A Photo Tour to New Zealand?

In Nashville this week.  This was taken in front of Dolly Parton's house.

In This Issue

• Lots-o-things

New Zealand Photo Tour Possibility

If you've been following the blog for the last few years you'll know that we hosted not one, but TWO photo safaris in Kenya.  Both were great successes - everyone had a great time, learned a lot, and came back with some trophy shots, allowing them to show off a trip that they will certainly never forget.

What shall we do next?  Carol and I are thinking about doing something similar in New Zealand, with an itinerary specifically geared for the unique needs of landscape photographers.  And at long last I was able to find a touring company that would be willing to put together a custom itinerary that meets my specifications: Visit scenics when the sun will be behind you, be at the right place at the right time with the best view, and generally get great shots in little-known places so your shots won't look like everyone else's.  And I'll be there to guide you, make suggestions and answer questions.  

These are gratuitous landscapes of New Zealand.  More here.

So I want to gauge the level of interest for such a trip.  It would take place in April 2027 (the best time to visit) and would cost about $5K USD, not including airfare.  We would need a minimum of 12 people to attend, at which time the trip would be a "go".  Please email me at Gary at Friedman Archives dot com and let me know your level of interest!

P.S. - Another similar opportunity opened up in Tibet in September 2017, led by my extremely talented photographer friend Steve Chong.  Let me know if this would be of interest as well.  (Yes, I'll be there too.)  You can read more about Steve's Tibet itinerary at https://travel.stevechong.com/tibet/ 

HDMI or USB 3.2?

I know what you're thinking: "When using my camera as a webcam, which method should I use to connect your camera to my computer?  Should I use the HDMI output (along with an HDMI-to-USB converter), or send the video signal out the USB port to my computer.  Is one method better than the other?"  

There are lots of technical characteristics I could toss around as if I knew what I was talking about:

1. HDMI and USB video use two different color gamuts.
2. USB-C makes the computer work harder decompressing the video.  
3. There might be a slight audio or video lag with USB-C.
4. HDMI requres a capture card.
5. USB-C requires a high-end cable (which is probably unlabeled regarding its capabilities - see the end of this blog post).

At the end of the day, though, this made the decision easy.  Left: HDMI  Right: USB-C.  HDMI has a narrower dynamic range.  (BTW, I've got a Santa gig in December.  Hence the beard.)

Book Announcements

The book on the Sony RX10 V is out in all formats!  www.FriedmanArchives.com/RX10V

The A7R VI book is availble in all formats as well!  www.FriedmanArchives.com/A7RVI

The 10 Best and 10 Worst Minoltas

My most popular youtube video was from 2012, entitled "The 10 Best and 10 Worst Minolta Cameras ever made", although that video only covered the best (in my opinion).  The worst were listed a few months later.  

For historic purposes, I've combined them both into one blog post to make finding the whole list in one convenient place!  Check it out at https://friedmanarchives.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-10-best-and-10-worst-minolta.html .

Update on Dr. Schiff and Uganda

I keep in touch with Dr. Schiff, wanting to know the results from his 20-year quest to prevent infections in the remove Jinja region of Uganda.

The samples we collected are proving rather incredible. Evidence of the pathogenic Paenibacillus bacteria in soil, cow milk, and … many fish. We just collected another hundred samples and they are ready to ship to us. And US cases keep showing up with very severe infant infections that are proving very difficult to treat well enough to get good outcomes (recent cases in Salt Lake City and another one in Pennsylvania). Going to be quite the story as we slowly unravel all of this incredible complexity. 

So, if it's everywhere, the question now becomes "Why isn't everyone getting infected??"  

The more difficult question is where are these US cases coming from. Two of the cases I know of conceived of the infants while in Egypt. The organism can live in the gut, and perhaps adults get colonized. 

I’ll admit that I neglected to check samples of feces from infants and mothers for the first thousand or so samples. Mea culpa.  We are, of course, fixing that. Honestly Gary, a motivator to go into brain surgery was to get away from feces. Story of my life.  :-) 

To make the story even more interesting, at 70 years old Dr. Schiff has left his professorship position at Yale and accepted a position at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, overseeing many similar projects and still allowing hime to continue coordinating the work in Uganda.

Stay tuned...

New Zoom Talks Available

I continue to expand my repetoire of zoom talks for photo clubs worldwide.  Here are some new lectures I put together for photo clubs that requested them:

• Tools for Enforcing Copyright - what works and what doesn't
• Ensuring your Family Photo Legacy Lives on
• Computational Photography - How our Smartphones are Beating the Big Cameras
• How to "Wow!" with Wireless Flash
• RAW vs. JPG (and the unknown benefits of shooting .jpg)
• Travel Stories - Times things went horribly wrong when on assignment.
• My Life as a Geek - My decade at NASA and the inventions that got me there.  (There's some photography-related inventions in there, too. :-) )

All of these have resonated with the photo clubs who hired me, as evidenced by the outstanding questions the generate from participants.  I can also put together a custom talk to address your club’s most pressing questions. (Hey, I’m working for YOU!!)

More info here: https://www.friedmanarchives.com/photo-clubs-only-2

Confidential Message

This message is for Steve Wagner.  You posted anonymously on my blog so there's no way to reach you.  My brother would like to get in touch with you.  Please contact me at Gary at Friedman Archives dot com. 

Until next time,

Yours Truly, Gary Friedman

This is what I have to do in order to know whether this USB-C cable conforms to USB 2.0 (480Mbp/s) or USB 3.2 Gen 1 single lane (5 Gbit/s) or USB 3.2 Gen 1 dual lane (10 Gbit/s) or USB 3.2 Gen 2 single lane (10 Gbit/s) or USB 3.2 Gen 2 dual lane (20 Gbit/s) or USB4 Gen 2 single lane (10 Gbit/s) or USB4 Gen 2 dual lane (20 Gbit/s) or USB4 Gen 3 single lane (20 Gbit/s) or USB4 Gen 3 dual lane (40 Gbit/s) or USB4 Gen 4 symmetric (80 Gbit/s) or USB4 Gen 4 asymmetric (120 Gbit/s) or Or USB4 with Thunderbolt compatibility.  (And don't even get me started about Display Port compatibility!)

In the old days new capabilities were usually accompanied by new, incompatible connectors to avoid this very mess in determining connector capabilities.  But that came with its own problems of electronic waste.