Camera to Instargam via WiFi

I needed a break from the angst of my microsoft upgrade frustrations and the Melbourne weather was being itself and changing dramatically everyf ew minutes and going from decent rain to glimpses of sunshine, perfect for seeing a rainbow. So I had my new Olympus OM-D M10iii and the great little pancake EZ lens all ready to capture its first rainbow. Well that never happened!

A real weather mix #janesweather

A post shared by norm hanson (@normhansonphoto) on Jun 15, 2018 at 12:13am PDT

What really  happened was that towards dusk there was a very brief few seconds where the sun broke through the clouds and the clouds turned beautifully but subtly colour. I just had time to grab my camera and take a few photos and then the colour was gone. Back to more grey clouds and darkness soon set in.  Nice

Then I turned on the Wifi in the camera (a really well thought out implementation) which makes the cameras a private Hot Spot. Started the Olympus Ol.share app on my phone, selected the best photo, downloaded it to the phone and clicked the share to instagram feed. I was straight into instagram and able to upload the above image within a couple of minutes of it being taken. Also I am constantly amazed at how good the Olympus jpeg files are straight from the camera (ie there is no post processing of filters applied just the cropping to a square within instagram.)

Travelling without free WiFi

_{Whilst access to WiFi is becoming pretty ubiquitous in most cities and tourist traps. Even if the hotel still charge too much, a trip to the local coffee shop (ok you have to wait a while for that captive log-in screen to load and then given a throw away email address) or steps of the local library will let you get on-line. Some towns like Freemantle have free WiFi zones. (for example this street artist was photographed on my phone and uploaded to Flickr using the free WiFi, elapsed time not even 2 minutes). Could the on-line life be any simpler?}

_{My travel kit, particularly the computer side, has become very small, light weight and portable (all based around the little HP Spectre 2-in-1) and accessories. This leaves the issue that the only way to communicate is via WiFi. Whilst my android phone can be a WiFi hot spot, I also now carry a neat little 4G WiFi modem, which is fast and has more & cheaper data capacity (data over the mobile phone network is still very expensive in Australia) This is great when the hotel are charging an arm & a leg for net access, or there just isn't WiFi available (such as at the beach or a tranquil picnic spot).}

_{However once you get off the beaten track, there is a lot of Australia with no wifi and little or no mobile phone coverage either. Be warned, intermittent mobile coverage is more frustrating for net access than none at all.}

_{So there is silence, the hustle and bustling modern world and social media will have to wait (or not even bother you at all). Life if simpler and you can wander around and just enjoy living. It’s quiet an experience, definitely worth a try, even if WiFi is available try pushing that WiFi slider to the left and turn it off for a day, an afternoon or even a couple of hours and get back to living.}

Free WiFi is great ….but slow …& other self inflicted woes

I’m sitting at Brisbane airport waiting for a delayed flight, and I thought it would be a great time to upload my best three photos from today. Ok there is free WiFi and it was simple enough to get connected BUT as I  was trying to upload to flickr via the web interface, I came to realise that after 10 minutes I had uploaded less than 10% of the files (an estimate looking at the progress bar). There is a good chance that the whole thing will abort because the three files won’t upload before my flight is ready to load. Do I abort and try individually? … or some other anxiety inducing worry. No the first rule of travel is go with the flow. The free WiFi is slow, so I’ll just wait and see what happens. Nothing is really being lost if I wait till I get home.
So the answer to that wait, is the flickr upload ground to a halt. Time to stop worrying and perhaps have a coffee.  Damn the flight is delayed further. Perhaps I’ll restart. …slowly slowly two of the three images get loaded over the next half hour wait. Now the incoming flight has arrived and passengers disembarking. The public service announcement indicates there is a problem and some passengers have to embark via the rear door and that means going out on the tarmac. It’s sure to be me, no big deal so I go to check my boarding pass on my phone (I’m just trying this for the first time).
Bugger the flight has closed off (and theoretically departed) so my boarding pass is no longer valid, and all I can see on my screen is I no longer have a boarding pass. So I join the queue of people with the same problem infront of a very stressed ground staff at the gate. After talking on her radio for a while, she says we’ll have to go to service desk. So the queue moves over there and eventually I get a printed boarding pass. The plane still is waiting to load and a massive queue is waiting to board but still to board via the air bridge and when the boarding actually starts only myself and two other guys walk over to the stairs to the tarmac, our boarding pass is checked and we stroll to the back of the plane. climb the portable stairs and get seated, everyone else is slowly getting through the air bridge crush and the the narrow corridor between the seats and other passengers arranging the luggage, it take a further 20 minutes to load everyone. Why weren’t they listening to all the announcements? Ah that’s right they where listen to their iPods, or watching video of their iPads or just talking on their phones, and probably their frequent flyer apps didn’t notify them because notify is turned off!

The morale of this story is perhaps we expect the always connected and on-line world to be there, work and look after our interests. However we shouldn’t stress when they don’t, just be prepared to go back to the old methods that work (ie Perhaps just wait to get home to upload, use a printed boarding pass, listen to the announcement)

PS: I was writing this as the events unfolded and I was able to update a draft of the text to blogger via my Open Live writer app, but it got hung up trying to upload the images I had capture on my phone & PC to Google Photos (low bandwidth issues same as flickr uploads mentioned above). So I had to be patient uploading this blog post as well.

Discovering the simple elegance in chromecast-ing

I must admit I had been ignoring Apple TV, streaming, chrome casting and such. Unlike the supposed typical Australian net user I don’t use such technology to download pirate videos of the lastest TV show from the USA. So I am late coming to the wonderful little chromecast dongle. Rather than playing with streaming video, I came across the wonders of the chrome cast as a way to avoid cables and incompatibilities when giving a presentation (or training session) directly from my computer. What it can do is allow you to throw your screen onto any modern TV and most data projectors without a cable. Thus avoiding resetting screen resolution, cables not long enough or other such hassles. The TV, Big screen or projector just needs a HDMI input and most recent equipment will come with this. You just plug in the chromecast dongle into the HDMI socket (it generally needs to be connected to separate power supply, a charger is supplied with the dongle but any powered USB port is fine).

There is a downside, you need to have WiFi, both to set up the the chrome cast at a new location and carry the stream from your screen during the presentation. Most venues these days do have internet & WiFi but if they don’t and If you have a smartphone that can create a local hotspot that will be fine for running a powerpoint or a live demo of software. Perfect for a travelling trainer. However it could be a very expensive way to stream cast a full movie from somewhere else on the internet, depending on your phones data package.

You can broadcast from your phone or tablet via special apps, and you probably already have some of these. For example the You Tube app on android will direct the YouTube clip to your chromecast, no need to download it first. Google Slides, can make a slide show presentation located on google drive directly controlled from your from your phone (and yes it can read powerpoint files). The real power lies in the ability to send the contents of any chrome browser tab, to the chromecast, and thus big screen it is connected to. The current version also has the ability to send an application output or your entire screen (these later options are in beta release and can be a little laggy at times). So as long as you have a chrome browser you can send anything you can get on your PC screen onto a larger presentation stage. All without any fuss.

I also like the backdrop (aka screen wallpaper) settings on the unit which lets you use your own pictures from Google Photos, Flickr (or facebook if you must) or just stick with the google selected photo as a slideshow screen saver.

Surviving in the Low Band Width and occasional free WiFi

A pleasant evening in Bandung

Its been almost two decades since I’ve been to this part of Indonesia. Back them I took slides and had to wait till I returned home before I could send then in for development and another week or so till it got back. Now with a digital camera the expectation is to have an image instantly and transmit it globally instantly.  Its not quiet like that what was once a beautiful mountainous area with clean air free from the tropical closeness of the coast is now constantly hazy and the traffic becoming very Jakarta like. Its still a very interesting place BUT internet connections are somewhat hard to fins and the occasional Free WiFi is overcrowded and so slow. Seems eveyone has a smart phone these days in Indonesia, and very few if any have apple logos) , You could also pay exorbitant rate for international roaming but the speed won't be much better.

The solution is simple go back to the old way be patient, dont try and post (or at least wait till you get to the Singapore lounge and good free WiFi.')


This has prompted me to rethink about the fact that some many of the trends in tools for digital photographers are on-line, or as the first step an upload. (Google’s Autobackup and the Flickr’s Uploadr have been going frantic in the low band width. Dropbox has released it should just wait.) I’m quiet happy doing it the old fashion way, but I do carry a laptop that can be my place to upload and edit photos, Trying to access those on-line tools and subsription system are just a real hindrance, I'd rather spend my time wandering around on a pleasant evening.

Me!bourne By Night by Phone

I tried out a little experiment as I was in the city to go the princes theatre to see “The King & I” which was a great production. Anyway on the way the wet city streets begged to be photographed but I only had my phone. So I took a couple of  photos with HDR Camera+. Next as I waited for the train home I played the Pixlr app creative filters to make the image on the right and then I created a blog post, using a Blogger android app, expecting to be able to utilize the WiFi at the station. However after a lot of non action and spinner on the screen I eventually got a message that the server wasn’t available. However when I got home the photos where already on my Dropbox recent uploads, so dropbox worked just fine.

 

 

HDR Camera+ 2,  Dropbox 2,  Pixlr 1,  def Android/Google Blogger 0

Sharing DSLR Photos on the Net via Low-Fi

You actually don't need a lot of extra hardware, or fancy WiFi Cards to be able to upload your photos from existing DLSRs or compact cameras. If you have a smart phone that uses Mirco SD cards, and perhaps a healthy bandwidth/data upload limit for it. Here is a very simple and inexpensive (providing your on a good data plan), albeit not so high tech, way to do it.

• Make sure you have an SD adaptor that your mirco SD card slots into (reputable brands are generally sold this way)

• Use the micro SD card inside its adaptor in your camera (the camera will treat this as an normal SD card)

• After your have taken the photos, take the SD card & holder from your camera and remove the micro SD card
• Insert The micro SD card in your Phone.

• Upload the photo to the Social Web, Flickr, FaceBook, Google+ etc.

More about WiFi and photo uploading

Most keen photographers know about Eye-Fi cards, I haven’t got one but I understand they do the job, are perhaps a bit slow and need extra software and drivers on the receiving computer. Then there is the cost which is between 3 to 8 times the equivalent memory SD card and there are some issues of compatibility. Now there is a competitor, Toshiba has announced a new FlashAir wireless LAN SD card. It works somewhat differently to the standard Eye-Fi approach, when the camera is tuned on it becomes a WiFi hotspot and all you need to download photos (or any files) is a browser. So you can access the photos from a wide range of devices, including smartphones. Looks like it will be a similar price to Eye-Fi for the FlashAir cards here in Australia, This Engadget review view explains more.

Post Processing in the Age of Coffee & Free WiFi

The time taken from image capture to world wide sharing can now measured in seconds, and the most amazing part is that this is likely to be free, or only at a small cost. You may have to buy a coffee to get the WiFi free.The hardware to do this is pretty common now as well. Smartphones with camera and Ipads are in so many people's hands and a common sight on cafe tables. There are also Eye-Fi cards for DSLR and some camera manufactures are adding android processors to some models (eg Polaroid, Samsung & Nikon but these are definitely not low cost yet!). However transferring the photos is just part of the story for a lot of digital photography addicts, who really want to do at least a little post processing. Fortunately here the story is also cheaper (if not free) and faster.

A Multitude of Apps

I know the apple-verse is overwhelmed with solutions here, but I’m dragging my feet joining the party. Clearly instagram is the most popular but the apple store is awash with photographic apps. I’m more familiar with the android market, and google play also have plenty to choose from. If up have an android phone I suggest you check out Aviary, Snapseed, Pixlr Express, and/or Photoshop Express all free to download. I also love HDR Camera+, which does the processing and sharing “inphone” (no computer or other software required)

My USB Digital Darkroom

I have been carry around a universal card reader and USB key with some photo portable apps in my camera bag or a while now and they have been real life savers on several occasions. These do need a cyber cafe;s computer or your laptop to connect into but you can get very close tom if not as good as, photoshop and lightroom level work with portable apps like Gimp Portable & Raw Therapee Portable just from an application that doesn’t need to be installed!

On-line Photo Editors

There are now many places that let you perform decent post processing on full size images from a web browser, so you probably want to have your netbook or laptop connected. I personally like Aviary for Google Drive (a chrome app) but Pixlr is damn good as well.

There is really no reason why you can’t take a great photo, then collect your thoughts over a coffee while you tweak it into being a true masterpiece and have it published on-line before you leave the cafe. However please use this new power wisely don’t choke the available bandwidth with copycat blandness or fill the social end of cyberspace with banality and imitative junk.