NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
I'm Heading Where?
On the way, by foot, to the top of that mountain

I took an impromptu hike to the top of Kyoto's Mt. Hiei (比叡山) yesterday, about exhausting myself to death in the process. I'm much less in shape than I thought. I tagged along with Stéphane Barbery, who has done it several times of late.

I made the half-hour walk from my place to his, then we walked for another half hour or so to get to the trailhead next to the Baptist Hospital in eastern Kyoto....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Initial Instructions
Stéphane pauses to tell about the upcoming path

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 60mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 360 — map & image data — nearby photos
This, I Can Handle
tall trees, slightly sloping path

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 31mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Steep Slope

The kind of Kyoto hikes I've done before have all had steep slopes, such as Daimonji, the local Higashiyama trails or other short hikes, but this Mt. Hiei hike was set apart by the mostly unrelenting slope.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 31mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Steeper Slope

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
This is Getting Ridiculous

Stéphane was clearly in better shape than I, as I was quickly huffing and puffing. And to make it worse, every time I paused for a few seconds to take a photo, I was that much further lagging behind, distance my ego required that I at least try to make up.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Slightly Precarious

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ridgeline Trail
Falls steeply immediately on both sides of the path

I actually recognized this ridgeline trail, having been on it once for a bit when popping up from the lower, simpler trail mentioned here.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Up and Down
overall, mostly up

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 450 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flat Run
Heaven-sent respite from the incessant climbing

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pause
at a tricky turn in the path

I was pretty beat by this point, to put it mildly, and I was regretting that I had opted for some hiking boots that I'd not really used much. I had a few Band-Aids, but thankfully Stéphane had a few special blister Band-Aids that he let me have, and for a while my feet felt much better.

To this point the path had been decidedly up, but from here it dove steeply down...

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Heading Down To Go Up
the next half hour was steep ups and downs

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
He's Down There Somewhere

As beat as I was, I would have preferred going up, because going down is extremely painful on my knees. Even when I visit a mountainside shrine like the Fushimi Inari Shrine I dread the downhill return trip because my knees soon start to hurt, on the outside edge just under the kneecap. Oddly, it hurts when I bend the knee while lifting the foot for the next step, and doesn't hurt at all when I then put my weight onto it. In the end, it often gets so bad that I actually turn around and go down backwards, which feels as odd as I suppose it looks, but it doesn't hurt that way.

So, this downhill stretch was really bad, and I took it slow. At the bottom was a small stream, then up again, then down again, and so on, for twenty minutes of pain until I got to about the halfway point of the whole climb, where Stéphane stops for a light energy snack. We ate and rested a bit, next to this monument....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 27mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Half Way
Stone dates from 1920, about some event in 1336

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/3200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Ready To Head Off
after our snack

Stéphane said that he makes a non-stop run to the top from this point, so explained where to find him if I couldn't keep up. I had no illusion that I would be able to keep up, so noted his instructions with care.

Not long after starting again from our rest, I got my first nice view of the city, behind the foreground of a bunch of power lines that someone so thoughtfully marred the view with.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 48mm — ¹/320 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Northern Kyoto
Iwakura (岩倉) area

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Trail-side Shrine To Fallen Hikers Who Bit Off More Than They Could Chew
(not really, but in my state, that's how I saw it)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 35mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Steep Run
the last I saw of Stéphane for a while

I just couldn't keep up with him, and had to admit defeat (a defeat my body had been telling me about for some time). For the next 20 minutes or so I made slow, painful progress, sometimes pausing for 10 or 20 seconds to contemplate what I had gotten myself in to.

Despite his promise not to wait for me, he did wait at one fork in the path, and in something reminiscent of the “red pill / blue pill” scene in The Matrix, pointed out that if I wanted to return home quickly, I could take one path, but if I wanted to continue to the top with him, it was another way. How long, at your pace?, I asked. “10 minutes”. I was utterly beat, but I could go for another 10 minutes, so went his direction.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 36mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Stairs
don't make it easier

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Neverending
unrelenting upslope

At one point we came across an old man dutifully setting a footstone into the path. I thanked him for his efforts as I went slowly by, then turned around to snap a shot.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/160 sec, f/5, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Path Maintenance

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — ¹/200 sec, f/5, ISO 1250 — map & image data — nearby photos
When. Will. This. Ever. End?

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 60mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 2800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Not Yet, Apparently

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 62mm — ¹/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 280 — map & image data — nearby photos
Laughing With Me
except that I wasn't laughing... no energy left to do so

Stéphane is laughing because of how positively exhausted I was, in light of the email conversation in the morning that had precipitated the hike:

Perhaps he was laughing also at the situation: despite being almost too tired to walk, I was still snapping pictures with my big camera with the heavy Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 zoom.

I had clearly bit off more than I could chew, and had not taken his warnings seriously. I guess I had images of previous hikes in my head, and images of me being in better shape than reality called for.

When I was in grad school in New Hampshire, I would think nothing of taking off for the day to pop up to the top of Mt. Washington by foot, a climb more than twice the distance I had done here, and a tougher climb as well. Something, I guess, tells me that I'm not quite as young as I was 25 years ago.

But now that I think of it, I should get credit for having walked uphill for half an hour to reach his place, but didn't think of it at the time. But really, I was completely devoid of energy, just exhausted. Wiped. Stéphane, for his part, looked as if he had taken an escalator the whole way.

We weren't at the very top of the mountain yet, and would not make it there. To reach our destination on this trip, we skirted around the edge of the mountain for half a kilometer, to a rest area with a nice view.

On the way, we passed under a cable car that goes from near the top to nearer the top....

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 34mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cable Car Lines
perhaps 100m below the summit

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 56mm — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Abandoned Ski Lodge
that had served a “ski run” less than 200m long.
No wonder it's out of business.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 50mm — ¹/200 sec, f/20, ISO 2200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Nice View Poking Through
つつじヶ丘　(azalea hillside)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Finally, Our Destination
800m up

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 34mm — ¹/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Chugging My Last Water
photo by Stéphane Barbery

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 70mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Me
I look like crap, but wow, I felt so much worse
photo by Stéphane Barbery

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 34mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Out
photo by Stéphane Barbery

After chugging my water, I lay down for 10 minutes while Stéphane ate lunch (and apparently used my camera). We sat for a while, then turned around to go home.

My knees would never handle the downhill return trip, so I availed myself of mechanical transport home, a story for another post.

Amazing (to me) was that after returning home and taking a rest, I was able to make the 30-minute walk to my favorite chicken-dinner place downtown, Uroko (mentioned here), for a delicious dinner and drinks with Nicolas Joannin and his lovely wife. Then walked back.

I slept well.

Continued here...

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Two months I posted the report “Adding a CPU Chip to a Nikon-Mount Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 Lens”, using a “Dandelion” CPU.

After posting the report, I spent some time actually using the lens, and could not get a consistent exposure. I thought that perhaps the aperture was not linear (that is, when the camera moved the aperture arm half way, the aperture closed something other than half way), so I re-programmed the chip so that it told the camera about the focal length and maximum aperture, leaving the actual control of the aperture back on the lens, as it was originally. I update the post, and the next day gave it a try.

It still didn't work, and I got wildly wrong exposures. This baffled me because the CPU wasn't playing any part in the per-image exposure... it just told the camera the maximum aperture, which never wavered.

So, I have no idea why it doesn't work, but I know it doesn't work, so feel obligated to report it. I'll have to yank the chip from the lens. )-:

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/4, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Be My Guest...
Koumyou-in Temple (光明院), Kyoto Japan

Vertical Desktop-Background Versions
1050×1680  ·  1200×1920  ·  1600×2560

So, Adobe has released the first official update for Lightroom 4, Lightroom 4.1. The release announcement on Adobe's Lightroom Journal blog lists the major changes, bug fixes, and new camera support (including recent heavy hitters like the Nikon's D4 and D800, and Canon's 1D X and 5D Mark III). However, the release notes don't even mention two changes that will be welcome and important for many users, so I want to tell you a bit about them here.

(The photos on this post, from my first visit earlier today to the small but elegant Koumyou-in Temple (光明院) in eastern Kyoto, have nothing to do with the prose of the post. They're just pretty pictures.)

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/10, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Japanese Aesthetic

Desktop-Background Versions
1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

The Problem

Upload Progress in Lr4.0 and earlier

Historically in Lightroom, when uploading one's photos to an online service such as Facebook, Flickr, etc., one sees a little progress bar in the upper left that chunks along with each picture, such as the one shown at right. With my plugins, the progress bar makes two steps for each image, one after Lightroom has rendered the copy to be uploaded, and another after the copy has actually been uploaded. However, there's no movement to the progress bar while the image is actually being rendered, and while the image is actually being uploaded. That's just how Lightroom has always worked.

So, during these potentially time-consuming processes, there's no indication that anything is happening. This is all the more regrettable when working with large videos, as they can take quite a long time to render and upload.

But even worse, the way Lightroom worked internally, large uploads were extremely inefficient. This was perhaps fine for most folks' images, but became a real problem with videos with sizes stretching into the hundreds of megabytes. On my machine, Lightroom would simply crash if I tried to upload a video weighing in at more than 30 or 40 megabytes.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/125 sec, f/2.5, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Built-in Navigation
this guy's socks reminded me of this photo on my recent post about my wife's ballet shoes
(Update some years later: the guy I met that day with the socks turned out to become a good friend)

The Solution

I made a suggestion to Adobe about how to allow plugin uploads to be more efficient, and they added this support in Lightroom 4.1. The result is extremely efficient, and plugins that make use of this support can now upload without file-size limit, at least as far as Lightroom is concerned. If your network and upload destination can handle a terabyte video, so can Lightroom.

While testing this stuff with a sneak-peek version of Lightroom that Adobe kindly provided to me last week, I realized that one of the by-products of using this new internal support was that I could have the plugin update the progress bar in real time while the upload progressed.

Upload Progress in Lr4.1

In the progress bar at right, notice the tiny little “7%” that's been added? That's the only difference from before, but it's huge from a user-interaction point of view. Now while the upload is happening, you can watch that percent-complete value march up, and you can see the progress bar creep toward completion. It's such a small thing that makes a surprisingly big difference: you no longer have to wonder whether the thing is stuck or not, waiting for the progress bar to jump once the upload has completed.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 — ¹/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Contemplation
Koumyou-in Temple (光明院), Kyoto Japan

Desktop-Background Versions
1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

The Joy

I spent the majority of the weekend working on this. It required writing a bunch of new code to use the new internal upload-handling stuff, and then retooling the plugins to work it in. It wasn't always smooth: I filed four separate bugs with Adobe on things related to this.

Sometimes I make murmurs about what I don't like about plugin development, most recently in “Ongoing Pitfalls of My Lightroom Plugin Development”, but also over the years in posts like “What To Do When a Hobby Becomes Work” and the most-unfortunate “Breakdown: When Good Intentions Don’t Scale”. But the days I spent wrestling with this were a joy because I was back getting my hands dirty with complex code that ended up actually working (I was able to work around most of the bugs), and the first time I tested a large upload and actually watched the progress bar slowly progress from 1% to 100% was positively giddy.

Positively giddy.

I don't expect many folks to understand that, but it was gratifying both as a user of Lightroom (the whole “no longer need to wonder” thing), and as a developer because I overcame obstacles to solve the real problem of handling large uploads. Before, some users would have trouble at 10-megabyte uploads, but now, 10 gigabytes would be a breeze.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 1800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dainty Propeller

Desktop-Background Versions
1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

So far I've pushed this change only in my uploader for PicasaWeb, which is also used a lot by folks for G+.

(UPDATE: I've now pushed this update for my Flickr, SmugMug, Zenfolio, Facebook, and Photobucket plugins as well.)

Google currently allows videos up to 100 megabytes, and I tested right up to the limit without problems. (Note: PicasaWeb specs note a maximum video of 1GB, but that's only when uploaded via Google's own Picasa desktop software; third-party apps are limited to 100MB.)

There is one caveat about this new support in the PicasaWeb plugin: due to one bug that I was not able to work around, the new support is used only for initial uploads, and not for image replacements (such as when republishing changes). This is unfortunate, but not as dire as it would be if Google allowed videos to be replaced. Google does not allow videos to be replaced, so the plugin continues to quietly ignore video updates.

I'll be pushing support in my other plugins soon, but I wanted to write this post right away to share a small slice of my geeky photographer plugin-developer joy.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 320 — map & image data — nearby photos
Alone Together

Vertical Desktop-Background Versions
1050×1680  ·  1200×1920  ·  1600×2560

Another Important Lr4.1 Update: Respecting “Private” Locations

Lightroom 4's new map module lets you put a circle around an area and assign it a name and, optionally, mark that this location is “private”. When you export images located within that private location, the geoencoded coordinates are removed from the exported copy, thus, in theory, preserving your privacy.

However, with some photo-hosting sites (PicasaWeb, SmugMug, and Flickr come to mind), the uploading app explicitly tells the site the image's map coordinates while uploading, and herein lies the problem: in Lr4.0, a plugin could always see a photo's location, but had no idea whether the user had marked it as “private”. Thus, private locations were removed from the copy uploaded, but the location was still sent along with the image to be displayed to the world. So much for “private”.

Lr4.1 includes infrastructure support that allows a plugin to inspect whether a photo's location is “private”, so, my plugins will be updated soon to support this. The PicasaWeb plugin already does, sporting new options to control if/when location data is sent to Google.

Nikon D700 + Voigtländer 125mm f/2.5 — ¹/400 sec, f/2.5, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Teamwork

Photos continued here...

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

Why is it that no matter what kind of special lens-cleaning this or expensive micro-fibre that that I buy, the most lint-free and absorbent cloth for cleaning my lenses remains my T-shirt?

NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.

My folks just sent me the most wonderful Japan travel guide, “Murray's Hand-Book, Japan”, published December 24th, 1900, and offered for sale as of January 1, 1901. It's a printed-in-Japan sixth edition of what, as far as I can tell, started out as the printed-in-London “A Handbook for Travelers in Central & Northern Japan”, circa 1881 (available as a PDF via that link from Google). Some of the introduction prose is identical, so if my sixth edition is not descended from it, at least some of its material is.

I'm happy to have the later sixth edition because, according to “Treaty Limits” on page xiii of the first edition, which talks about where foreigners are allowed to go in Japan, it's noted that Kyoto is off limits:

However, in the cloth-bound sixth-edition I have from 20 years later, there's plenty about Kyoto and its temples and shrines and palaces and attractions that I look forward to diving into. The book's 600 pages covers “the whole empire from Yezo to Formosa”, and then there's an additional 100-page section of advertisements.

It all looks much more modern than my image of “1900 Japan”, especially the advertisements. The facing page of the inside back cover is an advertisement for Kirin Beer, “the purest beer sold in Japan”.

There's even a smattering of phone numbers. Page 72 of the advertising section is an advertisement for a new hotel in Kyoto opened by an “N. Nishimura”, what is now the Westin Miyako. The ad gives its telephone number as “421”.

Yet, even though the first power generator in Japan had been in operation for a dozen years right across the street from that hotel (the original generator building making an appearance on my blog in this post from last December), I've so far found no mention in the book of that new, exciting convenience for the modern man: electrical lighting.