Tag: Review

Categories
Camera Equipment Gadgets Hardware HDR Long Exposure Photography Reviews Tips

TripodClamps for iTouch – Review

TripodClamps.com RAP-B-121-UN7U Cell Phone Clamp

Abandoned Paper Mill Reflections hdr 09
Abandoned Paper Mill Reflections hdr 09

When I originally wrote my research review, and posted it on Google+, one of the companies that I heard from was TripodClamps.com, and they suggested that I take a look at their Model RAP-B-121-UN7U Cell Phone Clamp on their website.

After reviewing the information, we exchanged a few more comments on Google+, about my concern for the iPod slipping from the four fingers of the clamp, and I was reassured that the rubber and the tension from the string grips would be sufficient.

So I ordered a unit, and several days later, my box arrived, and I quickly put the unit together and on my tripod for testing in my office.

Interestingly enough, I did allow my kids (8g & 6b) to play with the clamp and my iTouch, while connected to my camera, and I did not see any real reason to worry if the iTouch was slipping, even as my kids removed and replaced the iTouch, several times. I did this to try to judge the grip strength.

They could do it, but not easily.

Testing on Land – Completed and qualified

My next test was going to be over some water, on a little damn spillway near me.

This was my first time carrying my tripod while the clamp was attached, and it became quickly apparent, that it was there.

At first, there was now only one way I could carry the tripod on my shoulder, without the unit poking me in the head or shoulder, and while climbing through the brush, it was another item that did get caught in the branches as I walked around.

Another thing that I wanted to check, while over water, was how easy it was to trigger the camera from the iDevice, and not cause any additional movement further up the tripod.

Yes, I tried this on land, but there is something about being over water, and about to trigger a 15+ minute series of exposures.

One already has to worry about the water rushing around the tripod legs causing vibrations.

I was happy to find, that the clamp did not seem to transmit any additional moment, and the iDevice seems to be more sensitive than I had realized!

120912 Marsh Creek Spillway bw 07 - (3) Stops [32-259 seconds] f22 ISO 100
120912 Marsh Creek Spillway bw 07 – (3) Stops [32-259 seconds] f22 ISO 100
Testing over Water – Completed and qualified

Conclusion

If you are interested in a way to attach your iTouch to a Tripod, I would definitely invite you to take a look at this TripodClamps.com offering.

I am also still looking for a water-proof case for my iTouch, and the Clamp seems to have enough extra ‘reach’ that I will not have to by another mount.

Even though I did run into some issues while first working with this Clamp, that seemed more about me, learning how to best work with new equipment, then the function of the clamp, and I offer the following “Notes to Self”…

Notes to self

  • Carry clamp in a vest pocket while walking/exploring
  • Attach clamp prior to going over water
  • Keep iDevice in a pocket till needed

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Categories
Chester County Exton Reviews

Asian Grocery Store – Review

Logan & Madison looking at Dried Mushroom
Logan & Madison looking at Dried Mushroom

The Asian Grocery Store is located in the Marchwood Shopping Center in Exton, just off of Route 100.

I do not know how long my parents have been going there, but definitely before I was born.

There are many things you can get there, and even my dad does not know what most of the stuff in the store is, because most things are written in Chinese, but we do get this stuff on most of our trips.

Nori Snacks

I remember my Dad buying the green seaweed, and bringing it home. I could not believe he was eating seaweed, but one day, I decided to try it. After I tried a nori strip, I really liked it, because I like the taste of salty stuff, and even my brother, Logan, enjoys eating nori!

Rice Sprinkle

Both my parents have been making rice for as long as I can remember, and during one visit to the Asian Grocery store, we found this stuff that you sprinkle over your rice.

We got the rice sprinkle, then the next time we had rice, we put it on the rice, and my brother and I ended up liking it!

There are three types of the sprinkle, the flavors are:

Nori Komi Furikake (Blue Label) – Which has in it: sesame seeds, salt, sugar and seaweed.

Wasabi Fumi Furikake (Green Label) – Which has sesame seed, horse-radish, shaved bonito, Japanese mustard plant, sugar, seaweed, soy sauce, salt, and cooking rice wine in it.

Ebi Fumi Furikake (Red Label) – Which has in it sesame seed, shrimp (ebi), potato starch, seaweed, sugar, salt, and dried yolk powder.

I like the Nori Komi Furikake, but the Ebi Fumi Furikake would have to be my favorite, because I love shrimp! And I would like to try the Wasabi Fumi Furikake, but I am scared of the wasabi being too hot!

Madison and Logan looking at ginger
Madison & Logan looking at ginger

Soy Sauce

My mom loves soy sauce, more than my dad, so I saw her putting it on her rice a lot!

I did not want to try soy sauce, because the dark color kind of scared me, and I was not really sure what to put it on, but then one time at China Grill, when we were having sushi, my dad had a bowl of plain soy sauce, which he finally got me to try with my finger tip.

And at first I didn’t know what to think of the taste but, once I tasted it again I liked it!

Then my dad had me try the soy sauce on rice, then I tried it on sushi on my own, and that was awesome!

Pocky Sticks

Well I kind of discovered Pocky Sticks on my own! What they are, are biscuit sticks covered in flavored cream. There are two flavors Chocolate and Strawberry, but if you want more crunch to your Pocky sticks you can get chocolate cream and peanuts, but if you’re allergic you can get strawberry cream with strawberry pieces!

Noodles

At Asian Grocery when you get there if you go to the aisle farthest from the register you will be surrounded by plenty of types of noodles!

One of my favorites is Ramen noodles, especially the chicken flavored, but in this house we have a special name for Ramen noodles we call them “Daddy Noodles”!

I came up with that name when I was younger. How I came up with the name is the only two words I knew at the time, where “Daddy” and “noodles”, so I put them together, and came up with “Daddy Noodles”!

One time when I was in Daycare, they asked me what was my favorite food, and I said “Daddy Noodles”, and at the end of the day, my teacher had to ask what “Daddy Noodles” were, because they had no idea what I was talking about!

There are noodles made out of all sorts of things, like rice and beans. On our last trip we got invisible noodles, that are made out of mung beans, which we have not tried yet, but hope to soon.

Wasabi

Logan & Madison looking at deserts
Logan & Madison looking at deserts (Moon cakes)

My dad introduced me to wasabi at China Grill!

At first I didn’t know about it, but that day we had bacon wrapped crab, so when my dad wanted me to try wasabi, I took a tip of a toothpick, and it set my mouth on fire! Then my dad had me try wasabi in soy sauce. Then I thought that my tongue would feel really weird, but I tried it, and it was delicious! The soy sauce really took away a lot of the hot and spiciness!

In the Future

Right now we are working on my brother’s adventure into asian food!

Thank you’s

Just a quick “Thank you” to my new readers for inspiring me to keep blogging!

Updates

2012 July 10 – Published as “8-Year-Old Foodie Reviews Asian Grocery in Marchwood Shopping Center” on the ExtonDish.com.

– M ;  }
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Categories
Blogging Online Life Photography Reviews Web

Joined JPGmag.com – A First Impression

JPGmag.com logo
alseymour on JPGmag.com

I had been following JPGmag.com on Facebook for some time now, and earlier in the week, I posted a link to some of the contests that they offer, and finally, yesterday, I spent some time investigating what else the site had to offer.

Signing Up

JPGmag is similar to Flickr, in that anyone can join, and for $25/year, you can get unlimited uploads to your Profile, and a number of “Spotlight credits” which are all purchased via PayPal. (One should also be aware that you are enrolled into an automatic yearly renewal, which can be disabled within your preferences.)

Your Profile

Like any other website, you are given an area to create your profile so others can learn more about you if they wish.

There is an optional field that allows one to enter their website, but I have not been able to get it to work or see where the information would be located on the Profile.

I have also tried to add an active link to my website, but the Description field does not seem to recognize the HTML code for a link.

Update – I have been able to get both the Optional Website link and some basic HTML to work within the Description area.

I was very surprised that one can include their Google Analytics code to track your views!

Uploading Images

JPGmag encourages Users to upload images at a minimal of 1000px long-side, and is done via a clean easy to use web-based interface.

After files have been up-loaded, but before Posting, the User is presented with a three tabs to enter Details (Title, Description and Tags); Categories and Geo-tagging.

JPGmag also offers an online editing package, Express by Pixlr, which I have open, but have not used yet.

“Places/Map-It” – Needs improvement

The “Places/Map-It” tab is connected to Google maps, and does leave much to be desired.

You find your location by zooming in/out and panning. There is no place to search by address or enter in GPS coordinates.

I have also tried to edit my “Places” after posting, but have not gotten my place-markers to stick yet, which needless to say, is a real pain.

Flickr definitely has the advantage here.

Now What?

Once you have images on your profile, you can then submit them to the various Themes, Challenges and Contests. (At the moment, there does not appear to be an Adobe Lightroom plug-in, which would be nice.)

JPGmag has many Themes, Challenges and Contests area, that seem to be Member based suggestions versus the “Anyone Can Create a Group” model that Flickr uses.

Theme or Challenge (JPGmag)

One does seem limited to posting one image per Theme or Challenge, and depending on which Flickr group, is rather low, which does reduce the tenancy for someone to ‘spam’ a group with images, but makes it difficult if you have an image that could be submitted to several Themes or Challenges.

Contests (JPGmag)

The Contests on JPGmag are very different from Flickr in that one can actually win cash or prizes!

There are Entrance Fees, but there seems to be a high Entrance Fee to Award ratio – i.e. $5 Entrance Fee for a $1250 Award, then on other internet sites.

Groups (Flickr)

There also does not appear to be nearly as many “Groups” as there on Flickr (“Anyone Can Create a Group” model), and I have not run into a “Post/Award” restrictions, both of which can easily overwhelm a new contributor to Flickr.

100203 Struble Trail 023 (Updated)
100203 Struble Trail 023 (Updated)

Conclusion

I am still within my first 24-hours of starting my membership, and so far “things” seem to be going well.

I have uploaded 22 images, submitted to 3 Themes and have already gotten several nice Comments and Favorites, as well as an “Active Spotlight”.

There is more for me to explore, and I will continue to do so.

In the mean time, I invite you to visit my JPGmag profile to see that I have posted!

– Andrew
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Categories
HDR Photography Reviews Software

Photomatix 4.0 – Software Review

It was Friday night, and after everyone was off to bed, I finally got my chance to transfer my “110204 Chester Springs (Rt. 401) Field” images from my camera, converted from cr2 RAW to DNG and into Lightroom for evaluation.

On another computer, I fired up my test virtual machine (VM) and installed HDRSoft.com’s Photomatix.

I have seen many images done with Photomatix, and what normally comes to my mind, is the surrealistic side of HDR images, which seems to be the “in thing” to do these days.

Most of the time, I think, the surrealistic effects are over done, and have been a main reason I have not tried Photomatix before.

When I loaded my first single exposure, and started to play with the first few pre-sets, I realized that I had been sadly mistaken by my preconceptions.

Having worked with several HDR packages before, including Adobe Photoshop CS3/CS5 and HDRLabs.com’s Picturenaut, I found the Photomatix application to be very fast, even in a Virtual Machine.

I was very happy that I could open/import a DNG file, instead of converting it to TIFF like one has to do for Picturenaut 3.0.

The GUI interface was easy to work with and allowed for very easy adjustments. I do wish, that the sliders had a little more control, in that one could enter a number or use the arrow keys to make finer adjustments.

When playing with the various pre-sets, I could easily understand why people would succumb to the surreal side. It is quick and easy, and makes for a dynamic looking image.

In my initial steps, I selected a preset that was close to what I wanted, and then used the various sliders to tweak my image from there. Photomatix also allows you to easily save your custom pre-set for later use.

I also imported a multi-exposure HDR image from (5) DNG files, and again found the application to be quicker than Adobe Photoshop CS5.

When finished with Tone Mapping, I was able to save the image out as 16-bit TIFF file (there are 8-bit and jpeg options). A nice additional option, is that after processing your image, Photomatix will open the image in an external editor, such as Photoshop!

I have only worked on four image so far, but I plan to add Photomatix to my regular HDR/RAW work-flow.

– Andrew
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Categories
Adobe Reviews Software

Lightroom 3 – First Look

Lightroom 3 has been out for about a month now, after being having many of it core components rewritten from the ground up over the past two years, and it shows.

In general, the application is quicker at most common tasks, and can greatly hence most images that it comes in contact with.

Already, I have been able to breath new life in several images because of the enhanced noise reduction algorithms, on images that were shoot with a high ISO speed!

Another area that I have been really taken advantage of, is the built in Publishing Service for Flickr.

In the previous version, one would have to export the desired files, and then bring them into Flickr.

With LR3, after you have connected to Flickr, you just export!

There is no need to create an additional set of files, which saves time and disk space!

Over the course of the long weekend, I have been able to publish many new images to Flickr with great easy, and I invite you to take a look at my Photostream!

There are a ton of new features that have been added or enhanced, and I plan on using and commenting in the future, so stay tuned!

– Andrew
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