I recently joined Facebook, and, although I swore I'd never get sucked into another social networking site, it's become a minor obsession. The main reason: a quiz called the Traveler IQ Challenge.

Sponsored by the travel website TravelPod, the game shows a map of the world, then gives you a place name and ten seconds to click on its geographic location. You get points based on how close you are to the target and how fast you clicked. The game delivers praise ("Your map IQ is off the charts!") or sarcasm ("This is Earth. You know that, right?) as needed.

With each round, questions get harder—you may feel smart for clicking 90 kilometers from Barcelona, Spain, on Level 1, but wait until the target is Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, or Porto Alegre, Brazil. Those are big countries—you can be off by a long, long way.

Our early ability to create tools is largely due to our dexterity, most of which we owe to our opposable thumbs. That same ability to grip can also be found in a handy little gadget that I carry with me five days a week.

In the last couple of days, we have received a flurry of competitive camera announcements.  Two of the offerings include the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III (top left), 21 million pixel behemoth (that is sure to tax any hard drive), and the Nikon D3 (top right), which is capable of capturing images at ISO 25,600. Both have full frame CMOS sensors. Below is a breakdown of key features for these cameras, and a few details on the (more affordable) Nikon D300 model:

A bog is as subtle as landscape gets. At first glance, it might present as a monochrome horizon, a brown soup of unrelieved dullness. Look closely. The careful eye can tease out paisleys of color and form. There are blue and green lichens in shapes like antler horns or tiny trumpets. Bogs are home to purple moor grass, vermilion cranberries, beetles, badgers, skylarks, and red deer, which bathe in peat to shed flies. In addition to a startling array of life, bogs harbor mystery and death. Hundreds of bog bodies have turned up in northern Europe. In 1952, a peat digger in Denmark found a man who died at age 34—throat slit from ear to ear—in a bog. Conditions in the sodden sphagnum moss had preserved the body, hair and nails intact, for 2,300 years. Experts now suspect that Grauballe Man, as he is known, was a victim of ritual sacrifice, not murder as once thought. About 990 million acres (400 million hectares) of peatlands remain on five continents. They are disappearing fast. Large-scale cutting of peat for fuel, harvesting of sphagnum for horticulture, and draining of wetlands threaten most of Europe's remaining bogs. The potential loss extends beyond the evidence of past civilizations and distinctive plants. Not only do bogs help control water levels in surrounding areas, they also collect and store carbon from the atmosphere. The world's peatlands may contain more carbon than is currently in Earth's entire atmosphere. As bogs disappear, carbon is released. Destruction of Siberian bogs alone could unleash billions of tons of greenhouse gases. There is little mystery about the consequences of that.

Canon announced today a new addition to their digital camera line up.  What catches my eye in their press release is the ability to withstand the elements (if you look past the PR-speak):

"Canon design engineers made the EOS 40D SLR's magnesium alloy exterior even more ruggedly dependable than its predecessors with upgraded dust and weather resistant construction, particularly around the camera's connection ports, battery compartment and single-slot compact flash memory card door.

I destroyed a Canon 20D during a pleasurable but unfortunate walk in the rain with the camera while making pictures.  Through that traumatic experience I've come to understand the 20D as well as most consumer level digital camera are not water resistant.  If you are looking for a digital camera that won't break the bank and allow you to photograph when it is wet, keep this 40D on your radar.  It will be available in stores in early September 2007 for an estimated $1,299. 

Read "Canon EOS 40D, previewed" at Digital Photography Review for many more details on the camera.

[Canon 40D Press Release and the Canon 40D]

— Evan Wilder

While skateboarding with my son this weekend I watched several people struggle with their digital cameras trying to capture the near ballistic acrobatic moves of the boarders as they careened around the skate park. Unfortunately the fodder for that post will have to wait; as I was rudely reminded a short while later of a very important tool that I believe everyone who shoots digital images should have on their hard drive.

After my skateboarding misadventure and about three hours in the emergency room, I retuned home with my arm in a sling and a PC formatted CD holding my X-rays. I popped the CD in to my Mac laptop and fumbled through the numerous folders until I found what I hoped were the radiographs of my left arm. The first file I found was labeled 1426 with no file extension, which I tried to open in Photoshop without success.

Digital file formats come in a hodgepodge on acronyms: CRW, NEF, CVG, ECW, EPSF, IMQ, JFIF, MAG, MRC, PICT, SCX, TIFF, WPG, XFIG, YUV, just to name a few. My X-rays, as I later discovered were DlCOM, a medical imaging format produced by a Philips DigitalDiagnost digital radiography system.

Faced with a file format I did not recognize and could not open in Photoshop, I turned to the Swiss army knife of digital file formats for the Mac, Graphic Converter. Thorsten Lemke developed this shareware program in 1992, which now boasts it will open nearly 200 different graphic formats. Not only did Graphic Converter open the DlCOM file, it also allowed me to read the patient medical data embedded in the file header. Using Graphic Converter I exported the DlCOM file (right) to JPEG so I could include it with this post. I have also used Graphic Converter to open and recover corrupted JPEG images.

If you are a PC user you may want to take a look at Graphics Converter Pro by Newera, it has a five star rating on Versiontracker. Apple recently started pre-loading Graphic Converter, check your utilities folder; you may already have a copy.

— Ken Geiger

I found a helpful tool that lets me know exactly where packages of photographs are as they are  shipped to the magazine.  It is a free widget for the Mac called Delivery Status and I encourage you to use it if you need to easily monitor multiple shipments.

The idea is simple - tell the widget the shipping company, tracking number, how often you want it to update and enter an optional description of the package.  Now when the need arises to check on a package simply look at the dashboard. 

To make the notification process even easier (who has time or remembers to look at the dashhboard?)  have Growl display any change of status concerning the packages on the screen.   

Could it get any easier?  Let us know in the comments if you know of any great ways to stay on top of shipments of packages.

[Delivery Status via Delivery Status Package Tracker (Mac) on lifehacker.com and Growl.]

— Evan Wilder

I'm from Albany, NY, where they don't have anything I'd call "local" in the way of food. Growing up, I ate things like spaghetti, steak, pot roast, and chicken hearts (a foodie from the start, I think I'm the only one who ate this last item), and no matter where I went in the USA, these things - ok, not the hearts -  were always on the menu.

But when I started researching my story on regional foods for the September issue, I was surprised at how differently (at least from a gastronomical standpoint) other folks were raised. A friend from Maine told me she remembered her disappointment when, as a little girl, she discovered that they don't sell lobster rolls at every McDonald's. And, while I was busy eating routine chocolate ice cream cones, I had no idea other kids were getting exciting-sounding things like buckeye candies in Ohio and gooey cake in St. Louis. 

So now I know that there's more than one way to eat ravioli and there's more than one word for ground-up pig parts. What was on the table where you grew up? Remember how you felt when you realized that you couldn't find it once you left home? Is it still hard to find, or is it everywhere now? What do you think is the proper way to make it, and eat it?

— Catherine Barker

Everyone who uses a digital point-and-shoot camera knows the feeling. You’re looking at the LCD display, all ready for that decisive moment - toddler about to take his first step, daughter about to blow out her birthday candles. You press the shutter-release button and . . . you get the moment after. This occurs because the camera has a lot to do to capture an image: It has to switch from LCD display to image capture, focus, determine white balance, and set exposure, which can take a quarter second, depending on the camera and settings. Newer models have reduced shutter lag, but until it’s eliminated completely there are a couple of things you can do.

In both shots my son, Cory, was in midair when the shutter-release was pressed. By the time the camera focused, processed, and shot, he was in the water (top right). You can reduce shutter lag greatly by prefocusing and locking exposure on your subject. Depress the shutter-release button halfway just before the action and hold it. Push the rest of the way when the action occurs, to nail the moment (bottom right).

To reduce the time between shots when shooting in continuous mode, overcoming small buffers, try choosing a smaller file size (from large JPEG to medium JPEG, for example). Smaller files take less time to process and write to your card.

From the National Geographic guide to digital photography.

— Ken Geiger

How do you make distinctive photographs of subjects that have been photographed countless times? That was the challenge British photographer Simon Norfolk faced for the assignment of shooting the classic Mayan ruins of Central America.

Almost all compact digital cameras come with zoom lenses. But there’s a big difference between optical zoom and digital zoom. When you use optical zoom, you take full advantage of your camera’s millions of pixels. When you use digital zoom, you’re reducing the capability of your camera’s sensor to a fraction of its maximum potential. One picture (bottom image) was shot with a 7.1-megapixel camera using 3x optical zoom. The other (top) was shot with the same camera using 12x digital zoom, effectively reducing the 7.1 megapixels of image data to less than 0.5 megapixels. The picture’s detail and color quality is greatly reduced, making it look softer. The lesson: Use digital zoom only as a last resort.

From the National Geographic guide to digital photography.

— Ken Geiger

James Bond would not be much of a secret agent without his supply of extremely lethal gadgets supplied by his man in the lab, the inventive Q.

National Geographic Photo Engineering is an entire department of Q’s, who invent, blueprint and build some of the most amazing gadgets that make impossible photographs possible. From their arsenal of lathes, milling and welding machines they have created custom submersibles diving 1,000 feet below sea level to a remote camera controlled through a pair of virtual goggles. 

In their quest to explore every avenue to make unique images, they are now turning to the spy market.  Technology has advanced to the point where GPS and computer controlled micro aircraft can carry video surveillance cameras for the military or search and rescue missions. That same technology, like the AirRobot, can also carry a 10 megapixel still camera to an altitude of 3,000 feet, creating a distinctive perspective on a subject where normal aircraft or a helicopter may be impractical to fly.

The stealthy AirRobot will fly for 20 minutes on field replaceable rechargeable batteries. Four carbon fiber blades supply vertical lift to the unit, which is stabilized by a combination of gyroscopic, barometric and magnetic sensors. AirRobot weighs only two pounds and breaks down in pieces small enough to fit in a backpack. The second generation of this amazing little aircraft is in production and we are hoping its larger payload will lift a digital SLR to vantage points yet explored.

— Ken Geiger   

I'm Evan Wilder and I work as supervisor of Digital Imaging/Film Review.  The job includes receiving all incoming images for National Geographic magazine and preparing them for the editors.  As you may guess, we do see a lot of images each day!  We can't look too long because there are always more slides and film to send to the lab and more hard drives full of pictures that we need to prepare for the picture editors. 

The large volume and heavy flow of images through our office means I am always looking for ways to speed up the process.  One method I use and (I'm sure many of you use as well) are keyboard shortcuts. Simply put, using the keyboard saves time. 

When photographer Nick Nichols sent hard drives to me last week I started wondering how I could speed up the process of converting 23,000 RAW images into JPEGs.  My first instinct is to use the mouse to point and click on each step of the conversation process.  This typically is OK but since I had to repeat the process for each of the 212 folders I quickly tired of any slowness.  After I learned all of the keyboard strokes it took half as long to use the keyboard as it did to use the mouse for each folder of images.

The video below shows how it works and if you want to be a keyboard ninja yourself I've included the keyboard shortcuts below.

Click here to view the full resolution video

Photo Mechanic Shortcuts on a PC

• Select All = Ctrl + A
• Tools / Extract JPEG previews from RAW photos.. = Alt + T, E
• Extract = hit Return on keyboard
• Change focus in "Browse for Folder" window: Shift + Tab, then tap the letter matching the folder name to jump to the folder
• Navigate folder structure: arrow keys
• Create new folder: Alt + M
• Hit Return to finish

Photo Mechanic Shortcuts on a Mac

• Select All = Command + A
• Tools / Extract JPEG previews from RAW photos.. Control + F2, T, down arrow, tap up arrow twice (this step is more awkward on a Mac)
• Extract = hit Return on keyboard
• Photo Mechanic always leaves you in the folder you were just in.  So to get back to the parent folder: Command + Up Arrow
• Create new folder: Command + Shift + N
• Hit Return to finish

Do you have any other tips for speeding up this process?  Leave them in the comments.

— Evan Wilder

My childhood memories are slightly fuzzy, flicker, are briefly interrupted by black squiggling filaments of lint and accompanied by the soundtrack of 8mm sprocket holes begrudgingly snaking though a film projector. Memories that are literally decaying on celluloid film base, packed away in some box in my parent’s attic.

It seems a matter of inevitable chemistry; oxygen and water present in a confined film container creates an acidic chemical cocktail that reacts with the cellulose acetate film turning it into a brittle decaying mess. For most of us who don’t keep our precious memories stored in temperature and humidity controlled vaults, you may want to take a look at an article in Saturday’s New York Times by Alina Tugend, detailing the technology and services available to transfer your film and video to DVD.

If you’d like to read more on the chemical process of 8mm movie film decay, try this link detailing the vinegar syndrome of film degradation.

Dad, if you are reading, please start digging out the old home movies, let’s get them converted to DVD!

— Ken Geiger

When Leica rolled out the long awaited M8 digital rangefinder at Photokina last year, I’ll have to admit I was one of the throng willing to queue up at the Leica booth for 30 minutes just to get my hands on the prized piece of German engineering. Unfortunately that euphoria was dashed as press reviews revealed some of the shortfalls of the camera, extreme color shifts due to a lack of infrared filtering and poor image quality at higher ISO ratings.

Fortunately Leica seems to have taken these shortcomings seriously, releasing infrared filters and posting several firmware upgrades, including their most recent, M8 Firmware Update 1.107.

Through the combination of infrared filters and firmware upgrades the M8 image quality continues to move in a positive direction. This latest upgrade was released to address concerns over the auto white balance not hitting the mark and amount of digital noise showing when using the higher ISO range of the camera. A quick test of the AWB after upgrading displayed that Leica engineers still have a little more work to do, at least when dealing with florescent lights.

These firmware upgrades are highly recommended and continue to bring the M8 closer to the quality considered needed to be a serious replacement for the venerable M series film cameras.

— Ken Geiger