The part it attaches to I know, it is the immobilizer. It does not come packaged with it however.

Thanks in advance.

Ignition with trim piece missingTrim piece itself

Trim piece "installed" (IE losely put back in place, tabs on back are broken. On the immobilizer that it attaches to they are intact)

However, another small taste of the Grand Canyon pictures.

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

We got back from the Grand Canyon to find two kids who managed to thoroughly tire out their Grand Parents and might be a little sad that Mommy and Daddy are back (after all, Grand Parents are always more fun ). We took tons of pictures at the Grand Canyon. My count was 8 rolls and 284 pictures and my wifes was ~500. Roll 1 is scanned and 4 rolls are developed. My goal is to finish the first 4 rolls this week and the other 4 rolls next week and be totally done, blogs and all before labor day weekend. Sadly slow going, but its a lot to scan and process. For faster updates, see my wife’s blog http://talesoffruitandcake.wordpress.com/

A note, for those with film cameras especially, its always a good idea to periodically compare notes on light meter accuracy. Especially with OM cameras. I don’t know what silver oxide battery behavior is near the end of life of the battery, but with zinc-air the voltage is pretty steady until the very end, when it drops…but consider the several month life span of the batteries without heavy use, and the batter may be working, but the meter inaccurate because of low voltage for several days up to a couple of weeks. I recommend either relgiously replacing the batteries monthly (they are cheap) or periodically checking the accuracy. It was about half a day in to the trip when I noticed that my Sekonic light meter readings were about 2 EV higher than my OM-1 readings. Replaced the battery in the OM-1 and the readings were nearly identical. Goes to show, check the accuracy periodically. Downside, I should have checked earlier and then half a roll of pictures wouldn’t be 2 stops overexposed.

First up will be the remainder of my Shenandoah trip and then Grand Canyon pictures. As a note, we didn’t manage to do Havasupai. The backpacking trip down Bright Angel and back up was just too hard. If we had a day, or better yet two to recover we might have managed, but we were just too burned out and sore.

Here is just a very small taste from the Grand Canyon trip

Zuiko 50mm

The trail is nice, though not horribly scenic, only because the trail is heavily forested with few breaks through the trees. There were a few views and it is a nice trail however.

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Split trail, Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 100mm f/2.8

Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Skyline drive, Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

 I still have a handful of negatives from the trip to scan, all of them from Skyline drive (the last picture above is the only one from Skyline that I had a chance to scan). I’ll scan them tonight, but they’ll probably have to wait for a future post. Tomorrow my wife and I leave for the Grand Canyon and Vegas. I am feeling just a wee stressed on all of the packing that is left, getting the house ready for my in-laws to come and watch our kids for a week, etc, etc, etc.

On the photography end I’ve settled on the following. Sigma 14mm f/3.5, Zuiko 24mm f/2.8, Zuiko 35mm f/2.8, Zuiko 50mm f/1.8, Zuiko 100mm f/2.8, Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm f/3.5, OM-1 and OM-1n, my tripod, red 25a filter, GND filter, polarizers, 5 rolls Kodak Ektar, 2 rolls superia 400 (for night photography), 4 rolls Fuji 160s, 3 rolls Ilford XP-2 super. The OM-1n will be loaded with B&W film and as a backup body. My wife will have her Olympus E-PL1 and 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 and about 24GB of memory cards.

Day 1 is the arrival in Vegas and drive out to GCNP south rim. Day 2 is exploring the south rim topside. Day 3 early we break down the tent and hike below the rim down to Bright Angel campground. Day 4 late (~4pm) is break down the tent again and hike back out (probably to arrive around midnight). In both cases this is to minimize the heat of the inner gorge while hiking (forecast is for 104F at Phantom Ranch while it is a balmy 84 on the rim for this trip). Day 5 break down the tent, pack up the car and drive to Havasupai reservation and hike to Supai falls and camp. Day 6 is hike back out and drive in to Vegas for work/relaxation. Day 8 my wife flies home and Day 10 I fly home.

At the moment I plan to leave the 35, 70-210, tripod and the OM-1n on my suit case in the car for all of the backpacking trips on this vacation. However, the OM-1n and the B&W film my come along depending on final pack weight and for Supai the tripod may as well; again depending on pack weight and how my feet are doing after the Bright Angel backpacking.

I’ll scan and post as quickly as I can, but it’s going to take a while as I won’t return until 8/19 and it’ll probably be a couple of days to get all the film developed and a couple of weeks to scan it all.

As I promised a flood of updates and posts are a coming. I got back from my backpacking trip to Shenandoah National Park on Sunday. It was a blast. I also learned a few things for my upcoming Grand Canyon backpacking trip. I was using some new gear on this past trip, so I needed to both “break it in” as well as figure out how it fits in to my load out for trips. Also I rarely go backpacking when it is really hot out (I hate the heat). Biggest lesson, less is more. Next biggest lesson, dehydrated meals have improved a lot in the last 10 years since I had one (I normally pack “real” food that I cook, but not this time around going ultra light).

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro

Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro

Also I have my Zuiko 100mm f/2.8 page up with lens test shots, though the real world shots are coming once I finish scanning all of the film from my backpacking trip. Speaking of, my Grand Canyon photos are going to take a while and probably several posts to get up. I average about (1) 36 exposure roll of film scanned and edited per night, sometimes I can blitz and fit in 2 rolls of film. On the trip I’ll be taking 5 rolls of Kodak Ektar, 3 rolls of Ilford XP super, 2 rolls of Fuji Superia 400 and 4 rolls of Fuji 160s. The Ektar and Ilford are going to be my “first use” rolls with Superia for night-time exposures (star trails, etc) and the Fuji is for if/when I run out of the other rolls of film (I will have a 2nd camera body for B&W). So if I actually use it all I am looking at around 2 weeks straight of scanning and editing to finish.

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

Zuiko 24mm f/2.8

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

Here are pictures from my first roll of film, mostly from Sesame place (my kids are lucky to only live 2hrs away) as well as the weekend of the 4th of July.

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

Tamron 28mm f/2.5

 

Tamron 28mm f/2.5

 

Zuiko 50mm f/1.4

 

Zuiko 135mm f/3.5

 

Tamron 28mm f/2.5

 

Tamron 28mm f/2.5. Jack is an Elmo kind of guy, but Henry reserves his love for Cookie

 

Tamron 28mm f/2.5.

 

Tamron 28mm f/2.5

Impressions of the 100mm f/2.8 so far are that it is visually the twin of the 85/2. Its identical in length and barrel diameter to the 85/2 and the front element is effectively the same size. Its an ounce or so lighter and of course longer focal length. I don’t have any results from shooting with film with it yet, but I did a few test shots with my wife’s E-PL1. Conclusion, very sharp wide open and it doesn’t improve much upon stopping down (not much to improve on). Of course near the edge of the projected image it might be softer, the E-PL1 is only imaging from the center half of the projected image. Still impressive to me that a lens made for 35mm film does so well when it is effectively magnified by x2.

Center of image, 100% pixels, f/2.8 and f/11 images. 2 second shutter delay, tripod mounted E-PL1. Exposure is slightly different between the two images, so ignore that (f/11 was accidentally underexposed about 1/2 of a stop

I am heading out on a backpacking trip this weekend, possibly a solo trip as participants have been dropping like flies lately. Also still not entirely sure where I am going. Originally I was going to go up Old Rag in Shenandoah NP, but I looking at a different trip in SNP or possibly else where. My backpacking kit is pretty up in the air, but my photography kit is set in stone. I am taking my Nova mini bag, 24/2.8, 50/1.8 and 100/2.8 as well as 3 rolls of 160s and what I have left in my camera of the current roll (about 10exp left).

I am getting ready for a backpacking trip to Shenandoah national park to hike up and around Old Rag mountain as well as along parts of the Appalachian Trail next Friday till Sunday. After that it is getting ready for my Grand Canyon and Las Vegas trip. Work has me going to a conference in Las Vegas, and since the airfare is already paid and the hotel (for the part in Vegas) is also paid, I am extending the vacation and brining my wife along. We are going to fly in August 10th, drive straight out to the South rim of the canyon. Thursday is going to be spent exploring the rim. Friday before dawn we head down Bright Angel Trail to Bright Angel campground to spend the night camping there. Saturday we hike back out late in the day. Sunday morning we drive to Havasupai and hike to the campground near the falls. Monday we hike back to the car, drive to Vegas and spend Monday evening through Friday in sin city relaxing at night and (for me) working at the conference during the day.

So not only should I have tons of pictures to share, whether you want to see them or not (I assume you do if you are visiting my blog, or at least my blog posts, and not just here for the camera and lens information), but I should also have more camera info. In anticipation of both of these trips I’ve decided to simplify and lighten my kit, as well as making it more relevent. In the past I’ve taken my Lowepro Nova micro AW bag with an OM-1n, Zuiko 24mm f/2.8, 50/1.8 and 135/3.5. I’ve found with most of my backpacking destinations the 135 is just too long for most of my photography so a better kit would include my 85, which makes my whole bag heavier and there also isn’t room for all that in the Nova micro bag. So I finally convinced my wife (which wasn’t hard) that I needed to get another lens. Needed is a strong word, but “wanted” and I think “will benefit” are better terms. So I bought a zuiko 100mm f/2.8. It hasn’t shown up yet, but pre-backpacking trip I plan to do a bunch of testing with it and pre or post trip I’ll have a page dedicated to it with lens tests, etc up.

A new part of my lens tests is going to be testing the lenses using my wife’s E-PL1 for those interested. I have the adapter, my wife uses some of my lenses on her camera occasionally, and there are lots and lots of people using OM lenses on 4/3rds camera. I mentioned it awhile back with my wife getting her E-PL1. I’ve realized that my photography isn’t simply limited to Olympus OM cameras and OM lenses. Now they are my favorite, but I’ve faced the reality of a very busy father of 2 (and maybe father of 3 eventually, no, nothing on the way). Developing and then scanning film takes WAY to much of my time, and frankly the on going cost of film is a bit annoying. So eventually, probably 2-3 years from now, I’ll probably be going digital for at least 90% of my shooting. I’ll still do some film and still use my OM cameras (and still wish someone would come out with a digital interchangeable back for OM cameras). But, more likely than not around 2-3 years from now (I am thinking 30th birthday present) I am really going to look at investing in/buying a used Canon 5d, or if the price has come down significantly a used 5D Mkii. In large part to continue using my Zuiko and OM mount lenses on the camera and also in part because I crave, want and need a full frame camera and view finder. Anything less would greatly diminish any joy I have in photography.

So anyway, this has been a long post just to say I have nothing substantial to share, but that I will soon. Check back soon.

For those photographers out there in the digital world and to a degree just people who own a tablet (iPad or other) that does not have a card slot, I decided to throw together a post of “How do I post pictures to the web” (for a blog/personal/site/sharing/backups/etc). Also some ideas of how to expand storage on your tablet that doesn’t have a built in card slot.

A while back I decided that having only a 16GB iPad 2 was a bit of a limitation. Not a severe one, but on the occasional long trip to the in-laws, vacation, etc having only 16GB of storage space can be kind of limiting. Especially with two young children who sometimes want to watch (or need to be distracted by) a movie on Mommy or Daddy’s iPad. Once you figure in Apps, there is only maybe 10GB of storage on either iPad give or take a bit. That works out to maybe 10hrs of video…which sounds like a lot, until you figure 3-4 movies for the kids (for ANY kind of variety), a couple of movies or shows for Mom or Dad for something we want to watch…and suddenly you are out of space. Fine for a weekend away, not so fine with no internet connection and a week away from home.

Then my next “conundrum” was that the only way for my wife to blog, at least easy way to, was to lug her 17″ laptop with her to load the pictures from her E-PL1 and then up to the internet. No card slot on the iPad (thanks for that Apple).

So I decided to look for a way to expand storage. Seeing as how I am huge in to IT (its literally what I do for a living) it only took me a short while to settle on getting a used mobile hot spot. Internet access on the go isn’t a huge deal for us, and is expensive (I am NOT paying ~$50 a month just for the couple of times a year I am parted from the internet for more than a day or two straight, and pre-paid mobile access tends to not be very good, or has very tiny data limits). So I didn’t really care about the actual network, just about the hot spot features (WLAN, card slot, GPS, etc). I settled on a Sprint Overdrive for a couple of reasons. It supports up to 5 concurrent connections over 802.11b/g WLAN, WPA-2 encyption, has a micro SD card slot (max 16GB cards) and has a built in GPS. Best of all, used ones can be found on Ebay for $40 (cheap = good).

My next issue was that my wife’s camera uses SD cards, not micro SD cards. No problem since most micro SD cards come with an SD card adapter. However, fast micro SD cards are blisteringly expensive, and it is almost impossible to find anything faster than class 6, where as it is easy and cheap to get class 10 SD cards. So the hunt was on for a cheap SD to micro SD adapter. Yes, that is right, SD to micro SD. I found one through the following website Dealextreme.com. It is basically an SD card holder with a ribbon cable and dummy micro SD stub on the end of the cable. It works great as micro SD and SD are pin compatible, just a miniaturized version.

Then it was on  to the software end of things. The only reliable and decent application for iPads is File Browser, at the time of this writing a $3.99 app. Sadly not free, but it is very robust. The application allows you to connect to an SMB/CIFS network share on your local network, and the Sprint Overdrive has an SMB server baked in using the micro SD card slot for storage. You can transfer files too and from your iPad using the program and also stream music and videos. It isn’t blazing fast, but it will manage around 1MB/sec, more than enough to stream even HD video and not too painful to transfer images.

That out-of-the-way the next step is getting the pictures from your iPad to the internet. There are a few ways to do this, but I chose to use Adobe and their Photoshop Express app (free). Through Adobe Photoshop website you can create an account with up to 2GB of online storage. Plenty for backups of some key images or for blogging, web use, etc with some maintenance periodically.

For the non-photographically inclined, or for those that want other uses, you can, as I mentioned before, use the Overdrive or another hotspot with a card slot to stream music and video to your tablet if you don’t have a card slot. The overdrive will stream a couple of standard definition video streams without a hiccup using File Browser (I haven’t tried more than 2 SD video streams, but it should have the bit rate to manage 3 or 4 concurrent ones). The Overdrive also has a GPS that is very accurate. If it has an internet connection it will automatically map your location using Google maps, Yahoo, Mapquest, BING and I think one other one. If you don’t it’ll still give you Latitude and Longitude coordinates to 4 decimal places and will tell you how many satellites it managed to connect to (with 6 satellites it saw on my back deck it plotted my location to within about 5m accurately). With no internet connection you can use a regular old paper map, or download an offline mapping application like Gaia Maps. The SD to micro SD adapter is also useful for those who do have a card slot, but that is only Micro SD and they want to use full size SD cards in their camera. Its convoluted, but I bet if you looked, you could find a CF to micro SD or CF to SD and then use that in the micro SD card slot if you camera uses CF cards and you don’t want to use an SD to CF converter.

So here are the images and some quicky overviews.

SD card, SD to micro SD card adapter and Sprint Overdrive with card slot cover open. The Overdrive is about 3.2×3.2in and .75in thick and weighs about 6oz. Note, the hotspot has a vinyl skin on it, it’s normally glossy black with a Sprint log on the top.

SD card in converter and converter in hotspot.

In the File Browser application viewing the contents of the SD card. On the left hand side you see a “Remote Files” column. This is the name/IP address of the file server you are connecting to. You can configure this on the Sprint Overdrive using the device’s admin tool, as well as security, view GPS coordinates and a number of other options.

Once you click on an image it’ll bring it up to view and, if you want to copy it to your iPad you just hit copy, navigate to the local folder File Browser has created and hit Copy Here to copy it locally. If you want to copy it to your “Camera Roll” on the iPad, which means the image is accessible to any application on the iPad (crucial for uploading it to the web) when viewing an image on the upper left hit the drop down and “Copy to iPad Camera roll” is an option. With movies and other files, such as music and books, media can be streamed by clicking on the file, or if you want to copy it locally click on the blue and white greater than icon on the right of the file to select copy and then go to the File Browser local folder and hit Copy Here. Again, off the Overdrive it isn’t blindingly fast, only about 1MB/sec in an uncluttered wireless environment, or about 10 minutes for a full SD movie to copy. A faster network hard drive attached to my router on my local network copies at about 1.1MB/sec (about 4.5MB/sec wirelessly to my wife’s laptop, about the same over the Cat 5e Gigabit network I have) and my home file server does about the same 1.1MB/sec, so its a limitation of either the iPad, or probably a combo of that and the File Browser application itself since the file server will hit 115MB/sec average transfer speeds over wire, or 10MB/sec wirelessly. The Overdrive will write to the micro SD/SD card at about 1.3MBsec connecting wirelessly through my wife’s laptop (which has an average speed of 9MB/sec down and 4.5MB/sec up with its 150Mbps 802.11n connection to the home network).

Next, Photoshop Express application. When you first pull it up you have a colorful background and 4 options along the bottom, click Online. For your first time create the account and then using a flash enabled tablet (curses Apple!) log in on line to the account to set it up. There may be a way in PS Express application to create albums and set permissions, but I haven’t found how to. So you need to create any albums and their permissions through the website, and that portion requires flash to do it. Once this is done using the PS Express app login online using your account information.

Once logged in, then select the share icon on the bottom right to actually upload photos. Then select the intuitively named “Select Photo” icon in the middle of the screen.

It’ll bring up a blank screen with a listing on the right hand side of all of the pictures in your iPad’s Camera Roll. Select the photo your want to upload and you get this screen. Then select the PS Express icon on the bottom left (not the Facebook icon in the same area).

On the left side you’ll see all of your albums and your library pop-up. If you don’t want to have to manage the files online (requiring Flash a no-no on the iPad) then you need to have created a public Album already, then just select that album, and hit Share. Depending on the size of the photo it’ll take 4-15s to upload, click Sharing progress to see if it is chewing on it or not.

Once you are done you can click on the Online icon on the bottom to bring up your library and albums for everything you’ve upload to check to make sure they made it. It is also the default screen once you’ve logged in initially. Make sure it is there, and then you are on to the Photoshop website.

When you create your account it will give you the option of selecting what URL you’d like to use for your gallery. It’ll appear as http://_______.photoshop.com, just choose something that is memorable to you and not used already. So navigate to this, if you choose a public album you’ll see a screen a bit like the one above, if it is set as private then you’ll need to login first. Then select the album the pictures are in (no flash needed).

Click the image you want, and in the case of an iPad double touch to get the Save Image or Copy option, and select copy. That’ll copy the URL to the image. Now head off to whatever webpage, Blog admin tool, etc you have and paste in the URL and you now have a brand spanking new image up on your website, blog, facebook, etc. Do this for each image.

So sure, this isn’t the fastest, easiest thing in the world. It’s a far cry from slapping the memory card from your camera in to your desktop/laptop’s card reader or hooking the USB cable up, and if you wanted to you could just buy the camera connection kit for your iPad and skip the step of buying a hot spot and needing to deal with a paid 3rd party app to then copy it. However, the camera connection kit (new) it is about the same price (less than $50 total not including memory card price) as this other hardware, is bulkily attached to the dock connector on your iPad, which makes it poor for streaming anything for any length of time. Even if you go with the camera connection kit, this will give you an idea of some of the steps you go through to post pictures to the web (there are a few other programs out there other than PS Express that will allow you to upload pictures to their hosting service, I believe Shutterfly has one, I think there is an app or two for Picassa, etc, most are paid apps though).

A tablet is not a great productivity tool, but it can be used as such in a basic way. They are, as of now, with what they have on tap, a great media consumption tool and great for certain types of casual and even a bit more in depth video game playing. With the right knowledge and a little perserverance they can be a productivity tool though and they do allow you, if your needs are limited, to leave much larger, heavier and more power consuming hardware at home.

It’s a longer more drawn out process to go through. However, if you are trying to travel with a minimum of gear, but still want to post images and a netbook isn’t your cup of tea, or doesn’t do other things that you want it to (its isn’t as portable or small as a tablet, doesn’t have a touch interface, etc) then this is a good guide on how to leave your laptop/netbook at home, but still get your images up on the web while on the road, or on site. PS Express supports a few basic photo manipulation tools, and for a small cost adds a few others ($2.99 I think adds noise reduction tool and a few others) to tweak your photos before uploading.

In the end however, I have gotten the darned thing subdued and dancing to my tune. It does everything I want it too and more. Nice and low power, fast and able to multitask like no ones business. It was a nice feeling the other day to see it streaming a movie to the living room’s media player, to my wife’s laptop, to my computer all while backing up some files from my PC to it at about 80MB/sec and seemingly not breaking all that much of a sweat.

This isn’t actually apropos of nothing. If you are a photographer and either scan your negatives or just use a digital camera, IE you have digital copies of your pictures, you should really consider backups. I like to think since I scan my pictures that my negatives are the backups for my digital copies (or vice versa). However, I know if I somehow lost the digital copies I’d be pretty devastated. It wouldn’t be the end of the world (unless the physical negatives went as well), but it would be a lot of work evaporating. I still haven’t scanned every roll I’ve taken (only up to my Honeymoon, so about a years worth of negatives still to be done); however, that still means that I’ve scanned well over 100 rolls. Maybe over 200 rolls total. At probably 60-90 minutes a roll to scan and quicky edits that comes out to something like 100-300hrs of work I’ve invested in digitizing my pictures. Even at just minimum wage that is hundreds to low thousands of dollars worth of work I’ve put in to them.

So even if you don’t have the expertise to build your own file server or don’t want to purchase a ready-made one, at the very least get a nice external hard drive (or two!) that can handle backups of all your files. This doesn’t handle off-site backups in case of something truly tragic like a fire or break-in, but it at least protects against a hard drive failure or electrical surge (probably, especially if you only connect the drive when you are doing back-ups) or for that matter accidentally deleting a file.

So this has been a long way of saying, with this off my plate, not trying to sell my house any more (for a year or so anyway) and no major house projects, the only thing sucking up my time are little things like two young children and a wife .

I do have a tiny little camera related bit of gear showing up soon that I am going to play with and of course report on. It’s a Janco Omni-bounce for an Olympus FL-20 flash. I don’t happen to own an FL-20, but I do have an S-20, which is identical in dimensions and pretty much all functions (the FL-20 is a tad taller because of a taller hotshoe).  So fitment shouldn’t be an issue. It should be a nice way to diffuse the flash and for reducing the power for when I want some nice wide open, but close in shots. It’s only a few bucks through Amazon.

Also there will be a new addition to the family. My wife (open secrete) is getting an Olympus E-PL1 for her 30 birthday later this month. She has been wanting a dSLR for a while for higher quality images, more control over taking the pictures, more lens options, faster focusing, but also wants something small to fit in the diaper bag easily. An interchangeable lens camera (instead of a dSLR) fit this to a T. She just happened to like the E-PL1 the best after trying a few others ones. She has even requested a lens adapter to use my OM lenses with the camera (hubby is so proud!)

On an unrelated note I have, I think, finally decided that I do really need a dSLR at some point. I love my OM cameras, immensely, but scanning and then cleaning up film has just gotten to be a pain. I like film, but there are so many hassles associated with it (at least for me and my limited spare time). That said, don’t expect me to stop using my OMs, and certainly not my OM/zuiko lenses. It won’t be any day particularly soon, but I do plan on picking up a Canon 5d or 5d MkII one of these days soon (and by soon I mean probably in the next 1-3 years depending on price at the time). Really my budget is maybe about $1,000 when the time comes which can pick up a 5d these days if you bargain hunt and maybe in a couple of years might mean a 5d MkII.

I should have some new pictures to share, soonish. Maybe by the end of next week. Its only taken me 7 weeks to get through the roll of film