Re: Boycott Panasonic cameras - forced proprietary battery use infirmware

I doubt Sony would worry themselves over such an issue - after all many
of their cameras already require proprietary memory cards!

 

Swap the card? Do you want that? Not really. You want to
transmit the data!

First, there are solutions like Eye-Fi.

Second, of course you don't want to swap your mobile phone's
card(s) any more than you want to swap (internal) hard drives in
your computer. MicroSD cards are user upgradeable and you
can carry them over from your last phone, but that's it.

You certainly don't want to handle cards smaller than an SD
when you are not sitting at your well-lit, uncluttered desk.
Changing while walking works only sorta with an SD, and just
OKish with an CF. And you'll have a chance of spotting them
when you should drop them, unlike todays microscopic phone
storage devices.

The real solution is to tether your camera to your phone/data
transmission tool. Hence phone cameras. And bluetooth, since
cables are awkward, never around when you need them and prone
to be lost.[1] And docking stations for cameras, tying the camera
to the computer without having to remove the card. And EyeFi,
tethering your transmission tool to your camera. And IP-capable
cameras, remotely over the internet steerable 'web' camera designs.
And WiFi-handgrips for some DSLRs.

-Wolfgang

[1] Bluetooth is widely available in mobile phones, smart phones,
PDAs, netbooks, laptops, etc. Computers can easily be
upgraded to bluetooth. Interfaces for bluetooth should
be all standardized, as I understand it, and usable for
transmitting data. It's also not hampered by the wish for
even tinier memory packages for mobile phones and mutually
incompatible flash memory interface designs.

 

You'll have to explain that to me, I don't get it. How does that
work with the fast & good SD cards I have for my cameras and the
single, just-good-enough microSD I filled with stuff for my phone?

As I see it, to be able to transmit the data this way, I would have
to re-buy all the storage I might need (and currently have in SD
cards) in microSD cards, and that's not "$0.00 additional expense".

A great idea. I even might find them now in the high grass if
a tiny puff of wind blows the 0.4 gramms away --- that gives me
a warm feeling.

Maybe it's my large hands, maybe it's that I am a clutz, but I
don't feel comfortable changing SD cards in the field, how do
you suppose I feel with microSD?

-Wolfgang

PS: Luckily, there are even microSD to CF "converters".

 

Disliking an implementation does not indicate grasping the idea.

You don't pay me to speak for you, so stop complaining.

Good enough. Just don't complain the next time someone tells
you to just do something you and most people are not able to
do competently for some reason. It's your problem, not mine or
anyone elses.

If your real world really needs swapping microSD cards because
no better solution is possible, ever, then that's your choice
and all I can do is wish you the best of luck.

Don't assume everyone will share your 'vision' of the future and
the real world.

-Wolfgang

 

Personal experience tells me someting quite different to your
claims. Maybe you only drive in tunnels. Maybe you should
upgrade your GPS receiver to something sold in recent years.

There are ways to reduce the start-up time to about 0 seconds,
if your clock is somewhere around ±10 minutes of correct.

Most areas are without cell phone coverage.
And that "under trees" claim is spurious, personal experience
tells me something quite different to your claims.

-Wolfgang

 

For many years now GPS units have worked well inside cars with no
external antenna. If the GPS is hand held in the front of the car the
windscreen usually provides enough visibility unless it had one of the
RF blocking heating systems within it.

If your A-GPS uses RAW GPS readings from the cell phone GPS receiver
which is sent off for processing and the calculated location returned
to the phone then it has the same aerial requirements as a GPS. If the
cell phone has a fully fledged location calculation GPS unit then it
has the same aerial requirements as a GPS. If it hasn't a GPS
receiver, or can't currently get GPS readings, and is substituting
cell phone location derived from the cell(s) controlling your phone
what accuracy do you have? It depends on cell density and how
sophisticated it is. The least sophisticated uses the local cell
location. The most sophisticated uses multiple cells if they're
available combined with signal strength as a rather error-prone
estimate of distance to do a very rough approximation to
trilateralisation.

I find that with the systems here (UK) outside cities the error is
measured in miles, and in cities it's in hundreds of yards. It's a lot
better than nothing, but far from good enough for locating a
photograph. What location error do you get? I don't mean the error the
system optimistically hopes it has, I mean the real error it has in
practice

 

I agree. Never had a problem with GPS

That is the same for any GPS

I agree.

What he has said is:-
GPS works except where there is no coverage.
Mobile phones work except where there is no coverage.

More of the world has GPS coverage than mobile phone coverage.
BTW you have to have the right mobile phone... not all can handle all
four of the main systems in use.

You can loose signal GPS or Phone in some conditions. They loose signal
for different reasons. IT often depends on the construction of the
building.

Most camera GPS systems will "freeze" the co-ordinates when they loose
signal. For example go into a building. How accurate do you need the
position for the picture?

 

They are very good and the only time they have lost lock was in a 1/2
mile curved tunnel under a city. Re-lock as leaving tunnel. Otherwise
pin point accuracy. (Car radio also goes in that tunnel)

You must have an old system... it depends where you are and the weather
conditions and the landscape

Lots of places don't have phone cover. The UK is 98% but there are still
dips and valleys that have problems. Once stayed on a holiday park there
was no phone signal 4 miles from town . Mobile phone signals are line
of site from a ground based transmitter.

Great if you live in a flat area like remote deserts where two masts can
cover a far greater distance than in urban areas.

I agree... trees are not a problem

 

I'm curious--what are you using? My etrex Vista loses lock on a regular
basis in Connecticut forests in the summer. Maybe it's time to upgrade
again.

 

[GPS in cars]

If you have bad reception with them, something is wrong ---
and it's not the car.

.... and can be done in post-processing.
News for you: There's at least one commercial offer doing
exactly that. Fix time: 0.2 seconds.
This should be a big enough hint for you to figure it out.

You don't spend time anywhere except mostly densely settled
parts, it seems.

I understand that cell phone reception is spotty in the jungle.
Where, granted, GPS reception is not that easy. Still, people
are effectively using GPS in the tropical rain forrests, as a
quick google will show you.

-Wolfgang

 

[GPS]

Sub-millimeter accuracy is needed for macros.

-Wolfgang

 

Sorry, I need the phone in the meantime. And that includes the
data saved on the microSD. Which is, by the way, nearly full.

Sorry, I am out of cellphone range, the microSD is full after
3 pictures, and I want to make more pictures. No, there's
nothing to delete on the card, sorry, I need it all.

Told you I'd need to buy extra storage.

I also want to continue shooting while transmitting, which
can take _very_ long, depending on location and upload speed.

And then I am shooting RAW + JPEG, and I'll only transmit chosen
JPEGs (because of the size, and because flickr, for example,
doesn't do RAW). I'll still want all the RAWs.

Told you I'd need to buy enough cards. At least 2 and a mobile
hard drive.

Sure, for _you_ it may work great. You just don't get that
not everybody is you. Or uses equipment just like you do.
Or has needs different from yours.

Lost in the dirt in seconds, too.

I see, no additional weight, no additional costs, no additional
hassles.

Good for you! I'd like to watch you changing microSD cards
in high winds on a rocky rowing boat or while jogging through
waist-high grass.

-Wolfgang

 

Garmin Nuvi 660fm

How tall are the trees and how dense? If it is a very tall dense forest
if could have some effect.

 

Now why does that email address look bogus to me?

'as-poor of a speller'?

If you say so ... you must be right, "karl k". But I note
you are unwilling to back your claim with your good name.

I've never been canoeing in the Everglades where I got lost and
needed maps from pole to pole. You must be really inattentive
to come out of the swamps, go south past Cuba, through the
Panama canal and never notice until you are halfway to Cape Horn.

Yes, it's a grand idea to watch a movie (for example "Lord of
the Rings") definitively meant for the big screen on a tiny LCD,
running down your batteries in the middle of nowhere.

You've got great skill in solving problems in the hardest
possible way. Determined, if not necessarily smart.

So anyone who is a good photographer can change microSD cards,
that's what you say?
Wonder what Anselm Adams would think, handling huge view
cameras ...

Good to know that ability cannot be learned nor trained.

Let me put it that way: you'll go far as an orator for an extremist
party, where easy, cheap and wrong solutions are preferred to
understanding the problems or even looking closely.

-Wolfgang

 

I'm sure the US defense department will be very interested in how you
are achieving that with GPS.

 

Or have their assistants to do it. If they're *really* good
photographers.

 

garmin gps units with the sirf star iii chipset work amazingly well
indoors and under obstructions. i know someone who has a bluetooth gps
logger and he leaves it in his glove compartment and it tracks just
fine.

when i was shopping for a gps, i was able to get a 3d fix inside a
department store at a shopping mall (steel frame construction) with no
less than *six* satellites tracking, all with medium to high signal
strength. the older non-sirf star iii chipset gps had absolutely no
satellites. i easily get gps fixes indoors, and not on the top floor
either.

<http://www.gpslodge.com/archives/006739.php>

Both the Nuvi 350 and the Nuvi 360 come with the SiRF star III
chipset, which is very sensitive and recently I was able to get a
signal with the SiRF star III in my basement.

 

a clear view helps but is not required with decent gps units. older
ones do require a clear view, however.

 

They can't use triangulation since the towers don't know angles. They
could do trilateralisation by using signal strength as a rough
approximation to distance. So if there's a building (or your head) in
the way they get the distance wrong. And you can only do
trilaterisation if your phone is being monitored by three towers,
which is far from being always the case. It also only works if the
system provider has set up the systems to do trilaterisation. In the
UK for example, although this is regarded as a desirable system which
system providers should provide, it's not legally mandatory, and most
of them don't. Most of them don't even use the signal strength
differences. They just report the position of the tower your phone is
currently locked into. But that doesn't stop their salesmen from
describing how wonderful their systems might be, and possibly even are
in one or two places, and just happening to fail to mention that
mostly that's not how they work.

That's why I asked you what location errors you actually get from your
phone, as opposed to those you might get if the advised best systems
had been fully implemented and you were lucky enough to be in range
of three towers.

As I said, on my phone in the UK I get miles of error in the
countryside, and hundreds of yards of error in the city.

 

There is a big difference in the under trees performance of the latest
receivers and the previous generation, and another big difference
between those and the antepenultimate systems.

The special problem of tree cover comes from keeping moving under the
trees, and the fact that recovering a temporariliy lost satellite lock
takes much less time than locking onto a new satellite. While under
trees passing trunks and boughs keep losing lock very briefly. That
doesn't matter, because it picks it up again in seconds as you
move. But as you keep travelling under tree canopy some satellites
drop below the rather high visible horzion, and new ones rise. But the
time in between passing trunks and boughs is rarely enough to acquire
lock on a fresh satellite. So after a while you end up with too few
locked satellites and loss of position.

The latest units ameliorate that problem a lot, but can't remove
it. So this tree canopy problem is also highly dependent on usage. If
you keep moving under canopy you will eventually lose lock on all
visible satellites. But if you stop now and then to admire the view
and take a photograph, you may well give the system time to acquire a
new satellite. So fast walkers (or drivers) under tree canopy may get
very bad performance, whereas dawdlers and view admirers under the
same trees may get very good performance.

Of course if you understand how your GPS system works you can get good
location performance in heavily wooded places by stopping every now
and then for a session in which you check out where the satellites you
ought to be able to lock to are in the sky, and you move carefully
around to make them visible one by one through gaps in the canopy, and
acquire lock. Even if there's only one good window through the canopy,
you can walk around under it to catch each satellite one by one. Once
a satellite had been recognised and locked most modern GPS systems can
put up with catching a glimpse of it every thirty seconds to keep
going, more if you have more than the minimum set locked in.

But most people use their GPS units in ignorant auto mode, just as
most people use their cameras