I’ve recently returned from my Guatemala trip, on which I carried a Nikon V1 borrowed from the Photoshop team.  If you want a long & crazy-detailed overview, check out Rob Galbraith’s review. What follows is explicitly not that. Rather, it’s off-the-cuff impressions from a guy who normally carries a 5D and who didn’t have the new cam’s manual to consult.

On the whole it’s a camera I quite like.  With a few improvements it could be one I love.

Highlights: Quality, silence, size.

• I found image quality to be excellent. (Here’s a totally untouched shot taken from a very bumpy van.) Granted, I was looking at reduced-res images on my iPad (making it harder to judge noise & sharpness), and I was relying on Apple’s built-in raw conversion (making it harder to judge flexibility of dynamic range), but still I was quite pleased. Even photos taken in a dark museums & caves came out well when using Auto ISO (a feature my 5D lacks) and the 10mm f/2.8 lens.
• I loved the cam’s total silence.  People couldn’t tell that it was on or firing, making it great for candid shots. At one point a colleague asked me, “Are you actually going to take any photos?,” as she didn’t realize I’d been snapping away.
• The presence of a dedicated video start/stop button alongside the shutter release is a cool idea, making it easy to unambiguously capture video (i.e. no need to check or switch shooting mode first).  Overall video quality is great.

Lowlights: Battery, lags.

• I found battery life on the whole to be somewhere between mediocre and awful.  Even with the rear display turned off, I’d knock a fully charged battery down to 1 bar in maybe 150 shots.  Unlike an SLR, you can’t just leave the cam on & ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. There’s no way to just leave it on (max setting is 10 min), meaning you can’t just raise the cam to your eye & know it’ll be ready to go. Weirdly, I found that when left on, the body grew quite warm to the touch. Even with access to my recharger every night, I stressed about battery life; without it (e.g. if backpacking), I’d have had to carry at least one or two spares.
• When you raise the cam to your eye, there’s a very slight delay before the digital viewfinder comes to life–nothing outrageous, but annoying for street photography.  One can hack this by taping over the proximity sensor, but presumably that would just exacerbate the battery life issue.
• As noted in the Galbraith review, the camera insists on briefly showing the last-taken photo in the viewfinder. Again, it’s not horrible, but I often want to keep concentrating on what I’m shooting, not chimp at the shot I just took.
• Minor: I found it a bit too easy to turn the shooting mode wheel by accident.  Suddenly I’d find myself in some odd burst mode, having nudged the wheel with my right hand.

For pop-up street photography, I found the Nikon 1 a good camera–just not quite a great one. Cutting out the lags, letting me leave it on, and adding a flip-out screen (so that I could compose & fire from waist height) would make it nearly ideal for the kind of work I was doing.  As it was, I learned to work around the camera’s limitations, and I’m very happy with what it let me capture.

A few galleries, in case you’re interested:

• A trip to waterfalls & caves (many taken on the move or in the dark)
• Street life parts one and two
• Cemetery & vultures

Of all these, I think this is my favorite.

Our globetrotting photo evangelist has created a slideshow of images taken during her travels.

I would not expect the images to hold the same significance to you, the viewer, as they did for me. But that is not the point.

I am sharing this slideshow to encourage every image-maker to begin a visual journal for themselves – as a personal project. I am a firm believer that you have to exercise your creativity and you have to practice in order to improve.  So when I found myself in a rut last year, I started capturing images that were meaningful to me –  purely because I wanted to, for my own reasons – not because I think someone else is going to “like” it. And I had a delightful time.

[Via]

Russell speaks highly of Jim Goldstein’s work:

The next next thing is going to be Long Exposure Night Photography! I recently attended one of Jim Goldstein’s night photography workshops and I was influenced to take the path to the DARK SIDE. Night photography is really amazing and Jim’s latest book lays out all the details for the beginner, to the advanced geek, who hangs around large telescope arrays. I’m not a super techno nerd, and I love a book that show you how to do something without a lot of magic incantations that make your brain explode. I highly recommend Jim’s latest digital book.

Clever:

The creator writes,

“After Muybridge” is a loop made from 12 stock photographs that are sequenced to re-create the locomotion of a galloping horse. The animation was modeled after one of Eadweard Muybridge’s most famous motion studies called “Daisy”. I sifted through over 5,000 digital images to find 12 that matched his original photos.

The Internet allows me to access the over-abundance of everyday photographs, taken of everyday things, in every possible position. By collecting enough images of any one thing, including a running horse, I can place them in an order to re-invent or re-animate life.

[Via Jim Heid]

Ostensible bonus, sort of conceptually similar:

[Via]

One of the great pleasures of my job is getting to meet kickass artists of all stripes. This past summer I got to visit SWAT-cop-turned-photojournalist Bruce Haley at his home at the bottom of Big Sur’s Bixby Canyon. When I asked his advice about photographing people during my upcoming trip, he pointed me to an interview in which he provides some solid perspective. I’ve bolded a line that distills some of my hopes.

BH:  We spoke earlier about doing projects on my own dime…  what this buys me, in addition to the aforementioned freedom and independence, is time  –  the time I need to make people comfortable with my presence…

I don’t sneak any of my images, I never use a telephoto, I don’t do the “spray and pray” thing…  I spend time with the people I photograph, I hang out with them, get drunk with them, they invite me to their weddings, to funerals, whatever…  in extreme cases, like working in very closed societies like the most marginalized of the Roma, it took even more of that luxury of time…

First of all, I had to locate the camps or settlements that I wanted to shoot…  then I had to approach the camp, as a most unwelcome outsider, and not only try to convince them to allow me to shoot there, but to be relaxed enough with my presence that I could be that proverbial fly-on-the-wall that I aspire to be when I’m working…  and with the Roma especially, all of this was difficult, and I had some failures, but in the end I found some places where it all clicked…

Once I had the initial permission, I would ease into the situation very slowly, hoping to raise the comfort bar as high as possible..  I would show up without a single camera and just hang out…  maybe come back the next day with my camera bag, but never take a camera out…  next time come back and wear a camera around my neck, but not shoot anything… and all the while learning about the people, as individuals, so that my images would hopefully depict them as individuals, and not just as symbols of some sort of marginalized group…  then, finally, after all of this, beginning to shoot…  this easing in, getting extremely wary people accustomed to my presence prior to my making a single image, is a luxury of time, certainly, but better to have this level of trust and comfort as opposed to just walking into a situation, motor drive blazing, then beating a hasty retreat and hoping you got something…

Here Andrei Codrescu & Bruce speak about Bruce’s Sunder project:

I usually shoot with a Canon 5D plus a 24-70mm lens. Given the size & weight of that setup, I’m looking for an alternative. I also have a Canon S95, but I don’t love its shutter lag, and I wish I could get closer to the quality offered by a large sensor. Considerations:

• I don’t want to look like an ostentatious jerk.
• I don’t want to hang a “rob me” sign around my neck.
• I’d like great low-light performance for shooting people indoors.
• Zoom is fairly unimportant.

The Photoshop QE team has quite a few cameras to choose from, including a new Nikon 1. A friend seems quite enamored of his Fuji X100, and the local camera store guys like the Lumix DMC-GX1. I’m open to suggestions, especially if there’s something really solid I should consider renting. Thanks in advance for any ideas.

“17 Countries. 343 Days. 6237 Photographs.” Financial analyst turned photographer Kien Lam has created a high-speed tour of the world:

Check out his site for tons of additional information on the project. [Via Martin Bunyi]

• The Photojojo folks point out Pic Scatter, a free tool for generating a Facebook Timeline-friendly image by collaging your existing FB-hosted photos.
• They also note the funny F Yeah Facebook Profiles Tumblr, full of clever hacks to profile pages.
• From there I found Neal Campbell’s Facebook Timeline Cover Template PSD, useful for making one’s own hacks.

“J. Mettälä took a camera under a frozen lake in Finland,” writes PetaPixel, “and captured this beautiful (and mind-bending) footage of his friends fishing in an upside-down world.”

Here’s the blog post I was drafting Wednesday:

Dear 5D & 24-70: I don’t know what I did to make you disappear, but on the off chance you read this blog, please come back. I miss you very much.  — Love, J.

I was utterly bewildered by it, but I’d begun slowly coming to terms with the disappearance of my camera and big, stupid-expensive lens. The pair had been MIA since Halloween, and all the king’s horses, children, wife, babysitter, and cleaning lady could not find them again.

Thus on Wednesday evening I found myself at San Jose Camera, checking out 60D’s, 7D’s, and stupid-expensive lenses. I was all set to ask your advice on the matter (how’s the 17-55 2.8 lens? are live view and/or a swiveling screen worth a damn? should I maybe go Nikon overall?), and I’d secured a cam or two to borrow from the Photoshop QE locker (one of the best perks of this job). After mourning my loss, I’d started getting excited about having features like video capture.

And then, what do you know, as I was talking to my wife about it at home, my eyes wandered into the china cabinet (never lit except, oddly, at this moment), into a crystal serving bowl… and to the camera!!  Our elderly sitter later remembered that she’d stowed it there while the boys were roughhousing–then utterly forgot about it.

And thus we come to the Germans*: Doesn’t it seem they should have a term for “Relieved delight in one’s good fortune, tinged with vague disappointment, seasoned with guilt regarding the disappointment”?

In any case, I’m looking forward to getting the big rig back in action. It’s true I shoot much less with the SLR these days, and yet when you need to nail a shot (e.g. with family visiting for the holidays), “accept no substitutes.” I just can’t miss any more kid photos when the iPhone or even the S95 takes its sweet time to fire the shutter.

Welcome home, boys.
J.

*Interesting read: “A Joyful & Malicious History Of ‘Schadenfreude’“: “By leaving Germanisms untranslated, one always points to the sentiment expressed by the word as fundamentally and even organically German. My favorite, ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung,’ means roughly to overcome or to come to terms with the past… In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon notes ‘the German mania for name-giving, dividing the Creation finer and finer, analyzing, setting namer more hopelessly apart from named.’ Naming is not only a form of identification or labeling, but also of creation. To the eye, mouth, and ear, capacious German words seem to embody and externalize the weight of difficult emotions.”

From Jan Minol:

[Via]

Rob Whitworth makes frenzy look lovely:

[Via Kevin Connor]

Kinda fun, though the YouTube comments really make it (“Did you know that just like how DSLR’s have a P for Professional mode, Minivans also have an R for Racecar mode? #coolfacts”; “DANG and to think I have been shooting in ‘M’ for ‘Moron'”).

“MWAC,” incidentally, is “Mother With A Camera.”

Russell Brown puts Photoshop Extended through its paces:

Absolutely lovely work from Tom Jenk­ins (just trust me & take the two minutes):

Update: Here’s some great making-of info from Digital Arts.
Apropos of very little, I saw a Google Street View car sitting alongside Page Mill Road last week, its little optical turret spinning away. I hoped it was secretly one of their self-driving robots in disguise. [Via]

Small, ubiquitous video capture & aviation make a potent combo. The NY Times features a story about amateur video helping in air crash investigations. Elsewhere, clashes in the streets of Warsaw have been captured by small, remote helicopter:


I find the effect both exciting and unnerving. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” and capturing misbehavior begets exposure, outrage, and action. Or does it? I wonder whether the aerial footage introduces a “cinemification” element, a sense that real life is simply more TV, more entertainment. I don’t know; I’m not complaining, just wondering aloud a bit. [Via]

Another time lapse, really?? But check it out–Ken Murphy has created a really novel piece:

A camera installed on the roof of the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco captured an image of the sky every 10 seconds. From these images, I created a mosaic of time-lapse movies, each showing a single day. The days are arranged in chronological order. My intent was to reveal the patterns of light and weather over the course of a year.

Here’s more info on how it was done, the rig used, and more. [Via]

“For 17 days,” writes Joe Capra, “I travelled solo around the entire island shooting almost 24 hours, sleeping in the car, and eating whenever I had the time. During my days shooting this film I shot 38,000 images, travelled some 2900 miles, and saw some of the most amazing, beautiful, and indescribable landscapes on the planet.”
Joe used Lightroom (with an assist from LRTimelapse) and the new After Effects Warp Stabilizer to create this piece. For more info on the project, check out this interview with Michael Levy Studio.

[Via]

Filmmakers Green Renaissance created this beautiful, inspiring short piece. Our 2- and 3-year-old boys watch it obsessively and now know the “characters” by name (“There’s Cathy in the green hat! There’s old Jacques!”).

Michael König edited together beautiful imagery captured by the crew aboard the International Space Station (see the Vimeo page for more details):

Rip Curl and Time-Slice Films used GoPro HD cams to build a “’30 camera Array’–a line of cameras firing consistently as surfers ride towards and past it.”

The same team erected an in-water scaffolding in Malaysia’s Sunway Lagoon Hotel to mount 52 full-sized DSLR cameras:

Core77 features more details & photos of the rigs, along with behind-the-scenes videos.
[Via]

Another from the “Ah, What Could Go Wrong?” Files:

It denies any family connection to Imperial interrogation droids, but I’m not sure I buy its story. [Via]

Andrew Clancy’s “A Year in New York” is just lovely. Go Irish.

The song ‘We Don’t Eat’ by James Vincent McMorrow is available as a free download from Amazon. [Via Laine Fast]

A lovely little somethin’ somethin’ for a rainy Friday morning:

Dustin Farrell’s work is so beautiful, I almost can’t deal with it.

“Every frame of this video,” he notes, “is a raw still from a Canon 5D2 DSLR and processed with Adobe software.” Check out the Vimeo page for additional technical details. [Via John Dowdell]

Sixty seconds of beauty. (Full screen HD is a must, naturally.)

[Via]

Colin Rich has done the nearly impossible: He’s made me find Los Angeles beautiful.

[Via]