Richard's Tech Reviews

Digital Zoom in Camera app on Windows 10

You can zoom in and out (widen and narrow the field of view) in the Camera application for Windows 10 by holding down the CTRL key and rolling your mouse wheel up or down.  This is an undocumented feature.  This is a "sticky" setting; it will persist between Windows sessions, and will apply instantly to other applications using the camera such as MS Teams.

There are some applications that may reset it, for example you may find that running the (unfortunately-named) Zoom video conferencing application resets the digital zoom level.

In particular, any time you fully exit and relaunch Camera, it will reset the digital zoom level (this includes within the same Windows session).  That is, the setting is only sticky as long as you keep the Camera application closed once you've found the zoom level you like.

Microsoft says definitively that the Windows 10 application does not provide digital zoom:

In Windows 10 the Camera app doesn't include digital zoom

This is simply not true.

Similarly other support sites may refer to clicking on an icon in the Camera application in order to zoom in or out; this is also not true.

Others may suggest installing third-party applications or legacy Windows applications, which is usually not an option in a business setting where you don't have administrative control to install unauthorized applications.

MS Teams does offer access to camera settings including digital zoom, but that access is only available depending on the version of Teams, the version of your driver, and the brand and model of your camera.  In any case, the camera settings available in Teams are not sticky (it won't remember the settings), so you have to go back in to settings again in order to set the level you want, every time you start Windows and Teams.

The camera settings are not available during a video conference session; the devices menu is different depending whether you are in a video conference or not.

When not in a conference, select the three dots menu ⋯ at the very top right of the Teams window, in the menu bar next to your profile icon.  Select Settings, then in the popup window select Devices in the list on the left, then scroll down to Camera.  If camera settings control is available, there will be a clickable "Open camera settings" link.  As a reminder, these settings are not sticky; Teams will reset all the camera settings back to the defaults every time you open it and/or restart Windows.

Also, if you want to view the Camera adjustments live while using Teams, you'll have to start Teams first.  If you start the Camera application first, it will grab exclusive access to the image/video stream from your webcam.

Versions used:

• Windows 10 Enterprise 21H2
• Camera 2021.105.10.0
• MS Teams 1.5.00.33362 (64-bit)

For many video conferences you may want a tighter zoom in on your face rather than a wide view of your entire room background, so being able to set and keep a level of zoom using the Camera application first ensures that you have the right settings for Teams and other videoconference software.

Note for older versions of Camera

Older version of Camera (e.g. 2018.826.98.0) also have digital zoom, but you don't need to hold down the control key, just roll the middle mouse scroll wheel up and down.  You may experience unexpected behaviour, in particular, the Camera app may be able to set a much higher level of digital zoom than it actually displays.  That is, if you keep rolling the wheel for greater and greater zoom, the image on screen may stay the same, but when you switch to MS Teams you may find you are super zoomed in.  Just do a single step at a time (a single scroll wheel step) and then check in MS Teams if it is the level you want.

Older versions of Camera may also not be able to share the camera with Teams, so you will have to run Camera first, and then Teams, without being able to see live changes.

Depending on the combination of the version of camera and the version of the OS, the settings may not be sticky.  Camera 2018.826.98.0 zoom settings were not sticky for me.

Qstarz BTQ1000P (Platinum) GPS logger with photo geocoding - reviewed

NOTE: This 2008 draft blog post is being published in 2022; it may be incomplete and the information is certainly out of date.

Summary

The BT-Q1000P is the second generation of this logger from Qstarz, featuring some hardware enhancements and completely new software.  The hardware interface has been bumped from 38400 to 115200, making for much faster downloads, and track storage has been doubled.  The software features selective track download, sophisticated Google Maps integration, photo geocoding, altitude view and speed view.  This combination of features makes the Q1000P my new preferred logger.

As with the Q1000, the Q1000P is also compatible with the Mac over USB and Bluetooth, using BT747.

It can be set to 5Hz (5 track points per second) logging. [using special software?]

Details

The Qstarz BT-Q1000P (available through Amazon.com in the USA) is a compact GPS track logger, it stores tracks in its internal memory, as well as providing the ability for real-time navigation using USB or Bluetooth GPS-mouse mode.

It uses a replaceable, USB-rechargeable li-ion battery, with reported battery life of [].

The basic hardware appearance and controls are unchanged from the Q1000, so you can refer to that review for more information.

The hardware changes from the Q1000 are:

• interface speed increased from 38400 to 115200, much faster downloads
• Bluetooth download and control??
• storage increased from [] to []

You can see the GPSpassion.com review for additional information about hardware improvements.

Note that the number of storable track points Qstarz advertises is for logging lat/long ONLY.  With altitude (which is included by default), the needed storage space increases, so that actual number of track points available is only about ?135000?  This is an area where some standardisation of counting record storage would help for comparing between loggers.

The Q1000P also brings major software enhancements over the Q1000.  It includes two applications, an updated version of the original Travel Recorder software (now called V3), and a completely new application, called Travel Recorder V4.

I will not look at the V3 software, it is an incremental improvement to the original software I got with my Q1000, with photo geocoding added.

Travel Recorder V4 is similar to the GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr application, it is great to see the vendors starting to provide sophisticated mapping and photo geocoding applications to go along with their excellent hardware.

I will caution that I had a fair bit of trouble connecting successfully to the Q1000P over USB.  Although I am using the same USB-to-serial COM port driver as with the Q1000, it seemed to have some initialisation issues.  I was pretty consistently successful if I first turned on the logger (to LOG mode), and only then connected the USB cable.  You may find that a Windows reboot is the only thing that clears connection problems.

Travel Recorder 4 (henceforth TR4) opens with a blank Google Map (unlike GiSTEQ, you do not have to register for a Maps API key).

Before you're able to start using the product, you will have to enter the product key provided by Qstarz.  Keep this in mind if you're installing on a laptop before heading off on a trip.

When you select "Read GPS Log" TR4  will scan all the logs on your device and then offer you the option to download only selected tracks.  This is by far the nicest implementation of track downloading I have seen so far, compared with the GiSTEQ, which downloads all tracks every time, and the original Travel Recorder software, which also downloaded all tracks and then required manual editing in Excel to separate/split them.

You can see that Qstarz is using a sort of brushed metal look reminiscent of iTunes in some of its internal dialog boxes.

Uses idea of project, imt format, bin format.

the perils of a single photo database

iPhoto stores photos in a single giant database blob, a .photolibrary file.  And by giant, I mean for an average photo library that has been in use for several years, it may be 100GB or more.

Note: This will also apply to the new Photos app, with the file extension changing to .photoslibrary

Using this single file creates a single point of failure for losing your photos.

I have seen this file loss happen, with an entire year of photos gone.

Here are the issues:

• iPhoto using a single file to store all of your photos
• the .photolibrary file can grow very large, 100GB or more
• large files take a long time to backup, particularly if you are doing backup over wifi
• Time Machine canʼt do a full iPhoto Library backup when iPhoto is open
• large files that have been used for years may develop errors

So here's what happens:

• user has a single iPhoto database that has been in use for years (over 15,000 photos)
• user almost always has iPhoto open, meaning the library is rarely backed up by Time Machine
• the library is so large that it is slow to backup anyway
• eventually the library has a fatal error
• there is no recent version of the library to recover from backup

As a result, an entire year of photos are gone.  (This is a real example.)

To mitigate this risk:

• do not use one single giant iPhoto library; make new ones e.g. a new one each year
• make sure you close iPhoto at least at night so the library can be backed-up overnight
• make sure you have a complete copy of the individual photo files also in the file system, also backed up

You can get individual photos out of iPhoto through export, through software that will extract the photo files, through manually browsing and copying from the library (see Where iPhoto Pictures are Located - Accessing the Picture Files and Originals), or by doing a separate download into the filesystem each time you copy files from your photo device (you can use Image Capture to download files into a directory, although by default it will dump them all without any folder structure).

UPDATE 2015-04-20: To access the folder containing all of the individual photos in the iPhoto .photolibrary, first open Pictures, then right-click on iPhoto Library and select "Show Package Contents" in the popup menu.  You will then get a pseudodirectory display.  All of the photos are contained in the directory Masters, organised according to the whims of iPhoto.  This is a copyable directory, you can e.g. drag and drop the entire Masters directory to an external hard drive.  (Note: You must leave the original Masters folder inside the package, otherwise your photo library will break.)  ENDUPDATE

By having small libraries, ensuring that the libraries are backed up, and by having a completely separate copy of each individual photo file, you will have the best chance of preserving your photos.

Sidebar: I wouldn't have thought that it was possible either for the library not to be backed up for an entire year, or for the .photolibrary to error out in such a way that it disappeared unrecoverably (not even DiskWarrior could find it).  But both of those were the case.  Murphy's Law applies with a vengeance to computers.

a workflow for date-based import in Aperture

Aperture is terrible with dates.

A Workflow

Use Camera Bits Photo Mechanic

File->Ingest...

Copy Photos: into folder with name

Folder Name: {iptcyear4}/{iptcmonth0}/{iptcday0}

This will get you folders of format YYYY/MM/DD e.g. 2013/12/01

UPDATE 2014-01-04:  You could also use

Folder Name: {year4}/{month0}/{day0}

This is a better set of variables for files that don't have IPTC metadata, such as video files and screenshot PNG files.

If Photo Mechanic can't determine a date for an ingested file, it will give it the current date (the date you are doing the ingest).

ENDUPDATE

Destination Folder Roots

Primary: Primary Destination: /Users/username/Pictures/

You can optionally rename photos on ingest.  I like to have unique filenames, or at least mostly-unique ones, rather than the sequential ones that roll over back to 0001 after 9999.

A basic naming would be

Rename Ingested Photos As:

{filenamebase}-{foldernum}{frame}

This will give you files of format e.g. IMG_1183-1101183

NOTE: This assumes you are importing from the file structure on the CAMERA disk.  On the camera disk the folders typically have numbers like 109, 110 etc.  If you import from an existing hard disk file structure e.g. a date-based one, you will get the folder on the hard disk e.g. IMG_1183-051183 for a file in a folder named 05.

A more lengthy rename is

{filenamebase}-{foldernum}{frame}-{sequence}-{datesort}

This will give you e.g. IMG_1183-1101183-000010-20140101 (if you have set sequence to be 000001 as the starting, and this is the 10th image ingested) and the image was taken January 1, 2014.

Now in Aperture, do NOT use the upper-left Import arrow.

Use File->Import->Folders as Projects...

Import Folders As: Folders and Projects

Store Files: In their current location

(assuming you are doing Referenced files, not Managed inside an Aperture Library)

Version Name: Original File Name

That's it.  Now instead of Dec 01, 2013 becoming a Project called Dec 01, 2013 you will get two folders and a project, in a hierarchy.

2013 (folder)
       12 (folder)
          01 (project)

Because the files are already sorted this way on disk (during the Photo Mechanic ingest), you get

1) An Aperture folder structure that reflects your file folder structure

2) A date-based folder structure that Aperture will sort correctly

3) Files actually in the right project for their date (see below for why this is a problem in Aperture)

UPDATE 2014-05-24: This approach still has lots of issues, because none of the tools involved are designed to work like this.

Issues include:

1. Photo Mechanic changes the Date Modified for all PNG (iPhone/iPad screenshot) files to the import date.
2. Aperture creates a new top-level folder for each import.  So if you import from Photo Folder, and then import from Photo Folder again, the next import will create a completely new folder structure under Photo Folder (1).

You can address these issues but only with work-arounds.

1. Once PNGs are imported using Photo Mechanic, create a Smart Folder containing only those PNGs.  Use FIle Multi Tool, select Copy creation date to modification date, add all the PNGs from the Smart Folder, and then Perform Changes.  NOTE: This must be done before you import into Aperture.  Once Aperture imports with an incorrect PNG date, you cannot fix it.
2. You have to do all your Aperture imports on sequential dates, with only new files.  Then you can drag entire projects into the right folder structure.  Otherwise you end up having to manually merge files from duplicate projects.

These are both really clunky workarounds due to Aperture not wanting to manage dates or folders properly.

ENDUPDATE

The Problem

Aperture expects you to name projects on import, not to use date-based projects.

Even in version 3.5.1 under Mac OS X 10.9.1 it has issues.

The worst of these issues is that it names projects based on time windows, not actual dates.

So if you set up an import to create date-based projects:

Aperture->Preferences... Import - Autosplit into Projects: One project per day

This is simply not true.  Instead, they have continued their other options Two-hour gaps, Eight-hour gaps, to make 24-hour gaps, but called 24-hour gaps "one per day".  I assume One project per week is actually 168-hour gaps. 

What's the difference? 

When you click the Import arrow (top left of screen), and select Destination: New Project, with Automatically split projects selected, you get the following behaviour

24-hour gaps means a photo taken Dec 1, 2013 at 9am and a photo taken Dec 2, 2013 at 8am will both go in a project named Dec 01, 2013.  This is clearly not what most people would expect from "One project per day" but Aperture persists in this behaviour.

Additionally if you import from two different memory cards or two different devices connected via USB, instead of putting everything into a single project called e.g. Dec 01, 2013 it will make new projects, one for each import, e.g. Dec 01, 2013 (1) for the second import from a device that has files on the same date.

It does, however, group the photos as you would expect on disk, if you have subfolder Year/Month/Day set for creation, it puts them all in the same folder on disk, and it puts the right dated files in the right subfolders on disk (it does actually know what the dates of the files are, it's just creating the projects incorrectly).

Note that Projects are just an Aperture-internal view of what's on disk (a way of organising things within Aperture).  You can rename projects and move photos between projects without affecting anything on disk.

 

Facebook photo privacy and locations

Location Privacy

Facebook has lately gotten a lot more interested in attaching locations to status updates and photos.

One route for it to get this information is directly from your device, e.g. from your iPhone location (if you've given it permission) or from your browser's location function.

In Firefox, if you've already given a page permission to access your location, there is no "location manager" to help you see what you've authorized.  You can only go per-page and then go to the obscure Tools->Page Info->Permissions tab and then change Share Location.

To globally disable location sharing in Firefox, open about:config and change geo.enabled to false.

See more info in Firefox Location-Aware Browsing FAQ.

In Chrome, it's buried in Preferences... Under the Hood->Privacy->Content Settings... (click the button then scroll down to the Location section).

However, even if you block the browser from sharing your location, it can still be extracted from the information invisibly embedded in your photos.  This may be full EXIF-GPS (the exact location the photo was taken, embedded automatically by most cameraphones and by some cameras) or e.g. IPTC keywords giving the location as a text string e.g. "Ottawa, Ontario, Canada".  (IPTC actually has many fields for location text strings, including creator contact address and image location broken down into city, province and country.)

It's not clear what Facebook is using and what it is storing.  It is certain that in some cases it has enough data to create plots like this of where photos were taken:

(from What Facebook knows about you)

Facebook has also gotten a lot more aggressive about asking for explicit location information, both when uploading (every photo now has an attached location field) and retroactively for albums:

There's not a lot you can do easily to protect your location information.  Some basics are disabling the location-aware features in your web browsers, and not completing the blank Location fields Facebook provides.  You can also disable location features in your camera phone, e.g. on an iPhone go to Settings->Location Services and either turn Location off entirely (which means maps won't work) or go into the list of apps within Location Services and set Camera (and any other photo apps) to OFF. 

Beyond that, you could strip all EXIF information, particularly GPS and IPTC keywords and location fields, but that is often difficult or impossible to do on a camera phone, and awkward to do in photo editing apps (which are more intent on preserving EXIF than destroying it).

Photo Privacy

It is important to realise that there is no "private" on the Internet.  There is only "systems attempting to enforce privacy".  Systems can be hacked or have holes, intentional or unintentional.

Facebook very much wants as much of your content as possible to be public.

One consequence of this is that every single photo in Facebook has a public URL (a public link) regardless of what limits you have set on it (e.g. "Friends only").

It is easy to find this link for an entirely album.  Simply go to one of your albums (your wall photos are also an album).  If you don't know how to find albums, go to http://www.facebook.com/media/albums/

Click a photo to go into a specific album.  Scroll to the bottom if necessary.  You should see "Share this album with anyone by sending them this public link".  That's right.  Regardless of your photo controls.  With anyone.  Public link. 

It's a bit more complicated to see this with an individual photo, but you can find it: Right click on a single photo within an album, to pull up your browser menu.  In e.g. Firefox then do "Open Link in New Tab".  At the bottom of the new photo tab that opens, you will find "Share this photo with anyone by sending them this public link".

With "more than 250 million photos uploaded per day" (Facebook Statistics) and Facebook already hosting on the order of 150 BILLION photos (yes, billion, with a "b") that's a lot of surface area for photo privacy attacks.

Facebook doesn't even provide minimal location exclusion features, unlike Flickr, which lets you geofence important locations, so that even if by accident you upload EXIF-GPS data for e.g. your school or your home, Flickr won't display it.

Thanks to Neil Saunders (@neilfws) for getting me thinking about this.