Canon 1Ds Mk III: auto-noise reduction & UDMA cards

I've been using the new Canon 1Ds Mk III recently, and as with pretty much any gear I play with, one of the first things I'll do is dig through the preferences/ settings of the kit. After setting up the Mk III as I wanted it, I went out to take my first shots. One thing I noticed right away was that I was only getting two shots off before the buffer was filled! When you look through the viewfinder of this camera (as on most Canon pro cameras), you'll see a display of how many frames you can fire sequentially before the buffer fills and your fps drops below maximum.


Anyway on this 1Ds Mk III I was seeing only two. (I never did switch to JPG to see what I'd get there, as I'm not really interested in JPG shooting on this camera). My first thought was that this was because my CF card wasn't fast enough. Even though my cards are Lexar 2GB 133x cards, they are not UDMA cards. I basically accepted that this was the case (these are 21megapixel files after all), shrugged my shoulders and picked up a UDMA card.

2GB 133x


8GB 300x UDMA

Imagine my surprise when the UDMA card made no difference. So I started looking through the settings, trying to figure out what the problem could be. Digging back into the C Fn's (Custom Functions), I noticed that I had both Long Exposure (C. Fn II-1) and High ISO (C. Fn II-2) noise reduction turned on. I know that the idea behind the long exposure noise reduction is that the camera will process for as long as the exposure was; i.e., a 20 second exposure means a 20 second post-process before it's written to the card. OK.

Just out of interest I turned them both off. And guess what… up shot my continuous exposure count to 12! And in reality, it's more like 15.

This smelled like a bug to me. Because even at ISO 100, if I turn on High ISO reduction, the count drops to 4. Turn it off, it goes back to 12. ISO 100 does not count as high ISO!

Likewise, turn on long exposure noise reduction to "auto" or "on", and it drops to 10 frames in display. This is with a manual exposure set to ISO 100, f/2.8 1/8000th second. Not exactly a long exposure. And it actually stops after 11 shots fired.

So obviously this demanded some research. After some digging, here's the information I came up with. Even though the camera does not utilize the noise reduction at exposures under one second, having it enabled still affects the cameras buffer performance -- and this has been the case in all EOS bodies. The user should not have to turn this on or off if the exposure goes over or under one second, so IMHO this qualifies as a bug.

As far as the High ISO noise reduction, this is a misleading term as when enabled it does process the files differently at ALL ISOs. The higher the ISO the greater the correction, but even at ISO 100 it is handling the files differently to optimize image quality and keep noise to a minimum. This is why the buffer is reduced in this case.

So what's better, let the camera do the noise reduction, or let Aperture do it ('cause that's the software you're using, right?!). If you're shooting RAW, the noise reduction is NOT embedded into the file (thank goodness). Apparently you can alter the embedded reduction settings using Canon's Digital Photo Professional software (never used it myself), or if you're using Aperture (or anything else) to do the RAW decode, that camera data is thrown away and the software does its own thing.

So the short answer is… if you're shooting RAW, turn off the noise filters. If you're shooting JPEG, turn it on. Of course in my not-so-humble opinion, there are only fringe example reasons of why you would shoot JPEG anymore. It's all about the RAW file, baby.

As far as the UDMA / non-UDMA cards are concerned, it turns out that until the buffer is filled you will not see the write speed of the card in action. This will only be visible when the red "writing data" light is on and you see how fast the images are transferred to the card from the buffer. Basically the real question is not how fast you can shoot to the buffer, but how fast can the buffer transfer to the card and clear it for new shots. To test this, just hold down the shutter release on continuous for a set amount of time. In a test of one minute, with my Lexar 133x card I was able to take 64 pictures in one minute; with the Lexar 300x UDMA card I was able to take 77 shots in the one minute. This is a substantial improvement! Of course I think this would be more interesting in a camera like the 1D Mk III, which is all about shooting as many frames per second as possible.

So did I need the UDMA card? For my purposes, no. BUT I now have an 8GB card, which with a 21Mpixel camera is handy!

Fleet Week 2007, San Francisco

Gallery

Last weekend was Fleet Week here in San Francisco, and as always it was a blast. This year I decided to try to get a different angle on things, and so took the ferry to Angel Island to shoot from there.



View Larger Map

Shore to shore is about 3 miles, so it's not exactly close. A 400mm f/4.0 on a Canon 1D Mark III made for a 520mm equivalent, so a good telephoto but still pretty wide at 3 miles. This is a wide view of where I was shooting from… the iconic Transamerica Building is in that clump of skyscrapers to the left of the frame, just to the right of the Bay Bridge.


Mix in the typical haze for looking over salt water and the smoke left behind by all the planes, and that adds up to a pretty hazy shooting environment. I got some decent shots, nothing award winning but it was still a fantastic day. The weather was gorgeous, and I spent it outdoors shooting the Blue Angels from an island. Not bad for a days work.


One of the more exciting maneuvers was when one of the Blue Angels flew the length of the Bay, barely off the deck! You'll have to click through to the gallery to see a sequence, but here's a teaser… you can see the plane amongst the boats, and the tail of water she's pulling behind her!

Another beautiful day on the Bay.

Canon 1D Mark III

Playing with the new 1D Mark III. Seriously cool gear.

Room to Read

I just finished the book "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World" [amazon.com link], written by John Wood, founder of Room to Read. It's an amazing read, and a phenomenal story of what can be achieved by smart, ambitious people who refuse to watch the children of our world suffer because of lack of education, and refuse to hear the words "no" when asking others to help change that.

I eagerly recommend this book to anyone who's ever thought the world could be a better place.

Not able to Geotag for the moment

(Written Monday April 30, 13:56 Kenya time)

Unfortunately I'm not able to geotag my images as hoped at the moment. HoudahGeo, the awesome software I've been talking about, has a memory leak and is crapping out after about 30 images. Since I'm trying to throw several thousand at it, it's simply not happening. And I don't have the time (or patience) to do 4,000 pictures in batches of 30. Pierre, the creator, has been in touch and is aware of the issue and trying to fix it. For now though, I can only feasibly tag images after export. So we'll see what I can accomplish here. I don't have much bandwidth to upload large galleries so it may be irrelevant anyway until I return home.

Battery power again!

(Written Saturday April 28, 22:08 Kenya time)

Well this is unfortunate… since completing my last entry and wiping out both laptop batteries, I haven't been able to charge up again. My solar charger outputs only 75W; this MacBook Pro uses an 85W charger. The company that sold it to me insisted that it would still work but would just take longer to charge. This may be true, but the inverter screams a high pitched tone when it's being overdrawn, and so I can't plug this into it. In fact, the damn thing is screaming its song when I plug even half that wattage into it. I'm gonna make me some phone calls when I return stateside. It has at least been able to charge my camera batteries.

I had expected that I might want to use the solar system that's here already, but unfortunately it seems I've been thwarted at every turn. The first day no one put the main battery on solar charger. Then the smaller batteries got used up for watching TV. Yesterday I got the large battery fully charged, only to find out the power inverted had a blown fuse. And of course, no spares to be found. Someone was coming to the village today from town so we called in a request for the fuses, but when he arrived this morning he hadn't had time to get them. Finally tonight I jerry rigged two batteries together to get enough power and after 5 hours of charging, got one battery up to 100%. I gotta make good use of this! Although tomorrow (Sunday) I'm heading back to Nakuru for the night as Carol has business Monday morning and it'll give me a chance to get online and post all of this.

So now, to catch up on the last few days. (FYI I have backdated the posts written since this point so they are all in chronological order)

In Chicago now

The first part of the trip is over (ok the easiest part!); I'm in Chicago on a few hour layover now. I'd post a picture but, you know… it's just an airport.

I stayed up all night last night packing and generally getting ready. And working on that Pelican case, which unfortunately didn't come together quite like I planned – but I'm getting what I need out of it. Here's a picture of the lid, where I've either epoxied or velcro'd everything in place. On the right are four Lexar FireWire readers, mounted sideways. These are glued in place. On the left are three firewire drives; the top one is a backup drive for the OS and applications, so I can recover on the road if needed (all personal files are backed up on systems back home and I don't need recovery on the road for those if I lose them). The lower two drives are the G-RAID MINI's, as primary and backup. All master files to go to the one then are backed up to the other. In the middle you see the MacBook Pro power supply velcro'd to the lide, and under that the little white box is a Belkin FireWire hub. The coil of cables underneath are the two FireWire cables coming off the Lexar readers (for the FW400 port) and off the drives/hub (FW400 to 800 for the 800 port).

The computer is living in the protective sleeve that came with the case, and the sunshade sits under that. I couldn't figure out a way of incorporating the shade into the lid with all the other stuff there, so I compromised and put a small velcro tab on the lid of my MacBook Pro to hold it when I want to use it. Not thrilled with the idea but at least it works.

So now to recharge the iPod and have a snack before the 8 hour flight to Brussels! I have a three hour layover there, so may try to go to the other side of customs to see the big Tintin rocket. I grew up on Tintin, and my friend Steve just sent me this picture from the airport there. Gotta see it ;-)

GPS logging in the air?

I flew to Las Vegas this morning, and I, er, accidentally forgot to turn off my Sony GPS-CS1. And I sorta accidentally left it on the windowsill of the plane. So I sorta got some data of the trip.

OK now can someone please tell me why you're supposed to turn GPS off in flight? It's not a transmitter, it's a receiver, right? Is it *pulling* data from the satellites, or is it just picking up data in the air, like FM radio? The pilots use GPS. Why on earth would GPS not be permitted to be used in flight?

So since I now, er, had the data, I figured I'd, you know, have a look at it. And here's the curious thing. I have some really cool data on the runway, take-off, and a few points after take-off, but then nada for most of the flight. I got one point somewhere about half-way, (bizarrely enough over a populated area) then once we got close to Vegas, it kicked back into gear again.

What gives? Am I completely missing something about how GPS works at high altitudes, in airplanes, at high speeds, or ??

You can download the KMZ file for Google Earth here.

Epson P-5000 and Automator

The Epson P-5000 arrived today, and it's actually quite impressive on first look. The screen is gorgeous and huge. 4" doesn't sound like much but when you look at that after looking at the back of your dSLR, it's quite impressive. In (very minimal) tests, it seems to pull my CR2 files off the CF cards and display them on screen as advertised.

Immediately of course I wanted to see how it would integrate with Aperture. As expected since it's basically just a hard drive, you have to point Aperture to the devices "Backup" folder to copy content off of it. But in thinking of a way to automate this process, I've created an Automator script that does all of the following automatically. First, I plug the P-5000 into my MacBook Pro, and then…

1. An folder action detects the drive and kicks into gear.
   
2. Content from the P-5000's "Backup" folder is copied to the external FW drive, which we'll call FW1. (The script does not overwrite existing files, so there's no duplicate copying going on)
   
3. The P-5000 is ejected from the desktop
4. The content just copied to FW1 is now copied again to FW2 (this is my backup drive).

That's it… I now have three copies of my images, and once I'm satisfied that the files on FW1 and FW2 are intact, I can delete them from the P-5000 (this could be automated too, but I never automate deletions).

The next step, which is quite easy but I'll get to later, is importing (by reference!) these new images into Aperture, with metadata applied. Of course before doing that I need to do my geotagging, so we'll see what I can automate on that front later.

That's pretty cool… I can simply plug in my P-5000 and walk away. When I come back, I have pictures in Aperture, and backups already made.

Eventually I'll post details of how it's all done, once I get the rest of the puzzle in place.

Custom Pelican MacBook Pro case

The Pelican 1495CC1 that I ordered last week was suddenly unavailable, but fortunately I found another source. My friend at Pelican hooked me up with K C Specialty Products, who had the case in stock and shipped it immediately. Since the 1495 doesn't come with the riser/dividers that the 1490 does, I have some Peli Quick Mounts coming to help hold things in place, and the special 3M adhesive DP8010 to mount it with.

Just like Chase Jarvis, I've ordered a shade from CompuShade to fashion over the laptop. I'm hoping to find a way to rig it to the case instead of to the laptop, as I have absolutely zero intention of putting velcro strips on the lid of my MacBook Pro!

My drives of choice are 100GB G-Tech G-DRIVE Mini's. I originally chose these as they have no fan, to reduce the chance of dirt being sucked into the drives. It's less of a concern now that these will live under the MacBook Pro in the case, but it's still, I think, a Good Idea™. Mine are FW400 drives so will have to use a small FireWire hub, which is unfortunate, but oh well. These drives will mirror each-other for backup, and are where my master RAW files will live. I'll have additional FW drives in another case in the event I exceed 100GB of RAW files. (100GB should hold about 7,000 Canon 5D RAW files)

I use the stackable Lexar FireWire Professional CompactFlash Readers, so I'm anxious to see how (and how many) I can arrange into the case.

Of course when I have the pieces I'll show it off here!

I'm going to Kenya

I'm very fortunate to have been invited as a photographer on a trip to Kenya with the International Humanity Foundation, a true non-profit group who has been helping a tribe of people in Kenya called the Pokot (just one of many of their projects). I won't summarize here everything they've done and are doing; for that you can visit their website. However suffice it to say the generous work of everyone involved with IHF, from the founder Carol Sasaki to the volunteers who answer their phones, are greatly appreciated by the Pokot people and others around the world. I've been invited to document the culture of the Pokot people and the work of the IHF. My photographs will be used as preservation of their culture and heritage, as well as used by the IHF for fundraising for current and future projects.

I nearly went on this trip in January, but other obligations got in the way and I couldn't do it. Fortunately the opportunity came up again, and I leave on April 22, returning May 6. It's quite the journey out there; I fly from San Jose, CA to Chicago to Brussels to Nairobi, where I'll be met and driven to the final destination. The nearest city is Nakuru, and the location of the Pokot orphanage is approximately 0°50'16.00"N 36°1'14.00"E (the link will open Google maps). My return flight is Nairobi to London to Los Angeles to San Jose. I hope to visit friends on the 5 hour layover in London.

This is a massively important project for me; since my return to photography I've dreamed of doing a project like this, and certainly didn't expect this to come along so soon. I'm scrambling to prepare for it, while of course maintaining my current work commitments. Those who know me and know my day job know that I'm extremely busy right now leading up to NAB, the big broadcast show in Las Vegas. I leave for that show in less than a week, and return two days before leaving for Kenya. So I'm trying to get everything together now.

I'm going to blog about this trip, every step of the way, including preparation. Internet coverage is essentially nonexistent where I'll be (they don't even have electricity, so I guess asking for a broadband connection is a bit much!). I could of course connect via satphone but what I'm doing isn't urgent enough to require the expense, so all my writing and blogging will happen offline and get posted when I can.

Since I'm currently two weeks out, I'll talk about some of the prep going into this. Of course I'm throwing every bit of technology I can at this, because, well, it's me ;-)

** TRAVEL **

I booked on American Airlines with expectations of using my miles to upgrade to business class, at least for the return flight. But of course there were no upgrade seats left, and... get this... American now charges a $300 co-pay each direction for a points upgrade! So, it's economy all the way. SJC-ORD-BRU-NBO, then home NBO-LHR-LAX-SJC. Thanks to seatguru I should have power points at each seat.

** SOLAR POWER **

For power, there is a solar supply out there and I'm also bringing a little one called, originally, the Portable Solar Power System from the informative and helpful folks at http://www.siliconsolar.com/ which will primarily be for charging camera batteries. I'll be relying on their power to charge the laptop.

** CAMERA GEAR **

My primary purpose in going is of course photography, so I'm bringing all the toys. I'll be carrying one each of a 5D, 20D and 30D bodies. My lenses include a 14mm Aspherical, 24-70mm f/2.8, 85mm f/1.2, 100mm macro, 70-200mm f/4, and a 400mm f/4. I'm hoping to do some kind of safari while there, but am not sure if that will or won't happen. I'll carry a Gitzo tripod with Manfrotto tracker joystick head, and my Gorillapod, and loads of little goodies to go with.

In case I can't get my laptops charged, I'm brining an Epson P-5000 photo storage viewer to store digital photos on.

** COMPUTERS **

My primary computer is a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 17", with a 15" Core Duo as backup. The 17" will be in a custom built case (which I'm still working on) inspired by this Chase Jarvis blog entry. I'll post pics or video of it when it's done. All photo management will be done in Aperture (more on that below).

** GEOTAGGING **

One thing I really wanted to do on this trip was geotag my photos. All the pieces have come together for this trip (or are about to!) and I think this will really work. The workflow is a bit convoluted and tedious, but I think worth it in the end. So here's how that works...

I have a Sony GPSCS1KA which logs GPS position every 15 seconds. Plug this into the Mac and you can copy off the GPS .log file. Then using LoadMyTracks, convert the .log to a .GPX file. Now the GPS data is ready to be merged with the photos. (Apparently this can be automated with a perl scrip in an Automator action, according to this website. I haven't tried it yet but definitely will)

Whenever I'm ready to capture photos of the CF cards, instead of capturing straight to Aperture I'll first copy the files to the Finder. Then I'll add GPS data to the pictures using the HoudahGeo software. Basically it looks at the timestamp on the photo, looks for the closest time stamp from the GPS log file, and adds the appropriate coordinates to the image file.

Then I import the geotagged images into Aperture, and proceed as normal. When I'm ready to put pictures on the web, I'll use the Connected Flow's flickr plug-in to upload to my flickr account (click here for a map test from Hawaii; these aren't properly geotagged, but the approximate data was added later). This plug-in passes through the GPS data, and then flickr automatically places them on a map.

Cool, huh?

** MISC **

I'm bringing a Kata rain cover for one camera. I have it in my head that I'll set up the camera for some long term (i.e. all day) auto-triggered exposures, perhaps to catch animals at a watering hole, or a full-days excitement at the village. Should be fun.

** MOSQUITOS **

I'm already taking Neem tablets and have 34% Deet bug repellant, and a mosquito net to sleep in. Wish me luck.

** WEATHER **

It's been hard to get a picture of what to really expect. Currently it's only 85º in Nakuru, but I'm told it gets a lot hotter the 80 miles away in the Pokot village. We'll be in the Rift valley. I don't know about humidity, but I do know it's dusty and dirty. Should be fun.

** HYGIENE **

Those that know me will find this part shocking - I'll be shaving my head right before I go. Probably a tad unnecessary, but it's for the heat, to make it easier to keep clean(er), and frankly because it's a great excuse to do it. Don't worry, there will be pictures (and yes mom, I'll wear a hat and plenty of sunblock!)


OK that's a good start to all this. Again I'll do video and text blogs, but not much will be posted in real-time.

Gorillapod

Gorillapod at work! Supporting a Canon 5D and 70-200 mm lens while shooting 15-30 second exposures of the San Francisco skyline at night.