Monthly Archive for September, 2009

GPS Logging: Going straight through walls

Man, feels almost like in a post office these days. The i-Blue 747 GPS Logger arrived at our offices today and is put to the acid test right away. The little bugger is able to record up to 150,000 way points. Depending on your pre-determined log interval that’s enough for more than a day in the field. In connection with a bluetooth-enabled notebook or mobile phone you can also use it for GPS navigation.

It comes with software that allows you to configure it and download the recorded geo data. While it took me three attempts to get the software running and to detect the device connection, configuration of the logger itself was fairly simple. For the beginning I set the logging interval to 1 second and every 10 meters. And since we want to use it to tag our photos with GPS information, I grabbed the camera and the logger and went for a little walk. Important note: You first need to make sure that the clock in your camera is matched to the clock of the logger. Syncing of your photos to geo data is solely based on time.

So I went around the block and downloaded the recorded data via the software that also allows you to immediately draw a path in GoogleEarth. At first glance I’d say I had a blood alcohol content of at least 0.2 percent and bashed my ahead against the wall several times. Well, I better zoom out and look at it from a high altitude, so the path looks not so staggered anymore. Obviously measuring accuracy has some room for improvement. But what about geo-tagging of my photos?

The i-Blue’s software itself is not capable of photo tagging. So you first need to save the gps information to a file – you can either choose between saving it to Google’s .kmz-format to load your path into Google Earth, or .nmea-format. For now we need the latter one.

I’m going to use Copiks PhotoMapper, a free software to match your photos to your gps log file. It is simple and rather self-explanatory: Choose “Import GPS Data” from the menu to load your .nmea-file. It will immediately draw your path on a small map. Then choose “Import Images” from the same menu and open the photos you want to tag. Again, the software immediately does its job, matching longitude and latitude to your images. That’s it. Now just select all images and save them into a .kmz-file.

You can now load your .kmz-file into Google Earth…. et voila, there you have it: your tagged photos! Guess what, it doesn’t look too bad. In fact, almost each one of them is placed at the right spot, some more, some less. But overall it pretty good. Now if deactivate your zigzag path no one will ever notice any measuring inaccuracy. Hooray! Click here to download the .kmz-file from my little test and have a look at it for yourself.

by Alex | September 29, 2009 | 0 Comments
Equipment

Even more abandoned malls

German online magazine einestages (“one day”), a part of Spiegel Online (the online department of Der Spiegel) published an essay on the decline of the American shopping mall. And while the few images they dug up aren’t particularly noteworthy, the article itself is worth a reading and provides some insight into the so called “mall archeology” of people who write up their tours and impressions of empty hallways and abandoned stores on websites like deadmalls.com. Please note that the article is available in German only.

If you like to view some photos I’d rather recommend Brian Ullrich’s photo essay “Dark Stores”, which has been featured here just recently.

by Alex | September 29, 2009 | 1 Comment
Inspiration, Links, Research and USA

Audio Recording and the Canon 5D MarkII

We’ve been looking for a feasible audio solution for the Canon 5D Mark II for couple weeks now. The camera itself features a built-in microphone that is serviceable at best offering only a short pickup distance and mediocre sound quality. There is also the possibility to plug-in an add-on mic, but the camera offers no way of audio gain control or even monitoring recording levels (only with a third-party firmware update, but we wouldn’t want to install that one on a rented camera). Plus there is no headphone jack on the camera. So after reading through several bulletin boards and blogs on the topic we decided to give the ZOOM H4n portable digital audio recorder a try. The recorder is kindly provided by Sound Service GmbH, the European distributor of ZOOM products.

The audio recorder features a high-class onboard stereo mic, but more important for us, it also offers two XLR connectors for professional-level microphones. It accepts SD-cards of up to 32GB to capture digital audio in WAV or MP3 file format.

The recorder arrived at our offices today. Over the course of the next weeks we will see if it lives up to its promise. We can already say for sure that it is handy, lightweight and operating it seems kinda self-explanatory.

Getting a picture of it:

One of the reasons that led us to the ZOOM H4n was the audio testing conducted by P3Pictures. They tested several different audio gadgets with the 5D MkII. Here’s a short video with their final statement – for those of you who like to know the whole story, scroll down to find links to each and every testing video:


(vimeolink)

P3Pictures’ “Canon 5D Mark II Audio Exposed” on vimeo.com:
Part 1: Boom mics
Part 2: Add-on mics
Part 3: Wireless lavalier mics
Part 4: Foley
Part 5: Noise

by Alex | September 28, 2009 | 3 Comments
Equipment

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Alamo

Today we finally booked a rental car. After long hours of comparing quotes from different agencies we finally settled for you. Your quote just couldn’t be beaten by any of your competitors. We also realized, it’s not that easy to rent a car for a period of 61 days. But it’s possible with you, so thanks for that already. We’ve rented an intermediate SUV at a phenomenal rate of 1,900 dollars including all insurances, collission damage waivers and additional drivers! Good job, Mr. and Mrs. Alamo.

But that’s not the only reason I’m writing to you. I’m sure you can already guess that there is something I also wanna complain about.

Let’s talk about Alamo locations and their office hours in New York. I just can’t think of a reason, why Alamo does not run offices at any of the airports in the New York area. You know, we are not landing in New York City, but at the Newark Liberty Int’l Airport on the other side of the Hudson. If Alamo does not need to run an office in Newark, that’s fine. But what about JFK or LaGuardia? Nope. You can’t find Alamo anywhere near those. I mean, we’d be willing to travel across half the city, to get our rental car at JFK. But no. Would be pointless.

Not so in Manhattan: Obviously you need to have even six offices there! And almost all are located in rather close vicinity. What kind of business strategy is that? Or wasn’t enough left for the airports, after you paid all the rent in Manhattan?

I know what you are thinking right now: Better for us, since we won’t have to travel all the way from Newark to JFK.

I wish! But it’s even worse. We are landing in Newark shortly after 9 PM. By that time all your Manhattan locations are already closed for more than 3 hours! Not that you not only don’t run any airport offices in and around New York City, your office hours in Manhattan are not very helpful either! Monday thru thursday till 6 PM, saturdays only till 2:45 PM! In New York City. The Big Apple! Metropolis! Gotham City! N-E-W Y-O-R-K! The city that never sleeps, dammit. I am not even talking about Boise, Idaho, where by the way Alamo is operating till 9 PM seven days a week! And I remember getting rental cars from Alamo at far smaller airports even past midnight!

Not so in New York, always something special. What can I say? Now we need to take a cheap motel at the airport, leave at daybreak to finally get to our rental car in the heart of Manhattan

I better take another look at the rate we are paying, so I can’t be really mad at you, Mr. and Mrs. Alamo.

All the best from
THE AMERICAN BACKROOM

by Admin | September 26, 2009 | 0 Comments
Production and Travel

New companions: Navigon 4310 and GPS logger

Delivery service just rang! Making travel arrangements for our research trip sometimes feels like christmas, as we are getting little gift packages almost on a daily basis. This time it’s a Navigon 4310 max, so we are making sure not to lose our way in the USA. Thanks to the kind people at Navigon who provide this one for our trip. Usually the 4310 max comes with only European maps, but it seems as if they made an exception for us :)

Note the small label on the lower left corner… I bet this’ll help us find remote and secret access roads to Area 51! (Click to enlarge)

Speaking of GPS, navigation and geoinformation: To be able to tag the photos we are going to take, we just purchased an i-Blue 747 GPS Logger at everybody’s favorite online auction house. For a mere 45 dollars. The i-Blue 747 tracks itineraries and geoinformation that can be synchronized to Exif information of digital photos. I don’t know yet how (good) that’s gonna work out, but will keep you posted as soon as this little gadget gets dropped off… Like christmas, as I said.

by Esther | September 25, 2009 | 4 Comments
Travel and Equipment

Vintage color photos from across the United States

All morning I’ve been browsing through vintage color photos taken by Charles Cushman on his travels across the United States in the middle of the 20th century. Cushman took pictures of all sorts of things, but mostly he captured everyday scenes and street life in the forties and fifties. Wow! I could look at those all day. The picture above shows San Francisco in 1962, viewed north-east from Fairmont Hotel. Below it’s Halloween ’52 in Central City, CO (left) and Chicago, IL, 1945:

Thanks to Indiana University you can browse the complete Cushman Collection online, including all 11,374 pictures he took in the US!

Weed, CA, 1954 (left) and New York City, 1941:

Virginia City, NV and Los Angeles, CA, 1952:

(Click images to enlarge)

by Alex | September 25, 2009 | 0 Comments
Inspiration, Links, Research and USA

Change of plans

CC: bdunnette

So we booked a flight to and from New York, but since we had a stopover in Washington, DC, we thought it would be a pretty good idea to get off there and start heading west. Well, the airline didn’t think so. After several hours of being put through hotlines and helpdesks in about every corner of the world their final word is No! They won’t let us get off at the stopover without having to cancel our return flight from New York to Frankfurt, too. I don’t get it.

Apparently United not only breaks guitars, but also our meticulously planned itinerary :) …

So, we have to take the plane to Newark, NJ. No big deal, you might say, costs us only a single night (and another 250 miles). But with Alex’s fear of flying it means having to convince him of boarding another plane within two hours, not just two months as he had hoped for.

by Esther | September 21, 2009 | 0 Comments
Research and Travel

12,062 12,329 miles

(Clik here for larger map @ Google Maps)

EDIT: Three days old and had to be changed already…

Our research itinerary is going to take us roughly 12,000 12,300 miles across and back the United States. That’s what it says so far. We are going to tweak it here or there over the next couple days. And we are going to refresh it while we are going along, that’s for sure. Kind of a “live” update to the actual route we are taking. After all, you never know where certain stories or encounters will take you at the end of the day.

We’ll give the go-ahead on October 5, 2009 in Washington, DC.
And will be crossing the finishing line on December 5 in New York City.

Kudos and a big thank you! for some great advice and recommendations go out to some of the more experienced USA travellers here and here… That’s not to say we won’t be open for any more advice. So, keep ‘em coming.

by Admin | September 18, 2009 | 0 Comments
Research, Travel and USA

A little package for our trip

Today at the MovieBrats office: delivery service dropped a little package we have eagerly been waiting for. You must know, we are already planning to produce some “content” during our upcoming research trip. Not yet for the final feature documentary, rather to be made available online, so you all can take part in it. We just like to capture footage of encounters, chats, interviews, moods and atmosphere, faces and stories. Hit the jump to see what the little package has to do with our plan.

Continue reading ‘A little package for our trip’

by Alex | September 16, 2009 | 0 Comments
Cinematography and Travel

Abandoned malls in northeastern USA

“Dark Stores” is the title of a horror tale created by photographer Brian Ulrich in the wake of the financial crisis. It’s the last part of his “Copia” project, a serious albeit somewhat poetic examination of consumerism, which he began after 9/11. Back then Americans were being encouraged to help boost the economy by shopping in malls everywhere. A dubious equation of consumerism with patriotism, as Ulrich felt. He went out to capture the lackluster world of malls and retail stores – all in all he shot some fantastic photographic series.

In “Dark Stores” he concludes “Copia” by documenting empty and abandoned malls – at night, when an already eerie silence becomes even more spooky. Looking at those pictures I’d rather not be left alone in these dark places. You can almost hear faint voices and steps of people trailing off into the past, when these places where still alive.

by Alex | September 16, 2009 | 0 Comments
Inspiration, Links, Research and USA