Author Archives: Maria Langer

A New Camera

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Will it take my photography to the next level or have I gone as far as I can go?

Desert Still LifeLast spring, I shot one of what I consider one of my best photographs. I’d been “photojeeping” out in the desert when the hedgehog cacti were blooming. I stopped the Jeep on the two-track I’d been following, grabbed my tripod, camera, and cable release, and set off on foot across a relatively flat area peppered with pink blossoms. When I saw this cactus, my eye began a search for an interesting composition. I had to get down on the ground, with my tripod’s legs as short as they could go, to frame this shot. Although I let the camera handle the exposure (as I usually do), I fine-tuned the focus and depth of field using aperture settings. Said simply: I put a lot of effort into this shot — a lot more than I usually do.

And I was very pleased with the results.

Until I looked more closely at the photo in Photoshop, using 100% magnification. That’s when I could clearly see that the image lacked the kind of sharpness I wanted in my photos. It was as if nothing in the photo was in clear focus. Given the depth of field, that just didn’t seem possible.

I had done just about everything in my power to get the best shot I could and I’d fallen short of desired results. It was like being slapped in the face.

Nikkor 16-85mm LensI started doing research. I knew it wasn’t the lenses I was using — this particular image was shot with my Nikon 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX ED VR Nikkor lens, which was still relatively new at the time. Although this is not a top-of-the-line Nikon lens, it is not a junk lens. The low ISO settings on the camera should have prevented the graininess I observed. That left the camera or me.

I didn’t think it was the camera. After all, I’d come into photography the old fashioned way: using film. When dealing with film, the camera is just a mechanical device to get the exposure — at least at the level of camera I could afford. The lens handles the clarity of the image, so we normally put our money into good optics. Processing and printing (in the case of prints) are also important for the final result.

So it must be me, I reasoned. I resolved to try harder.

Time passed. I took a lot of photos. I started getting accustomed to disappointment. It was taking a lot of the joy out of photography. I’d do a shoot at an amazing place and get ho-hum images.

Nikon D80Then I started thinking more about the camera. I knew that my Nikon D80, which I’d had since 2007, had a 10.2 megapixel Nikon DX format CCD imaging sensor. Newer cameras offered higher resolutions (more megapixels or “piglets,” as my family calls them). They also offered different sensors. My husband’s D90, for example, has a 12.3-megapixel DX-format CMOS imaging sensor. And I knew that there were also cameras that had film-frame size sensors. Why the differences? Did it really matter? I began to get an education about how cameras differ in the world of digital photography.

By the autumn of 2010, I was convinced I needed a different camera. I was limited, however, because I already had a huge investment in Nikkor DX-compatible lenses. That meant that I couldn’t go with a film-frame size sensor in a new camera without buying new lenses. That also meant that any thoughts of jumping the good ship Nikon and boarding the S.S. Canon were not entertained. (Don’t get me wrong: Canon makes excellent equipment, too. But I know Nikon and have an investment in Nikon equipment; it makes no sense for me to switch.)

In November, I went to Tempe Camera to learn more. I was about 75% ready to plunk down up to $1500 for a new camera. But the sales guy educated me some more. Although I’d always seen my husband’s D90 as a minor upgrade to my D80, the sales guy told me that the software was far superior in the D90. I’d get better, clearer images from a D90.

Of course, my husband already had a D90, so it didn’t make sense to buy another one. I’d give it a go with his camera.

That didn’t work. When we went shooting together, he wanted to use his camera. Can you blame him? So I’d be stuck with mine and wouldn’t get the opportunity I needed to experiment with a different camera.

Nikon D7000I heard about the Nikon D7000 in, of all places, Wilson Camera on Camelback Road in Phoenix. We’d gone in there to get passport photos taken and the guy at the counter had been almost drooling over the D7000. I started doing some research. I liked what I read. Not only was it another [big] step above Mike’s D90, but Ken Rockwell, a highly respected camera reviewer, said:

The D7000 is Nikon’s most advanced camera at any price. The fact that it sells for $1,200 make [sic] it a no-brainer, which is why it’s sold out. The D7000 is Nikon’s best DSLR ever.

Holy cow. That was quite a statement.

I did more research on Nikon’s Web site. (That site, by the way, is an excellent and well-designed source of information about Nikon products and photography in general.) I liked the feature list. Better sensor, higher resolution images, programmable custom settings, more scene modes, true 1080p video capabilities — hell, it could even do time-lapse photography without an add-on intervalometer. There are a lot more features; if you’re interested I highly recommend reading up on Nikon’s Web site.

But Mr. Rockwell wasn’t kidding when he said the camera was sold out. Once I decided I wanted one, I spent two hours trying to track one down. Amazon.com was selling one for $100 above retail price. (I don’t pay more than retail for anything; heck, I seldom pay retail for anything.) Tempe Camera only had a kit, which came with the Nikkor 18-105mm lens. I don’t have that lens but I don’t need it either — and was not interested in spending $300 more for the camera with lens. A dozen calls all reported out of stock, although many dealers were willing to let me place an order anyway. But like the true American I am, I wanted immediate gratification — or as close to it as I could get. I was going to San Francisco in a few days and planned to use my new camera there.

I wound up on J&R’s Web site. I used to shop in the J&R store on Park Row when I worked in downtown Manhattan years ago. This was back in the mid 1980s, before digital cameras, when personal computers were in their infancy. J&R then was what chains like Best Buy and Fry’s Electronics are now. (Would love to walk through J&R again; maybe the next time I’m in New York I’ll make the trip down there.) I’d bought other camera and computer equipment from them in the past. Their Web site said they were out of stock on a D7000 body only, but I called anyway. The guy who answered in Maspeth, NY (in the borough of Queens, in case you’re wondering) said a shipment had just come in and the Web site evidently hadn’t been updated yet. They were selling at retail. Brand new, in an unopened box, packaged for U.S. sales. (I asked, of course; I know what goes on among some NYC camera dealers.) Free shipping would get it to me by Friday or Monday. I asked how much overnight shipping would cost. $27.27. Sold!

I expect it to arrive this afternoon.

Nikon GP-1 GPSIn a fit of crazy shopping mania, I also ordered the Nikon GP-1 GPS from Amazon.com. This device, which can attach to the camera’s hot shoe, will automatically geotag my images. This will seriously reduce my geotagging workflow and ensure that all of my photos are properly tagged. I even coughed up the $4 for overnight shipping to get that today.

Once I get the camera and learn to use it, the ball will be in my court. No more excuses; I’ll have good camera equipment and should be able to take better photos. If I can’t — well, I’ll only have myself to blame.

It’ll be interesting to see whether this camera takes me to the next level as a photographer. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 4: Choose a Reputable Flight School

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Get what you pay for.

The quality of your training will be determined by your flight school. And believe me, you want the best training you can get.

Some Basic Tips

Here’s a bunch of tips for choosing a flight school; sadly, most of them are “don’ts” because of the kinds of marketing tactics some schools use:

  • Don’t be lured by ads for cheap training with promises of jobs at 300 hours of flight time. These schools are not interested in turning out quality pilots. They’re interested in attracting as many wannabes as possible to fill out their bottom line.
  • Don’t get fooled by schools that make verbal promises about hiring all graduates as flight instructors. A verbal promise isn’t worth more than the paper it’s written on. Many flight schools will tell you anything you want to hear to get you to sign up. Besides, wouldn’t you rather get trained at a school that chooses the best CFIs as instructors than the one who takes any CFI as an instructor? And do you really think they can hire all of their graduates? What happens when graduates hired as CFIs outnumber students? How many hours of flying will you get then?
  • Don’t look at the biggest or smallest schools. Look at schools somewhere in the middle. These are the ones where you’ll have the benefit of several CFIs on staff while still getting some level of personal attention.
  • Check into the experience of the training staff. Find out how many hours of flight time the chief flight instructor and some of the other flight instructors have. Find out whether any of them have real-life flying experience. Flight schools that offer tour and charter services also offer opportunities for their CFIs to get the kind of experience they’ll use in future jobs.
  • Once you’ve got the flight schools narrowed down to one or two, talk to some of the students and flight instructors there. See what they think. Try to get the contact information for one or two graduates who have moved on to see whether they thought their training at the school helped them succeed.

Don’t be lazy and take shortcuts here. Your future starts with your training. Do your homework. You’ll be amazed by what you learn.

Equipment

Learn to Fly Here SignThere are a lot of people who make a big deal over the kind of equipment used for flying. There are three basic helicopters used for training: Robinson R22, Schweitzer Schweizer 269/300 (which has a bunch of other names), and Enstrom F28F and 280FX. News flash: They’re all good.

The R22 is an extremely “squirrelly” helicopter. It really takes all of your attention to fly. Its two-bladed system makes it unsafe for aggressive or low-G maneuvers, but ground resonance is not an issue. Robinsons are widely respected and widely used in flight schools.

I can’t speak firsthand about the Schweitzer Schweizer since I’ve never flown one. I know that as a helicopter with a fully articulated rotor system, it’s capable of performing far more aggressive maneuvers than a Robinson. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. It is susceptible to ground resonance. I have heard that its glide slope in autorotation is steeper than an R22 but can’t back that up with facts and figures.

I have flown an Enstrom and, in all honesty, I wasn’t impressed. The excessive vibrations really turned me off, but that could have been caused by the blades being out of balance or some other maintenance issue on that particular aircraft. It also has a fully articulated rotor system, but I can’t recall hearing anything about one getting into ground resonance. I don’t know enough about its flight characteristics to pass judgement on it.

Most pilots favor the helicopter they trained on. That’s true with me. Not only did I learn in an R22, but I owned an R22 Beta II for four years and put at least 1,000 hours on it. But who knows? If I’d trained in a 300, I might have all kinds of love for it instead.

I’m hoping that folks reading this who have more knowledge about the other two aircraft will comment on their experiences. (Warning: I will not allow an equipment-bashing comment thread to form for this post. Present facts about what you know; not hearsay about what you don’t.)

I certainly don’t think you should pass up a flight school because of the brand of its equipment. The age, maintenance quality, and condition is far more important. You want a flight school with its own hangar and maintenance facility. You might even want to take a look at it to make sure it’s relatively neat and clean and the mechanics look like they know what they’re doing. A place with friendly mechanics who are willing to talk to you when you have a mechanical problem or question will certainly help you get more out of your flight training.

There’s one other thing to keep in mind. Some flight schools have one or two turbine helicopters on hand that they use for charter work or even training. When trying to get you to sign with them, they might hint or even promise that they’ll give you a certain number of hours of turbine flight time. Get any promises in writing. It is not uncommon for flight schools to give students the impression they’d get turbine transition training in a package deal and then, for some reason, not provide it. Either the aircraft was down for maintenance or there were too many other pilots queued up for time in it or there was an additional fee that was never discussed. If a turbine aircraft is dangled like a carrot in front of you, get all the facts about flying it before signing up.

Beware of Package Deals

And that brings up the topic of package deals. My advice is this: Do not sign with a school that forces you to enter into a contract for all training and pay them a bunch of money up front. (This was also pointed out by Damien in comments for Part 2 of this series, which discussed funding your flight training.) You do not want to be contractually tied to any flight school (at least not without a contractual way out that won’t cost you anything) and you certainly don’t want them getting money upfront (beyond reasonable prepayments) for services yet to be rendered.

If there’s anything the Silver State debacle taught us, it’s that flight schools aren’t always around forever. If they fold with your money, you’re out of luck.

Equally important is that if you decide after a few weeks or months of training that you don’t like the flight school and want to continue training elsewhere, you have the freedom to do so. And believe me; this happens more often than you think.

Networking Potential

Keith, who has far more experience flying far more equipment in far more places than me, pointed out in comments to my earlier post about age:

I know several aspiring pilots who I have counseled about the helicopter business but I hesitate to recommend a school to them. My usual advice on schools has been pick the best ranked school that provides the greatest possible chance to get that first job.

It is a little discouraging to me to have to tell an aspiring career pilot that all the good grades, excellent flight reviews and mind numbing study may come to not if they don’t make that first job happen for themselves. Perseverance helps but choosing the right place to train and the connections and recommendations that come from certain schools and/or instructors might make all the difference. It is still a small industry where more positions are gained through personal recommendations and associations than any quantity of paper credentials. Your reputation in this industry begins at day one and for good or bad will follow you your entire career.

This is excellent advice for career pilots. I know of at least once school — now defunct — that had a terrible reputation for training. It got so bad that many employers would simply not consider any pilot that had that flight school listed on a resume. That’s a difficult hurdle to jump when you’re just starting out.

But I think what Keith’s saying goes beyond just choosing a flight school. I think it also has to do with how you represent yourself throughout training and your first few jobs. That’s attitude and I’ll cover that next.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 3: Start Young

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The younger you start, the farther you can go.

In the last part of this series, I discussed the financial aspects of learning to fly helicopters and getting the ratings you need to move forward. I’m thrilled to see that a few folks have added comments from their own experiences. With luck, others will do the same. The more real experiences that are shared, the more real information readers can pick up here.

In this post I’ll discuss another important topic: age. Ideally, you want to have all certificates in hand by the time you’re 30 years old. Even better would be 25. This means you need to start young.

Look at it this way: if you were going to college for career training, wouldn’t you want to have your degree so you could get to work in your chosen field before the age of 30? This would give you plenty of time to pay your dues (discussed in another post), get your foot in the door, and work your way up the career ladder to the kind of flying job you want.

How Young Can You Start?

I honestly don’t know the minimum age for starting helicopter flying lessons. I’ve seen airplane flight schools offering training for kids as young as 14 years. On the helicopter side, however, I noticed that some flight schools require students to be at least 18 years old. I think that’s a pretty good minimum age for getting on the controls of a helicopter.

Rotorcraft Flying HandbookBut that doesn’t mean you have to wait until you’re 18 to start learning. There’s plenty to learn before you begin taking actual flight lessons. A good place to start is with the FAA’s Rotorcraft Flying Handbook. This free 207-page book in PDF format is an excellent source of information about helicopter aerodynamics and maneuvers. In fact, it’s the book I turn to to brush up on topics like gyroscopic precession and coriolis effect for my annual Part 135 checkride. Start here — no matter how old you are — and get a head start on the basics before you even meet your first flight instructor.

Midlife Career Changes

I get lots of e-mail and comments from guys who are in their 40s or even 50s or 60s who claim that they’ve always wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Always? What I want to reply is: why didn’t you do it when you were younger?

Reality check: 40 is not a good age to start training to become a career pilot. I’m not saying it’s impossible — hell, I was 37 when I started learning to fly. (An airline pilot I knew at the time told me point blank that I was too old to start a career as a pilot.) But it won’t be easy to build your career.

Part of the problem is this: although you’d think that entry level employers would be more inclined to hire older, more mature pilots, they aren’t. They want young guys who will do anything they’re told. They don’t want people who can think and reason based on life experiences. They want cheap robot pilots who will stick around just long enough to fulfill a contract that ends with the tour season. I experienced this first-hand at the Grand Canyon, working with guys young enough to be my sons.

If you’re starting to get up there in years, give this some serious thought before diving in. Do you have many financial responsibilities? Are you prepared to give up your current salary and start at the bottom of a helicopter pilot’s pay scale?

I am fortunate in that my other job as a freelance writer makes it possible to work around my flying activities; I’ve been working two jobs since I began flying for hire. I could never survive in without a serious lifestyle change on what I currently earn as a pilot.

Maybe you’re in a similar situation and have an income that will continue. Or maybe your first career has left you with enough residual income that you don’t need to worry about future income. Or maybe you’ll just prove to be the exception.

If you do decide to go for it, don’t wait. The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.

And here’s one more thing to keep in mind: you don’t have to make flying your career to be a pilot. A man I knew got his private helicopter rating on his 65th birthday. No, he wasn’t a career pilot. He just wanted to fly helicopters.

Next up, an important decision: choosing a flight school.

Dragon Dictation? Maybe.

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I try an iPad-based dictation tool.

Note: This blog post was dictated into my iPad. Although I’d originally hoped to display the text in two columns to show unedited and edited text (as referred to in the post), I later decided to use DEL and INS tags to show actual text edits required — places where Dragon Dictation actually got it wrong. I did not correct my failure to dictate punctuation or my poor use of words, since those are my errors and not the software’s. A few additional comments are included in square brackets in the text.

I am trying something different today. I’m writing a blog post by dictating into my iPad.

I’m using a program called Capps dDragon caps dDictation. I downloaded it for free on my iPad not long after I bought the iPad. I’ve tried it a few times, and was very pleased with the results. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to using dictation software and than simply saying what you want to say.

These first two paragraph are good example. On the left you see my dictated version. On the right you see my edited version. Notice the changes I needed to make. It’s really not bad, but not exactly perfect.

The main problem with using dictation software. See is that you have to dictate everything you want to type. That means you have to dictate your punctuation, capitalization, quotes, and any other information that you want to put in your text other than the exact words.

You also need to speak clearly directly into a microphone. On the iPad that’s not exactly convenient since the microphone is at the top of the iPad. Right now my iPad is standing up on my table with the microphone close to my mouth so that so that Dragon dictation can understand what I’m saying. Of course if you have an external microphone it will work with that as well.

You also need to be careful about what you say. Any mistakes you make will be transcribed. This makes dictation a useful tool for getting out of a first draft, but not for getting final text. You’ll still have to go through the document and make changes to it as necessary to correct errors and rephrase sentences.

As I dictate this today, I see that I’m quickly getting the hang of it. Although it’s not natural for me to do this, I don’t think it will be difficult to learn. What amazes me the most, is the way the software can recognize exactly what I’m saying. I haven’t edited any of this text other than what you sought saw at the top of this post. [Not true; read note at top of post.] Get Yet as you can see dragon dictation has managed to understand almost everything that I’ve said. This absolutely amazes me. What I don’t understand, however, is how many people reported that dragon dictation could not understand them. The overall reviews in the iTunes store for the app are very low. I can only assume that these people are not speaking slowly and clearly so that the software can understand them.

What I do find a little bothersome about this software is that it needs an Internet connection to work. As I speak it evidently records what I say and then when I’m done it sends it to the Dragon dictation website words where it’s translated and returned to me. This isn’tthe best solution if you don’t have an Internet connection all the time. But given the price of the software, which was free, I really can’t complain.

Another thing I find a little bit bothersome is the fact that it evidently has a buffer. I can’t just go on talking for a long period of time and expect the software to be able to translate. Instead it automatically cuts me off gets the translation in and puts it in the software sometimes while I’m still talking. [Boy, that previous sentence could sure benefit from some commas.] This means that I need to stop at the end of every long paragraph let it translate and then start again.

It’s interesting to me also how the software does not recognize upon a pause as a place to put a comma or period it’s also interesting to me that it probably just inserted those two forms of punctuation instead of the words that I just set. Let’s see. That’s funny it’s got the words as I said them and didn’t put in punctuation. I guess it does take a little bit of time to get used to this. [This whole paragraph is a good example of experimenting. Believe it or not, Dragon dictation made only one error; the other errors were mine.]

As a writer, it’s a dream to be able to say what you want to say and have it automatically typed for you. But the reality is and not so sweet. In reality, I can type a lot faster than I can do this dictation. I can also make a lot fewer mistakes. And I can edit as I go along.

Still, I think the thing that bothers me the most, is that I have to stop at the end of every long paragraph to let Dragon dictation catch up. I don’t type like this. I don’t think like this. I tend to type thing [I corrected myself here but DD didn’t know that.] right write a lot more a lot more fluidly. I also don’t think about the comments commas that I need to put in my documents.

Overall what do I think of this? I think it has its uses, but I can’t see using it as a normal writing tool. I’ll keep experimenting with it, but I’m not sure whether it will ever be something I use daily.

If you have an iPad or my phone iPhone I recommend giving this a try. You might like it. And if you like it a lot. You might want to buy the regular software that they self sell for your computer. They have a Windows version and a Mac version.