6 Months With Ipernity

So, it has been about six months since Flickr loved me so much that I had to leave for Ipernity. For the most part, it is a good alternative. It has many of the same features as Flickr, and one can post documents other than photos (though I primarily use it for photos, and will comment based on that), but there are some long-standing issues that I have that would make it so much better. I have brought most of these to the attention of Ipernity or the appropriate 3rd party developer, and hopefully someday they'll get fixed.

First, the good stuff:

* Works quite well as a photo sharing site. Great metadata support, commenting (and nested comments), search-ability, licensing options,
* No annoying animated gifs to invite your photos to groups.
* Well tuned in to the world outside the USA from the start.

The bad:
* No automatic geotagging on upload. If I have GPS EXIF metadata in my photos, they are not automatically placed on the map. I have asked about this, and was told it doesn't make sense to have automatic geotagging because it just adds too many points. Uh, why support it at all if you don't want us to have multiple points on the map??? This is my #1 gripe. Either support it or don't, don't wrap a lame excuse around a half-baked implementation!
* Ipernity supports additional metadata about your geo points. Click the little dot on the map, and you get more info in addition to the photo. It is cool, except that for some reason whenever I upload an image, and geotag it by hand, for some reason the location name and country are automatically filled in as France (yes, both of them) no matter where the photo was taken (or where it was slapped down on the map). This is such a simple thing! Use the IPTC location information already provided in the photo for this stuff. If it isn't there, just leave it blank! Or, if they want to get fancy, they could grab the location from the map and query the GeoNames database. It's free and creative commons licensed.

Update 21.12.2007: I uploaded some pictures with GPS metadata this morning, and after manually geotagging them, the location metadata showed up correctly - no longer is everything located in France! However, I have noticed that on the few older pictures I checked, which were right in the middle of Stuttgart, the location metadata says they are in Ghana, not Germany. Hmm...

* There is no batch editor for the location information I mention above. And one must be zoomed in quite close, and only in the geotagging part of the doc manager, before the option to edit it becomes available. Makes editing a lot of information a chore, so a lot of the time I don't even bother. Why not let me change it from the doc's "home" page"?

Update 21.12.2007:One can now edit location properties while zoomed out all the way (assuming the selected dot has only one location in it). A good start. Hopefully they'll address the other issues as well.

* Stop nagging me about not using Firefox in the DocManager. I know Firefox is great, but I chose to use OmniWeb instead. Along the same lines, when I am looking at geotagged photos, why do you insist on saying "the mini-map cannot be displayed in this browser", which is 100% false. When I change my browser identification to Firefox, it displays just fine. I know you are a small team and can't try it on everything out there, but why not give it a try? Most browsers out there are not that broken.

* This isn't Ipernity's fault, but there are no (that I know of) fun sites like Big Huge Labs' "Fd's Flickr Toys" for Ipernity.
* Again, not a fault of Ipernity, but the variety of upload tools is lacking. I really, really, like Connected Flow's "Flickr Export for Aperture" a plugin for Aperture that really makes it easy to upload photos from within my preferred photo management and editing software. Picturesync from uVerse is a decent stopgap measure, but it is an extra, clunky step along the way. And the interface, IMHO, is quite horrible. Maybe I just need to write the Aperture to Ipernity export plugin myself...

The Bill...

So, it turns out that the final cost of repairing my lens is €570. Ouch. That's only about €100 less than buying a new one. (The price has dropped a bit since the day I bought it...)

Apparently, contrary to my initial evaluation, the optics were damaged, along with the auto-focus mechanism.

Crappity Crap Crap Crap!

(Note: I was going to use a different word than Crap in the title, but since this is a family blog, I, despite my feelings, used a softer word)

Saturday started bad. I couldn't sleep. So I was awake at like 5. That's early for a Saturday, but not that much earlier than planned. You see, I was leaving for a business trip at 8. So it was about 2 hours earlier than I wanted. But probably significant. The drive to Frankfurt was uneventful. The wait at the Frankfurt airport was worse than typical airport waits (the only thing I despise about travel).
When I got on the plane, I couldn't sleep (I usually can't, but thought being tired would help). Why is it that people always have to kick my seat on the way to the bathroom. Or lean on my head.

There was a 5 hour layover in Chicago. My coworker and I had a couple Sam Adam's at the Chili's bar to wait it out. Then the flight to San Jose was mostly sleepless. But I probably had the two best conversations on the plane that I ever had with strangers on an airplane. And my bad was the first one out at the baggage claim. Cool. After a short wait for my colleague, we tried to find the rental car. There was a bus that took us there, and it waited to fill up before taking us there, so the saved time of being first at baggage claim was pretty lost.

We got to the Avis counter at about 23:00. That's in California. My body was still on Central European time, which is 9 hours later, or 8 in the morning. And only a hour or two of low-quality sleep. I blame what happens next on the lack of sleep. I really felt like I could have collapsed at any second from exhaustion.

Anyway, as we reached for credit cards & driver's licenses, my camera bag slipped off my shoulder and thudded on the floor. It seemed oddly loud, but not anything that worried me too much (other than the "damn! I need to not be doing that, because someday it will break") When I eventually got checked in to the hotel, I did a quick visual inspection of the camera and lens. Everything looked OK.

Since our class doesn't start until Monday, we decided to head into San Francisco and enjoy the day. Eventually we got the car parked and I immediately saw something picture worthy and whipped the camera out. The GPS was locked in, and I was ready to shoot in this target rich environment. But something was wrong! The part that is supposed to twist to adjust the zoom would not twist. Uh oh. The fall did bugger something up. My standard lens, the 18-200 VR, the (relatively) tiny lens with the incredible 11x zoom range, the perfect travel lens because it goes from respectable wide-angle to respectable telephoto in only one lens is now effectively a doorstop. It seems to be optically OK,and can probably be repaired for less than the cost of a new one. But I don't get to San Francisco often. I wanted my perfect travel lens for my travel!

As I was packing for this trip, I debated whether or not to bring any other lenses. The 18-200 really covers 95% of what I need. The 80-400 was out. Traveling with that beast is not fun. And it almost requires a tripod. (I think it would be great to have for photographing the sea lions in San Fran, tho). I thought about the new Macro lens. If it was me & Jeannette alone, then probably. Jeannette is the perfect wife in may respects, one of them is that she puts up with me taking wacky pictures. If one of those is a macro shot of a sewer drain, she wouldn't care. She might have her own wacky macro shots (or at least suggestions for me to try), but she wasn't coming with, and someone who may not be so tolerant of my photo hobby was, so I left the macro lens. I debated the 10-20 wide-angle lens. It isn't needed often, but when it is, it sure is nice to have. Like when you are in a tight European city, where that beautiful Gothic church is only 10 meters from a castle wall, and I want the whole thing in one shot, 10mm just might do it. I debated this lens, and decided it isn't too big & heavy, so why the heck shouldn't I? Now I am glad that I did.

It's hard to shoot San Francisco with a 10-20mm lens. There are so many things that I wanted to do but couldn't. I get spoiled by my ultra versatile 18-200mm lens.

To make the day worse:
1) Somehow some sticky glop got on the working lens (luckily not on the glass parts). I think it was sap from a tree or something. I's still trying to figure out how to get it all cleaned off.
2) We have something like 37 tubes of chap stick at home. I have one with me all the time at home or work. I forgot to bring one on this trip. My lips were killing me bby the time I got off the plane. So I had to buy chap stick tube #38. I should buy some stock in the company.
3) It was a beautiful today. I had my hat, but forgot to pack sunscreen. Again, we have around 18 tubes of sunscreen at home. Why didn't I bring any? Cuz I'm an idiot that drops expensive cameras & lenses. Might as well just get skin cancer too.
4) We have at least two giant vats of post sunburn treatment (one is aloe based, and one is something we picked up in France that is magic-based, or something). Guess where I am going with this.
5) We were wandering the streets of SF and it eventually got to be lunch time, like it does. But there were no restaurants anywhere. Finally we stumble across an Italian place that was expensive, but had a lunch specials on the high side of reasonable, so we stopped and ate. It was tasty-ish, but quite tiny. I would have been satisfied, but after we walked one more block and turned the corner, there were bazillion restaurants to choose from.

I think some of the pictures I took today were good. Maybe if I have time tonight, I will upload one or two to ipernity. But I might just sulk all night about my lens.

If It Seems Dreary Around Here...

...My Flickr account expires soon, and I decided not to renew it.
Too many of my friends have left due to recent troubles(see my last post), and it just isn't fun for me anymore.
I am looking for an alternative. So far,ipernity is winning. But it's hard, because the workflow tools for uploading are not there, there are no groups yet, etc.

Anyway, because of that, I decided to delete most of the photos on Flickr that aren't interesting, so that the 200 that Flickr allows in a non-paying account will at least be somewhat interesting. So far I have whittled the over 2000 photos down to 399, so about 50% more have to go. I'll wait a few days for that...

Anyway, many of the photos on my blog have been deleted since they were hosted at Flickr. I'm sorry. But it had to be done. Maybe some day I will replace the photos somewhere else. And some day, maybe, I will feel like sharing new photos again.

The Best Geotagging Solution Yet

Back in December, I talked about the attempt Jeannette and I were making on an elegant geotagging solution where the key components would come from our employer.

For various reasons, that project is on hold. But I still want to use the capabilities built into my camera to automatically geotag my photos, but I was not happy in Strasbourg and Barcelona carrying around the setup I had. (see below)



I have been yearning for a solution, and even tried out a few things (unsuccessfully). With the upcoming vacation season, the sense of urgency has increased, so I bit the bullet and invested in this:



The two small boxes replace the Nikon MC-35 cable, the 6-foot long GPS serial cable and the old & clunky Garmin GPS reciever.

The larger box is a Holux GPSlim 236 bluetooth GPS receiver and the smaller box is a bluetooth-to-serial converter doodad from Foolography that plugs into the camera's 10-pin accessory port. I don't think the creator has decided on a model number yet...

These two things completely eliminate the cable clutter. The only downside is the loss of the 10-pin connector for my remote release. But I am working on that...

So far this system has worked quite well, especially considering its small size. After extensive testing on our trip to Paris over the long Easter weekend, I can say I am quite happy. But there are some strange points I will bring up:
* The Bluetooth connection is flaky. Once the connection is made, it is pretty solid. I'd say about 66% of the time, the connection between the GPS and the module on the camera is made within a second or three of turning on the camera. About 25% of the time it will take much longer. Maybe 10 -15 seconds. The remaining 10% or so of the time it simply will not connect, and I have to switch off the camera and back on before the connection is made.
* The Bluetooth connection is much more reliable when I keep the GPS close to the camera. I had originally intended to keep the GPS unit in my backpack, but it was unreliable. Currently I have a cell-phone pouch (thank you Jeannette!) attached to my camera strap. Not perfect, but working acceptably well.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 battery life is incredible. I get at least 12 hours on a charge.
* The battery on the D200 is not seriously diminished, if I turn off the camera between bursts of shooting. Nikon made an interesting decision (or maybe it was just a mistake) to keep the exposure meter on when there is incoming GPS data. This means the camera is burning a lot more power than it does in its idle state when nothing is happening. The battery will die in a few hours if I don't turn the camera off. I think it is more the exposure meter remaining on than the Bluetooth-to-serial module.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 normally locks in pretty quickly (less than 1 minute), assuming I haven't moved a great distance since the last time it was on (and locked in). But sometimes, and I haven't figured out what causes this, it will take forever, like it is reading the entire almanac. It is very frustrating when the GPS doesn't lock in quickly, more so than when the Bluetooth connection isn't made.
* The Holux GPSlim 236 is very good (but not perfect) at keeping a lock in a city. It beats the heck out of my old Garmin, which is no surprise considering the Garmin is around 8 years older than the Holux. I think the quality of the position reported by the Holux is better too. Comparing geotagged photos with both GPS units using Google Maps, the Holux geotagged photos seem much closer to the right place than the Garmin. I really like that.