travel bag on just about every trip is a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash, which has held up well through several years and thousands of miles.
The built-in flash on my Nikon D90 is handy. But the SB-600 can often produce far better results and really give your pictures a professional edge.
An external flash isn’t just for indoor use, either. Outdoors, when taking close-up or medium shots of people, using fill flash can really make your shots more colorful and balanced.
The SB-600 is easy to use and supports through-the-lens metering for automatic balancing of fill flash. It will automatically zoom with compatible Nikon cameras from 24 to 85 mm and weighs in at only half a pound.
Here’s an example, an outdoor picture of a bicycle rider taken with my D90 and the SB-600. Without the flash, the rider’s face would be dull and his riding shirt would be much less colorful.
This use of fill flash can really give your pictures that extra sparkle when shooting outdoors. It can really make a huge difference.
Using a bounce card or a flash diffuser that snaps on to the strobe will also help improve your pics in many situations, making the flash look less harsh. In fact, the best outdoor pictures taken with fill flash are those where you can’t tell any flash was used.
The Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash retails for $249.99, with a current street price of $219.99 at Amazon or $224 at Buy.com. In over 300 reviews on Amazon, it gets an average of five stars, the highest rating.
Not using a Nikon camera? Check out the other dedicated flashes for your camera or some of the third-party entries.
If you’re only taking pictures of faraway landscapes, an external flash won’t help. But for those great people shots, an external flash can take your photography to the next level.
Posted by JohnG in Business Gear, General Gear, Kids and Family on May 4th, 2010
5 Things I Always Pack – Janna Graber
This month’s guest post of “5 things I always pack” is from Janna Graber, editor of international travel site www.goworldtravel.com and the Colorado uber-site, www.goColorado.com. A travel journalist and video producer, Janna has worked in some 38 countries. She feels completely at home on the road.
1. My “airplane sleeping gear”
Over the years, I’ve developed a routine for sleeping on airplanes, and I always bring the same items with me. First, I travel in comfy clothes (my friends call them my “travel pants,” but they are really just nice looking sweatpants). Then I have a stuffed neck pillow (leopard print, it was all they had on sale at the time), and two inflatable neck pillows. I put one half-inflated pillow behind the small of my back (no back ache then!), and use the two other pillows to keep my head in place while I sleep. Then I have my usual ear plugs, eye mask and lightweight blanket. Sure, I may look ridiculous, but at least I’m fast asleep.
2. My book.
Reading is one of my favorite pastimes, and traveling gives me the opportunity to catch up on my favorite authors. I always have a good paperback with me. 
They’re easy to stick in my backpack, and I can get some good reading in whenever I have to sit and wait.
3. My Rhonda Allison sunscreen
Since it comes in 1 oz bottles, this Rhonda Allison sunscreen is perfect for my carry-on. It’s not greasy and is formulated specifically for faces, which means I actually wear it every day. This sunscreen is usually only sold in high-end salons or dermatologists’ offices, but you can find it online for a good price.
4. My cameras
Photographs are the best souvenirs, and they’re also a huge part of our reader experience at Go World Travel and Go Colorado. I always have a good digital camera with me. Right now, I use the Nikon Coolpix S630. I like the 7x zoom it has, as well as its light weight.
If I have the space, I also have my Canon HV20 3MP High Definition MiniDV Camcorder and tripod. (The newer version of this is the Canon VIXIA HV40.) These days, we produce video stories whenever we can.
5. My Samsonite carry-on suitcase
The zipper is on its last legs and one of the wheels is starting to wobble, but I still cling to my favorite Samsonite carry-on suitcase. It has my faded “I love Canada” handle protector, so I can easily locate the suitcase on the luggage belt, and has traveled with me across the world. Someday, I’ll have to break down and buy a new suitcase, but I’m keeping this one as long as I can.
See other 5 Things guest posts
Posted by Tim in General Gear, Travel Light on April 22nd, 2010
Lensbaby Turns Photos into Works of Art
One of the most-carried pieces of travel gear is a digital camera. And if you’ve moved up from a point-and-shoot to a DSLR—or are thinking about it—Lensbaby can help take your photography to the next level of creativity.
Lensbaby makes a series of lenses, and optic inserts for those lenses, that can turn ordinary photos into extraordinary works of art. I’ve been spending some time with the Composer lens and the Soft Focus Optic on my Nikon D90 and enjoying the results.
First stop was an old-fashioned carnival where I got so busy with the Lensbaby, I forgot about the cotton candy.
The Composer is a selective-focus lens. One of the best ways to call attention to a subject is to have it in sharp focus, with the background or even the foreground blurred. This is a great-looking effect. And it’s where the Composer shines.
Lensbaby Composer's view of the Fun Slide
The focus area can be in the center of the picture. Or, with the Composer’s ball-and-socket design, the sweet spot can be moved to the right or left and up or down.
Then, just focus and shoot. A built-in locking ring, if needed, will hold the spot.
It’s possible to get a similar type of selective focus with a regular lens by using a wide aperture, giving the picture a shallow depth of field. But the Composer makes it easy and can create a more dramatic effect with a movable sweet spot in only a portion of the frame.
The Composer also includes changeable aperture discs ranging from f2 to f22. I used manual exposure settings for my D90. Some other cameras allow light metering in aperture-priority mode.
The Composer is available with mounts for most popular digital SLR cameras.
Lensbaby offers two other selective-focus lenses—the Muse, with an accordion-like design, and the Control Freak for tabletop and macro photography. The Composer, Muse and Control Freak can each be used with interchangeable optics for different looks.
Carnival ride with Soft Focus Optic
One of these interchangeable optics is the Soft Focus, which I’ve also been testing. It gives pictures a softer, velvety look. This effect is seen evenly throughout the image, without the sweet spot of the standard optic in the Composer.
It’s great for portraits and landscape shots and can do some really interesting things with lights as you can see from the photo of the Wipeout ride.
Lensbaby has an online gallery of photos. There’s also a Flickr group for enthusiasts to share their favorite pics and tips.
The Composer sells for $270 at Lensbaby’s online store. Street prices are very close to that. It’s available from Amazon and other retailers nationwide. (The Amazon link is for the Nikon model—be sure and choose the correct mount for your camera.)
Carnival ride with Composer
The Soft Focus Optic sells for $89.95 from Lensbaby direct and is also available from Amazon. Note that a Composer, Muse or Control Freak lens is needed to use one of the changeable optics such as Soft Focus.
Of course, setting up a Lensbaby takes a bit longer than using an automatic lens. But the small amount of extra time invested pays off with stunning photos.
Point and shoot cameras are great when you want a small, easy-to-use camera to carry around during your travels. But for serious photography—minus the shutter lag, fixed lenses and other annoyances of the point-and-shoots—a DSLR is definitely the way to go.
Then, adding a Lensbaby can help you look at the world in a new way.
Posted by JohnG in Adventure Gear, Business Gear, General Gear on February 22nd, 2010
Rebit Automatic Backup Hard Drive
Backing up your computer is something that most people think about but seldom do. Kind of like flossing your teeth or exercising more. It needs to be done, but it’s not an enjoyable task and it’s easy to put off. The products from Rebit take care of that by making it automatic.
Much of your data can be backed up “in the cloud” now anyway, so a hard drive crash isn’t what it used to be. But what about all those photos? What about all that music? Backing all those up online can get expensive since they are very big files. If you’re traveling for a long time or are an expat in a developing country, you also may not always have a fast Internet connection for all those gigabytes to flow through.
I used to use a basic portable hard drive from Western Digital until out of the blue it died while I was on a ship in the Galapagos. Apparently that’s common with these small portable drives, which makes me wonder, “Do I need a backup for my backup?” There I was with 400 new photos stored and praying that my laptop wouldn’t die or disappear. Their warranty on the old version I had was quite limited, but the company kindly offered to restore the data on it—for a mere $800. Um, no thanks. Now they come with a longer warranty though: three years. (See John’s Western Digital portable hard drives review.)
So now I use this Rebit, which is billed as “ridiculously simple backup.” The promise is that you plug this thing into a USB port (or two ports if extra juice is needed) and follow the installation wizard. After that it figures out what’s on your computer, and then it backs everything up. You don’t need to press any buttons or launch any software. It’s all automatic.
If you leave it plugged in it keeps backing up files as you work (and deleting what you delete), but if you only plug it in now and then, that’s fine too. The Rebit figures out what’s new since the last time and it goes and grabs it. In the event you need any files later, you just drag them off the Rebit and onto any computer.
The product has improved over time. I tried out a version a few years ago that was twice as thick and twice as buggy, failing to work properly on two different PCs with XP. This time I plugged it into my HP dv3 laptop with Vista and everything went without a hitch. The Rebit backed up 100 GB of data while I slept and then every time I plugged it in later (getting nagged every day I didn’t by the software), it would usually take 20-30 minutes to get updated. In theory it works in a way that doesn’t slow down your system—waiting until your mouse isn’t moving to work—but there was a little bit of system lag when the Rebit was plugged in, especially if I was typing. But this is true with most any backup system, so if it’s a concern you can plug it in when you’re going to lunch or something.
The device is sleek, light, and thin, with just a blue LED light to show it’s on and a place to plug in the USB. It comes with a cloth carrying case. This would be easy to pack up and take on the road for making sure you don’t lose any photos or files from your travels. It can also serve as a way to transfer said photos or files to a different computer. In my tests I was able to plug this into a home PC and drag over picture folders using the usual Windows Explorer drag and drop system.
Personally, I would prefer more feedback than what is provided. There’s nothing telling you what’s being backed up or scanned like you get with cloud solutions such as SugarSync. It doesn’t even really tell you when it’s working and when it’s not. Mousing over it or clicking on what’s in your system tray just brings up a message that it’s working.
The one real snag I ran into initially was this was supposed to be a two-computer version, but I could only get it to work on one. Since there’s no way to control the thing, there was nothing to try as a fix when it just installed itself and then did nothing more on the second computer. A call to tech support fixed the issue though when they walked me through a workaround—they do have a phone number answered by humans available during working hours. [Review updated 2/15/09]
Note that you can also buy Rebit just as a software solution (for less than $20 at Amazon) and install it on your own external hard drive. So if you’ve already got a regular hardware-only portable drive, you can put this software on it and then back up without thinking in the future. Just plug it in. It only works with Windows but that’s okay: with a Mac you can do the same thing with the included TimeMachine.
The prices on the actual drive are quite reasonable though—if you ignore the list price. The 160GB version goes for under $80 at Amazon and the 320GB version is under $110. Both ship for free.
See other reviews at Rebit.com.
Posted by Tim in Business Gear, General Gear on February 11th, 2010
Review: Eye-Fi Explore Video Camera Card
Occasionally, I run across a gadget that leaves me wondering, “How did they do that?”
The Eye-Fi Explore Video wireless memory card, that plugs into digital cameras and uploads still photos and videos, is one of those. While it has some limitations, what it does is pretty amazing.
The Explore Video card will connect and automatically upload pictures to your computer through a wireless router on a home network. It can also connect to thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots around the country. And it can upload, without ever taking the card out of the camera, to photo- and video-sharing services such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube.
It works with cameras that use SDHC storage and is the same size as a conventional card. The 4 GB Eye-Fi card will hold more than 500 pictures, at highest JPG quality, on my Nikon D90.
Just think of the possibilities. Travelers can easily upload and share pictures from the road. Or, I could walk around the house taking family photos while they transfer to the computer automatically. The card has good range and the signal even holds up well through walls.
I found it takes 10-15 seconds to upload a high-resolution picture to the computer with file sizes of 5-7 MB. Videos, if your camera supports them, can take much longer because of the bigger file sizes. I didn’t find any objectionable battery drain with my D90.
The Explore Video card can also geotag photos, adding location information which can be seen with some programs and Internet-based sharing services.
Setting up a computer to receive the photos is quick and easy, using a card reader that plugs into a USB port. The card can be set up to connect to encrypted routers. (Time out for a reminder—always encrypt wireless signals at your home or office. You never know who might be driving by or trying to connect from next door.)
Eye-Fi’s online support is excellent and addresses just about any question imaginable on setup and operation.
There are some limitations. The main one is connecting to many free, public Wi-Fi hotspots.
Eye-Fi cards will seamlessly connect to Wayport hot spots. There are more than 10,000 across the U.S., including hotel, fast-food restaurant and airport locations.
The trick is trying to connect to other public Wi-Fi signals. It can be done, but only if the signals are unencrypted and do not use a splash or log-in screen.
There are also some limitations on geotagging, which does not use GPS for determining locations. Instead, it homes in through the locations of nearby wi-fi signals without connecting to them. In areas with few signals, geotagging might not work.
Some cameras provide more support for the card than others. For example, some upper-end Nikon DSLRs will show on the screen when photos are being uploaded. Most cameras do not show any indication when an upload is in progress, though you can choose to be notified by e-mail or text message when it completes.
The Eye-Fi Explore 4GB Video card retails for $99.99, but you’ll find it on Amazon for less. That includes one year of access to Wayport hot spots. After that, the price for Wayport access is $14.99 a year.
For travelers who take lots of pictures and like to share them with family and friends, the Eye-Fi Explore Video card can make the task a whole lot easier. And it won’t take up any more room in your bag.
Posted by JohnG in General Gear, Kids and Family, Travel Light on January 5th, 2010
