Many people feel that digital photography is now at the point where 50% of the shot is capturing the image with the camera and the other 50% is the post-processing that you do to the image on the computer afterward.  I agree.

I love Adobe Lightroom.  Well, as much as it’s possible to love a bunch of digital bits.  I know I still have a lot to learn about using the program and at some point I’ll have to get serious about learning Photoshop.  Lightroom does most of what I’m looking to do and  even though I’d rate my skill level with it at intermediate, I can still do a hell of a lot.

For example, last night’s pictures.  When I first looked at them, I was pretty tired.  And quite disappointed with the way they looked straight out of the camera.  Later I found some energy and went to work on them and I’m pretty happy with the results.   So I thought that some might find it useful for me to post an example here of what I’m talking about.

Here’s a shot straight out of the camera (click on the image to see it full size):

And now the same image after “developing” it in Lightroom:

In no particular order, I straightened out the photo, cropped it very slightly, cut back on the overall exposure level, boosted up the blacks, used the noise reduction tools, brought up clarity and vibrance, backed off on saturation on blue and orange, sharpened things up a bit.  Of course I’m working with a RAW image.  Did I over-do or under-do some bits?  Maybe. That’s one of the things with tools like Lightroom – there’s no one “right” solution, you work at it until it looks good to you.  And I’m pretty happy with the end result.

For those who are interested in this sort of thing, this was shot with my Nikon D700 camera and Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens.  For this shot, I was all the way out at 24mm and wide open at f/2.8, ISO 3200, 1/20th of a second, handheld.  And here’s where I was standing when I took the shot.  (Actually, it’s slightly off.  Zoom in and it looks as if I was on the roof of the next building over.)

I know the lens is not at its sharpest at 24mm and f/2.8.  Normally I would have stood out there and taken a dozen variations on this shot at different settings.  I might have boosted the ISO up to 6400, closed down the aperture a bit and perhaps experimented with some different focal lengths.  But I was too fricking cold!  I think I’m going to revisit this spot on a clear night when the temperature is back to normal again.

Anyway, I know some of my readers are more expert at photography than I am, some aren’t, but your comments, tips, advice are always appreciated.

This evening, I found myself with some free time before dinner.  For me, unexpected free time means time to take more photos.  And Hong Kong has something photo-worthy on almost every street.

This fabulous old building is at the corner of Johnston & Wanchai Roads.  Given our government’s almost psychotic bent towards redevelopment, I wonder how many years this building has left?

Speaking of real estate, since there are almost no exclusive listings for vacant properties, anyone with a license can stick up a sign.  This is one of the more extreme examples I’ve encountered recently.

My understanding is that the government no longer issues permits to erect new scaffolding for neon signs.  But you can put new signs on old scaffolding, and this is a relatively new one.  If memory serves, this used to hold a sign advertising two rather grotty night clubs.   I like the neon rose here.

This got me sad.  I used to be on Mallory Street every week when Rock Gallery was in the Emperor Group Centre.  And I used to love looking across the street at this row of houses, kickin’ it old skool, filled with life.  And now they’re coming down.  It’s not too hard to guess what will replace them.

How many excellent hotels do you know in Hong Kong?  Here’s one!

A nice night time view looking down Johnston Road.

And we close “part 1″ with two views of The Hennessy – in true Hong Kong fashion, the entrance to this building is not on Hennessy Road, it’s on Johnston Road.  I suppose Hennessy Road sounds like a better address for this self-described A-List Shopping Destination (which features a home furnishings shop and several restaurants).

Dinner was at Wooloomooloo, the branch at The Hennessy.  They have the 31st floor and rooftop, which was why I brought the camera along.  And even though it was a fricking cold night (especially on the roof, where the winds were really whipping around), I had to go up and take a few photos.  I had both my 24-70 and 70-300 lenses along.  The 70-300, zoomed all the way in, has a maximum aperture of only f/5.6 – and with the cold, my hands were shaking so much that I had trouble getting decent photos handheld.  The last couple of shots, ISO is bumped all the way up to 8000 – and still quite okay I think.

Icebox rockin’ the stage last night at Amazonia.

I’ve redone the Photography page here.  It now leads to four separate sub-pages of photo galleries organized by general subject.  There are now separate pages for Hong Kong, Musicians, Food & Travel and Models.  Please check back on a regular basis as I plan to be adding more photos on a regular basis.  (There are 27 new shots of Icebox live at Amazonia added just this morning.)  The pages load very fast, just thumbnails with the Lightbox plugin so that you can see larger versions of any/all photos without leaving the page.  I hope you enjoy!

The Shamrock Irish Pub on Ashley Road in Tsim Sha Tsui has been open for awhile now, but tonight was finally the grand opening party.  For two hours there was plenty of free food and drink, so of course they attracted a large crowd.

Now others at BC Magazine are expert in working the room at events for the BCene page, one of BC’s more popular features.  But believe it or not, I’m too shy to do that – to go up to complete strangers and say, “Can I take your picture for BC please?”  But by the same token, the Nikon D700 camera and Nikon SB-900 speedlight are pretty fricking huge, so people see me with that and I suppose they assume I am working – which in this case as I walked by, many people actually stopped me and asked me to take their picture, and I was happy to oblige. (In case you’re wondering, two of the managers had asked me to bring my camera and take photos during the party.)

There was a great lion dance and afterwards we went walking around TST for a bit before heading home.  Several different sets of photos to share below.

(And many of you will be happy to note that I have finally done the right thing – uploaded photos to Flickr first, organized them into sets, and using the Lightbox add-in for WordPress so that you can view larger versions of all the photos without leaving the page.  Can’t promise I’ll always be this organized but I will make more of an effort to do this in the future.)

This first set is from the party at Shamrock.

And a separate set of photos for the lion dance outside.  Not that I’ve seen hundreds of these, but this was definitely one of the better ones in my opinion.

After the dance finished and the party started winding down, we ducked into Sushi One on Ashley Road for dinner.  Normally I’m not a fan of the robot belt sushi chains in Hong Kong, but this was actually quite okay and we filled up for HK$200.

Then a bit of walking around, giving me the chance to grab some shots of the Peninsula Hotel and the new Hullett House shopping mall.

I’d parked the car on the roof deck of the Ocean Terminal garage so that I’d be able to grab some harbor view shots before going home.  Despite the continuing foggy weather, I think I got some decent shots.

Finally, on the drive home, I pulled over along Sai Sha Road because I’ve always wanted to get some shots of the restaurants there at night.  I don’t know quite what the deal is with Sai Sha Cafe and Country Inn – that these two places right next to each other both serve Thai food and seem to be competing for how many colored lights they can use to attract customers.  But if someone told me that both places had the same owner, I wouldn’t be surprised.  The relatively new Tom Bar + Grill right next door looks positively dowdy compared to these two spots.  The food?  Couldn’t tell you.  I ate at one of these Thai places more than 10 years ago and the reviews on Open Rice for Tom don’t make me feel like running there any time soon.

I know, I’ve probably over-shared in terms of quantity of photos posted tonight.

You may recall that following my Macau “photo safari,” I decided that a GPS unit for my Nikon DSLR would be a good idea.   We’d walked so far and turned so many corners, without using a map most of the time, that I had a poor recollection of where certain photos were taken or if I’d ever be able to find some of those spots again.  Geotagging is also a popular enhancement to photo sharing.

A few weeks back, I went to the camera stores on Stanley Street in Central.  I found Nikon’s own GP-1 GPS unit but was put off by the price, well over HK$2,000.  The shop also had a GPS device from a company called Phottix selling for about half the price of Nikon’s add-on, but I’d never heard of Phottix and had no idea how the product would compare to Nikon’s.  I mentioned this in an earlier blog post and, much to my amazement, within a day I received an email from someone at Phottix who saw the post and offered to loan me one of their devices for me to test and review on the blog.   That device, the Phottix Geo One GPS, arrived at my house today.

Over the past few weeks, I learned that where photos are concerned, there are two basic types of GPS devices.  The first is a stand-alone device that will give you readings of your location; you then note these in a journal or a piece of paper and then, using a variety of methods, combine the info with your photos once you get home.  It sounds like a tedious way to do this.  The second type plugs into your camera and embeds GPS information directly into the metadata of the photos you shoot.  This is what I wanted and that’s what the Phottix GPS does.

I’d like to mention that I have no prior experience with GPS devices aside from the one in my iPhone.  I can’t directly compare this device to any others on the market.  That’s why I’m separating my review into two separate posts – my initial impressions now and final impressions later on – to give any readers a chance to give me tips on things to try or to look out for, or to ask questions in general before I finish the review and send this back to Phottix.

Unboxing

The Phottix Geo One GPS arrives in a small cardboard box.

Inside the box is a smaller cardboard box and the unit is displayed face out.

To give you an idea of how small it actually is, here’s the Geo One removed from the box.  It is, to the best of my recollection, identical in size and shape to Nikon’s device.

Tucked away inside the orange cardboard box are these cables and accessories:

These include:

• Camera-specific connecting cable – for Nikon, this plugs into the same 10-pin connector on the front of the camera where you would plug in a wired shutter release
• A USB cable – you can also connect the Geo One to a laptop computer for logging your location – based on Nikon’s product page, their GP-1 does not do this
• A wired shutter release – since the 10-pin connector is being used for the Geo One, Phottix includes this in the package – a very nice touch and Nikon’s GP-1 does not include this accessory!
• A small plastic piece that allows you to mount the Geo One on a shoulder strap instead of the camera
• A wrist strap
• A small cable with mini-plugs

Why don’t I know what that last cable is for?  The answer is that there was nothing else in the box – no instruction sheet, no warranty card, zilch.  (I’ve written to Phottix and they will be emailing a PDF instruction sheet to me.)

Set Up

Luckily, I was able to figure out 95% of what I needed to know about this within a minute despite the lack of instructions.  You mount the unit in the hot shoe on the camera, connect the cable and you’re good to go.  There is no battery – the Geo One draws its power from the camera’s battery.  The only display on the unit is a small LED – glowing red when it has not acquired position data from satellites, and then green once it has acquired the data; blinking or steady green depending on how many satellites it’s reading (I found this out via the Phottix web site).  It weighs practically nothing so added weight isn’t a concern.

The set-up menu on my Nikon D700 has GPS options built into the firmware, accessible through the set-up menu.  You can view the acquired location data, set some power-saving features and allow the GPS unit to update the camera’s clock.

First Use

I wanted to get out and use this right away!  It’s been unusually foggy for the past few days so I knew in advance that the pictures I’d get wouldn’t be the best, but that wasn’t really the point.  I drove along Sai Sha Road, between Sai Kung and Ma On Shan, looking for some places where I could pull the car over and take a few shots.

I got out of the car, turned on the camera and went to the GPS menu option.  I wasn’t using a stop watch, but my guess is that the location data was acquired in well under a minute, perhaps just 30 seconds.  I took a dozen photos.  Then I turned off the camera, something I habitually do whenever I change lenses.  Oops!  What would happen with the GPS?  How long would I have to wait once I switched the camera back on?  The answer was a pleasant surprise – GPS data appeared almost instantly.

Here’s one photo I took today.  Taken at 5 PM on a foggy day, I won’t claim that there’s anything special about this photo; I’m just using it for demo purposes here:

So the GPS data is embedded in the photo’s metadata.  How do you access it?  That depends on what software you use.  I use Picasa for JPGs and Lightroom for RAW files.  First I examined the RAW photos.

Lightroom doesn’t have GPS capabilities built directly into it, but there is a free plug-in you can download from here that adds this functionality.

As you can see in the screen capture above (click on the image to view full size), the plug-in allows display of an additional line of data when you are in Library mode and Loupe View.  Labeled “GPS,” it displays the GPS data stored with the photo.  Press the little arrow icon to the right of that and you are immediately whisked off to Google Maps, with your location tagged on the map.

See that little green arrow there?  (Well, you can see it if you click on the image above for the full sized version.)  That’s exactly where I was standing when I took the photo.  Whoa!

Picasa is a different and even easier story.  Geotagging is built directly into the program – you don’t need to download any plug-ins or install anything additional.  In grid view, thumbnails of photos with geo-data automatically display that small red thumb-tack  icon that you’re familiar with from Google Maps.  Clicking on “Places” (lower right hand corner of the screen) displays the location on Google Maps inside the Picasa application.  This functionality works when you’re viewing either the thumbnails or an individual photo.

In other words, I’m able to take advantage of the geo-tagging feature in the software that I already use.  Photos uploaded to Flickr and presumably other photo-sharing websites (but not Facebook) can also use this data.

Conclusion, Part 1

After my first trial with the unit, I’m 99.9% happy.  It’s easy to use, works as advertised and includes accessories that Nikon doesn’t include despite the higher price.

The only negative I can find so far is the lack of any instruction sheet in the box.  I can’t see any reason to choose the more expensive Nikon device over this one – especially since this includes accessories and capabilities that Nikon’s doesn’t.  As of now, I anticipate that once I return this review model to Phottix, this is the one I’ll be happy to buy.

Addendum

Note that, as with all similar GPS units, this can only be used outdoors.  Unlike the iPhone’s GPS, this obviously does not work in conjunction with the mobile network to give an approximate location if it can’t read the signal from the GPS satellites.

As I mentioned previously, I don’t have prior experience with GPS units.  So I invite those of you who know more about this to suggest any tips or tests that I might do while I’ve got this.  And for those of you who are like me and new to all of this, feel free to ask me questions about anything I haven’t covered (or didn’t cover in sufficient detail).

I know, I should be in bed.  But this is one of those nights where I went to bed early, woke up again after a couple of hours and the sleep I got functioned more as a nap.  So I’m wide awake but hoping that I won’t be up all night.

I sold off my Panasonic GF1 today.  As much as I thought it was a terrific camera, I wasn’t using it.  In 3 months, I’d taken less than 500 shots with it (I take 500-1,000 per month with my DSLR).  The problem is that it’s not truly pocket-sized.  So any time I was going to take it with me, I needed some sort of backpack or shoulder bag and at that point I’d usually say, “the hell with it, might as well take the DSLR instead.”  Now I’m wondering if I should go out and buy something truly pocket-sized, like the Canon S90 – a few of my friends own this and are very happy with it – or just try to make do with my iPhone camera, crappy as that may be.   Any thoughts on this?

Today, I found out something about a longtime friend that I never knew.  He and his wife both have full time jobs and yet, together, they are also operating a very successful online business – successful to the point where they rent office space and have employed staff.   Some people have told me, both online and off, that I should be looking to start my own business and of course the idea is nice but I have my doubts.  I’ve started or co-started 3 businesses in the past and been involved in a couple of larger-scale start-ups and, well, I certainly don’t own any beachfront property in Phuket or Boracay.   The photo studio’s doing okay and I make some pocket money from the blog but neither are going to give me the sort of income that I need, let alone that I want.  The idea of having an online business – that dream of being able to work from anywhere – is attractive.  And with Hong Kong rents being what they are, starting a business where one doesn’t need to pay rent here (or at least having a well-trafficked location like Lan Kwai Fong is not needed) is definitely a plus.

I’ve taken an occasional look through alibaba.com and that seems to be the spot where a lot of things converge.  But if it was so easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?  I know it’s not a case of just building a web site and waiting for the world to beat a path to my virtual door.  My imagination conjures up long lists of potential pitfalls.  Can anyone point me to some online references that discuss how one gets started, what traps exist and how to avoid them, etc.?   (Yes, I know there are some exhibitions coming up at the HKCEC in April and I will be there.)

Is there any restaurant in Hong Kong that does Romanian tenderloin steak?  What about chicken fried steak – with lumpy mashed potatoes and white gravy?  Pierogis?  Blueberry blintzes?  California burritos?  Any restaurant in HK doing Filipino food on any level better than Cinta J?  Just curious.

Also in need of some good Lightroom presets for the Nikon D700.  Can’t seem to find any so far that work as well for me as the ones I had for the D300.  And lemme tell ya – while physically the D300 and D700 are very similar and while the menus are almost identical, the different sensor inside means the D700 is a very different beast indeed.  Mostly in good ways.  But definitely more of a learning curve than I expected – not in the pure usage but in terms of wringing the best results out of it.

Oh well, let me see if I can sleep now.

Oh btw, new triple-CD set from Joanna Newsom sounds quite good on first listen.  And 50% of the way through the Red Riding trilogy, starts slow but does the job.

Just some quick & dirty snaps from yesterday.

The view of Makati from our hotel room.

Greenbelt 3:

Greenbelt 3

View at night from our room:

Cafe Havana at Greenbelt 3 is still a very popular night spot in Makati.

The chapel in the park at Greenbelt:

I’m intrigued by this Japanese restaurant in Greenbelt 5.  Love the name (get it?) and the look of the place.

Gelato goodness at Greenbelt 5:

The free jazz concert on Wednesday night.  Every seat was taken.

Greenbelt 3 with the sign for our hotel looming behind:

Nikon D700 as a spy cam – ISO 6400, 50mm lens at f/1.4, 1/60th of a second, cropped roughly 50%.  No flash, auto focus assist light turned off … this could be dangerous!

Took these tonight after dinner.  A bit tired, not tripod, just trying things out.  Handheld, 1600 ISO, no retouching or edit except for some mild cropping and straightening.

Got a shipment from Amazon a few days ago and have been spending time this weekend with the two photography books I received.

The first has the unwieldy title of David Busch’s Digital Photography Bucket List:  100 Great Photos You Must Take Before You Die.

So yeah, we’ve been swimming in books like 1,000 movies to see before you die, 1,000 foods to eat before you die, 1,000 cow-pies to smell before you die.  But I gave it a shot because David Busch wrote what I consider to be the definitive guide to my Nikon D300 (updated D300s version available too, planning to get his D700 book soon).  And I’m really so happy that I got this.

This is not a booked filled with photos by famous photographers like Annie Liebovitz or Mark Seliger – most of the photographers here are new to me.  But what Busch does is present some really excellent photos covering a wide variety of genres and, more importantly, for each photo he tells you the equipment used, the settings used (and often why those specific settings were chosen) and the general steps that were done in post-processing.  There are a couple of times that he shows the original, straight-out-of-the-camera photo alongside the finished work, and I wish there were more of those here.  Even so, this is a terrific book.

The second book isn’t for everyone but works really well for me.  It’s by Loe Beerens and it’s called Three Songs, No Flash!  Your Ultimate Guide to Concert Photography.

I love photographing musicians – rather obvious of course, since I’m such a music fan.  Incidentally, one reason that I now shoot the two bands at Amazonia so often is that I know what they are going to do.  I know their songs and their moves and it helps me be ready for what I know they’ll be doing next.  I think my photos get a little bit better each time I bring my camera there.  But how to best photograph musicians when I’m not familiar with them, or at least not familiar with their stage moves?  Yes, time and practice, go out and shoot again and again and carefully examine the results each time looking for ways to be better next time.

Concert photographers are generally told that they can stay in the photo pit for just the first three songs and are forbidden to use any flash – hence the title of the book.  The book is filled with photos of musicians, mostly on stage, some very famous, some not.  Each photo has a caption telling you the equipment used and the settings (though not with the kind of detail you’ll find in Busch’s book).  The photos illustrate a collection of tips for shooting different genres, large or small clubs, guitarists vs. drummers, etc.  Some are actually relatively obvious, stuff that you (or at least I) know intuitively but haven’t necessarily put into words:

Again, it is important to listen to the performer you are shooting.  Most of the time, the rhythm guitarist plays certain patterns repeatedly.  Lead guitarists play the same or a slightly different pattern, but also riffs and solos.  During the solos, especially when they play the high notes, you will get the best facial expressions.  Take your shot when they reach the highest note. At that moment, their hands are usually at the bottom of the guitar neck – an excellent opportunity to combine your standpoint and frame with the ultimate expression.

Okay, so it’s nothing very deep or original, but I think it will prove useful.  I see that there are some very negative reviews posted on Amazon for this book but I’m happy to add it to my collection.