First observation – babies are heavy. I mean, ours is only rated as a 23 pounder, but man, water for 3 plus the pack plus the camera plus one lens ended up somewhere in the 60 pound range, I’m sure. Now, I know I’m out of shape for this kind of thing, but my stars.

Second observation – the superzoom lens and camera did okay for where we were. I put it on ISO 400, program mode, and just let it go. This is after all, what it was meant to do. The 18s are a little warpy and fade more than I like in the corners, in the middle it looks pretty good actually, and on closeups it just looks average. The contrast is never great, the colors are not wonderful but not bad, and it’s just not a sharp lens; but I didn’t really expect it to be. I’ll reserve speculation for later in the article. Once we got near the top, I switched out the 18-200 for the 12-24 to get the view from the top in. I did a quick-n-cheesy pano spin of the view for stitching once we got home, recovered my breath, showed the kids San Francisco, Oakland, and our house in San Jose all from one view (nice!) and then we turned back for the shade and refreshing downhill walk to the van. (See July08 folder on www.smurfless.com for more/bigger.)

Third observation – the 12-24 is a nice lens for tripod work, but on the D2x, it’s just not fast enough for shady walking shots. I should have switched to auto-ISO or gone to ISO 800, but I didn’t, and that cost me some none too good shots of us descending. Honestly I don’t miss those pictures, but it did reinforce my geeky desire for the new D3/D700 generation with all the extra ISO horsepower they hold. It also reminded me that for day tripping, I should just switch to my auto-ISO custom setting every time instead of thinking I’d remember to adjust. I was too busy trying not to have a stroke.

But a new camera would knock my 360 precision template out of line, I must not succumb. I must resist! But I am weak. I may be able to wait until the next generation comes out, but it’s hard to say. At least the D2x continues to work, where my D1x just plain ate batteries like candy. The D2x is still after all this time a reliable beast, and 12 megapixels is quite a big image for all its perceived weaknesses compared to newer cameras.

So part of why I’m rattling this off is that I wanted to compare this to the ounce-counting camp. Am I really getting a chance to do something better for the what, 5 pounds of extra gear I’m hauling with me? I’ve seen decent pictures come out of point-n-shoots, and what I’m doing is essentially the same work, but the images are bigger, more clean, and believe it or not, easier on the eyes. I’m certainly getting more exercise, but is it worth it? I guess that’s subjective, but I certainly got a couple shots I’m happy I took with a decent camera. Once the kids can carry themselves, I can easily see carrying a tripod with a light ballhead as well, although perhaps not my 360 Precision. And while I liked having the full range of the zoom, I think I’d only use it on scouting for “real pictures” using heavier lenses and a tripod, because I’m just not happy with it as a fine picture lens. I feel that the far cheaper 28-105 gives far sharper pictures although without the fun VR and -S suffixes. The contrast is better, the falloff is about the same, and the images are just plain sharper. Plus it feels lighter. Maybe I’m nitpicking, but I think next trip I’ll just go with the 28-105. And besides, once I get a full frame camera, the 28-105 remains a full-resolution lens. And it’s cheaper. It’s hard to argue those if you’re shopping.

So, I think it’s time to either hand the VR off to my wife who would probably get full use of it and then sell off the other two lenses she has (kit + 70-300 junker) or just sell it and not disturb what she has going. Either way, I think it’s not going back in my kit. I think I want a medium telephoto that doesn’t suck, which I hear the 80-200 f/2.8 is the answer to.

1. Create a new PTGui project.
2. Add your bracketed shots.
3. Turn on Advanced.
4. Skip everything until the HDR step.
5. Go to the Panorama Editor window and use the “Fit to picture” thing that clips off as much black as it can.
6. In the HDR tab, set it up the way you want. I like my contrast at about 20% for this shot.
7. Skip to the Preview/Output steps as you normally would.

This just saved me buying an additional piece of software, and I’m honestly quite pleased with the result. Thanks guys!

1. “Vacuuming” the database made Aperture many orders of magnitude faster. I was honestly shocked when I realized how slow it had gotten. Something that took care of this occasionally would be nice.
2.  Many tasks that take a long time should be “backgroundable”. Put it in the little spinwheel dialog and make it disappear from the UI. Like exports.
3. Some tasks aren’t even cancel-able. These should also be put in the spinwheel dialog.
4. A way to rapidly add captions across many images would be nice. I believe I’ve mentioned before that I now use an applescript to do this for me, but a more polished way would be welcome.
5. Getting focus in and out of the inspector pane is painful currently.
6. Images imported from removable media are very quirky. Often the volume names are wrong and need to be reconnected immediately.
7. TAKE CARE OF DUPLICATE IMAGE IMPORTS FOR ME. Stupid to have left this off. If you don’t want to make a decision yourself, delegate it to the user.
8. Barring the option to not import duplicate images, offer the option to detect possible duplicates, both in binary and by content (resolution independent duplicate detection).
9. Make date/time adjustments the same as any other metadata adjustment. Or, in fact, make it better. Won’t upset me.
10.  Simplify the folders thing. Blue vs. Brown is confusing and undocumented at best.
11. Add output network sharing, even if it is the previews.
12. Simplify the thumbnail vs. preview vs. original differentiations and document the differences better. Default to previews off and unmaintained.
13. Making the Aperture preview library be the iPhoto library would simplify a home user’s life.
14. Publish and maintain color profiles for your book publishers, Apple. The fact that this is not done now is truly shameful. Professional level my foot.
15. Permit vaults on network shares. Not everyone wants to connect a firewire drive every night. This feature is useless to me until this is available. I’d rather back up the whole machine.
16. Don’t rebuild the projects when you restore a vault. That’s what you just told it to do – restore. It should be restored.
17. Get rid of the alert when combining keywords. It’s confusing and rather pointless.
18. Make the “you’re going to delete something” dialog more informative.
19. Help make the difference between “versions” and “masters” more obvious on the screen. For instance, if you open a project and look at all the images there, and move one to another project, you’re moving the “master” and that version. If you move an image from an album, you are only creating a version in another project for a master in this project. And yet if you go into an album and modify the version there, you are also modifying the “version” that is shown out in the top level of the project.
20. Come up with a “move” concept within projects – like the book UI’s option to only show unplaced images, but showing images not in albums instead. Rather a low priority, I learned to just create many smaller empty projects with the subfolder names I wanted and move the “primary versions” instead.
21. Let AppleScript do more. Adjusting the selection, delete versions, delete masters, vacuum the database, consolidate to my network drive, etc. I already have a smart album that is called “Delete Me”, all I’d need is something that would consolidate those masters, and then delete them when I run the script. I know data loss liability there is high, but give me an option to make my home-sync easier.
22. Optical media output. C’mon. It’s cheap and relatively painless to put a snapshot of a project on CDs/DVDs and then shoebox it.
23. I realize this is an outside type of request, but exporting images to panorama software is goofy because the external editor application setting is designed around exporting one image at a time. Multiple image export to external editors would help this kind of thing.

I still love Aperture, but this kind of thing would make it oh so much easier to manage.

One advantage was that I was home and during my waking hours I was able to get to the photos marked “Edit”. I corrected about 600 white balance issues, some low-degree rotation fixes, converted some really bad color screwups to B/W, and took that off my todo list. I’m about a year of pictures away from being current, and I’m looking forward to the bus ride tomorrow, where I’ll probably get most of that done. I’m still in my ratings run. I also did a small number of mosaic-panoramas taken before I had my panorama head. Some turned out much better than previous attempts to stitch; the change in panoramic stitching software over the years is quite visible.

I did try doing month-to-month rating instead of full-year, and I’m not sold on either. The month-to-month effort interrupts me too often, but I can tell clearly where I left off. I think for the remainder I’ll go back to yearlong rating.