I used the Olympus E-420 for a few days, but the pointy viewfinder, though a minor thing, just bothered me way too much. So I decided to finally get the Sigma DP1, one of the first things I blogged about. The DP1 has its own faults of which the speed is probably its worst. Every review I read commented about that fault making it sound “useless.” It lowered my expectations to the point that I thought the camera was going to be like a floppy drive Mavica. I’m so glad I read all those horrible reviews. While playing with the camera, I found myself saying, “wow, it’s not that bad.” Now onto the observation bullet points:
- I used SDHC Class 6 Patriot 4gb card. This made the shot to shot speed feel faster.
- It is true, the autofocus does not always work in dim light.
- The autofocus speed when it does work is tolerable.
- Shutter lag isn’t instant, but still tolerable.
- I thought menu navigation was going to be sluggish and unresponsive. It isn’t. Viewing images isn’t slow either.
- It is smaller than I expected. Smaller than the Canon G series.
- Not as conspicuous as a person carrying a DSLR.
- I actually like the included strap. I took off the suedette material because I like wearing the camera diagonally.
- It comes with a fleece pouch that I really do use since I bring the camera with me everywhere I go. I just put it in my bag. Carrying your DSLR with you everywhere you go is bit of a pain.
- Its dynamic range is nice. I don’t get as many blown highlights like I would with other point and shoots. Maybe better than my D80?
- It is the ultimate pixel peeper camera. Looking at the images at 100% magnification is incredible.
- RAW files are not compatible with Adobe Camera RAW and DNG Converter yet.
- Sigma Photo Pro is really weird probably because I’m not used to it.
- If image quality and portability is your main goal, this is the only game in town.
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I broke down and bought the E-420 last night. So far, it’s a sweet little camera. Everything is smaller on it, almost 3/4 scale. The 14-42mm looks like it’s about the size of a standard 50mm. Remember in the 60s and 70s when Olympus was making those small SLRs like the OM series and Pen cameras? I like that they’re going back to that. I haven’t had a chance to play with it that much but here are a few observations:
- The kit lens is not silent like a Wave/USM/HSM motor, but it has the mechanism where the focus ring does not move when focusing, not like the Canon or Nikon 18-55mm lenses. Turns out the manual focus ring is not a mechanical one but electronic. While it turns, it sends a signal to tell the camera to start adjusting focus kind of like a point and shoot.
- The three position autofocus points seems kind of not that useful (I hate when people say “useless.” Is it really?) because they are so close together. You have to use the menu to switch positions.
- The viewfinder eyehole sticks out kind of far for my taste. This is actually driving me nuts right now.
- Does not use standard mini-USB.
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I was having a few problems getting the Extreme to recognize my Epson 7600 printer on the network. It worked at first, but disappeared when I tried printing from it again. Mind you, I am not connecting the printer to the USB connection of the Extreme. The printer has an ethernet print server card installed in it, and that is connected to one of the ethernet ports on the Extreme. Anyways the key is to give the printer a static IP address. I was able to do it on my Netgear, but I didn’t know if the Extreme had the ability. It does.
- Open Airport Utility
- Click Internet
- Click DHCP
- Go to the bottom section labeled DHCP Reservations. Click the + symbol.
- Think of a description and fill in the description field.
- Choose the Reserve by MAC address radio button.
- Click Continue.
- Find the MAC address off the ethernet print server card, fill in the MAC address field.
- Choose an IP address you’d like to reserve.
- Click Done.
This solution seemed to work for me.
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The first thing I did after charging the SD1000s battery, which actually charges pretty quickly (maybe an hour or two), was install CHDK. The instructions are available at the CHK Wiki. Also a lot of info is on the CHDK Forum. I’ll give a quick summary of what I did below. This is from a Mac’s perspective (using a lot of Parallels actually!)
Checking Firmware version
- Format the SD card in the camera.
- Put the SD card in a card reader and hook it up to your Mac.
- In TextWrangler or TextEdit, create a blank file called “ver.req” and save it onto the root of the SD card. Then reinsert the SD card back into the camera.
- Put the SD1000 in play mode and turn it on. Pressed the function set button + disp button, kind of like a ctrl+c, holding down the function set button while pressing the disp button. This will tell you what firmware version you’re using. Mine iss GM 1.02A.
Installing CHDK
- The firmware version let’s you know what CHDK build you can use. Luckily mine was available here: http://malbe.nm.ru/chdk/.
- Getting CHDK on the SD from a Mac seemed a little finicky, so I just used parallels to do it. Unzip the firmware on Parallels desktop then drop the two files, ps.fir and diskboot.bin, onto the SD card’s root.
- Reinsert the card into the camera, put the camera in play mode, and turn the camera on.
- Pressed the Menu button. Under the play tab, scroll to the bottom where the Firmware Update option is. Update the firmware, which will install the CHDK.
This update does not change the actual firmware. It just install itself into temporary memory. Once you turn it off and back on the hack is gone. But there is a way to have the hack auto boot.
Autobooting
- After following the Installing CHDK instructions above. Press the ALT button (called the print button with the led in the middle.) Then press the Menu button.
- Go to the Debug Parameters page and activate the Make Card Bootable.
- Turn off the camera and pull out the SD card.
- Move the lock switch on the SD to the lock mode.
- Reinsert the card. The SD1000 should now auto boot.
Locking the card doesn’t affect being able to record or delete pictures.
Some observations so far
- RAW is cool, but a pain for the Mac so far. I’ve been using DNG4PS-2 in parallels to convert the CRW files to Adobe DNG. The mac version doesn’t really work well in Leopard. It kept crashing on me. The converter is especially nice because it copies the exif data from the jpeg.
- Overriding shutter speeds is cool when you want to do high speed syncing.
- You can customize a User Menu with your most often used items.
- The On Screen Display is cool but annoying. You get a lot of extra information, but it doesn’t disappear in the “no information just the picture” display mode. You can also customize where overlays are displayed on the screen. Overlays also hover on top of most everything, so you have to be careful where you place them.
- You now have a battery level display all the time. Without the hack, the battery warning only pops up right before the battery dies.
- Live blended Histogram and Zebra (blinking blown highlights) displays are nice.
- Auto ISO customization doesn’t work.
- I can’t seem to get any Intervalometer scripts to work.
- The Motion Detector scripts work, but need some finessing to work reliably.
- Manual focus override works.
- There is a “hotkey” (ALT button, then the up button, then down button) that will set the camera’s focus to the hyperfocal distance and also display the range of acceptable focus (nearest distance within focus to infinity).
- There is no flash exposure compensation.
This is definitely a tinkerer’s delight. I spent way too much time trying to customize it than taking pictures with it.
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On Thursday, Fry’s had a sale on the all silver Canon SD1000, so I guess I had to pick one up. It is so cool with it’s block like shape. It’s smaller than I expected. I also picked up a Lowepro Napoli 5 leather case. It fits perfectly. It was a little snug at first, but loosened up after after a few insertions. Now it feels like it was made for the camera. The only issue is the the hole for the strap is a bit off center (a little closer to the back of the case.)
Observations list:
- Battery/SD card door is flimsy like other reviews have said. I did read one review that noted that previous Canon cameras had used harder plastic, but were prone to breaking. The flimsy door of the SD1000 is more flexible so is less likely to crack.
- There is only one aperture: f2.8. F8.0 is with ND. The variable f-stops that you might see are due to the zooming lens losing light.
- The only manual controls are white balance, exposure compensation, and ISO.
- It uses Mini USB for connectivity! I hate when things use Micro USB. It will not charge the battery through the Mini USB though.
- There is no Play button like my old Fuji. There is a play slider switch that feels like will wear out.
- You can only upload your images to your computer in Play mode.
- There is no option for “Card Reader” mode for transferring.
- Battery dies rather quickly. Though it might because I spent a lot of time tinkering with it and CHDK (see below for more info on that) with the screen on. I ordered a couple more batteries and a charger off ebay for $13. I haven’t received them yet.
- The LCD has a plastic coated protective cover. I’m a little nervous about bare lcd screens.
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A few more things I’ve noticed:
- Time Machine over Airport Extreme with a MacBook Core Duo (only wireless g) is very slow. I unloaded a bunch of pictures a few days ago. It’s been trying to backup the files since, but keeps failing because of the amount of time it needs. I guess that’s the nature of notebook computer sometimes. Look up something really quick, then close it. Write something quick, then close it. Mind you I gave the MB a couple hours last night to backup about 12gb. That wasn’t enough time. I’ll have to hook it up directly again.
- I really like using Airport Utility versus the browser based configuration. On the Netgear, I’d only configure the router when hooked up directly through the ethernet. It’s apparently the only secure way. I noticed that I can us Airport Utility over wireless on my MB. Should I be worried about security?
- You can allow the Airport to notify you when it has a firmware update. With Netgear, I’d have to visit the netgear website whenever it occurred to me that there might be an update.
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Last night I picked up an Airport Extreme! I’m pretty excited. Set up was relatively easy. Below are some random observations so far because I love unordered lists.
- No more web based configuring like with my old Netgear, instead you use Airport Utility.
- In Airport Utility, “SSID” is listed as “Network Name.” And is it just me or does it seem confusing that there is something called “MAC Address” and it has nothing to do with Macs?
- Airport Utility shows who is connected and how much bandwidth they’re using in a neat little line graph.
- The Extreme’s access list setup also lets you choose what times devices can connect to the router.
- If you have an iPhone or any pre-N device like my Core-Duo MacBook, you can’t use the 5ghz frequency. You’re stuck with 2.4ghz like everyone else.
- Airport Disk is cool though I swear it was called “Airdisk”. I can’t wait to figure out how to access it from anywhere on the internet. Also, I don’t think you can change the name of the disk while connected to the Extreme.
- Time Machine through the Airport Disk seems to be working. I used the gigabit ethernet for my initial MacBook backup. I’ll let you know about the wireless-G backup experience after I work on some large files.
- I have an Ethernet card in my Epson 7600. My old version of EpsonNet 1.9a couldn’t find the printer through the Extreme, 2.2a could! I thought Epson was going to leave me behind again, but they didn’t.
- I have not used the built in print server.
So far it seems like a pretty solid router at a good price considering what you get: gigabit ethernet, wireless print server, NAS, Time Capsule-like Time Machine, wireless-N, and Apple support.
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Installation
Very easy. Just plug all the cables in. Drop the drive in. It just works, on a Mac that is. I didn’t really look at the instructions.
Observations
- 3.5″ drives slide in easily. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to go off track and not hook up right.
- Ejecting 3.5″ drives require a little more than just pressing the eject button. You should probably pull on the drive too. (I wonder if that was in the instructions.)
- Ejecting 2.5″ drives seem to get stuck a little. It just might be the drive I was using.
- The flap which covers the drive slot seems a little flimsy.
- The drive light on the top of the Blac X consists of two lights: a blue power light, and a red drive activity light.
- I’m having an issue when unmounting a 2.5″ drive then remounting it. Blac X doesn’t seem to recognize the drive. I have to turn the Blac X off then back on for it to work.
- It allows deep sleep like so many USB devices do!
- Does not prevent automatic sleep like so many USB devices do!
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I’ve been looking for the perfect solution to back up my life, basically all the files on my computer. I wanted something that was inexpensive, easy to use, and reliable. I was backing stuff up on CD, that got old fast. I tried DVDs, but I heard the dyes are unstable. Then I heard a suggestion of just saving it on hard drives. Ok, why not?
I bought one of these. The Seritek seemed like a good solution at the time. I was taking advantage of the speed and technology of SATA drives. Whenever I bought a new hard drive for my PowerMac, I could stick the old drive in a tray and use it in this enclosure. External SATA is nice, but it just doesn’t work like a Firewire drive. It didn’t take long before I got super annoyed by these stupid trays. I learned later that there were enclosures out there that don’t require trays. Cooldrives has a few, but I was told the fans would not turn off when the computer is put to sleep. Ditto for the Seritek. That was very annoying to me also. Drobo was another drive enclosure I considered and still am. But it does so much more which comes at a cost, a cost of half a G! This leads me to the Blac X (finally, huh?)
A couple of weeks ago, I was perusing my local Fry’s looking for some kind of hard drive solution. Something caught my eye: a tiny little black box with a picture of bare hard drive plugged into some kind of enclosure like a video game cartridge. Ooh, what’s this? It takes SATA drives, 2.5″ and 3.5″. Nice. USB? Rip off! How much was this badboy? $39.95. Ooh, maybe not a rip off. Is it any good? I pulled out my iPhone and quickly searched the web for reviews just like in the commercials. Ahh, here’s one.. skipped to the conclusion section. Thumbs up. It’s mine!
Part 2 here.
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