The Boston Globe’s “The Big Picture” has some wonderful images of this year’s Tour de France.

Ouch.

Seeing the UI in action across several tasks, not just in a highly controlled presentation, shows how awkward and unsophisticated it is — I had the same feeling you get when you got a movie based on a great trailer, only to discover that all the good stuff was in the trailer and the rest of the movie was a mess.

Love it! I’ve been saying I want Safari to sync its open tabs to the iPad and iPhone. Hopefully Apple implements this pronto.

Jeffrey Friedl, author of many excellent Lightroom plugins, has posted an interesting article on Lightroom’s JPEG export quality settings. They’re not what you’d imagine, of course, or it wouldn’t be so interesting. One of the highlights is the quality comparison widget he uses to illustrate his findings—Lightroom should offer a similar preview to assist in the selection of a value.

Pike U-Turn Air 454, originally uploaded by Stmpjmpr.

I’m not the kind of person who thinks that photographs should always represent “reality” as it was when the exposure was made. But there are cases when it’s important that the photograph represent a scene fairly to the viewer. That might mean that it doesn’t look exactly as it was, but the viewer gets the mood and tenor of the scene in a way that helps them understand the situation. Here’s a case where that should have been the goal, but The Economist’s photo editor asked for changes that seriously undermined the reality of the scene. Too bad, too, because it hurts photojournalism when something like this happens at an otherwise excellent source of news.

Great essay. I completely agree that Apple’s attention to detail and ruthless exclusion of that which it doesn’t feel is up to its standards are reasons that their products resonate so well with consumers. Android is good, and as the article points out, getting better. It just hasn’t gotten that detail right to the point where I’m ready to switch. Also good is the point that phone makers aren’t particularly good at software and that hurts their phones, even with Android.

Erik on Manzanita-001, originally uploaded by Stmpjmpr.

Great ride!

At dinner with Erik and Elizabeth at Hola Restaurant in Belmont.

Everyone who watches TopGear knows the turns on its test track by name. Now they’ll be able to drive the track themselves in the upcoming Gran Turismo 5 (when it finally comes out, that is). In any case, this will be fun, and is almost worth the $60 or whatever for the game by itself.

Fountain, originally uploaded by Stmpjmpr.

dailyshoot.com/assignments/229 : “Refresh from the summer heat today. Make a photo of water in motion. Freeze it or let it blur!”

Rotor, originally uploaded by Stmpjmpr.

dailyshoot.com/assignments/227 : “Make a photograph of something circular and crop it within a square frame.”

I’ve mentioned Clik Elite’s bags here a few times, and I keep coming back to them even though I haven’t yet found one I truly love. The reason for that is that they’re targeting people like me who enjoy active sports like mountain biking and want to take their photography gear along to capture their adventures, but it’s hard to fit my fairly niche requirements precisely. I’ve purchased the Compact Sport, the Small Rangefinder Chestpack and Medium Nature in the past, although I sold the Compact Sport after determining that it was a bit too small for my needs. They’ve since introduced a size that’s supposed to be a bit bigger than the Compact Sport and yet not the behemoth the Medium Nature is: the Probody Sport. I’ll probably order one of those and try it, as it seems to be perfect for what I’m interested in for biking.

Another kind of bag I’ve been looking for is one which I can use as a carry-everywhere bag. I want something that, I hate to say it, is a techno-weenie man purse. I want to have a pocket that can accommodate my iPad and MiFi and some camera gear. When I started keeping an eye out for such a thing, I had my Panasonic GF-1 in mind, so it could be pretty compact. Then I came across a Clik Elite bag I hadn’t seen before: the Traveler. I seemed to be right up my alley, although it appeared to be potentially big enough to carry be Nikon D700 (without the MB-D10 extension) and a standard lens, so I ordered one.

The Traveler gives a good first impression. It’s smaller than I pictured in my mind, which is a nice surprise, since I’m used to getting a bag that’s bigger and heavier than I expect. That said, it’s just a tiny, tiny bit too small in some ways and a little too big in others. The first thing I tried was putting my iPad in the front pocket. It fits…barely, without the DODOcase I’ve been using; I can live with that. The small pocket on the front is clearly built with an iPhone in mind…perfect. The front flap covers the iPad pocket as well as some smaller pockets for a pen, business cards and other miscellany. These pockets can accommodate the MiFi, although not perfectly. Again, close enough.

The real question is: How well does it suit my desire to carry camera equipment? The answer, once again, is it’ll do what I want, but not perfectly. The D700 fits, but it’s tall enough to make it hard to close the zipper, and I’m a bit worried that the top might be pushing a little hard on the iPad. Not enough to worry a lot about, but if I smacked the bag, the eyepiece of the camera might provide enough of a lever against the iPad to cause concern. Since I’m considering this as my everyday bag, it’s the biggest problem I have with the bag.

As I said, I initially had the GF-1 in mind for this bag, although being able to carry the Nikon would be great. The inside compartment of the bag is sort of too big for just the GF-1, so I don’t consider it optimal for that purpose either, sadly. I normally use a LowePro SlingShot 200 AW as my grab-and-go bag; here’s the Traveler next to it for comparison.

I don’t have a bottom-line on the bag yet. I’ll play with it a bit more and carry it for a day to decide if I’m going to keep it. I’m also planning on heading to a local shop to try out a quite different bag: a ThinkTank Retrospective 10. It’s a traditional camera bag, but might be a good candidate for a daily bag too.

Hmm. The find a ride feature is a no-brainer, and a welcome addition to a service that has been iterating and improving on a consistent basis since I started using it earlier this year. Flagging hazards sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but the description of it on the blog is off-putting to me.

Having a warning on a route that there’s a hazard there is a good idea, but stopping the competitive features of the site because someone flagged it? A hazard for one person is a feature for another, and reporting a hazard as “abuse” to get it removed seems clunky too. I’ll have to see it in action to say for sure, but I’m not thrilled with it as-described. Besides, this is something that needs implementing now? There are a ton of other features I’d like to have higher on the list, that’s for sure. I wonder who was asking for this.

Hot!

As an example of how this handy feature works, when photographing a ball game with a player on first base, a photographer can prefocus on second base, lock the focus into the memory, then focus on whomever is up at bat, follow them (using Focus Track) to first base, press the Memory button again, and snag a sharp photo of the first player sliding into second base. When shooting fast action this feature can prove to be priceless.

Great idea.