Why not carry a pocket size GPS device ....... like my Garmin GPSMap 64s
........ and every time you snap the shutter click the GPS and record
another way point location accurate to the fifth decimal place of lat
and long. I haven't gone wrong yet !
jh
On 8/31/2015 5:42 PM, Moose wrote:
On 8/31/2015 1:45 AM, Jez Cunningham wrote:
MANY thanks Moose. It's certainly the zoom range and EVF that
interest me,
but also the gps
This is my third compact camera with GPS - and my third
disappointment. (Well, by #3, I wasn't expecting much.)
All of them work fine - once they figure out where they are. But
there's the rub. They all seem to take half a minute or longer to
figure that out, sometimes a lot longer. And that's even if it's about
the same place as last time, just a few minutes before. I had the same
thing with the i-gotU geotracker device I used to use, so perhaps it
is just the way of things with stand alone GPS reception?
With the i-gotU, it didn't matter much, as it has its own battery,
which lasts many hours. I could just start it up at the start of a
visit to somewhere photogenic and let it run. I would often forget to
turn it off until someone in the evening asked about the flashing
light in my shirt pocket.
OTOH, neither i-gotU nor the cameras I've used is any good for the
casual, unexpected shot or three, pulling the car over or pulling the
camera out while walking. It just takes too long to start logging.
With the cameras, the GPS seems to eat battery life faster than I
would like. I don't know why this is so. The i-gotU looks to have a
small battery. My iPhones always seem to know where they are without
killing their batteries. That may be from using cell system and WiFi
to help get close?
On that note comes my own practice. I ignore the camera GPS and use my
iPhone. I use free GPX Master, (YouNeedaMap works, as I imagine other
apps may, also) to make GPX track files. Yes, it uses battery faster,
but has much less effect on phone battery life than the camera GPSs
have on their batteries. Almost always, GPX Master is logging
locations within a handful of seconds of starting. If I start it the
moment I've taken casual pics, let it run for a few points and stop
logging again, I have the location nailed down close enough in time
for geocoding. Or I can leave it logging for a few hours when actively
photographing.
GPX Master passes the files on to DropBox, which uploads when I have
WiFi, and they appear on my desktop. I was using free GeoSetter on
Windoze to geocode files; it's a nice program, but for anyone using LR
to catalog their images, it is even slicker at geocoding from GPX files.
When I have my wits about me, I carry spare camera batteries and a
small phone charger battery, so perhaps none of this should matter too
much. But I don't always remember, and waiting for camera GPS to
orient itself drives me crazy ...
and wifi.
The Panny WiFi and at least the iThingie app for it are quite nice.
Same one for all their cameras with WiFi, a bit slicker than the Oly
app, although.
While of course wanting to improve IQ. I had forgotton that site
with the size comparisons - useful...
It's certainly bigger than the S95. In DPReview's preview of the S110,
they consider the RX100 as competition, and it's about the volume,
slightly different shape, as the ZS40, and the ZS40 still fits in my
acceptable range. So it's pretty personal.
IIRC your file naming convention, it indicates the use of Focus Magic
more-or-less every time.
What you are seeing there is a record of post downsampling
resharpening, not of what I did at full size. No, I don't necessarily
deconvolute all my ZS40 images in post. At a guess, it would be less
than a majority, but I'm just not sure, as I've not done a large
number at once for a while.
Did you also find the sweet spot there like you did with the S95 and
just use it habitually?
Nope.
And how do you find the battery life? (with gps and wifi it could be
very short)
I don't think I've ever had a camera where I could be sure of a full
day's shooting activity on one battery. The 300D and the Oly Pens
came/come closest. I as a matter of course get a couple of spares,
with charger, if necessary, and try to always carry them when carrying
the camera. That said, the ZS40 has pretty decent battery life with
GPS and WiFi off. OTOH, the batteries are cheap and tiny.
I don't know how much WiFi affects battery life. I've only used it on
the ZS40 to see that it works. I know it's good for tripod work with
long shutter speeds from using it with other cameras. And I imagine it
could be useful for various kinds of candid/stealth shooting, but I've
not yet tried that with it.
I should say again, as I've said before, the the ZS40 is a good light
camera. The lens is slow, esp. at the long end, and IQ deteriorates
badly above ISO 400. The S100 lens is only a tiny bit faster; may be a
little better at ISOs? I just don't recall, and could only compare to
the S100.The S100 had all new imaging components from the S95, lens
sensor and processor, so the ZS40 might even be better at IQ than the
S95.
Nattering Moose
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