Chromecast - too good to be true?

I’ll admit to being a bit of a gadget fan. These days though, I tend to hold back from the ‘bleeding edge’ in favour of somewhere where the pain threshold is a bit lower. So it wasn’t until last month that I bought a Chromecast device. At under $60 it was a small outlay and, as a consequence, I did less prior research than usual (my bad).

What I wanted was a device which allowed my family to view ‘on demand’ television from the main New Zealand broadcasters on a mixture of iOS and Android devices. The broadcaster’s apps were already available for both platforms but how much better would it be if they could be viewed on the TV. Unfortunately there was a large lump of disappointment waiting down this track.

What I hadn’t understood was that Chromecast only works with specific Chromecast enabled apps. Neither of the New Zealand on-demand apps (TVNZ nor TV3) are Chromecast enabled, nor is Spark’s Lightbox. YouTube is Chromecast enabled, but my smart TV already played YouTube so I didn’t need Chromecast for that. Netflix is Chromecast enabled but this is New Zealand and NZ is not Netflix compatible (yes, I know there are ways around this). That leaves Chromecast in New Zealand with Google Play Movies and Quickflix - an Australian/NZ Netflix style service.

There are quite a number of other ‘novelty’ apps that can cast your picture gallery or a video from your mobile device, but these are simply icing on a rather insubstantial cake. What Chromecast needs to be able to do is cast anything that you can see/hear on a mobile device, and its far from being able to do this on anything but late model Android devices (4.4.4 and above) even then it is a buggy beta implementation.

So, what about this Quickflix service then? Well it sort of works - best from your desktop browser but iOS and Android apps are available. Be warned though, the iOS app only gets 1.5 stars on the App Store and the Android app only 3 stars on the Play Store. Both of the mobile apps are feature constrained and buggy. As for the service, regular media consumers will be disappointed; the $13/month basic service gets you access to a catalogue of either older or unpopular TV series and films (great for catching up with Dr Who though) while the additional pay-per-view Premium service is still not going to give you the very latest titles.

So the end result is that Chromecast in New Zealand is somewhat of a disappointment. Lots of promise but severely lacking in actual application. So, yes, Chromecast sounds too good to be true at the moment. Shame.

Hokitika dreamin'

Just back from a few days in Hokitika. I had forgotten how lovely this West Coast town is; especially in the glorious sun. Plenty of places to go, things to see and great food.

The Otira Viaduct from Death's Corner. The old road (behind the ridge to the right) was a driver's nightmare and this corner was well named. Fortunately the viaduct (finished in 1999) cuts out the worst section of the road - a magnificent feat of engineering dwarfed by the landscape.

View over Lake Mahinapua from "Swimmers Beach" - a 2m wide sliver of sand in an otherwise bush edged lake :-).

Swimming from the jetty at at Lake Mahinapua.

The Carnnegie Library at Hokitika - now used as a museum.

Sunset (nearly) on Hokitika foreshore with one of the art installations.

The only camera I took on this trip was Tillie, the RX100 m3. It was very freeing not having to tote around my DSLR kit and while Tillie's reach at the long end is not enough for wild life shooting, in all other respects she was quite up to the task and produced some wonderful quality files.

Je Suis Charlie

It didn’t take long - the anti “Je Suis Charlie” brigade are now in full cry with “how can you support such a puerile, offence laden, rag like Charlie Hebdo?”

Who knows how many thousands, probably millions, of people have rallied to the cry of “Je Suis Charlie” in the last few days. Are they all Charlie Hebdo readers? Of course not. Most, in the wider global community, had probably never heard of Charlie Hebdo before last week. Few would probably subscribe to the offensive and frequently vile content of Charlie Hebdo.

“Je Suis Charlie”. It’s hard to make an articulate and comprehensive argument in three words. But one thing is clear, the majority of people were not saying, “I agree with Charlie”. Charlie Hebdo it seems was one of the more disagreeable and unlikeable publications to ever get into print.

But “I am Charlie” in the sense that my participation in a free society, my right to have an opinion and to express it, is based on exactly the same rights as allow Charlie Hebdo to exist - despite what I may think of it. If Charlie Hebdo can not speak, then neither can I - Je Suis Charlie.

As the well known saying goes (usually misattributed to Voltaire) “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  - Je Suis Charlie, indeed.

Tillie at the Botanic Gardens

Yesterday, Annette, myself and Tillie went to the Botanic Gardens. It was good to see the conservatory open again (it was closed after the earthquakes in 2011) and to see the new Visitor Centre. This was Tillie’s first real world outing and I was very impressed as to how she handled herself.

The 24mm wide end provides a satisfyingly wide field of view in tight situations allowing this shot of the two-story interior of the main conservatory. While the ambient light shot in a dimly lit exhibit below was no problem, with Tillie deciding that 1/30sec, f2.2 and ISO 125 was the way to go.

Inside the cafeteria Tillie demonstrated her high dynamic range chops by including everything from the brightly lit exterior through to the goodies in the cabinet in a single RAW file, with no fancy post-processing (just Lightroom). Love the ceiling shades and the dappled light they produce - like being under a tree.

On another shot I got Tillie to take 5 bracketed shots for an HDR, which I later merged in Photoshop. However, the results were not as tonally pleasing as the single RAW shot that I also took of the same scene. It would seem that, like the D600, Tillie can manage most high dynamic range shots without any external help.

One of the things I am beginning to appreciate, is Tillie’s ability to get the shot right, it leaves me free to make a grab shot or to concentrate on the aesthetics of the picture and not get distracted by constantly having to worry about camera settings. Of course, if I want a special effect or Tillie isn’t reading the scene correctly then I can intervene with my own settings but why reinvent the wheel every shot?

Why Tillie? Well, there was an English adaptation of “The Little Engine That Could” in which the engine was called Tillie. I think the Sony RX100iii is the ‘little camera that could’, so that’s what I called her.

The Last Camera

The last camera I brought was not a rip-roaring success. It was a Panasonic LF1 - I wanted it as a go anywhere accompaniment to my full-frame DSLR. It seemed to tick the right boxes (very small, RAW shooter, EVF) and the reviews were quite good too. But, in use, it never met my expectations for image quality.

Of course I knew that the LF1 wouldn’t produce full-frame quality (or even close) but I soon found that the RAW files just seemed to lack spunk. Whenever I went to develop one, it felt like I was having to give it CPR with Lightroom, just to get it looking average. It wasn’t just the sensor noise (evident even at the lowest ISO) but a general flatness and lack of detail that no reasonable amount of sharpening or clarity seemed able to overcome.

I don’t think I ever had a frame out of that camera that made me whoop for joy. In the end I just didn’t want to pick it up - it was like having a friend who always turned up at your house feeling miserable; guaranteed to lower the spirit of any occasion. Who needs a camera like that? The LF1 did, however, prove that a camera of this size is a useful thing to have - if only it could produce better images! So my search continued for a compact camera that I would be happy to use when not toting a DSLR. And I am now confident that I have found it.

In the last couple of days, I have processed well over a hundred RAW files from this compact and I am in awe of its capabilities in both general, low light and high dynamic range situations. Perhaps that is why all the reviews unanimously rate it as the very best camera in its class. It’s also almost the same size as the LF1 (just a little thicker).

So, after weeks of research and waiting for the mail man, my Sony RX100 iii is now firmly in my hot little hands (thank you wifey)- this one could be the elusive Last Camera for this aging photographer. Play time!

Taken with the Sony RX100 iii, 1/125sec, f4.0, ISO 125 - RAW file processed in Lightroom.

A short stroll in Infrared

Now that it's post Christmas, we are in stay at home mode until the road madness subsides. This morning it was a short stroll down town before the temperature rises too much. I find it hard to photograph my own stomping ground; everything is so familiar. So, this morning, I took the infrared camera in the hope that a different wavelength might provide some inspiration. Nothing awe inspiring here, just a rather different type of holiday snap.

On our street - white leaves against dark sky

My favourite cafe 

Pearson Park looking toward Mt Oxford

Memorial - Pearson Park

Path in Pearson Park - looks like snow (it isn't)

Maggie Pie taking flight

Across the cricket field to Mt Oxford

Looking East from Pearson Park

I like the way that foliage fluoresces almost white with infrared, while clear sky is almost devoid of IR and turns nearly black. The middle of a sunny day isn't the best time for ordinary photography but it is a great  time for IR.

Scanbot

Usually I download an app to my phone, only to find a few weeks later that I never use it and it ends up being deleted. Some apps like Feedly wheedle themselves into your daily life. But rarely does an app become more and more useful as time goes on. Such an app is Scanbot.

For the last couple of years I have been going paperless, scanning most documents I receive on a flat-bed scanner and dumping the paper. It’s worth it to save collecting boxes of receipts, warranties and bills but it’s a tedious process, especially if I let the paperwork back up for a few weeks.

Then I found Scanbot - Android (free), iOS (paid). Here’s the deal; put your document on a flat surface, hold your phone over the document, pause and the document is ‘scanned’ - actually photographed, squared off, trimmed and saved as a PDF. Multi-page documents are no problem and get combined into a multi-page PDF. Super easy and I can scan documents as they arrive and immediately bin the paper. Scanned documents are automatically uploaded to my Dropbox account (other cloud services are supported).

Then I found another use. Turning the hundreds of old family photos into digital. My digital photo library started in 2001. Before that it is folders of printed photos collected over a few decades of camera toting family life. I didn’t have very high hopes but scanbot, combined with my phone’s 13Mp camera, does a wonderful job of turning the prints into reasonable digital images. Colours are true and, while you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, a few tweaks in Lightroom can often improve on the quality of original print.

The results are perfectly usable for online use and for reprinting at the original size. I probably wouldn’t print larger, but this was from a wallet sized print taken in 1982:

Keeping it simple

Today we did 'simple' - as in taking delight in small blessings; like a drive to New Brighton, lunch at the pier and a short walk on the beach with my lady. There is a certain purity about a spring day, a soft salty breeze and the sound of surf gently breaking on the beach, that erases (temporarily, anyway) the weightier and more intractable obstacles to life. After that we put the car through a car-wash, so we all came home feeling a little fresher than when we set out.

Make like paint

Occasionally I like to make my photographs look a little less photographic and a little more drawn or painted. Over the years I have tried a lot of software to accomplish this with varying degrees of success and lack of. This last few days have been a concerted effort to find which software could produce the best results.

I had previously tried Virtual Painter 5 (now no longer available), Corel Painter (now only available as part of  a $600 package) and a few others that escape my memory (i.e. not memorable - literally).

This time I looked at four packages. I excluded anything costing over $100 as being too expensive for the use I would make of it and ended up looking at:
FotoSketcher (free),
GMX photo Painter (about $50),
Dynamic Auto Painter ($100) and
Snap Art 4 ($100).

First the exclusions;
Dynamic Auto Painter has a lot of people rooting for it. I didn't like the results. I really tried with this software, processing my test picture through about a dozen filters and post processing steps. The results were unconvincing. I also didn't like the way it messed with the colours. While there were detailed differences between the filters, the overall effect was sameness and a lack of differentiation. It’s also an overly complex program to come to grips with. Big fail.

GMX photo painter was much better. There are heaps of controls and, with some effort, good results could be obtained. But to get good results does require a lot of trial and error and patient work with a stylus. Don’t even think of using this program with a mouse! I liked this program a lot and if cost is an important factor then its a reasonable pick despite one or two little niggles (like the painting not going all the way to the top and left edges of the picture). I only really excluded this program because my final choice was just so much better. A free trial is available if you want to give it a try.

I’m keeping two of the programs:
FotoSketcher is brilliant for a free program. It doesn't have as many filters as some of the other programs but what it does have are very flexible. I found the best way to use this program was to produce a few JPGs with different settings and to combine the layers in Photoshop to produce the finished piece. In fact this is the strategy that I use with both my keepers. If you just want to play around and produce some reasonably impressive results then download FotoSketcher and give it a go.

My best keeper was Snap Art 4 from Alien Skin. It’s the easiest program of the four to learn and the results it produces from a single pass are truly impressive. However, produce separate layers for underpainting, body and details to combine in Photoshop and the results really surpass anything else I have ever tried. If you don’t have Photoshop then you can mask different setting from within Snap Art but I simply find using Photoshop easier. This program is a wonderful blend of power and ease of use. It also works as a stand alone program and as a plugin for photoshop, lightroom and other  graphics programs.

Here are my two test pictures (original photos from http://www.morguefile.co.nz/) processed in Snap Art 4 and Photoshop (view full size):

Deep breaths, people

So, it's all over for another three years. We didn't get the government I would have liked, but we also didn't get the government I feared. What we did get was the government best equipped to run the country. Confused?

I would have preferred a competent government with compassionate social policies that could have carried this country forward to a better future for all its citizens. In some people's eyes that would make me a centrist or perhaps a centre-left voter. Unfortunately there wasn't a choice of voting in any leftward direction at this election. The left were united in only one thing - getting rid of John Key. There was absolutely no evidence that having achieved that goal there was any competency to run a country - the bickering and infighting that would have resulted would have paralysed New Zealand for the next three years (if they had lasted that long). New Zealanders didn't vote 'right' so much as they voted for stability - absolutely in line with the New Zealand psychi in my view.

As well as no demonstrable evidence that the left had any cohesiveness, or ability to manage NZ Inc. there was the spectre of Dotcom being behind at least a part of any government. As Dotcom admitted himself afterwards, the Dotcom brand had become 'poisoned'. I think it's a shame that we lost Hone Harawira in the process - I didn't often agree with him but he was a good voice to have in parliament. Shame.

Which brings me to the brokenness of our party political system. Elections should be about policies and the direction the country is headed in. This election had very little about policy; it was about getting elected and stopping other people getting elected - by fair means or foul. The policy debate, as little as there was, was lost in the noise of the bar-brawl. Indeed the little policy there was could have well been characterised as a series of election bribes (from both sides). I think it's time we demanded better of our politicians.

How about each political party being required to publish a couple of statutory documents three months out from an election. The first document is a brief ‘Vision’ document of where they would like to see New Zealand in 25 years time. Let’s set a word limit on that to discourage waffle and political BS. The second document should be the party’s 10 year business plan for NZ Inc., spelling out how they intend to move towards their vision. If we had those two documents we might have a chance of knowing what we were voting for every three years.

Of course coalitions would require compromises but an incoming coalition government  would need to identify which policies from each coalition partner were going to be pursued and publish a revised business plan and vision at the beginning of their term. It’s about transparency of intent and accountability of action. We, the people of New Zealand, need to know clearly what our politicians are going to do when we elect them and to be able to hold them accountable for their actions while in government.

Maybe there are other and better ways to achieve transparency and accountability but it seems to me that requiring our politicians to be clear about what they intend, provides a good basis for both.