Everyone photographer should have a pocket camera...

Altoids, the curiously strong (and cheap) camera case!!!

It doesn't matter if you have a billion-pixel-best camera in the world-uber-DSLR hopped up on steroids it won't amount to jack squat if you don't have it with you when you need to take a shot. A few times now I've had my shots or videos used in the news simply because I was the only one present with a camera, the shots were not always the best quality but they were often the only ones available. In one instance there was a large accident near where I work, photos I took were used by the local newspaper in an online story and the video was used by a few local stations. One day at work we had some stray moose wander into our parking lot and once again I had some of my footage make it onto the news. Last winter during a -40º C cold snap a spur of the moment experiment let to a video that ended up being used province wide of water freezing before it hit the ground. They played it throughout the winter whenever there was a cold snap ;)

Point and shoot cameras are sometimes looked down upon by us "serious" photographers but there is still a place for them for multiple reasons, the main one being size and portability. Another key advantage is that they don't attract a lot of attention, something very handy for street photography or events where "professional cameras" aren't allowed. A few years back when I visited China I accidentally left my point and shoot back here in Canada. I was so envious of my fellow travellers as they popped candid street photos while I had everyone shying away from the business end of my monstrous 40D. When I first purchased my G10 I read an article of a man who had to cover a university's championship baseball team's trip to the white house, his G10 slipped under the radar because it wasn't an SLR. [On a side note that last link is an interesting read since he accidently snapped his SD card in half whilst trying to dump the shots]

My current camera "family" is like the 3 little bears story, my SD780IS is the baby, my G10 is the middle one, and my 5DMKII is the big one. In this story however the "middle" one isn't necessarily the right one. Each have their place and for this post I'm going to focus on the SD780IS and the G10.

I'll admit I'm a bit biased towards Canon personally but even if you're a die hard fan of brand X it doesn't really matter when it comes to point and shoot cameras. Its not like the SLR world where you have hundreds or thousands of dollars invested in glass that's keeping you loyal to a specific manufacturer. Some of the Nikon cameras coming out are becoming tempting, likewise Pentax has some cool water and weatherproof point and shoots and Panasonic's Lumix series is quite good as well.

Getting the most out of your tiny camera.
CHKD is one of the biggest reasons I'm still going back to Canon for my tiny camera "fix". If you haven't heard of it I recommend clicking the link. Basically its what is referred to as a "firmware extension" that unlocks tons of control in your point and shoot giving you SLR-like features. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO, custom bracketing and even RAW! Using the shutter overrides some people have claimed insanely fast shutter speeds above 1/20000th of a second. But the fun doesn't stop there, you can even run scripts on your camera like a motion detection script that some have used to capture lightning, or an intervalometer script to take cool time-lapse shots. These clever MIT students used a cheap Canon A470 running CHDK to take pictures in SPACE!

Perhaps you're a photographer who is just starting out, say you want to get into using some off camera flash ala strobist well if you're running CHDK you can set your on-camera flash to manual to avoid that nasty pre-flash that is preventing you from using those cheap optical slaves. This summer I'm planning on doing a fashion shoot using only my SD780IS just to prove it can be done. If/when that happens I'll post the results here.

Know your limits, then bend or break them
The image quality of a point and shoot may not rival a full frame SLR but if you wield it correctly and know your limitations amazing things can still be done with these cameras.

Generally the really tiny cameras (like the Canon Elph series) all suffer from the same thing, a small sensor and small optics. The very thing that makes them so nice and portable is their biggest downfall. Small sensors don't work well with low light situations or tolerate high ISO's very well. The small lenses they come with often suffer from barrel distortion and pincushion distortion when they are either zoomed all the way in or all the way out. While the lowlight issues can't always be avoided the optical distortion caused by small lenses can be easily corrected using software like Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom.

One of the frequently overlooked issues with point and shoot cameras that is getting worse with every generation is the mega-pixel race, every year they're cramming more and more photosites into the same size sensor. In more than a few instances its been proven that older version of the same cameras that are lower MP actually produce better images.

For the most part the image quality of most point and shoots aren't going to win any awards but what I told you this doesn't have to be the case? Well one way is to take a bunch of pictures then stitch them into one huge picture. Essentially you fake a large sensor. Confused? Let me explain. Say your point and shoot at full resolution and highest quality takes a really sharp 5x7 but once you start to blow it up to 8x10 or 11x14 it starts to look poor. Now take that same subject but zoom way in (optical zoom only) and take 20 pictures to cover the same area. Now since each of your photos have enough resolution to make great 5x7's when you stitch them together with some software like this you'll have a very large shot that looks sharp. The shot below is an example of trying this technique out, it was taken using a piddly 3.2MP Canon SD200. It was made up of about 50 individual photos and I later printed it sharply at 16x20!

What about the middle road?
Ok some of you may say those little cameras are too tiny, I want something a little beefier. No problem, the Canon G series, the Nikon P600, or the Panasonic Lumix LX3 among others might be right up your alley. All 3 bring SLR-like control to the table, are still pocketable (mostly) and have. Once again I'm biased towards the G10 but this time it is attachment based in that I can use my 580EXII on it. That being said the other two have some nice perks of their own, the P600 for example has built in GPS for automatic geotagging and the Panasonic will do HD video. All 3 still suffer a little from the smaller sensors with respect to ISO noise (try to keep it below 200) but the G10 at least in good light could give some dSLR's a run for their money.

I'm not sure about the Nikon or the Panasonic but the G10 has one huge ace up its sleeve, amazingly high speed sync. Using a wired connection the G10 can sync a flash up to 1/4000th of a second thanks to its electronic shutter. This feat can let you do some pretty amazing things like overpowering the midday sun. There are two ways to do this, either use a very high power strobes full blast like an AB1600 or White Lightning 1800 and crank your aperture up to f16 or higher, or use a few speedlights at low power at a very fast shutter speed.

In conclusion
Don't dismiss these diminutive cameras, keep one in your shirt pocket and keep these tips in mind:

• When possible avoid low light situations
• Try to keep the ISO below 200
• Use the low key nature to your advantage (street photography, concerts etc)
  
• Get large sharp images by taking a bunch of smaller ones and stitch them together
• Use the features unique to smaller cameras like the electronic shutter to you advantage
• Take advantage of the video feature, most point and shoots are near camcorder quality and newer models are
  

Go Go Gadgets On The Go

I've got a few pieces of gear to share with you that I'm starting to find invaluable, they are all small and easily portable and meant for use on the go.

The main item I wanted to discuss is my new eeePC netbook, its been a few weeks now and I'm convinced that nobody should be without one least of all photographers packing light.

eeePC

When I first heard about the miniaturized laptop movement (OLPC, uMPC, eeePC etc) a lot of people were saying they were severely underpowered and for the price you could get a decent laptop for $100 more. Because of this I kept my distance but decided I'd check in on the technology once in awhile. A few weeks ago I finally took the plunge, my b-day was around the corner and I figured I'd treat myself with a netbook.

I settled on the ASUS eeePC 1005HA model, it seemed to have enough oomph to do basic tasks and have a long enough battery life to get me through any typical shooting jobs. After having it for awhile now I find I underestimated both the power and the battery life (although admittedly I did upgrade to 2GB of RAM). I've had laptops before and they did their jobs however I often hated lugging around all the power adapters etc. Battery life on most laptops was about 2-3hrs but I never trusted that and found myself never bringing it anywhere that I couldn't plug it in anyway. The netbook however gives me 6hrs + of constant heavy use and 8-10hrs of light use and standby, I've yet to even have a low battery warning pop up.

Far from being underpowered I find myself running all sorts of programs on this machine, even crunching through 200MB+ psd files in Photoshop. I just finished a series of art prints that I made almost entirely on the netbook, from vectorizing them in Inkscape to layering/blending/compositing them in PS.

I'm always working on a project of some sort and this netbook lets me take my work wherever I want to go, from whipping up a 3D model in Sketchup to making a quick poster for a friend's charity event in Gimp I have the tools to do it wherever I take my netbook.

For even more versatility I installed Ubuntu 9.04 through Wubi which is an installer that lets you install Linux as if it were a regular program in Windows (good for newbs like me). Provided you have a wired internet connection to start with getting the rest of the eeePC specific drivers and bells & whistles installed was easy, I followed most of this guy's post on how to do it. His article is for installing it as the main OS instead of dual boot which the install through Wubi creates. Also he is using the netbook remix edition of Ubuntu. He lists all of the packages you need to install though to get the wifi working and all the function keys etc, just type them into Synaptic and you'll be good to go.

Here is what makes it great for photographers:

• Portable Storage - Use it on location to dump memory cards, even if you have enough cards to handle your shoot it still provides a level of redundancy in case a card fails or you accidentally delete the contents.
• Impromptu Slideshow - Showing your client/model/customer the shots you've just taken on the back of your camera is often cumbersome and doesn't give them a good view, use the netbook instead to give them a better show.
  
• Image Editing - While it isn't quite a desktop replacement you can still do quite a bit of editing on this machine. Sometimes doing a quick edit to show the client your concept and make sure you're on the same page can save you wasted time later in post.
• Internet Access - This assumes you have an available wifi access point, you can upload shots to say Flickr or Picasa etc shortly after you take them or post them on your blog.

iTouch/iPhone
The next piece of gear I wanted to share was a device that almost nobody has heard about ;) Ok fine so they're ridiculously popular, so popular in fact I actually avoided upgrading my 60GB ipod photo purely because I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon. I was foolish to fight progress, the iTouch I picked up is a very versatile piece of gear. Its like a mini computer really, the web browsers I've used on small devices previously (pda's, Sony PSP, etc) were frustrating to use and very slow. The iTouch/iPhone browser experience is lightyears ahead of those and its fairly speedy too, all that remains is for apple to pull their heads out of their a$$es and allow flash to work on them.

Here's what makes it great for photographers.

• Portfolio in your pocket - Whether you're just showing friends your latest photoshoot or pitching yourself to a prospective client it is handy to have your entire portfolio at your fingertips.
  
• Apps galore - While most of the photography apps in the store are geared towards gimicky effects for the iPhone's camera there are some that can be used for serious photographers. Some are simple calculators for Depth Of Field (DOF), some simply tell you sunrise and sunset times by your location, others give suggestions for shooting in certain situations (neon lights, campfire, lightning, aurora etc) but some like the dSLR remote lets you control your camera remotely and even see through the viewfinder (only on certain models).
• Portable inspiration - When browsing the interwebs keep a folder of photos you find inspiring or of shots you'd like to try, then dump them periodically to your ipod. This is also handy for keeping an album of poses if you're shooting people, often times I'll draw a blank mid-shoot on how to pose the subject only to realize afterwards that I should have tried "this angle" or "done that instead".
  
• Maps* - Running late and can't find the location you're supposed to be shooting at? There's an app for that ;) Google maps can be very handy in this instance, this summer while on a roadtrip to BC our car overheated and thanks to the ipod we found a VW dealer only 1.5 kM from where we were. *This assumes you have wifi (or a data plan on the iPhone).
• Scout Locations (Using iPhone Camera) - See an interesting alleyway or perhaps an alluring spiral staircase that you want to come back to for a shoot? Take a snap of it. Some software even lets you geotag the location so you can even get directions back to where you took the photo.

Digimate III portable HDD and card dumper
This device made the list because of its potential, I truly haven't reached the point of not being able to live without it. Long story short the one I received had some bent pins in the CF card slot so I'm in the process of getting a replacement. Hopefully that doesn't scare you off though, this is the first incident I've had like this in many many orders from this company so they're track record is still good!!!

Essentially this device is an enclosure for a 2.5" laptop hard drive, however unlike most of its kind this one had built in card readers and a chip that lets you plug in a memory card and copy its contents to the hard drive. I really can't believe there aren't more products like it out there, the ones that do exist are often so overpriced they go extinct quickly due to lack of sales.

I was able to test out the one I received using other memory card slots however and found it to work very well, transfer speeds while not blazing fast were more than sufficient.

This device is really just a shell, you need to still purchase a hard drive to stick into it. The price of drives comes down daily so for as little as $50 you can buy a 250GB sata drive. On that note I should point out that there are 2 versions of this item, one for SATA drives and one for IDE drives. IDE drives are starting to reach the end of their lifecycle and are therefore become more expensive than the more abundant SATA drives. Unfortunately I didn't realize there was a SATA version when I ordered mine so I was stuck with IDE and a 160GB size limitation.

I'll try to post a followup on this device once I get my replacement. I can't see myself using it every day (except maybe as just a portable HDD) but I can see it being a great companion while travelling and for an extra layer of redunancy during photoshoots. One final thing to note however, this device requires the HDD to be formatted as FAT32 which is something that Windows has issues with. Windows will limit you to a max of 32GB partition size which can be annoying. You'll need to use a third party software program to format the drive, I used GParted in Ubuntu as a quick method but plenty of tools exist for Windows environments too.

Why it's great for photographers:

• Large storgage - Even if you get the IDE version which is limited to 160GB thats still a ton of shots. I carry two 16GB cards when shooting RAW with my 5DMKII and don't often worry about space, this would be like having 10 cards.
• PC Free Transfers - If you're like me you already have enough gear to lug around, being able to travel without a pc (even a netbook) will cut your weight down a lot.
• Extra Redunancy - Even if you have tons of memory cards and don't require the extra space its still a good idea not to keep all your eggs in one basket. Dumping the cards to this device will help protect you against accidental data loss.