Category Archives: Computing

LUMIX Gh4: Capturing Stills from 4k video

LUMIX Gh4

Recently, I tested a Panasonic LUMIX Gh4 with two important features that affect how still photographers will be capturing images in the near future. Firmware now offered by Panasonic for the Gh4 makes it possible when shooting 4k video to set any shutter speed for each video frame.

The LUMIX Gh4 also is a WIFI hub and the Jpg images taken by the camera can be transferred to a smart phone immediately for distribution.

I put together a two and a half minute video that graphically shows how it all works. It can be found here.

8.5Mb Still at 1/1000 sec.

I took the LUMIX Gh4 to Disney World where, as an experiment, I shot only 4k video. I selected a number of frames that I extracted as stills for illustrations in my monthly newsletter. Sign up on this page. I have included several other successful images below.

1/400 of a second, ISO 200

1/400 of a second, ISO 400

1/400 of a second ISO 200

1/400 of a second, ISO 200

1/30 of a second, ISO 800

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Review of My 2014 Blogs

Recently I looked back at the archive of blogs that I posted in 2014. Although there were a couple of outliers, most blogs fit into specific photographic themes. Please click on the links to revisit these blogs.

Objects in Disguise

White Mountains Sunset

In the month of July I concentrated on tutorials on photographing things above the earth’s surface staring with fireworks just before the Fourth and followed up with the moon (a super moon in July), the sun and a rather complicated blog on star photography. Much fun and hopefully helpful.

Photojournalists
As I consider myself one, photojournalists that literally put their life on the line enamor me. These blogs on Tyler Hicks (January) and Bob Edelman and his civil rights coverage (April) attempted to explore their vision and their bravery while photographing difficult subjects.

Thoughts for Photojournalists
These blogs explored methods and suggestions for budding photojournalists and included one on finding locals to help you (October), and returning to a location that one senses will make good images (Also in October).

Technological Advances in Photography
2014 saw new innovations on many fronts, from new cameras (July) to new software solutions by Getty Images (March). I also highlighted what social media is doing with our previously private information (February), and talked about good digital practices by backing up (January) and the value of having a tablet (February).

Photography Exhibits

Cloud Gate Sculpture

I have personally entered a number of shows and exhibits and with a blog tried to impart some knowledge about how they are organized in May, but also highlighted exhibits in Mexico that show differences in approach with photography (March).

This Fragile Earth
Two blogs covered the international land grab (November), and how the Bureau of Land Management in the US is trying to mitigate the hordes of visitors that descend on sensitive areas (January). These blogs bookended 2014.

“The Second Wave”, Arizona

I hope you enjoyed these ruminations and find that my future blogs in 2015 are of value. Before I put one up, I think about the photographic community at large, and try to decide if the blog may be of interest to them.

If you enjoy the site and find something of interest, please let me know.

4k Video – Many, Many “Decisive Moments”

One overarching benefit of digital technology is the ability to recreate work with complete fidelity – in other words new works are exactly the same as the original. This benefit, coupled with the merging and warping of imagery is changing still photography. Several important developments are already here, and other are innovations are not far behind.

1. Stills from video. Panasonic has just announced their LUMIX FZ1000 camera, available late this month. It’s a long zoom camera (28-400mm equivalent) with 4K video capabilities for $900. According to Thomas Curley, Business Development Manager for LUMIX Professional Services, Panasonic North America, “The most amazing thing about it is that you can shoot a video clip (in 4K) then ‘in camera’ select a frame for the video and save it as a 8 megapixel Jpg that is suitable for printing. Nothing like this has existed until now and it is going to change how we take pictures.”

Tom is on to something here. I think that this is the first of many video/still cameras to come. With the LZ1000 you can preview the video frames on the LCD panel and then select the frame(s) that you want to convert to 8 megapixel still(s). Check out this video of what the camera can do. WIFI is also available on this camera to transmit your photographs immediately onto the web via a smart phone or an iPad.

Think three years out. The LZ1000 has a 20.1 megapixel sensor. Will they or other camera manufacturers find a way to wrangle out a 15 megapixel still or even higher res image? Bet on it.

2. HDR video. High Dynamic Range is a fancy term for combining several frames of a subject that have huge differences in exposure. The result is an image that pushes the dynamic range (specular highlights to deep shadows) of the subject toward the middle so that nothing is blown out or unreadable in the shadow area. Many still cameras now have this feature where a “burst” of frames are taken at a variety of exposures. In camera, or in post processing the images are merged together.

In video, this is difficult, as the dang thing keeps taking moving frames at 30 fps (frames per second). Now Red cameras and Magic Lantern software have come up with ways to double the frames at 60 fps with different exposures and then merge them in post production.

3. Auto focus for video. Rule of thumb: do not turn on auto focus on a DSLR when shooting video or the viewer may have an extended bout of sea sickness as the camera is constantly refocusing. Videographers have always been able to mask slight out of focus frames with motion and sound. But what happens when you pull an 8 megapixel still from the video? The resultant still can’t handle sharpness issues.

Now Andra and several other software manufacturers offer follow-focus for DSLR video. They run the application through an iPad and are able to make “focus pulls” on the fly with accuracy.

4. Helicopters and drones. Small, unmanned helicopters have been a staple for feature films and TV productions for 10 years. They are expensive, but can be programmed with GPS to fly the exact same flight again and again.

CopterStudios, a California-based company, uses a “pilot” for the remote controlled helicopter; a camera operator, who uses an IR remote control to adjust camera functions; and a set coordinator, who works with the director or producer to plan the shots.

The director or producer can watch the video in real time on a monitor on the set. SD video is transmitted from the JVC camera via a live video microwave downlink to a directional patch antenna, which feeds the reference monitor on set.
See their stunning demo video.

OK, so helicopters are pricey, but enter the drones. Drones DJI announced that it is working on an update of its S1000 Octocopter, a pro-level drone capable of carrying pro cameras such as a Canon 5D Mark III. That model should be ready in a few months and is expected to cost thousands of dollars, but may be very appealing to professional photographers and videographers.

At the present time, drones are banned from many National Parks and the Federal Aviation Administration (FFA) forbids commercial use. Under congressional order, the FAA must open national airspace to commercial and civilian drones by the end of 2015. The agency is in the process of determining the regulations for a drone license.

ADDENDUM ADDED

Grand Prismatic Geyser

Reuters reported that a tourist seeking to take pictures of Yellowstone National Park crashed a camera-equipped drone into its largest hot spring, on Saturday, August 2. It was not clear if the drone that crashed into Grand Prismatic Spring damaged the prized geothermal feature when it sank into its depths, and officials were still trying to decide whether to remove it.

“What we have to determine is whether the presence of this radio-controlled recreational aircraft poses a threat to that unique resource,” park spokesman Al Nash said of the Grand Prismatic, the third-largest hot spring in the world and a top attraction for the roughly 3 million visitors who flock to Yellowstone each year.

The park is puzzling over how to find the drone and extract it without damaging the hot spring, which is 370 feet in diameter, more than 121 feet deep and known for its brilliant colors caused by bacteria and minerals in the water.

OK, so what does this mean for the still photographer?

First, not many people will be shooting still photographs – not even the professionals. If a client wants stills, why wouldn’t you shoot video where you can pick out the frame where the eyes are not closed, the action is at it’s height and the exposure and focus are right on? In addition, why would a client want to hire both a still photographer and a videographer?

So it is not “goodbye still photography”, but it will be “goodbye still photographer”, as we move to a video-centric world. Art photographers may still want to use still cameras, much the same as many of them today want to still use film. I have to make a living, and what is described above is, in my estimation, what will transpire in the near future. Get ready.

Getty Images Allows Social Media Usage

Huge news was made a week ago in the online photography business. Getty Images announced that they were allowing that many of the pictures on their website that are for sale now will be available for anyone for “non-commercial use”.

Until I investigated, it gave me pause, as I am represented by Getty through National Geographic, and surely did not want my images out there without payment. After all, I am a professional photographer who makes my living selling images.

Some websites such as petapixel.com decried Getty’s actions saying, “…in the end, this represents Getty throwing in the towel when it comes to non-commercial use of its images. They’ve lost this war, and rather than fight the hoards of people on the Internet who pull their images without watermark or credit and use them all over the place, Getty has created a legal use avenue that they believe will “benefit [their] content creators.”

In looking into the “embedding” process that Getty uses, I found that they are relying on a company that they acquired called PicScout. The software they use is sophisticated enough so that even a fragment of the embedded image is identified. According to Maura Mulvihill, National Geographic Society’s Image Collection Vice President and Director, Getty plans to use the PicScout software to crawl the web for violators of the terms of service that were agreed to when they were downloaded.

Here is an embedded Getty image. Click on it and it will take you to the Getty site where the picture is located.

It is interesting that I can “screen grab” this image and eliminate the information below the picture. Can they Getty still track the image? I don’t know. Below right is a screen grab of the image taken from Getty’s site.

While Director of Imaging at National Geographic, I had several software companies demonstrate their ability to survey the web and find sites that used NGS pictures illegally. My question always was, “Who will be the cop?” Their answer was NGS. We did not have the legal resources to do so.

Maura says that PicScout will contact the violators and negotiate a payment to Getty. What happens if a violator refuses to pay? Obviously Getty can’t hire all the lawyers in the world, so I would guess it depends on how grievous (read $$$) of an offense has occurred. BTW, you can obtain the services of PicScout if you so desire.

You may have noticed that on this site that I have a link to National Geographic Creative where NG Image Sales sells my images, and you can also buy scenic/art photography directly from this website. The difference is that my pictures that Geographic sells (and receives a portion of the proceeds) are editorial and commercial in nature and the NGS clients are corporations, ad agencies or large volume users. NGS is not interested in selling to individual consumers — for them it is not worthwhile to spend the effort on such a small one-time sale.

The jury is still out on the Getty decision. A screen grab of an image on the web is still very easy. Today, not many people want a high resolution image to print – they want a lo res to send immediately to their friends. And that is why you don’t see many of my best pictures on my Instagram or Facebook feeds.

Social Media Privacy – My Life Is Not an Open Book

Recently I found an illuminating infographic in the New Yorker magazine that shows how social media sites gather information about their users. As explained in the New Yorker:

“In short, they see people as data, breaking their users down into categories that fit neatly into a machine-readable stream of information. This data is gathered not only from what users share on the social networks themselves but also through programs that plug into these networks by way of an application programming interface, better known as an A.P.I. For instance, think of any time you signed in to a Web site or an application with your Facebook or Twitter login, used a Facebook or Twitter app that was made by a third-party company like Zynga, or clicked a Like button at the top of an article. In different ways, those applications all talk to social networks via their A.P.I.s.”

“This information flows both ways: the social networks receive data from applications and, in turn, they can provide developers and advertisers with data about their users. …Much of the information that they have about users remains internal, and is not made available to developers via their A.P.I. Taken together, they are a way of conceiving of how social networks see you. Facebook may provide items like your name, statuses, photographs, favorite television shows, friend requests, religious views, privacy settings, events, and check-ins. (What it can make available to these applications depends on your privacy settings.) For instance, when you play Candy Crush Saga on Facebook—currently the most popular game on the social network—the developer, King, has access to what Facebook describes as “your basic information,” which includes your name, profile picture, gender, user I.D., friends, and “any other information you made public.” In the Twitter A.P.I., as Paul Ford has explained, you are an amalgam of your tweets, username, favorites, retweets, location, language spoken, and so on.”

Here is the infographic developed by the New Yorker.

For my business pages, I get access to much of this information and it helps me understand how users are addressing my site.

For my personal pages, I rarely post to these sites, as I value my personal privacy and do not want the professional pictures I take to be all over the net.

ADDENDUM June 29, 2014

Here is another way the Facebook manipulates your data.

A Tablet Is Not A Computer

For years, when traveling I took my laptop with me. This was always worrisome, as it is my prime computer and all of my files are on it, including emails, important documents, photographs, etc. It was also fairly heavy. It resided in my camera bag when traveling, and the rest of the time it was in my room. I have it backed up, (see my blog on backups), but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of restoring everything if it was stolen, which fortunately it never was.

When Apple came out with the iPad in 2010, I felt that it would perhaps be the intermediate step between my iPhone and my MacBook Pro. I was curious, but having an aversion to “Model One – Number One”, I decided to wait and see how customers felt about the machine. Of course, the response was overwhelming. Criticisms were leveled, such as not being equipped with a USB input and not having enough storage space. I was not in a great hurry to purchase, as I felt that my iPad would be WIFI only and not enough establishments at that time had WIFI, or it was locked and the password was not available. Also, I felt that with the early machines storage would be an issue.

What drove me to finally purchase an iPad was, of all things, when Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc. declared that tablets (and the iPad specifically) were “post PC computing“. I found out that, at this stage of the game, one has to take the word “computing” as a generic term.

What I should have done was to research what the iPad could do, and what it couldn’t do. After my purchase, I ran across a simple way of understanding your computer needs in an article by Daniel Nations.

As Daniel says, “Many people use their laptop or desktop PC primarily for checking email, finding out what friends and family are up to on Facebook, playing casual games and browsing the web. Those are all things that the iPad can not only do, but in some cases, even outperform the laptop. For casual gaming, the iPad easily comes out on top. Not only does it have cheaper games, it has a huge app store full of them. The iPad can also excel at browsing the web or checking Facebook, being much lighter and more comfortable to hold while curled up on the couch.”

Then he goes on to say that a desktop/laptop computer user should make a list of the applications that she uses on her machine. Then keep the list handy and every time she uses an app or something like Spotlight, she writes it down. After 10 days or so, she should match this list to what she can accomplish on the iPad. This is great advice.

In my case, as a photographer/designer, it is obvious that there is no “heavy lifting” going on with the iPad. Here are some examples: “Pages”, Apple’s word processing program has a limited number of fonts and others cannot be downloaded to this program; importing pictures to the “Photos” app removes the file names and important data; apps such as “PhotoShop Touch” and “iDraw” are light weights compared to Photoshop and Illustrator; if you want to use “Flash” – forget it; in Pages, it is impossible to attach documents to email, etc. etc.

iPad users will be quick to point out that there are ways around these limitations, such as jailbreaking the iPad so Pages can download any font; that you can get applications to help you attach documents by importing them into that app first; that you can get apps that save the file names of images; etc.

Workarounds is what I call them. And yesterday when I used my iPad to go to an airline website to check in for a flight, it was built in “Flash”. And “Spotlight” only finds contacts and emails, not documents.Thanks Apple!

So caveat emptor. I thought I would be into “post PC computing”, only to find that I have purchased a larger and more expensive version of my iPhone, and it doesn’t make calls.

My sister has an iPad mini that she loves. Her uses for it are generally for social media and email. She had changed the default signature to read, “Sent from My Toy Tablet”. I would put the emphasis on “Toy”.

Backup, Backup, Backup

Two days ago I did the unthinkable — I washed my cell phone. It was in an “Otter Box”, but soapy water still got into the phone.

As the phone was under a contract, I immediately looked on the net to see if I could revive it. Methods ran from using a vacuum to pull all of the water out to submerging it in a bag of rice, etc. Tried them all out, because in today’s world, a smart phone makes for mobile computing.

In short, yesterday I had to replace the phone. It had almost 12 GB of information on it, but I had little worries, as I knew that I had backed up the phone on my computer within the past few days. Sure enough, when I plugged it into my computer, all came back except for a few voicemails from last week and several text messages. No images were lost. If the text message were important, I could have asked the individuals who sent or received them to send them back to me, but they were not of that nature. And I’m sure that if I really needed any lost information that I could appeal to the NSA since they have all of it! Replacement of the phone was “free”.

Last year I had my camera pick-pocketed. In it was a 32 GB flash card. Every night in the field I download the day’s images onto an external “photo” hard drive that is made specifically for backups of CF and SD flash cards with slots for the cards and a screen for viewing stored images. So I lost about 20 pictures I had taken the morning before the theft — none prize winners. Insurance paid for the camera (and a model upgrade!).

A few years back, the hard drive on my computer went down, along with about 400 GB of applications, documents, and everything else that one “stores” on a computer. I had the hard drive replaced. Since I have automatic backup of everything on my computer (and my external hard drives consisting of 5 TB) I simply plugged the computer with the new hard drive into my backup drive and retrieved everything. Adobe and several other software manufacturers required me to re-enter my registration numbers, so keep those handy. The manufacturer later sent an email noting that the problem with the hard drive was theirs, and they eventually sent me a check for the amount of the replaced drive.

The point of this blog is to make sure you back up every device, and often. Fortunately, at this point in time, it is not hard to do. But do you do it? There is a saying about the computing world, “It is not if your device will go down, but when”. My son-in-law is a Marine and he says that for the Marines three is redundant.

Make it a point today to re-think where you stuff resides and if you have it backed up.