I’m a big fan of the Nikon Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR II AF-S lens because it’s so versatile. It’s also a great companion to my Tokina AT-X 116 ultra wide angle zoom lens. Both fit nicely into my small LowePro SlingShot camera bag and it doesn’t get too heavy.

After reading Ken Rockwell’s review about the Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6 G I was curious to see how much sharper it is than my 18-200mm lens. Ken claims the 28-80mm to be “unbelievably sharp”. Read more »

I’ve been using an A-series Cokin filter system for years but with the transition to bigger lenses I had to transition to the larger P-series Cokin filter system. Now I’m using the rather slim wide-angle holder P299 to reduce vignetting for shorter focal lengths. I don’t need the possibility to hold more than one filter as I’m only using a single graduated neutral density (GND) filter anyway. Cokin filters are expensive in my country. The P-series filters have a price tag of around 50 US$. They cost half the price on Adorama or B&H but they charge 50 US$ (!) just for shipping the filter to Switzerland.
So I searched on eBay for less expensive soft edged graduated filters and found some P-series compatible filters from a Chinese company called Tian-Ya. Read more »

We just returned from a two week holiday in Scotland. I hauled my complete photo gear (which added almost 10kg to my backpack…aww) with me because I planned to spend quite some time photographing. It turned out that the scottish weather can be rather challenging to the passionate photographer but that’s another story. Of course I took my Holux M-241 GPS logger with me because I wanted to geotag all our photos. I also decided to take my small 13″ notebook with me, just in case the GPS logging device runs out of storage. As it turned out at the end this wouldn’t have been necessary. More on that later on.

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Here’s a review of geotagging tools available as of today (July ‘08). I tested all of them personally and tried to come up with a pro & con list on each of them. If you know a geotagging Mac application that’s not included on this list, please drop a comment. Read more »

I already wrote a few articles about how to use my preferred GPS logging device, the Holux M-241, on the Mac. In this article I’m focusing on the linking process between the GPS data and the photos. This process is called a geotagging workflow. Most of the time I’m taking pictures in RAW mode so the workflow is optimized for this type of images. I’m using a Nikon D80 but the workflow should work with almost any other (Nikon) digital camera like the Nikon D200 or Nikon D300 too. Read more »

Here’s a new HOW-TO to connect your Holux M-241 GPS logger over Bluetooth on the Mac using the BT747 application. Read more »

Holux recently published a firmware update for its M-241 GPS logger. Once applied you’ll be able to set the M-241 on auto-logging so it starts logging automatically every time you turn it on. In earlier firmware releases you had to wait until it had a satellite fix in order to turn logging on. This was a much criticized shortcoming. Read more »

The latest version of Kekus LensFix CI features a beta Aperture 2.1 plug-in. It works pretty well as you can see in my animated GIF below (please click to enlarge). Read more »

On my last trip to NYC I noticed that my Nikkor 18-200mm (27-300mm) zoom lens wasn’t wide enough for quite a few locations. I was looking for a non-fisheye, ultra-wide lens for some time when a fellow pointed me to the brand new Tokina AT-X 11-16mm f/2.8 zoom, that’s 16-24mm on my Nikon D80. The same model is available for Canon DSLRs too. The lens is a DX which means it should be used on crop sensor DSLRs only. The quality of the lens body is very good, nothing feels cheap or flimsy. Read more »

I finally found the (almost) perfect tripod for me. I decided to go for the Benro HVC Flexpod C-298n6 with a Benro KS-0 ballhead for the following reasons:

• Lightweight (legs made of carbon fiber)
• Extractable/reversible center column
• Maximum load of tripod and ballhead is 8kg (17.4 lbs)
• Maximum height is 167cm (65 in.)
• Fits into my travel gear (folded: 54.5cm/21.5 in. + ballhead height)
• Affordable price tag (for a full-height carbon tripod)

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Today, my Holux M-241 GPS Logger was giving me a hard time. I wanted to connect it to my Macintosh over Bluetooth and the BT747 Java application for the first time. There’s some fragmented information on the Internet about how it can be done but I was unable to find a useful guide. Read more »

Geotagging photos is becoming more and more popular since photosharing websites like Flickr, Picasa Web Albums and others support close integration of geotagged EXIF information.

Added 2008-7-13: See here for a complete geotagging workflow on the Mac!

Manual geotagging is a slow and boring process - provided you remember the locations the photos were taken at. I’m convinced that it won’t take long until almost every cheapo digital camera comes with its own GPS receiver that automatically stamps the coordinates into the EXIF header but unfortunately, we’re not quite there yet. So the main question is: how do I get the GPS readings into the EXIF header of the photos in my Nikon D80? Read more »