First, I appologize for the lack of updates recently. Clive and I have both been working furiously to generate some great new content for everyone. We took a few trips to “The Bog”, Lake Scugog, and had one hell of a time both on the lake and at the only bar in Port Perry the night before. Unfortunatly, we weren’t able to land any Musky on either trip, but we did find the occasional out-of-season Largemouth Bass and lots of Panfish and Rock Bass. The guy in the middle is Martin, a friend of a friend that happened to come along last minute. It couldn’t have worked out better because we had a crazy-ass time at the bar. He definitely knows what fishing fury is all about.
You may not have even noticed, but our site was moved to a new server a few days ago which will allow for the higher capacity of hits the photo gallery will no doubt generate, and further expansion into some new and exciting sites. This site may go down briefly tonight as I try, again, to update Wordpress to version 2.
The Fishing Fury photo gallery is coming along nicely and I’m expecting to launch the first version very soon. This would be my first project in Ruby on Rails and I wan’t to make sure it’s a bit more polished before I release it. Though I haven’t worked with RoR for very long I really like the environment they’ve set up, I just wish (like many newbies, I’m sure) their online documentation was a bit more complete.
I’ve even got another review coming soon!
JVC Everio First Impressions - I bought this camera because it sounded like everything I wanted and needed (other than High Definition), and it would hopefully save me from hours of capturing footage from DV tapes. This camcorder is able to record over 7 hours of DVD quality footage, to it’s internal 30GB hard drive. Will it be everything I hoped for, or another great idea built on crippled hardware or software. (model: GZ-MG77U)
I found this cool Flickr photo pool of laptop stickers and I thought I would share mine. It also reminded me that I have to get the Fishing Fury stickers ordered as soon as possible because I would like to give lots of them away at the next two OFN events.
People are always asking me about our digital cameras and after my last post I thought I should explain a bit about the gear that we’ve used in 2005, specificly the camera gear. When asked in person I just whip my camera out of my pocket and show them. 80% of the time they refuse believe that such high quality images could come from a camera so small.
Canon Elph Powershot SD10
The Canon SD10 is an amazingly powerful camera for its size, at 4 megapixels it’s actually smaller than most cellphones. This camera has been in my pocket nearly everyday since I got it for Christmas in 2003 and has withstood countless drops, bumps, and bangs. Because of its size the camera has no optical zoom, but 5.7X digital zoom, which I’ve obviously disabled. The SD10 has minimal modes (Auto/Manual/Macro/Stitch), but each does it’s job absolutely perfectly.
In case your wondering Stitch Mode is for taking panoramic photos, basicly it shows you half of the previous image and allows you to line up the horizon so the images can be easily “stitched” together later. For this I use software called Panorama Factory.
Las Arenas, BCS
More gear updates to come, including our favorite tackle for 2005. I will leave it to Clive to post about his camera, as I think he has a full review coming soon. Not to mention a photo slide show, and if I can find the time, a 2005 video to compliment the 2004 videos.
In todays world gadgets are everywhere and used by everyone, from school children to senior citizens - from mp3 players to blood glucose meters. There is little doubt in my mind that technology and everyday gadgets have made our lives better, albiet for the occasional vaporware and crippled consumer electronics. I try my best to follow the trends and future of such devices, mostly so that when it comes time for me to make a purchase (generally an expensive one), I don’t make the wrong decision.
People often ask me for my opinion on various electronics, from digital cameras to DVD players, and while I can talk for hours on end about the subject I try to leave them a basic set of rules or guidlines on what not to buy, or what features are generally meaningless, rather than an indepth understanding on how such devices actually work.
With the passing of Christmas I had countless converstations with family members and friends looking to make such purchases for themselves or as gifts. While the average geek should know the majority of these simple rules, I’ll take some time out to cover the basics should you be looking to purchase some new toys this year.
If you’re a gadget addict like myself, then you’ll want to keep up on the latest, greatest, and not so great products soon to be seen in your local electronics store. Luckily with the internet doing so is far from difficult, as opposed to researching a product just before you’ve decided to purchase it. There are countless consumer electronic magazines, blogs, and publications but finding one that will give you a honest opinion that is not swayed by marketing or close ties to specific vendors can be difficult.
First and foremost it’s probably a good idea to have a place to lookup some of those confusing terms that you might not be familiar with. For that I recommend searching for the term on Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia that is written collaboratively by it’s readers.
Digital Cameras
- Digital zoom is not a selling point, in fact it is utterly useless. Digital zoom differs from optical zoom in that digital zoom is done through interpolation, the approximation of the surrounding pixels, where optical zoom is done with the lens and offers a true image at full resolution. In plain terms when you take a picture with digital zoom your camera is actually discarding pixels, resizing the image to full resolution, and using software to “fill in” the necessary pixels. You will get much better results by cropping your images and resizing them on your computer, with Photoshop for instance, than having your camera do it for you.
It should be noted that digital zoom can, at times, result in decent images. However the more digital zoom you use and the further away the object you’re zooming in on, the worse the results. My advice is to never use digital zoom and if your camera allows you to disable it, do so.
More information on digital zoom can be found at Wikipedia, and a detailed explaination at Cambridge in Colour.
- Bundled software means nothing, and should not increase the price of your camera. It doesn’t matter what software they’ve bundled, unless maybe it’s the newest version of Photoshop (ya right!), or what it does. The bottom line is that there is plenty of free software out there that will do a far better job.
A few examples are, Picasa from Google, Faststone Image Viewer, Image resizer and other Microsoft Windows XP powertoys, Paint.NET, and Gimpshop for Windows.
My appologies for not covering free software alternatives for Mac, but I don’t have one nor access to one.
- Proprietary lock-in features, also called vendor lock-in, are features that are only compatible with other products by the same vendor. With digital cameras this generally means some kind of software or connector to a printer by the same company that will make printing images “easier” or “automated”, but can extend itself to memory modules, for instance Sony cameras are only compatible with Sony Memory Sticks, lens mountings for SLR cameras, and even file formats.
- File formats can differ from camera to camera, all cameras will take pictures in JPEG format, though some may support more. TIFF and RAW for instance, are higher quality images but will take up much more space on your memory card and aren’t necessary for normal usage. However where cameras can differ considerably is the format in which they record video files. Lots of new cameras are supporting MPEG-4 and Quicktime formats. While both formats produce high quality video at relatively the same cost in memory Quicktime locks you in to using their specific player, which I abhor (the player not the format).
- Proprietary batteries vs. regular batteries. Batteries seem to be more of a personal preference than a selling point or lack there of. I personally prefer the proprietary batteries as they tend to last longer and cause less aggrivation than shelling out cash to buy packs of AA’s. However, one could make the argument that you can pick up regular batteries at just about every corner store so running out of batteries isn’t a huge problem, and you can always get some high quality rechargeables.
- Eye finders are only useful on SLR cameras and most point and shoot cameras are not SLR. This means that what you see through the eye finder is only an approximation of what your camera is actually going to take a picture of, and if you’re using macro mode its probably nothing like what your picture will turn out to be. Use the LCD screen whenever possible.
So that’s basicly a run down of what I tell people to look out for when purchasing a new digital camera. Inevitably the next question is;
“What do you look for when you’re buying a camera?”
- Price vs. Megapixels. Simply put you want the most for you money and just because a camera takes images at a higher resolution than another doesn’t make it better. If possible ask if you can take a similar picture with multiple cameras and see them up close on a computer screen. It’s not an unreasonable thing to ask for.
- Lag time, or the ammount of time in which it takes the camera to turn on and be ready to take pictures. You never know when you’re going to see something you want a picture of, and chances are that opportunity isn’t going to last long, so the lag time should be a short as possible.
- Burst mode is the ablity to take pictures in sequence, and is great for capturing movement or if you just want to take a bunch of images in a short period to be sure you don’t miss the perfect one. In this case you will be looking for the number of images that can be taken per second and at what resolution. Generally speaking the higher the resolution the slower and the less amount of time the burst can be sustained (due to limitations writing to the memory card).
- Optical zoom, if you’re going to need to zoom in on things make sure you’re not going to be using a digital zoom.
- Overall size; look and feel. Think about what you’re going to be using the camera for. If you’re like me and you want to be able to take pictures everywhere you’ll probably want something small, yet powerful, that you can keep in your pocket.
- Moveable LCD screen, though it’s not a definitive selling point for me, if you like taking pictures of yourself you’ll probably want this feature.
- Frames per second is the one of the most important things to look at when trying to understand the video abilities of your camera. If a camera can take video at 640×480 but at only 15 frames per second it’s generally useless for that feature. If video is important to you look for a camera that can shoot 60 frames per second, you’ll even be able to slow the video down to half speed without loosing quality.
Here is a small list of gadget and consumer electronic websites that I read on an almost daily basis to get the low-down on new products. Always remember to read the user comments on products that interest you, as some can be extremely insightful, but always take them with a grain of salt.
Gizmodo, Engadget, Living Room Photolog, Photography Blog, Tech Digest
And of course you’ll want to read about the latest-greatest photo software.
Download Squad, The Unofficial Photoshop Blog, Photoshop Support Blog
If you have any other recommendations or input, please make them in the comments for this entry. Enjoy and good luck shopping.
