Updated camera comparison

I had the page sizes of the later Tract Books wrong, actually at twice ledger size, so I corrected that to the correct open, 2-page spread of 22″ wide by 17″ tall, and the single page in portrait mode at 11″ wide by 17″ tall in this new version 1.4. I also added several cameras just for comparison:  Nikon’s D3S and D300S along with the Pentax K-X. Considering just pixel count, they don’t measure up, but the Nikons have excellent image quality, especially at high ISO settings, and the Pentax is very interesting on features and price. The lens used will have a big effect on how legible the writing is. Both companies ave some very fine glass available. At low ISO settings, I think probably any of the cameras shown could create clear images. With the copy stand holding the camera steady the exposures could be as long as needed. Most camera reviews do not evaluate performance in copying handwritten text, so you have to extrapolate from other aspects.

http://cedingman.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/glo-tract-books-some-digital-cameras-compared-v14.pdf

Copy stand testing and updated camera comparison

This week I ordered and received the Dot Line brand RS-CS1070 COPY STAND and RS-C150 COPY LIGHT SET with PH211 Lamp – 75 watts/120 volts from B and H Photo. The price and service were great with fast, free shipping. I have set it up and taken it down 3 times now, and timed one set up at 18 minutes, workable for daily use at a document repository. I am keeping 4 boxes to transport it all in, one 2′x2′ x1″ thin flat for the base, one 3″x6″x3.5′ tall box for the camera column, and 2 2″x6″x8″ boxes for the light reflector/shade devices.

My testing was with my pocket-sized consumer camera, a Norcent 1050 with 3x zoom. I realized looking at my test document composed of multiple printed letter sized sheets that I had misunderstood my own notes about the size of the Tract Books. Each page is 17″ high and 11″ wide, not the open double spread, so all my calculations of dots per inch image resolution were off by 2x. I revised the spreadsheet and attach it here as version 13.  http://cedingman.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/glo-tract-books-some-digital-cameras-compared-v131.pdf

I tried different camera heights with different focal lengths, and with macro versus non-macro settings. I need to finish examining the test images at 1:1 zoom, but one thing I noticed was that one side of the image had poorer focus, when I had the top of the camera carrier at 12.7″, no macro, 7.6 mm focal length at f2.8, 1/149s, ISO 100. I may have had the camera tilted to the side and off-center; its tripod mount is not aligned with the center of focus of the lens, and the camera carrier has a good 3″ of lateral adjustment. I will measure its centering and level it with a carpenter’s level in further testing. I am trying to find the best settings to get at least one 11″x17″ page in clear focus. Bumping up the ISO or the exposure time and stopping the lens down may help. I left most settings at “Auto” for my first test shots and used a 2′ shutter delay to avoid shaking the camera in tripping the shutter, since no remote shutter release is possible. The zoom is actually stepped and not continuous. I found 7.6, 9.3, 11.1, and 17 mm focal lengths, but nothing in between. I need to set a custom white balance of the documents being imaged, and include my black, white, and gray chips in the image for reference and possible adjustment. The base of the copy stand is 18% gray, I think. Unlike some, it has no grid or measurements on its surface.

My current camera was only a way to get started. It does answer some questions. The lights are important to getting clear pictures with consistent color balances in rooms with variable window or office illumination, using fairly low ISO and short exposures. The vault at BLM Eastern States is windowless and lit by strip fluorescents, with one small table I might be allowed to use. If one can take a volume out to the law library table, it is still far from the nearest windows. I was not sure I would need the lights, or the enlarger light bulbs, but now I think they will help a lot. At the National Archives I would not be able to use them. Longer exposure times would be needed.

My next steps will be more testing at home, recording and reviewing the settings against the resulting images, then travel to Springfield, VA to try imaging a Tract Book for Minnesota.

Color (white) balance

Thanks to an inexpensive diffuser (Dot Line 77mm White Balance Lens Cap) I hold over the lens, I can now set custom white balances on my little digital camera (Norcent DCS-1050). The diffuser was a gift from my wife, and it has helped me get good color on available light holiday photos.  The lens cap will be large enough for most zoom lenses I may have. Since no 26mm one is available that would fit over the end of the small lens I have now, I think it will work out better to have one that probably will fit larger lenses later. I have found it only slightly inconvenient to hold the diffuser with one hand and operate the camera menus and shutter with the  other. I wear it on a lanyard around my neck. I choose the white balance menu and “Shutter,” snap a shot, then respond to the “Custom white balance?” prompt with the Menu button to set the white balance. Colors immediately look much better on the screen as well as in exposures, and the custom white balance is stored when the camera is powered off.

I also received a Digital Image Flow Digital Grey Kard – Premium White Balance Card Set with Premium Lanyard (Set of Three Cards) that I can use for photographing documents or objects where I want a reference white, grey and black level in the image to document the lighting or for tweaking white balance after exposure, though since my camera only captures jpeg images that have their color levels already compressed, I cannot adjust color nearly so well after exposure. The white or grey card should also provide a way to set a custom white balance before taking a picture, if placed to fill the field of view in the ambient light that illuminates a subject reflecting diffusely, but I have not yet actually worked out how to do that with the Norcent.  Both tools came from B & H Photo -Video – Pro Audio in NYC. I have bought a camera for my wife’s Mom and an audio system for my home from the store, and have been very happy with its service and prices.

Spring term, 2010 possibilities

The class I want to take, GEOG672 Biophysics of Optical Remote Sensing, is already full and I might not luck out and get into a place vacated by someone dropping it. Looking over the online class schedule Testudo, I see other classes taught by professors, an experience I would like to repeat.

GEOG672 Biophysics of Optical Remote Sensing; (3 credits) Grade Method: REG/AUD.

Prerequisite: GEOG472 or equivalent; or permission of department. Biophysical principles, phenomena and processes underlying multispectral remote sensing in the optical portion of the EM spectrum. Includes computer-based exercises that explore the biophysical basis of land patterns and dynamics observed in remote sensing data. There is a $40 lab fee for this course.

0101(37133) S. Goward (FULL: Seats=20, Open=0, Waitlist=0) Books

W……… 1:00pm- 3:30pm (LEF 1171)

No books listed yet.

GEOG445 Climatology; (3 credits) Grade Method: REG.

Prerequisite: GEOG345. Credit will be granted for only one of the following: GEOG445 or GEOG446. Formerly GEOG446. Quantitative investigations into the Earth’s radiation balance, water cycle, and the interrelationship of climate and vegetation. Methodologies in climate research. Case studies related to global climatic change.

0101(36988) E. Vermote (Seats=20, Open=9, Waitlist=0) Books

TuTh……11:00am-12:15pm (LEF 1201)

No books listed yet.

GEOG342 Introduction to Biogeography; (3 credits) Grade Method: REG/P-F/AUD.

Prerequisite: GEOG201. Recommended: GEOG211. Credit will be granted for only one of the following: GEOG342 or GEOG347. Formerly GEOG347. The principles of biogeography, including the patterns, processes and distributions of living organisms from local to global scales, aspects of ecophysiology, population and community ecology and evolutionary biology. Spatial processes in the biosphere will be covered.

0101(36823) S. Prince (Seats=60, Open=18, Waitlist=0) Books

TuTh……12:30pm- 1:45pm (LEF 2166)

ECOLOGY 978-0-3-2150743-3

GEOG340 Geomorphology; (3 credits) Grade Method: REG/P-F/AUD.

Survey of landform types and role of processes in their generation. Frequency of occurrence and implications for land utilization. Emphasis on coastal, fluvial, and glacial landforms in different environmental settings. Landform regions of Maryland.

0101(36813) M. Kearney (Seats=54, Open=20, Waitlist=0) Books

TuTh…… 9:30am-10:45am (LEF 2166)

PROCESS GEOMORPHOLOGY 978-1-5-7766461-1  (I have the previous edition of this one.)

My current camera comparison

I have kept a spreadsheet on consumer cameras that could capture a full spread 2 page open GLO Tract Book 11 x 17 inches in one exposure so I would not need to be making and stitching together multiple exposures, and this is the current version.

GLO Tract Books by Digital Camera — Some Cameras Compared v9

Reviewing my About page I noted that John Butterfield had said he thought the Tract Books would need 450 to 500 dpi color images to read, so I revised my spreadsheet to include 450 dpi as well as 300 dpi, and single page as well as double page spreads.  Since I may try out lower resolutions, I entered my current modest consumer camera at the bottom.  With an inexpensive copy stand (under $100), I could image each page by moving the book laterally in between page turns, then stitch the pages together.  These are both extra steps in the work flow that I might not want to do for many states, but could for some.  I would be a test to see how well my simple camera could work as a gauge of how much better a camera I need.

GLO Tract Books by Digital Camera — Some Cameras Compared v11

Another season, another geography course but no research in GLO records

I had the final exam today for GEOG472 Remote Sensing Processing & Analysis, so now I feel I have the time to write something other than a research paper.  Since my last post I got into and completed GEOG475 Computer Cartography and a Summer class, Intro to Remote Sensing.  Of the four courses so far, this last one (472) is the first I have taken that was taught by a professor, Dr. Sam Goward. Since he is just back from sabattical and got tagged as acting Geography Department head when the last chair, Dr. Townshend, was appointed Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Dr. Goward brought in his research colleague Dr. Huang to co-teach with him. Dr. Goward has been one of the major developers of remote sensing and its application to earth science, especially Landsat imagery. His research and teaching experience made for a great learning experience.  Dr. Chengquan Huang has made a number of recent research contributions and was excellent at explaining analysis operations in the spatial and spectral dimensions.

Dr. Goward is going to teach a follow-on course, Geography 672 — Biophysics of Optical Remote Sensing (RS)  for the Spring 2010 term and I would like to take it. Unfortunately for me,  it is filling up and I might not make it in since I have to wait until the third day of classes to register, under the space available rules for Golden ID students.  It would be my first truly graduate level course since I finished my MA at UMN in 1972. Dr. Goward described it as having less emphasis on tests, more on writing and research. It would be a new challenge for me but also a unique opportunity to learn material that Dr. Goward assured me is not in any book. This department is sometimes jokingly called the “Dept. of RS” instead of  the “Dept. of Geography” because of its depth in that subject. Researchers who have grants that pay much of their salaries and also support labs and students have long been a big part of the department, and most of that research has been with NASA or other agencies for RS work. So I, as a little cork in the big stream, going where openings allow and excellence beckons, have taken all computer analysis and presentation courses so far. That is thanks in part to the fairly new Master of Professional Studies and Graduate Certificate in Professional Studies in Geospatial Information Sciences that made some of those openings available, and also to the research professors in RS who make possible other courses I have taken. There are other possibilities for next term, but then again, looking at the way the class schedule overlaps my Son’s graduation from Berklee College of Music in Boston, no course may be feasible.  Skipping one major term will still leave me eligible to take further courses next Fall under the Golden ID program without reapplying, so I may need to do that.

I just touched up my “About” page, adding URL references. I also inquired about the availability of the whole Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales Database, and will note the results of that as soon as I have them.  I asked if I could obtain the database behind the  web application that allows searches and lookups of particular entry names and land parcel descriptions, one by one, so that it could be analyzed. While doing that, I noticed it had been 10 months since my last blog entry.  I have continued to monitor the costs and specifications of cameras that would allow capture of the big GLO Tract Books in one frame per page spread with adequate resolution for general archival use. That is my preferred method if I can swing it so that I will have a resource others can use, perhaps even the BLM as a substitute for their planned imaging.  I won’t go into more details here. See my About page. It still is an interest, just not one I have been actively pursuing of late.

My first course at UMD, GIS, was an enabler for research that I want to do with a large amount of spatially detailed information.  The computer cartography course was arguably also an enabler, for presentation of results.  The 2 remote sensing courses I have taken since then were more opportunistic parallel learning experiences, based on an old but abiding interest. I think some general analysis techniques may translate to the GLO research, and they were generally intellectual confidence builders–at least I hope so, as I wait for my grade in the last course.  I will have to set aside some months without too many commitments so I can commute to Springfield, VA and experiment with photographing the GLO records at the Eastern States BLM office there. If taking a class next Spring conflicts with family plans, that might be a good time to take the plunge, or I could start in any case as soon as January.  We are just now in the early stages of our first major snow storm in years, but I don’t expect that will impede travel beyond the next few days or week at most.  My first white Christmas in years is possible.

Now that I have spent 4 hours after midnight online writing this and celebrating my term’s completion, I am getting weary and need to sign off again.  Another season may bring more movement on my GLO research. I hope so.

Time: there’s the rub

That I have not kept a blog or other active web presence, that I have not posted more than once a month now that I have started this blog, that I have not photographed or abstracted one page of GLO Tract Books a year after visiting their home at Eastern States BLM, that this restart was 10 years after I turned back to look at the GLO Records, with the first computer I built; all this just highlights the biggest throttle on my progress toward these goals I have cherished:  alert, attentive time.  My mind comes almost to a full stop when I think of the repetitive, routine actions required to get the masses of detail out of the Tract Books and onto the digital commons where I and many others can tame them and turn them into useful resources for understanding the European settlement of our public land states.  I see myself turning the pages, checking focus and framing, taking and checking images, cataloging them, reading them, keying the names and dates with the PLSS descriptions, managing the database entries, for however many thousands of 40 acre quarter-quarter sections, government lots, and river or lake meanders.  Minnesota has about 39,000.  I just downloaded and added to an ArcMap the MN DNR PLSS polygons, built from the highest available accuracy records.  This was usually the PLSS surveyors’ notes entered as coordinate geography (COGO), or failing that coordinates calculated from the best available base maps showing sections; these were subdivided evenly by formulas to get quarter sections and then quarter-quarters.  The real data is much less regular than that result because of the tools and time available, the errors of field and office work, and sometimes outright fraud.  The way the survey was monumented is what controls ownership, once the survey was accepted, and not the more accurate coordinates someone later could surely gather.

The PLSS database  for MN is a great resource for many purposes, and it will form the spatial framework onto which I will hang the information gleaned from the Tract Books.  Other states have perhaps less robust databases, and I will have to develop an approximate framework by calculating aliquot parts from the secondary map sources.  IL has the land entry dates and entry persons in a data file created in a State Prison project decades ago, for Federal lands alienated and for RR lands as well, but this has not to my knowledge been mapped at full scale because the only spatial frame available was at the section level, from 1:24,ooo quadrangle maps, so a summary of dates for each section was used {add reference to IL Map Notes article and url for the data}.

I begin to know what this is about

I am slowly getting together what I will need to realize the recurrent vision in my tagline, including a coherent plan, time, and equipment.  See my About page for details.  Almost a year ago now I visited the Eastern States BLM offices and saw its collection of GLO records and potential places I could set up and shoot images of the Tract Books.  I was introduced to the ongoing digitization of other GLO record sets by Jennifer Spencer, who showed me around, and John Butterfield, who explained the ongoing digitization he is leading.  Since then I have worked a six month part-time consulting gig that has helped pay the bills and taken one class at UMD, the 300-level GIS class GEOG373, but haven’t been back to the BLM office.  The GIS tutorial used includes a six-month license for ESRI ArcGIS Evaluation Version, so for now I have access to a GIS system that I have learned to use,  but unless I take another class that gives me another license, I won’t have that ArcGIS after sometime next month.

My plans for UMD are still up in the air for the Spring term starting next month.  I have to wait until the third day of class to register, on a space-available basis.  That makes planning a bit difficult, but those are the terms for the Golden ID pass I am using to keep the costs affordable.  The last time I looked, computer cartography had multiple openings, but spatial analysis did not.  Last Fall term, some slots opened up after the first day of class so I may have an opening there if I want it.  Either would be great, and there are other classes I would like to take.  I wish they used open source software, though, so independent scholars without grants, like me, could afford to have the software we learn to use in class,  for more than the period of the class, plus a little.

I am working just now using a very good monitor for GIS work that I bought last week, a HP LP2475W with wonderful color and viewing angles.  I calibrated the color with a small and simple to use tool from Eye-One.  The monitor is connected to my laptop’s VGA port until my new computer gets here next week.  That will have a digital connection and much more power to drive the display.  It shows a delay in scrolling a display this large.  Calibration benefited the little laptop’s own monitor noticeably.  It still suffers from poor viewing angles, especially from below, and measures only 12.1″ diagonally, but its color is much better, calibrated, than it was before.  The laptop is very useful because is so small and light, but fast.  It is also a HP product, a TX2000 convertible tablet that will be good to have in the archives.  I may even use the stylus on the touch sensitive screen for geographic editing.  So far, I have only browsed and taken some notes with it in tablet mode.

I have my first digital camera, other than what’s been in my last 2 cell phones, a tolerable, very small 10 MP Norcent with a 3x zoom.  It would do in a pinch to capture document images in an archive, certainly better than nothing.  I got it for $80 to use for snapshots, and take it with me a lot.  For archival photos, if I can afford it, I am thinking of getting one of the new crop of digital SLRs with over 20 megapixels to allow one shot to take in an open Tract Book, 11″ x 17″ at adequate resolution for BLM use.  That could be on of the following cameras:

• Canon 5D Mark II @ $3.2k
• Sony A900 @ $3k
• Nikon D3X @ $8k

Those are just the camera bodies.  The lenses for the Sony seem to be excellent, but expensive, Carl Zeiss glass at about $1750 for either a wide to middle or a middle to telephoto zoom lens, but I see that older Minolta autofocus lenses work fine.  The Nikon has a lot of new and old lenses that can be much less expensive, especially if without autofocus.  Canon has a lot of choices.  Since these are all “full frame” 35mm sensors, the old lenses for film 35mm cameras will work.  The Nikon does not seem to have image stabilization in either the body or lenses.  For work on a copy stand, I’m not sure that matters.  The Sony does not have Live View, but has an image preview.  All three can be controlled from a PC, which is advantageous when the camera is on a copy stand, pointed down.