Autopsis » Photography

Photos Posted: May, June & July 2008

Doug — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:48:11 +0000

Photos for May, June & July 2008 are now posted at:

http://www.hackneys.com/gallery/v/travel/

Photo Gadget of the Week

Doug — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:46:21 +0000

Photo gadget of the week is Steph’s Gorilla Pod made by Joby http://www.joby.com/

It enables support/mounting of our pocket cameras and Steph’s Canon 30D or 40D with a short lens just about anywhere.

It is a great device and it has come in very handy on numerous occasions.

Highly recommended.

DG 080

Doug — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:19:29 +0000

Prior to departing for South America I collected a set of GPS waypoints from prior overlanders. They included service locations, fuel stops, points of interest and, most importantly, camp sites.

We like to find our own places, make our own discoveries and generally have our own adventure rather than follow exactly in others footsteps, but, when the sun is sinking and we need a safe, proven place to pull over for the night, the collection of waypoints has been invaluable.

Such was the case five days ago when we pulled into the little town of San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile.

Click here for the rest of the story: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/chile/docs/dg080.pdf

Digital Photography Meta Data Overview

Doug — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:38:11 +0000

Introduction

Winston Churchill’s immortal description of 1939 Russia as “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” is equally true of the current state of digital photography meta data.

Most casual digital photographers never come face to face with meta data. They take their photos, they upload them to a web photo sharing or social networking web site, they may even print a photo occasionally, and at no time are they even aware that digital photography meta data exists. In many respects, they are the lucky ones.

Serious amateur and professional photographers wrestle with meta data as part and parcel of their daily workflow. Meta data problems, flaws, corruptions and disasters are a regular part of photography forums and discussion groups. Challenges can be as simple as one tool displaying a photo’s caption/description while another will not. Or, they can be as catastrophic as the loss of thousands of photos’ meta data, often painstakingly entered over weeks, months or years.

Meta data, defined as “data about data,” can be a very technical, daunting subject. In practice and application in digital photography, it has often been an unmitigated disaster.

Even at its young age, digital photography has experienced multiple meta data standards. Each of these standards has been ignored, corrupted or “enhanced” by digital photography software vendors. There has been no backwards compatibility or standardized mapping established to bridge from one standard to the next. The lack of standards regarding the labeling of meta data information has led to a plethora of conflicting terms used to label the very same piece of meta data, spawning mass frustration and confusion among users.

Unfortunately, there is no immediate relief in sight for serious amateur and professional photographers. If anything, the meta data anarchy and chaos created by the software vendors promises to increase.

The only hope for those tasked with unwrapping the meta data riddle lies in better understanding digital photography meta data. Only by understanding meta data can we accurately diagnose the challenges and build workarounds.

*****

Full document is here: http://www.hackneys.com/travel/docs/…taoverview.pdf

Breeze Browser Pro EXIF/XMP-IPTC Bug and Workaround

Doug — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:59:16 +0000

Problem/Bug: BBP not populating EXIF comment/description from IPTC Description

Scope: Problem/bug affects all BBP users who need to replicate IPTC description to EXIF description for JPG images. (This issue may affect other image types as well, I only tested JPG.) Impact is across all images used with any tool or environment, i.e. web photo hosting service, that defaults to or requires the use of EXIF data fields and/or does not support XMP data.

Click here for the full document: www.hackneys.com/travel/docs/bbp-exif-iptc-desc-bug-workaround.pdf

Meta Data Audit

Doug — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:54:28 +0000

Introduction

Digital photographers are often faced with the challenge of missing, corrupted or disappearing meta data in their workflow.

As a photo moves down the workflow, meta data can disappear or be corrupted. This missing or corrupted meta data may not be detected for weeks, months or years after the fact, often leading to disastrous consequences, especially for practicing professional shooters.

The only way to know, with certainty, what is happening to your photos’ meta data in your workflow, using your tools, is to do a step by step, tool by tool, audit of the meta data across your workflow.

The audit takes from 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the workflows complexity and the tools used.

Click here for the full document: www.hackneys.com/travel/docs/metadataaudit.pdf

Lightroom Edit Capture Time XMP vs. EXIF

Doug — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:50:10 +0000

Scope:
- Lightroom (LR) 1.4.1 and 2 Beta
- Any file that is edited using Metadata:Edit Capture Time
(Note: detail info below may be helpful to those seeking to understand date/time problems/issues with LR and other tools)

Background:
LR allows editing/offsetting of image capture time via the “Metadata:Edit Capture Time” menu option.

Changing the time in LR alters the following EXIF date/time metadata fields as displayed in LR:
- Date Time Original
- Date Time Digitized
- Date Time

Writing the LR metadata to the image file via the “Metadata:Save Metadata to File” command writes the values into the image’s relevant EXIF and XMP date/time metadata fields.

Challenge:
LR writes the correctly edited times into the XMP date/time metadata fields but writes incorrect times into the EXIF date/time metadata fields.

LR uses XMP date/time metadata fields for its displayed time data, not EXIF date/time metadata fields. As a consequence, the user does not know the EXIF time fields have been incorrectly changed unless they check them in a tool that displays or uses the EXIF date/time metadata fields.

Solution:
Use a batch file based on exiftools to copy the LR edited XMP date/times into the EXIF date/time metadata fields.

Click here for the complete document: www.hackneys.com/travel/docs/lrdatetimeexifbugfix.pdf