Intro to Technocamography

I am quite certain that many, if not most serious photographers are not getting bent out of shape at the price of the latest Nikon, but there is a growing number of people who own and use expensive cameras, photographic gear, and software etc. more or less just because they enjoy the experience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that and if given the chance I would probably join right in. However, a subset of those in this group take their photographic experience very seriously. These individuals are generally much less concerned with photography and much more concerned with taking pictures. In this category performance, speed, megapixels, newness, and yes price are everything -not because they are needed to take the picture but because they define the art of technocamography. In short, for lack of a better term or definition, I have defined technocamography as: the serious discussion, evaluation, and use of the latest in photographic equipment; generally concerned with technical aspects and infrequently with artistic value or substance.

This is indeed where the conflict starts. Photographers and technocamographers come at a similar subject from very different angles and for such a long time have been forced to believe they must agree to both be valuable to society. Now I hope we can finally come to the realization that there are two groups using photographic equipment; both are valuable although they are considerably different.

Why photographers need technocamographers

It may not be obvious but technocamographers are actually very important to photographers. Here is just a short list of reasons why.

1. Technocamographers generally buy the newest equipment right when it’s introduced and most expensive. This provides the most income to the companies producing the equipment which in turn allows them to do their research and produce products of value and interest to photographers.
2. Technocamographers fuss and fume about every little detail often posting comments on blogs and sending emails that (while a bit tiresome to photographers who take it a little less seriously) sometimes do cause manufactures to correct errors in their equipment.
3. When a new version or model is released they often sell off their old equipment to photographers at reduced prices.
4. Technocamographers put new equipment through strenuous tests and find all the quirks and glitches and possible solutions before many photographers buy the new equipment. A time and headache saving service that all photographers should be grateful for.

All this is great but for some it may be difficult to determine whether you are truly a technocamographer or a photographer. To make it a little easier I have posted a few things that may help you decide.

You may be a technocamographer if

• You have the latest version of everything. -No out dated software; all camera models are currently produced, no lenses are out of production or replaced by an updated version.
• You visit Nikon Rumors at least daily.
• It is impossible for a new product to be released by “your camera company” and you not need it for some project.
• You take your photographic experience very seriously. No equipment should ever malfunction, be inconvenient, or create imperfect images. If any of the above occurs it is unquestionably the fault of the manufacturer of your equipment and you will voice the problem as loudly as possible.
• Under no circumstance would you consider using and “old” product even if it better suits your needs.
• You read about, comment on, and discuss photographic equipment issues, rumors, and fixes more than how/where to actually take pictures.
• You critique the technical aspect more than the artistic aspect of your images.

You may be a photographer if

• You buy most of your equipment second-hand or substantially after its initial release date.
• You are more or equally concerned about the artistic content of your images vs. the technical quality.
• No matter what happens in the field you can always just pull out the old one and do it the old fashioned way. And more often than not -some setting is just messed up and the equipment is working fine.
• You enjoy reading and commenting on how/where to take pictures more or as much as keeping track of the latest equipment quirks, rumors, and releases.
• You sill use film of any sort.
• You routinely use out of production lenses, cameras, or other products because they work best for you.
• You sometimes find that the latest equipment release does nothing for you so you ignore it.

I admit I am definitely a photographer -all the images in this post are multi-frame panoramas taken this fall with a Nikon D1x and stitched using Photoshop CS2 and it will most likely be years before I can afford better. But I really do appreciate all that technocamographers do for us. The one thing that I think many of us as photographers would like to say to all the technocamographers in the world is -go embrace technocamography as your own, setup your own websites, comment on your own blogs, argue about the value of the multifunction button and the price of the D3X… just don’t bug us about it and think we should understand the relevance.

I thought there must be a fairly easy way to display the shutter speed as a fraction so I set out to see if I could find a solution.  I quickly found out that while php does a fairly good job at math, very few people must need to convert decimals to fractions.  A google search shows a few attempts with varied success but nothing that would work conveniently for the job at hand.  I dropped some of the shutter speeds into Excel to see if I could figure a convenient function to do the conversion and as it turns out, it didn’t take me all that long to figure it out… Unfortunately for me, I’m a biologist -not a php coding expert so please forgive any glaring errors and I won’t tell you how may times I had to hit the reload button on my browser trying to figure out the correct php syntax… (I’ve got to buy a book on php… any suggestions?).  Here is what I figured that seems to do the trick for me.

Starting with the code from Sarah.

<?php echo "<li>Shutter Speed: " . number_format($imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed'],2) . " seconds</li>\n"; ?>

It occurred to me that the decimal could be converted to the denominator like so.

<?php echo (1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']) ?>

That’s nice, but because shutter speeds can be several seconds long I had to combine it with an “if” statement to separate the ones that needed to be displayed as a fraction and the others that needed to be left in the decimal format.

<?php if ((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']) > 1)
{
echo "1/";
echo (1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']) . " second";
}
else{
echo $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed'] . " seconds";
}
?>

As it turns out, a few of the shutter speeds (from my camera at least) don’t turn out to be perfect whole numbers (e.g. 1/45 = 1/45.000045 etc.). The decimals can be easily trimmed off with the number_format function but then what about those shutter speeds of 1/1.5 or 1/2.5 that the camera likes to dish out on occasion?  Ever since I started working with if statements in Excel I’ve always used the stone soup principle -and it always serves me well (you do remember stone soup… don’t you)(“it’s good… but it would be better with some carrots…”).

Long story short; here’s the code that worked for me (and my camera).

<?php if (!empty($imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']))
{
if ((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']) > 1)
{
echo "1/";
if ((number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1)) == 1.3
or number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1) == 1.5
or number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1) == 1.6
or number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1) == 2.5)
{
echo number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1, '.', '') . " second";
}
else{
echo number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 0, '.', '') . " second";
}
}
else{
echo $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed'] . " seconds";
}
}
?>

[Update: NOTE: the if (!empty($imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed'])) function is required to prevent a PHP "dividing by 0" warning message if the shutter speed field is empty. ]

Finally, combining it together with the if statements that check to see whether a field is empty or not and all the rest that creates the table currently displaying the EXIF data on my site I get something like:

<?php if (is_attachment()) : $imgmeta = wp_get_attachment_metadata( $id );
	echo "<table class=\"exif\">\n";
	if (!empty($imgmeta['image_meta']['camera'])) echo "<tr><th>Camera:</th><td>" . $imgmeta['image_meta']['camera']."</td></tr>\n";
	if (!empty($imgmeta['image_meta']['focal_length']))echo "<tr><th>Focal length:</th><td>" . $imgmeta['image_meta']['focal_length']."&nbsp;mm</td></tr>\n";
	if (!empty($imgmeta['image_meta']['aperture']))echo "<tr><th>Aperture:</th><td>" . $imgmeta['image_meta']['aperture']."</td></tr>\n";
	if (!empty($imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']))
	{
	echo "<tr><th>Shutter Speed:&nbsp;</th><td>";
		if ((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']) > 1)
		{
		echo "1/";
			if ((number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1)) == 1.3
			or number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1) == 1.5
			or number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1) == 1.6
			or number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1) == 2.5)
			{
			echo number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 1, '.', '') . " second</td></tr>\n";
			}
			else{
			echo number_format((1 / $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']), 0, '.', '') . " second</td></tr>\n";
			}
		}
		else{
		echo $imgmeta['image_meta']['shutter_speed']." seconds</td></tr>\n";
		}
	}
	if (!empty($imgmeta['image_meta']['iso']))echo "<tr><th>ISO:</th><td>" . $imgmeta['image_meta']['iso']."</td></tr>\n";
	echo "</table>\n";
   endif;
?>

I hope this is helpful.  So far it seems to be correctly displaying all the shutter speeds that I've tried -though I haven't tried every last one.  You can see the code in action by clicking the picture below. Let me know what you think -Enjoy!

I don’t know how people went about things in the past… but there are a few things that have helped me tremendously in securing the permission of several landowners to work in what looks like some really great areas.  I thought I would post them here.

1. www.maps.live.com – Ok, so on the surface it just looks like Microsoft is trying to keep up with Google… but try the “birds eye view” around a major US city… it’s a little scary… but very helpful if your looking good bat hangouts.
2. www.whitepages.com – How do you look in a phone book you’ll never have in a place you’ll never live for people you’ve never heard of before…?  Thank goodness for this web service… The reverse phone # look-up  works too… it’s occasionally even correct.
3. water.usgs.gov – Did you know you can get real-time data on stream/lake/river levels… maybe it doesn’t make much difference to you… but it’s pretty helpful if you plan on standing in the middle of one.
4. maps.yahoo.com – I know everyone knows about online directions already -but they can be incredibly helpful if your constantly heading to places you’ve never heard of before.  The reason yahoo is my personal choice at the moment is their maps seem to load much faster than others and I like the way you can just click and drag to adjust the desired path of travel.  But a word of caution here -trying to follow online generated directions through a major downtown area can leave you a little turned around… use with adequate backup (sometimes called a paper map).