karlo.org

View from the rooftop at The Hotel on Rivington

2009-06-26T21:55:34Z

View from the rooftop at THOR, originally uploaded by karlo.

Taken at Katia and Sven's wedding.

Just before sunrise, Rio Negro

2009-06-22T15:49:12Z

_PIC2492, originally uploaded by karlo.

A few minutes before the sun rising over the archipelagos of the Rio Negro, north of Manaus.

Turns out a few shots were left in my camera from the trip, don't know how I missed them.

links for 2009-06-08

2009-06-08T13:02:12Z

how to be happy in business - venn diagram

Much work truth, distilled.

(tags: productivity business charts strategy entrepreneurship venn work)

Pool, Sag Harbor

2009-06-07T15:46:47Z

Pool, Sag Harbor, originally uploaded by karlo.

Shooting in the Rain Forest

2009-06-05T14:58:00Z

Yeah, there's solid ground on this Amazon archipelago. It's just 50 feet underwater right now. Mind that first step with your $5000 worth of camera gear.

Almost all of my photography is urban or indoors - these are a few tips gleaned from my recent vacation down to the Rio Negro in Brazil, in the Amazon rain forest. You may find them useful if you're a semi-serious photographer planning a trip to a tropical, non-beach destination.

SLR Rain Covers

If you can afford it, get one of the purpose-made SLR rain covers for about $40. It's going to rain, and you shouldn't feel forced to hide your camera every time there's a little sprinkle. Note that these covers will protect against most rain, but they won't save your camera from immersion accidents like a canoe tipping over. For that, you'll need a dry bag.

Dry Bags & Dessicants

Generally used by kayakers and other small boaters in the states to keep their camping gear dry while traveling downriver, dry bags provide a moderately-priced, and more importantly easily packable, waterproofing option for your expensive camera equipment. Obviously, you won't be able to shoot when your camera is in the dry bag. They don't provide any cushioning and they're inconvenient to carry a long distance without another bag to put them in. But when things just get way too hairy (like suddenly learning that the hike you're on will end with a short traverse in a tiny, very unstable traditional canoe), having an 8 liter or 13 liter dry bag tucked into the bottom of your regular camera bag will pay huge dividends against the $20 or so you spent on it.

Dry bags also provide one of the best solutions to a problem some may encounter if staying in a lodge or hotel that has air-conditioning: massive condensation. Taking a 3-4 pound SLR that's been sitting in your cold room all night and walking out into tropical air with 85% relative humidity is a recipe for disaster -- not only will moisture condense on the outside of the camera, but if air is getting into the lens during zooming, etc, it will result in drops of moisture right inside the camera and lens. This can be solved by leaving the camera in the sealed (and airtight) drybag until it's warmed up to the ambient outdoor temperature. You can speed the process by minimizing the excess air trapped in the dry bag. If you are really worried, buy some dessicant bags (a drying agent, like silica gel) and toss them into the dry bag. Having a pack of dessicant in your dry bag is also good if you find yourself having to put in gear that's gotten damp from spray or rain, so you're not sealing it in with the moisture.

Deet

Unless you like melting your fingerprints into your camera body, avoid Deet-based insect repellants. There are good alternatives in the form of [Picardin] and natural solutions based on Eucalyptus Oil and other formulas. Just to be extra careful, you may want to test a touch of the repellant on an inconspicuous spot of your camera (the bottom) before your trip to see if it does anything. Once you're in the middle of the forest, you won't have much choice.

Off-camera flash and extra batteries

If you're shooting under the canopy, and particularly if you want to shoot wildlife up in the trees (often with patches of bright sky behind them, and effectively backlit), you'll want a more powerful strobe then then one built into your SLR. For Nikon shooters, that means the SB-800 or SB-900 strobe. If you're using a 200mm or larger lens, you may want to look at some of the fresnel-lens based attachments that will focus the beam of your flash more and extend its reach. Also, bring a full extra set of batteries (maybe high-capacity lithium ion) if you're not bringing a charger with you. I carried an SB-800 thousands of miles on my trip only to discover that my freshly-recharged NiMH batters were totally dead.

Small flashlight

Bring one, even if's just one of those tiny LED squeezelights. The first time you drop some tiny part of your camera (port cover, anyone?) in a dim setting, you'll be happy about it. I generally carry one of two SureFire flashlights I bought years ago. They're small, indestructable and blindingly bright - I've used them in lieu of flash a few times when it was dark but the flash of a strobe wasn't appropriate. The only drawback is a relatively short total run time - you want to use these for momentary illumination or emergencies, not for walking back to your tent at night.

Business cards

Consider getting some Moo Cards with the URL of your photoblog or Flickr stream and email address printed on the back, and maybe a variety of your own photos on the reverse. They're really handy when someone's been kind enough to let you take their photo, or you're traveling with a larger group and they'd like to look at the shots from the trip.

Backup Compact Camera

Unless you're carrying a second dSLR body (and even maybe if you are), you'll want to invest in small, compact camera of good quality as a backup. I'm a huge fan of Canon's SD960. For $300, it has a nice wide-angle lens (28mm), takes really beautiful ambient-light photos in anything other than low-light conditions, has relatively little shutter lag for a compact, and takes beautiful HD videos. Not only does having a compact camera with you mean you don't risk losing all photos for the trip if your SLR has a problem, but it will also free you of always having to lug around an SLR if you're walking the town, going to dinner or hanging around the hotel. Your family will thank you.

Netbook or iPhone

I carried a 6 lb MacBook on my last trip and it was a bear... but I also don't know how I'd travel without any computer at all, because I like to review the shots from each day in the evening (how did we ever live with film?), and I like to be able to communicate with home via email and Skype. My cousin Mike travels with a Dell Mini 9 netbook, and it's obviously a much better solution - less than 3 lbs,. compact, and only $250 from their factory outlet so if it's stolen or lost it's not a tragedy. Add some storage, and you can even use it on the plane to watch some movies or play some simple video games to pass the time. (And on the way home, you can sort/tag/edit photos on the plane.)

If you're not carrying a computer, an iPhone is the next best thing. Although it can't read your photos (at present), even if you're in a country where you don't get phone service, you can use the wifi capabilities to check your email and, if you download the free Skype app, make international calls cheaply. If you don't have a computer, you should have a good amount of memory cards with you, but these days you can also take a memory card to a photo store in most tourist destinations and have all of the images transferred to a CD or DVD for a small fee.

Think Small

If you're only going to the jungle for a few days, the reality is you're probably not going to get close to larger wildlife (unless someone in the village has been feeding it.) Even fauna you see up in the trees will be relatively far away, and backlit. Insects, flowers and other smaller things will be much closer, much easier to shoot from multiple angles, and often more novel. Make sure your gear has sufficient macro capabilities to take decent close-up shots of subjects from 1/2 to 2 inches in size.

Take the Unexpected Shot

(At the time I shot this, I saw the chainsaw - but it wasn't until I was in post-processing that I noticed the passenger was also texting at the same time.)

This is a more subjective tip, but really try to not just take the "standard" trip photos. A year after the trip, my favorite shots are always the ones you won't find in the tourist book - me or my companion, little offbeat places we went, food we ate, etc. They may not be National Geographic material but in the end you're documenting your own experiences, not some archetype of what a trip to that destination "should be". As we used to say in photojournalism, shoot first, edit later. If you end up with 2-3 pictures per day that you're really happy with at the end, you're doing better than most - if you're planning to show the set to others, or upload the online, you'll have a much better impact with a dozen great shot than two dozen mediocre picks.

Motel on 5th Ave, Seattle

2009-06-03T14:08:00Z

Motel on 5th Ave, Seattle, originally uploaded by karlo.

Champale Sparkling Malt Liquor

2009-06-02T00:20:34Z

Champale Sparkling Malt Liquor, originally uploaded by karlo.

Found this in an old magazine. "Gives a champagne glow to any occasion... yet costs just pennies more than beer."

links for 2009-05-29

2009-05-29T13:02:29Z

we love typography.

"a place to bookmark and savour quality type-related images and quotes"

(tags: design typography inspiration type)
Introducing Typekit

"The Easiest Way to Host Real Fonts on Your Web Site"

(tags: web technology development typography internet typekit browsers)

Why I May Have Traveled with an SLR for the Last Time

2009-05-28T13:23:43Z

On my recent trip to Brazil to visit the rain forest and Rio de Janiero, I carried a lot of photo gear by some standards, and very little by others. It'll sound like a lot when I list it out; in comparison to previous extended overseas trips, it was actually less than usual.

Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP SLR (2.5 lbs)
Nikon 18-200mm DX lens (1.25 lbs)
Nikon 12-24mm lens (1.0 lb)
Nikon SB800 flash unit (0.75 lbs)
Canon PowerShot SD960IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera in Crumpler Thirsty Al Camera Pouch XS* (0.5 lbs approx)
Pentax Optio 7 MP waterproof compact camera with case (0.5 lbs approx)
MacBook with AC adaptor (6.5 lbs)
Domke F3X shoulder bag and dry bag (1.5 lbs)
Cokin graduated ND filter set with filter holder, rings (0.5 lbs)

That's about 15 lbs of gear, most of which has to be carried on my back through airports, since you're not supposed to put cameras or laptops in checked baggage.

Even in taking this pile of gear, I was making a few assumptions from the outside: I was giving up on any but the brightest-lit shots of fauna at a distance (yes, I saw lots of monkeys - no, I don't have a photo of a monkey) on the assumption I was never going to match up to the existing catalog of telephoto shots of those animals. Nor was I carrying the right lenses for low-light shots - I'd have to crank up the ISO a few stops extra and sacrifice quality so I could use these slower zoom lenses instead of a faster prime lens like the Nikon 24mm F/2.8 D.

The Canon SD960 was a late addition to the game. Replacing my Canon SD850, which met its untimely end in Miami last winter, I bought the SD960 at the last minute based on the writeup at Cabel, primarily for its wide-angle lens and stellar HD video capabilities.

Playing the Packing Game

Most experienced amateur photographers have played this game many times: trying to figure out what to bring, and what to leave behind, because the rest of your travel group probably isn't going to be very happy with you lugging a fully-loaded, 45-lb Lowepro Photo Trekker through the trip. (And yes, I've done that, once. It's a Bad Idea(TM) unless you are mostly traveling by car.) And I'd like to think that after 20+ years of playing and a dozen-plus major international trips, I'm pretty good at it.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Sitting here at home, having gotten off a plane from Brazil this morning, it's pretty obvious that I missed the answer entirely on this one. That at least 50% of those 15 pounds, if not 90%, were a mistake to carry. And that means I'm going to have to seriously rethink how the game is played going forward.

Out of approximately 900 frames I shot during the vacation, about 100 are "keepers" - maybe not images I'd publish, but at the least pictures I've picked as good enough that I'll want to have picked out for looking back on the trip someday down the road. The rest aren't terrible or anything; they're often just other shots of the same location or scene, have a slight framing issue, etc. What's really stunning, though, is how those 100 were taken: only about 30 were taken using my D300 SLR and its associated lenses, 5 or so with the Optio waterproof camera, and 65 - the clear majority - were taken with the Canon SD 960 compact camera.

To put it another way, think about it in terms of the ratio of weight to images:

Nikon D300 SLR: 5.5 lbs / 30 images = 0.183 lbs / image
Canon SD960: 0.5 lbs / 60 images = 0.017 lbs / image

And this ignores that I also shot 80+ HD video clips using the SD960 as well.

Why So Wrong?

The simple answer is, the newest generation of compact cameras has once against pushed towards the capabilities of the SLRs, especially when it comes to "up the middle" vacation photos. The SD960, in particular, has a spectacularly good wide angle lens that's equivalent to a 28mm view on a 35mm camera. (It's sad that consumers tend to focus on buying longer focal lengths when they'd really be happier with shorter ones in the form of a wider angle option.) And it's exposure software seems to be better than ever: I noticed that in general, on the auto settings, the camera fires the flash far less often then you'd expect from a small compact. Noise is also reduced, as well; you can comfortably shoot the Canon SD960 at up to ISO 400 without serious noise issues. And finally, the quality of the LCD on the back is superb - the resolution is tremendous, and the clarity is very similar to the jump in quality we saw in the LCDs of mid-range SLRs over the past two product generations.

Another consideration also weighed in favor of the SD960 when shooting in Rio: security. To be clear, I never felt any personal danger while shooting in Rio de Janiero. That didn't mean I wasn't concerned that I was probably facing a higher-than-typical risk of property crime. Not only did carrying the SD960 mean I was limiting my potential property loss to $300, it also meant I was a lot less conspicuous than I would have been carrying around an 8 lb. Domke bag with $4000 worth of gear.

Beyond those considerations, it's also just more fun to not be a camera sherpa when you're on vacation, as long as you know you can still get decent photos. Not having my SLR on me meant I could walk farther, see more, and frankly that my girlfriend was happier with me. It also meant that if we wanted wander down to the beach and leave my backpack under the umbrella while goofing around without being constantly paranoid that someone was going to abscond with it. (Still paranoid - it's Rio - but not keep-it-handcuffed-to-my-wrist paranoid.)

Image Quality

(The photo above was taken during my morning run down the beach. So not only is its quality close to that of an SLR, it's an image I would never have captured with my heavier equipment.)

There are certainly limitations to what the compact camera can do. The shutter lag is pretty good, but you're not going to go shoot sports with it. Bright sun from the wrong angle can make the LCD unreadable while shooting. And from other angles, flare is a serious problem.

But don't let the SLR hype fool you. In most situations you're likely to encounter, the quality was great. Photography is about understanding the limitations of your tools and working around them. For the large majority of my vacation shots, I'd happily put them up alongside a similar image taken by someone else using an SLR and a mid-range lens. And realizing that means I have to reconsider how I pack.

(Having a 28mm lens even means the SD960 does a pretty good job shooting panoramas, if you hold it in portrait format. I'd love to know why they have built-in support for landscape panorama shooting, but none for portrait.)

Video

Generally, I like video for some very specific situations but I generally think of it as a secondary media for me. That said, the SD960 takes some nice clips and if you have iMovie '09 it's relatively easy to string a bunch of short shots into a vacation video.

Brazil 2009 - Manaus and Rio de Janiero from Tom Karlo on Vimeo.

This video is viewable in HD by clicking on the embedded version above.

Next Time

Unless I'm going on a photo safari in Africa, I suspect I'll be leaving the D300 at home next time and just tossing the Canon SD 960 with its charger and Crumpler case into my carry-on bag. I love the D300 and there's nothing I'd rather be shooting when taking studio photos, or action, or working in dim ambient light for large-format output. But when I'm traveling for fun and carrying everything I bring on my back, I doubt I'll be able to justify carrying an SLR any more when I can just slip the SD960 in my pocket and take close to 10 lbs of weight off my back.

One last thing: although I've been talking about a Nikon SLR and a Canon Compact, by no means consider this a negative reflection on Nikon SLRs... the statements would hold equally true for a Canon SLR -- I just happen to be a die-hard Nikon user when it comes to my SLR equipment, whereas I truly believe Canon makes the best compact digital cameras and has done so for years.

Feel free to view my Brazil photo set on Flickr for yourself and see what you think; the camera used to take each shot is clearly labeled in the right-side column of each individual image page.

(* The Crumpler Thirsty Al Camera Pouch XS is only $5.51 direct from Amazon right now. That's ludicrously cheap for a very nice compact camera case with effective belt-loop mechanism (you don't have to take your belt off to get it on or off.) If you have one of the older Canon SD compacts, I recommend stepping up a size to the Small - the XS only just barely fits the SD 960 and probably wouldn't fit my old SD 850.)

Off in Rio

2009-05-26T02:56:50Z

IMG_0383, originally uploaded by karlo.

I've been in Brazil for the last week... this photo's from the beach in Rio. I'll be posting more shots from the trip over the next two weeks.

Citrus Pressed at Cafe Gitane

2009-05-17T05:27:50Z

Citrus Pressed at Cafe Gitane, originally uploaded by karlo.

Testing out the new Canon SD960. It takes a really nice shot for a compact, and I notice they've altered the program mode software to really reduce the use of flash lighting.

Northeast Housing Market "Shadow Inventory" May Approach 40%

2009-05-15T21:17:06Z

Realty site Zillow notes a potentially giant (think 3-4 years of typical home sales volume) shadow inventory building nationwide in the housing market. If true, this would predict continued downwards price pressure across the US for some time to come as supply would bump every time there's any apparent uptick in the market, driving prices back down.

Particular interesting is the column for the Northeast -- although home prices here have declined less than in the West or the Southeast (after growing as much or more over the past decade) the percentage of homeowners that said they were at least "somewhat likely" to put their home on the market in the next 12 months if prices stabilized was almost 40%. That's over six years worth of "normal" home sales volume waiting on the bench, looking to get into the game.

links for 2009-05-15

2009-05-15T13:02:42Z

Coudal Partners' Layer Tennis Presented by Adobe CS4 | Week 11 | Introduction

I watch most weeks' matches without comment, but this logo-focused collaboration (with some nice video shorts - maybe short with an HD-capable dSLR?) is unusually notable

(tags: design coudal tennis adobe creative)

links for 2009-05-14

2009-05-14T13:02:29Z

cabel.name: Canon SD960: Great Pictures, Great Video

Amazing review / demo of the HD video capabilities in the new Canon 960. Posts like this will make me poor... had already been wanting to replace my beloved SD850, now I guess it's a done deal, I can't resist having those video capabilities to boot for just $40 more than the SD880.

(tags: camera shopping photography review)

Lower Broadway

2009-05-12T03:30:09Z

Lower Broadway, originally uploaded by karlo.