David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Views of science and technology from around the world
Eiffel Tower Stairway. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and 6.7-13 mm VR lens (ISO 160, 6.7 mm, f/3.5, 1/125 sec).
A Male Northern Red Cardinal taken with a Nikon 1 V2 camera and the new 80-400 mm VRII lens (with the FT1 adapter). The lens is much bigger than the camera, but still easy to use hand-held. The field of view (FOV) with this lens is equivalent to 216-1080 mm on a 35 mm (FX) DSLR. The base ISO for the Nikon 1 V2 is 160, and at the base ISO the image of the red cardinal shows good colors and saturation. This image was taken hand-held. The new VR-II works well with this lens to stabilize the image. This combo should be good for birding.
For my second night of chasing Aurora I went with “Northern Lights with Green Fox Guiding- When The Sky Becomes Magic”. Green Fox Guiding is a relatively new company, but Jacek Orasinski has been working in the Tromsø area as a guide for the last 11 years. Jacek is originally from Poland. The group was picked up in front of the Tromsø Tourist Information center at 17:00 (5 PM). There was low fog covering Tromsø. Jacek was pretty sure that as soon as we got away from the city we would have some clear skies. The Space Weather report was also favorable for the appearance of auroras during the night. A little after 18:30 we had our first sighting. This was one of the earliest displays that Jacek had seen this season. We stopped along the side of the road and got some initial images. Jacek drove us a little further to a better location with mountains in the background. Even though there was just barely a sliver of the moon, a couple of Norwegians were climbing the mountain. While photographing the Northern Lights we watched these two tiny lights climb up the mountain and then ski down in the dark. Once down, they started up the mountain again. Jacek knew that I was looking for something unique to use as a background. He brought us to an abandoned coal mine which I thought was great. I think the others got board after a few minutes at the site. I framed an image of the Northern Lights display with the silhouette of a coal chute in the foreground. As I was taking the 30 second exposure, a tour bus drove by and lit up the coal chute. I wasn’t planning on doing light painting – but as can be seen below I am happy with the result. We continued on to several other locations, with the Northern Light displays getting better and better. Finally, we ended up on a beach where we continued shooting. Jacek built a wood fire to heat his signature “Fish Soup”. We were provided with reindeer skins to sit on as we ate the soup. After dinner the Northern Light displays continued for another 3 hours. Although I thought last night was great, this was an order of magnitude better. Jacek even said it was the best night he had seed this season. In all, I took about 1400 images. Many, many will be used for time-lapse videos. I didn’t get back to the hotel until 02:00 and then couldn’t sleep as I wanted to start reviewing the images.
I really like the ability to have GPS data imbedded within the metadata of my images. It helps me remember exactly where I took the image, and especially now with Google Maps and Bing Map be able to zoom in from a satellite image. For a few years I had been using various Solmeta GPS devices that plugged into the 10-pin adapter on Nikon camera bodies. Unfortunately, during a winter photography workshop in Yosemite the device managed to short out the electronics in my brand new Nikon D3x. Ouch. The camera had to be sent back to Nikon to be repaired, and because the failure was caused by a non-Nikon device the repair was not covered under warranty. Since then I have been wary of attaching a GPS device directly to the camera.
The solution since then was to add GPS location data to the image metadata after downloading the images to my computer. I have a Garmin Rino 530Cx device that I used to record GPS tracking information. Many smart phones can do the same thing. You just need to be able to download the GPS tracking information, and extract the time-based location data. You do need to make sure that the clock in the camera is relatively accurate (including time-zone and daylight savings adjustment). You can then compare the time that an image was taken with the GPS location and add the location to the metadata. Doing this one image at a time, however takes too long.
The current versions of Nikon View NX2 and Lightroom 4 have a feature where the GPS metadata can be added to many images. I prefer using View NX2 because the information can be added to the RAW image files (as well as JPG and TIFF image files). With Lightroom 4, the GPS data is added to a sidecar file for proprietary RAW images — although the data is added directly to JPG, TIFF, PSD, and DNG image files.
The process to add GPS location data to image metadata within View NX2 is as follows. (1) Select the files to update (limited to 500 images at a time). (2) From the Edit tab, select Log Matching — OK the GeoTag message.
(3) Add the *.GPX file that contains the GPS log data for the time period that the images were taken. [Other supported GPS log files include *.nmea, *.nma, and *.log. There is also an option to correct for differences between camera time and GPS time if you didn’t synchronize the time between the camera and GPS before hand.] (4) The program will then compare the image time with the GPS log file and place an x next to the images that will be updated. If there was GPS data in the image files, the new data will be shown in Red. (5) Select Save — Yes to overwrite the GPS data.
After updating the GPS location metadata in the image files, I need to update the database catalogs in Lightroom: (1) Library – Select the image files to be updated (2) Metadata – Read metadata from file [Note that this will overwrite any metadata added since the image file had been added to the Lightroom Catalog.]
Within Media One Pro, updating the image database is a little bit different: (1) Within the Organize Panel Window (clt-5) Select the images to update (2) From the Action Tab select Rebuild Item (ctl-B). One could write a script to do this.
One gotcha that I ran into is that even though the current version of View NX2 (2.7.1 64 bit) was updated to handle Nikon 1 V2 Raw files, if the metadata for these files is updated with GPS data as described above, the updated file is no longer recognized by View NX2. For now that is not a problem for me since I am using the Nikon GPS attachment with the Nikon 1 V2 camera.
One other note, you do need to be connected to the internet to use these features since there is a strong connection to Google Maps.
The mirror-less Nikon 1 V1 (N1V1) camera has been upgraded to the Nikon 1 V2 (N1V2). The first thing that I noticed about the N1V2 is that it is smaller than the N1V1. Ergonomically, it is easier to handle. The mode selector has been moved to the top — it was on the back of the N1V1 in a position that was too easy to accidentally change modes. A couple of negatives – the battery is new, and lower capacity than the battery in the N1V1. Also, the interval timer mode has disappeared. I won’t be able to take time-lapse videos with this camera. I took the camera out for a walk at the Sourland Mountain Preserve this morning and caught this Mallard duck taking off from the pond. I don’t know if it plans to stay for the winter, or is about to go south.
