Today was spent walking through Calgary, enjoying the May weather we’ve been deserving.  I’ve figured out how to geotag all my images and I can even track where I’ve walked with Google Earth.  I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with this yet but it’s interesting information.

I use GPSLogger for Android to record the GPS data.  Then GPicSync is used to update the EXIF data with the GPS coordinates and generate a KML file for Google Earth.  When that’s all done the images can be uploaded to Flickr read with GeoTags or you can view your trek in Google Earth by loading the KML file.

I caught some late night crop dusting last night.  I’m enjoying the “fresh” look this telephoto lens brings to photographs.  It really makes them stand out because the image is cropped in so close.

Shot with a D800 with a Nikkor 300mm F4 AF-S D

I can see why birders have all the fun.  I picked up a 300mm F4 Nikkor to do some heavily cropped landscapes and I just realized that it’s fun to take photographs of birds!  I’m going to have to start learning what all these various local species are because I think I’m going to see them all the time as I’m walking about shooting other stuff.

This is the region north of 16th Ave NE in Calgary Alberta, running west of Deerfoot Trail.  I like the hills and I want to spend more time here.

Shot with the D800 with just one exposure.  This thing has some good dynamic range.

This is the new Peace Bridge in Calgary, Canada.  It was designed by the Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava.  It was controversial in the popular media because it wasn’t designed by a Calgarian architect and built by foreign labour.  I think it’s a great addition to our city and I’m glad we have it here.

Shot with the D800 using the 14-24 2.8G which is an adequate architectural rig.

My wife and I went for about a 5 hour walk today from our inner-city home to downtown Calgary and back again.  She enjoyed walking down the streets looking at the fronts of interesting homes.  I was constantly urged to take us along the alleys to peer in peoples’ lives.  She was slightly unnerved in some instances where there were people inside the yards and I was peeking fences to look inside.  But I managed to get a few interesting shots.  I also have some photos of the new Peace Bridge here in Calgary but I don’t know yet if I’ll be sharing those.

This was done with the D800 and the Nikkor 14-24 2.8 which is a combination I’m thoroughly beginning to enjoy.  I have a 50mm lens for the camera as well but I’m finding the 14-24 never comes off the body.  I was a little bit afraid of the quality of a zoom but it’s good enough for my needs and the versatility is great.  The Nikon tends to produce slightly flat images by default when the raw NEF files are opened with Lightroom but they lend themselves well to all sorts of pushing and pulling in both Lightroom and Photoshop.  Good stuff.

Not even the personal belongings are of value.  This home is being torn down and there will probably be an in-fill in its place within a couple years.  A friend tipped me off on this and I’m glad I made it by before all the materials were hauled away.

Shot in Calgary, Canada.  More toying with my new D800 and a 14-24mm 2.8G.

The other night I did some quick tests of the video functionality of the D800 and was disappointed to find that the audio came through completely inaudibly with an ultra-low frequency tone and an intermitten ultra-high frequency squeek.  The first 1/2 second of audio would be fine then it would go to crap.

At first I thought it was the camera but the files played fine in the D800′s preview system.  I played a youtube test video I posted on my wife’s Motorola Xoom and that came through fine too.  Then I tested another computer and I verified it was my computer, not the camera.

To disable the CMSS-3D system (which is only used to provide fake spatial audio for 2 channel audio) open your Creative Labs Audio Control Panel (Start->Programs->Creative->Audio Control Panel) then disable it in the X-Fi CMSS-3D tab.  Done and now everything works!

These are our neighbours.  Well there are no neighbours there.  Just an empty house that’s falling apart with a fence that’s threatening to fall on our car.

But I finally got the D800!  I have practically been without a camera of my own for months.  I sold almost all I own to get one good camera which turned out to be the D800 digital SLR.  It’s 36 megapixels meaning it can capture some very high resolution images.  There’s a dedicated 4:5 crop mode (30 megapixels!) and it also has some good dynamic range which translates into strong tonal performance.  I haven’t had much time to get to learn it (and I’m new to Nikon cameras, too) but the above was shot tonight at ISO 1000 and I’m quite thoroughly impressed.  The sun was pretty much down but it still managed to capture what was there.  There were some tweaks done in Lightroom and Photoshop of course.

That’s a crop of the ISO 1000 shot.  There is a lot there that’s going to print well.  There was a bit of colour noise that I could have removed but for a quick test it’s not bad.  Now I just have to wait for some good lighting and I’m laughing!  If only I had a printer wide enough for 16×20′s.  Looks like I’m stuck with 11×14′s and 13×19′s for now.

There are some days I look back and think “damn I’m glad I had a camera that day.”  This was shot in Banff National Park on Monday.  DSLR capture.