Michael Chang

Are you driving in California?  If so, the GPS laws have changed, again, this year.  There’s a lot of old material and misinformation circulating around the web, so here’s the definitive source from the California DMV, legalese and all:

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d12/vc26708.htm

What does this all mean for California GPS users?

1. GPS units must be mounted in a 5″-square corner on the lower corner of the driver-side windshield area or in a 7″-square corner on the passenger-side windshield area.
2. Friction mounts (bean bags and other mount devices) are not allowed if the GPS unit ends up blocking any part of the windshield besides those areas mentioned in #1.  (You can’t mount the GPS unit in the middle of the dash, even if you have a bean bag friction mount.)

That’s about it except for additional fine print.  You may need a lawyer and an engineer to decipher the rest of the small details.  You can’t be watching movies on the GPS unit, for instance. By the way, those rear-view-mirror hanging dice aren’t allowed, either, and you’re supposed to clear all the ice and snow on your windows, too.  Only California and Minnesota have specific GPS-mounting rules.  Go figure…

Related note: one of these days, we’ll have ulta thin, flexible, portable screens that we can tape to just about anything.

In the past few years, keeping track of Gitzo tripods is much like sorting out the iPod product variations– there have been a few lineup changes in just a few years, and the naming convention went through some confusing changes, as well.  So, reading forums and reviews about popular past models and trying to map them to current products (like the classic 1325) can be head-spinning.

The most popular carbon-fiber Gitzo tripods:

Gitzo 3531 (3-section classic landscape carbon-fiber tripod, series 3):   1325 ==> 3530LSV ==> 3531

Gitzo 2531 (3-section carbon fiber, series 2):  1227 ==> 1257 ==> 2530 ==> 2531

Gitzo 2541 (4-section carbon fiber, series 2):  1228 ==> 1258 ==> 2540 ==> 2541

Gitzo 1541T (4-section carbon fiber, compact travel):  1540T ==> 1541T

Confusing enough?  Go with the 3530LSV for heavy-duty support.  The 3-section 1531 is great for a slightly more portable solution.  Add a good Arca-plate ball head and a replacement base plate, and you have a tripod that will last.  Don’t pass up a deal on the classic 1325 and 1227 tripods.  They are by no means obsolete!

One of my favorite coffee beans at the moment is Trader Joe’s Bolivian Blend.  The “blend” label is used because the beans come from a variety of farms.  The coffee is still 100% Arabica beans– no cheapo Robusto beans here!  The Bolivian Blend is a medium-dark roast, and it’s very aromatic and rich (caramel-like).  At $6.50 for a 14 oz. can, this is a great deal for really good coffee.  It’s been my favorite Trader Joe’s coffee so far.

Definitely get the whole-bean version and grind yourself.  Get a decent, low-RPM grinder that uses conical burrs.  These conical-burr grinders ($100) heat up the beans a lot less because they operate at much, much lower speeds (about 500 RPM) than cheaper $30 burr grinders and blade grinders (10,000 to 20,000 RPM).  Less heat in the beans means better flavor preservation in the beans’ essential oils.

Capresso makes a great grinder below $100 (from Amazon):

http://www.capresso.com/coffee-grinders-burr-infinity.shtml

Try the Bolivian coffee!  (By the way, it’s organic and fair-trade, too.)

The Panasonic LX3 (and the similar Leica D-LUX4) is a bit of a clunky “compact” camera in terms of its form factor.  The protruding lens barrel gives the camera an slightly odd, “non-box” shape, and finding a good carrying solution is a challenge.  Personally, I don’t want to carry the camera around in the $90 Panasonic DMW-CLX3 case.   The case is a classic, retro look, but the LX3 is a lot more useful if you can carry it and maneuver it like any other standard compact camera.  Also, the suggested OEM case is not very discreet for street photography.

The best solution, I’ve found, is an $8 Lowepro case.  The Lowepro D-RES 8 is the perfect size for the LX3.  There’s an inner pocket just enough room for an extra SD card and battery.  The D-RES 8 fits the LX3 almost perfectly, and there’s plenty of padding for bump protection.  This case is discontinued, so look for new old-stock on e-Bay and your favorite camera stores.

The best strap for the LX-3 is a hand-carry strap if you want to carry the camera in-hand.  Carrying the LX-3 around the neck seems unnecessary for such a light and small item, and everyone has his/her shooting preferences.  The Olympus adjustable wrist strap (part# OLWASB, $4 at BH Photo) is a great solution for hand carrying.  It’s soft and strong, and it has a an adjustable eyelet that keeps the loop around your wrist when you are swinging the camera everywhere.  Everything feels lot more secure with an adjustable wrist strap!  Let this wrist loop hang out of your Lowepro D-RES 8 case, and you have a really compact carrying solution for $12!

Put the rest of the money you save on batteries for the LX3 since this little camera does eat batteries.  You can purchase an extra lens cap for $8 directly from Panasonic.  Search for part VYF3198 at

http://www.pstc.panasonic.com/EpartR/PartsListChoice.asp

Finding a decent, pinch-style cap for the Sekonic 758 light meter was more of a challenge than I had anticipated!  Major online photos stores (like BH and Adorama) only carried slip-on caps, and finding the right slip-on size can be tricky (need to add 1 to 1.5mm for these small sizes).  Besdies, if you’ve ever had to deal with the slip-on cap for a B&W slim filter, you know that these slip-on caps tend to slip off all the time!  Pinch caps, on the other hand, stay in place nicely.

Much to my surprise, I found a nice pinch-style cap for the 30.5mm thread (on the Sekonic 758) at the local Best Buy.  Sunpak makes a $5 blister pack with two pinch-caps that fit 28mm, 30mm. and 30.5mm threads.  One is a 28mm cap, and the other fits both 30mm and 30.5mm.  The catalog number is LC-2830-BB, and the product line is called “PlatinumPlus.”

Pair this lens cap with a Sigma cap keeper (basically an adhesive cap holder on a string), and you have a great, tethered cap for the 758 light meter or other 30.5mm filter!  Hurray!

Tip: Use the cap included in the Sekonic 758 for the eyepiece/viewfinder side, instead.  Now, both the viewfinder and lens are protected.

Oh, happy day!  Mozilla Firefox 3 now supports color management!  This means color-aware browsing of photos and images in a decent browser.  Windows users didn’t have a mainstream color-aware browser available until Firefox 3.

To activate this breakthrough in WinXP:

1. Install and launch Firefox 3.
2. Type in “about:config” in the URL box.  (Ignore the warning about making custom configurations.)
3. Find “gfx.color_management.enabled” and double-click to set the value to TRUE.
4. Find “gfx.color_management.display_profile” just above the previous entry and point this to your ICC/ICM monitor profile.
5. Close and restart Firefox.

Tip:

• Find your monitor profile in
  C:\Windows\system32\spool\drivers\color

• From Windows Explorer, click & drag your monitor profile into the Firefox URL box, and Firefox will give you the path in “Firefox’ form.

• Example:
  file:///C:/WINDOWS/system32/spool/drivers/color/my_monitor_profile.icc
• Enter this “file:///…” string into the Firefox gfx.color_management.display_profile field.

Enjoy browsing with a color-managed browser!!!  Photos look so much better in true color!

For those of you not using Firefox, go to the International Color Consortium to check if your current brower supports color management.  (IE7 currently does not.)

This is what I typically carry around in most outdoor, walk-around shooting situations:

Lowepro 75 AW top-loading holster bag
(great for dusty and damp situations)

Really Right Stuff Arca-Swiss L-bracket
(for tripod shooting)

Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer (slim)
(for landscapes)

Hoya Pro-1 S-HMC UV filter
(B+W MRC filters work great, too)

Lens hood

Extra compact flash cards

Extra batteries

WhiBal gray-card reference
(for white balance; “studio” size works well)

Allen wrench for RRS bracket

Gallon- and quart-sized Ziplock bags
(for cold-weather and wet shoots)

My favorite walk-around lens at the moment is the 17-55 f/2.8 DX lens. The eventual prosumer full-frame Nikon DSLR with the new 24-70mm f/2.8 lens would be a dream combination, but the 17-55 DX is no slouch!

In ultra-light situations, I just take the 18-200 VR on a D40/D40x/D60 with a few SD cards and an extra battery. All of this fits compactly in the Lowepro Rezo TLZ 20 toploading holster bag. These consumer DSLRs have such great battery life that I could ditch the bag and just put an 8GB or 16GB SD card and go!

In the no-DSLR, ultra-ultra-light situation, I carry the Fujifilm F31FD point-and-shoot gem. One battery and a 2GB XD (yes, XD, blah) card last for a whole day’s worth of shooting. Stop down a little to avoid the dreaded purple fringing.

The list of items explodes for wedding and event shooting. Flash photography equipment sure takes up a lot of bag space! More on that later…

P.S.  Some online stores say that the D60 + 18-55 VR kit lens will fit in a Lowepro TLZ 10.  Unfortunately, this combo won’t fit.  The D40 + non-VR kit lens will probably fit, but the newer kit lens is just a little to long!  Use the TLZ 20 instead.

Shooting spring flowers is a great exercise in composition.  How do you manage the foreground, background, “middleground”, focal point, colors, perspective, depth of focus, highlights/shadows, etc?  Shooting dense flower beds really helps you to explore your compositional style.

I like shooting dense flower beds, in particular, because you need to strictly control the elements that appear in your frame.  Are you going to keep that leaf, the other flower, or the base of the background flower in the photo?  How can you manage the viewers’ perspective relative to the ground and the sky?  How can you make the picture “edgier?”  In particular, how do foreground and background colors change the feel of the composition?

Anyways, I highly recommend visiting your local park in the spring.  You can learn a lot about your own compositional style, likes and dislikes without having to do much trekking!

Yes, the Nikon 18-200 VR lens is a real, compact gem, and yes, it suffers from zoom creep after some use. (In other words, if you point the lens straight up or down while at ~135mm, the lens will zoom in or out because of gravity. The best solution that I’ve found (and there are many out there) is a simple silicone wristband (black). These are the same wristbands that have been popularized by Lance Armstrong’s “Live Strong” campaigns.

Don’t stick tape on the lens barrel as tape can come loose or leave nasty adhesive inside your lens barrel. Thin rubber bands don’t seem to stay put very well. The silicone wristbands are prefect except that they end up covering all the focal-length markings. Using a “clear” wristband solves this issue, but the band looks more like a white band, which isn’t as elegant as black. I use a black wristband and mark off key focal lengths with a permanent market somewhere else on the lens barrel.

A silicone wristband costs about $1. It’s a cheap and elegant solution to a problem that probably should have been corrected in Nikon’s original design.

Stores sell these specialized metal bars that magically wash away garlic oils/scents on your hands. These bars often cost around $10. What’s the secret? They’re stainless steel!

So, you can save yourself counter space and a few dollars by using your run-of-the-mill stainless steel spoon, instead. Why stainless steel pulls away garlic oils so effectively is still a mystery to me. There’s some good chemistry behind this phenonemom, but I haven’t seen a definitive explaination— only speculation…