Indo China impresses with wifi

I have been traveling through Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam the last few days. I had gotten along my iPhone to keep in touch with friends and family while on the road. 5 days into my trip, I am pleasantly surprised at the abundance of free wifi hot spots that have allowed access to my iPhone.

In Kuala Lumpur, both the airport and the train to the city center had wifi. So did the Siem Reap and Saigon airports. All the hotels have wifi as part of their service, even the small ones. I am at the train station at Danang right now and have connectivity enough to post this. All without paying an extra dime.

Not bad eh?

In-camera photo editing - more than a gimmick

When I started exploring my DSLR camera (Nikon D90), I thought that I would not have much use for the in-camera editing options. I had invested in Lightroom and figured that Lightroom would cover all my photo editing use cases. A couple of web searches indicated that many in the Nikon / photo community considered the in-camera photo editing to be gimmicky.

However, I have found the in-camera photo editing to be handy for quick retouching and emergency use. I was recently on a trip with my sister who took some shots of me using one of the pre-set modes (Portrait) on the camera. Since my camera is set to RAW, there was no JPEG version of the images available. On returning home I wanted to show one of these images to some friends and family on something larger than the camera's LCD display - Nikon's RAW format wouldn't display on the computer at hand.

The in-camera editing options came in handy. The original of the photo displayed above was somewhat underexposed. And since I had used a "neutral" white balance setting, the colors of the head dress were muted. I was quickly able to fix the underexposure and change the white balance so that head dress colors popped, right on my camera. I was also able to crop the image and eliminate some of the distractions in the background with the in-camera photo editor. Finally, I could convert the image to JPEG and upload the same to Flickr.

You can check out the results on a larger copy of the image here. Not bad for 60 seconds of work eh?

De-mystifying Lithium Ion Battery Care

While reading "Mastering the Nikon D90" recently, I came across a recommendation in the book that asked users to recharge the battery whenever it went down to 25% power. Since the recommendation ran counter to the urban legend of "completely discharging and recharging" a battery, I thought I'd investigate the topic a bit. I came up with the following do's and dont's that some of you may find useful.

Do's

1. Lithium Ion batteries do not suffer from the memory effect. So you can charge them anytime without waiting for it to discharge down to 20% or less of capacity.
2. Use the battery regularly.  As a corollary, you may want to buy batteries only when you are ready to use them, rather buying and storing them for possible future use.
3. Keep the firmware on your device updated - developers may have optimized your device to draw less power. (The last two recommendations are from Apple's iPhone page.)
4. Fully discharge (~0%) the battery and then fully recharge (~100%) approximately every 30 cycles. However, do not fully discharge the battery and then store it for an extended period of time. You may not be able to recharge it!
5. If you are storing a battery, keep it at 40% charge in a cool place, say in a refrigerator - but not the freezer! (The last two recommendations are from Battery University.)

Dont's

1. Don't continuing charging a battery after it has attained a full charge.
2. Don't expose the battery to extreme heat or direct sunlight. Be aware of the green house effect in your car or home.
3. Keep the batteries warm on cold days. When you are ready to use the battery on a cold day, you will have more of the battery charge left if you have kept it warm. (The three points above are from page 249 of the Nikon D90 user manual).
4. Don't frequently discharge the battery completely.
5. If possible, don't charge or discharge the battery at a high rate. For example, you may be able to avoid a high discharge rate in a camera by reducing the use of the LCD screen. (The last two recommendations are from Battery University.)

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Nikon under-documenting the D90 SLR

After years of shooting with a film SLR and a "point and shoot" digital camera, I finally graduated to using a Digital SLR late last year with my purchase of the Nikon D90. However, given that modern day digital SLRs are significantly more complex than their point and film SLR brethren, I ended up using the D90 as a very expensive digital point and shoot. The myriad configuration options on the camera seemed to be a complete mystery. The stock manual that came with the camera explained all the buttons and menu options but rarely helped me take better pictures. My confidence in my ability with the camera could not be worse.

A year after my purchase, I decided to buy a book to help me figure out the camera - in the hope that the effort would lead to better pictures. I bought and quickly read "Mastering the Nikon D90" by Darrell Young. This books is a guided tour of the Nikon D90 with suggestions on getting the best of the camera for specific situations. Having read the book, I have a much better understanding of the D90's capabilities, than I did from reading the manual. Consequently, my confidence in handling the camera has sky rocketed. Initial results are encouraging (see here for a larger version of the shot accompanying photo).

I finally understand how best to setup the camera for a post processing work flow with Adobe Lightroom, how to shoot pictures using the histogram displays for correct exposure, hot to use the advanced AF system for static and moving objects and how best to reduce vibration for sharp photos. I even ended up experimenting with shooting video using the D90 - while I already knew, that the D90 could shoot video, I didn't think that getting the video to display on my Samsung HDTV would be as easy as it was - it literally took just 30 seconds to set it all up!

Given how versatile and effective the Nikon D90 is, and how efficiently beginners like me can ramp up on its features with a little bit of hand holding, I am surprised that Nikon does not include "Mastering the Nikon D90" (or similar book) as part of its standard kit. I have to imagine that customer satisfaction would be way higher if consumers had an easier time unlocking the various camera features.

I wish I had realized the need for a book other than the manual a year ago when I first bought the camera. So many memories inadequately captured...

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