Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Sat, 2005-04-23 (Apr 23)

Glad to be home!

Vegas was great, but it’s so good to be home! I love lots of things that are in my life, and people that are in my life. It’s a good time to be alive, and God is good. And sometime, I’ll be able to share a bit more of it. For now, you get to read whatever I feel like putting here (well, you’ll always get that, it just might not be as interesting as my life actually is :-)

I got my camera, and it’s really cool. Haven’t had much time to play with it yet! Also they didn’t send me an adapter ring that I need to use the lenses I got, but they’re sending me one for free that will hopefully be here next week (never depend on specific timing from the USPS!). So I haven’t been able to play with the macro lens that I was looking foward to…not like I’ve had time anyway, so I suppose it’s all working out :-)

I have two friends that have actually uploaded a significant amount of stuff to “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com/ now! Takes time, but eventually I bring people around to the latest and greatest I’ve found :-) Sometimes ;-)

Also…I didn’t know until I read one of the blogs I keep up with that “Adobe bought Macromedia”:http://robert.accettura.com/archives/2005/04/18/adobe-buys-macromedia/! Very interesting, but makes sense. I’m sure we’ll hear more soon!

Sun, 2005-04-17 (Apr 17)

To Las Vegas!

Well, this afternoon (Sunday the 17th) I’m off to Las Vegas! A pastor from my church (the media pastor), the Technical Director, and me are all going to “NAB2005”:http://www.nabshow.com/ (the National Association of Broadcasters trade show/conference). It’s going to be fun, and we’ll hopefully pick up some good pointers for what we want to do in the future with our video/media. The show is Monday through Wednesday, and we’re coming back on the red-eye Wednesday night and should be back in town Thursday morning (fortunately I have Thursday off). My girlfriend Ruth is taking a couple of hours off work early on Thursday so I can see her soon when I get back (and finish sleeping Thursday morning, depending on how good the overnight flight goes), she’s so awesome :-)

Depending on what kind of internet access we have in Vegas, I may be posting some pics online while I’m there or perhaps when I get back, time permitting. I may shoot a few good ones over to this blog, but you could watch my “Flickr photostream”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/ directly for any new ones coming down the pike!

Also, in case anyone’s interested, Fuji has a nice $50 rebate this month on their “Finepix S5100”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/S5100/S51A.HTM SLR-like digital camera! It’s 4 megapixels with a 10x optical zoom, among lots of other good features, which you can see by reading the review the name is linked to. Best price I’ve seen (it’s where I ordered mine) before the rebate is from “ButterflyPhoto”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/ and you can “see the S5100 item listing here”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIS5100. Just $249.95 before the rebate, or $199.99 (yes, that’s less than $200!) after the rebate! This camera was at least $275 before shipping at the cheapest location I’ve ever found for it, back a couple of months ago when I bought my “Finpix E550”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM (buy it now for “$247 at ButterflyPhoto”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIE550 which is over $60 less than I paid for it!) which is another awesome camera but more along the point-and-shoot lines (but is VERY nice for that type of shooting, and I’ve taken over 2,000 pictures with it since I got it around two months ago!). Anyway, I ordered this last (Friday) night and it should get here either next week around when I get home, or at the latest the beginning of the next week. I already have a second 512MB xD picture card to use in it…best price on those is “eCost.com”:http://www.ecost.com/ecost/ecsplash/shop/detail~dpno~269806.asp as far as I’ve found (free shipping, small handling fee, $10 for overnight shipping). The xD picture cards are a bit more expensive than traditional flash storage cards but the data transfer rate is much higher unless you buy a high-speed card of another type, which would likely be priced the same. But all xD cards are the same high speed, no need to double-check :-)

Tue, 2005-03-29 (Mar 29)

Words, Words, and Few for You!

Talking is cool. Both online and in person. For me, when I get enough talking one-on-one, apparently I can’t come up with anything worthwhile to post to the general public here (and by “general public” I mean, the two or three people that read this regularly and anyone else that stumbles through from Google or something :-)

Not that that’s a bad thing. Unless you want to read more stuff here. But hey, it’s my blog, so you’ll just have to live. I do respond to comments occasionally, especially from commenters that aren’t, um, regulars :-) Or I would, if there were more than three such comments on the whole site. And one of those is from someone I know in person.

Of course, if I posted more interesting stuff here that was actually worth commenting on, I suppose I might then expect more comments. Catch-22 really. Or maybe the most important things I have to say right now aren’t meant for you to hear. Or you. Or you. Safe bet: if you don’t know if it’s you or not, it’s not you :-) On the other hand, if you do know what I’m talking about, feel free to ignore what I’m talking about, it doesn’t apply to you :-)

Do I get a prize? You know, for least content in three paragraphs? I should at least get runner-up for this one :-) What do you know, I did want to talk. Just not about anything you’re probably interested in, here at least :-) If you’re feeling left out, give it time (sure for this post to sink in or something (like it ever will…ha! Like the blonde that died in the shower when the shampoo bottle said “lather, rinse, repeat” ;-), but what I mean is come back later and perhaps eventually I’ll be able to post something more interesting in such a public forum :-)

Um…”Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2″:http://www.getfirefox.com/ is out. It’s cool. Get it. Um…[looks at multitude of tabs open for something interesting to post]…I found a site called “LinkedIn”:https://www.linkedin.com/ the other day that I hadn’t seen before. Interesting stuff, but I haven’t signed up yet. Still, the tab remains open since I’m curious about it :-)

Also, “Magix music products”:http://site.magix.net/index.php?id=471&no_cache=1 are good stuff…try the demos sometime. Music Studio 2005 is really good and at less than $100 is very powerful, the main limitation I run into is not being able to edit the audio while recording at the same time, which you can do in their premiere “Samplitude”:http://site.magix.net/index.php?id=15648&type=2 product (although it’s $1,000 more expensive :-)

If you have an extra $79 laying around (and who doesn’t?), “Amazon Prime”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/subs/primeclub/signup/main.html/002-2086300-3510456 is a nice program to get into if you like Amazon.com and want to get fast, free shipping (or faster, cheaper shipping). Details are right there on the site, I think you can read it without me :-) Free two-day shipping on over 1 million items, overnight for $3.99, for a year. Yep, I told you anyway! Get over it!

Ran into an interesting site while searching for something (I don’t remember what, a how-to on something) the other day. It’s a computer help site called “Bleeping Computer”:http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/. I get a kick out of the name and wish I’d gotten to that domain…like I need more than the 30+ I have :-)

If you’re looking to buy something computer related, first check out “eCost”:http://www.ecost.com/ because they have a lot of good deals. LCDs and camera memory cards are some of their best and most often discounted items. But they have lots of stuff. Also, for general, daily updated deals (lots of Dell deals that link directly to Dell, sometimes with coupon codes, but plenty of non-Dell, and some non-computer related, like “Overstock.com”:http://www.overstock.com selling down comforters and bedsheets really cheap) are awesome over at “GotApex”:http://www.gotapex.com/. I watch that site several days out of the week to spot good stuff. Not that I buy that often, or I’d be much poorer than I am (although they’re one of the reasons I’m as poor as I am already :-)

For example, GotApex is listing right now that Amazon.com has a “Canon PowerShot SD110 Digital Elph 3 megapixel 2X zoom”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001G6U9I/ref%3Dnosim/gotapex/002-2086300-3510456 camera for just $159! If I had the spare cash I’d jump on it, the Elphs are awesome because they’re so darn tiny while still be high quality. And usually high priced. But I don’t :-)

And, my last item for this post is “my Flickr page”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/ which, if you’re not on my friends or family list, still has a lot of pictures that I spent all night last Friday night (until 8am Saturday morning) tagging with metadata and making public. I have over 3,200 images uploaded to Flickr, and am nowhere near getting them all sorted (probably never will be) but I like the ones I have available now :-)

Goodnight!

Update: I do find it somewhat ironic how long this post ended up being, and how much info I included, given the title. So much for intent! :-) But aren’t you glad I got around to some actually useful information after all that stuff at the top?

Tue, 2005-02-08 (Feb 08)

Considering Cameras (part Yipee! I mean…two)

Filed under: Blog,Digital Cameras,General,Tech (General) — David @ 00:51

(There’s also a “Part One”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/02/05/considering-cameras-part-1/ to this post.)

See, “AbesOfMaine”:http://www.abesofmaine.com/ dropped their price on the “Fuji FinePix E550”:http://www.fujifilm.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/digitalE550Overview.jsp?item=I789908&dbid=789908&urltype=overview&NavBarId=I789908 to about $273 plus shipping. Overnight shipping would have been about $35 or so, ground would have been $20. CircuitCity.com was having a deal, web-only, “$314.99”:http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Fujifilm-FinePix-E550-Digital-Camera/sem/rpsm/oid/108877/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do but you could pick it up in-store. The store had it on the shelf for $349.99, but since I ordered online I paid $333.90 including tax. It was a tad more for same day-service, but not that much. And I put off the 512MB xD Picture Card until tomorrow because “eCost”:http://www.ecost.com/ was $25 cheaper even with (overnight) shipping! Hey, the included 16MB card holds a whole two pictures. But that’s at the highest quality; it holds like eleven or twelve medium-quality pics! I think the included rechargable hi-capacity AA batteries with charger is a much better included accessory, but I will have to get some more of these rechargables. At least it only uses two at a time instead my old one’s four.

It might be a dissected fetal pig for lunch...(click for full, 4MB version)What? You didn’t think I was going to go through all that and not give you a sample? Well…okay. I was dissecting a fetal pig for a snack earlier and grabbed this one (click picture for full version but be warned, it’s a 4MB file!). If you ask nicely, I might resize it down a bit (the thumbnail doesn’t show the whole picture), ’cause if you’re on dial-up you may want to just say no to 4MB!

Oh yeah, and I’m taking the afternoons off work all this week. If you know me, you might know the past weekend (Catalyst Vision Banquet) as being a bit long. Gotta have some recovery time sometimes. Photography takes time, after all… ;-)

(more…)

Sat, 2005-02-05 (Feb 05)

Considering Cameras (part 1)

Filed under: Blog,Digital Cameras,General,Photography,Tech (General) — David @ 05:09

I’ve been wanting a new digital camera for a while. My current, an Olympus D-450 Zoom, functions excruciatingly slowly, and only has 1.3 megapixels of resolution. It was top of the line for a consumer camera when I got it five or six years ago, and I’ve taken thousands of pictures with it (over a thousand in Holland alone last year). But it’s now old enough that it’s available on “eBay”:http://www.ebay.com/ for $50 or less.

I’m by no means a professional photographer, or even in the “amateur” category really. I don’t have time to develop those skills. But I like to pretend like I know what I’m doing, and maybe learn something when I have time. It’s an area of interest.

So, I want a camera that rocks, at a cheap price. Yeah, who doesn’t? :-) Well, my style tends to be, “develop composition mentally over a wide subject angle, test composition through camera (mainly LCD but occasionally viewfinder), shoot quickly before subject moves.” I take lots of pictures, fast. I don’t wait for the “perfect shot”, if needed I’ll take several in a row of the same thing to see which comes out best (quality-wise and in composition).

This style really seems to fit a point-and-shoot camera better than an SLR-like (or SLR, if that were in my price range). But I want the flexibility of as many manual controls as possible in case I want to do something a little more advanced, and have the time to set it up.

Also, because of my quick-composition and multi-pictures tendencies, I like to take some wide-angle shots in addition to closeups of the same thing, making a long and fast zoom very helpful.

I’m looking at three cameras, when I can afford one. I’ve been eyeing the “Fuji FinePix E550 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM for the longest. Earlier tonight I found three others that do that thing I hate — turning an easy decision into a much more subjective and time-consuming one! One is the “Olympus C-7000 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/C7000/C7KA.HTM, another is the “Casio EXILIM PRO EX-P600”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P600/P60A.HTM, and the final one is the “Canon Powershot S70”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CS70/S70A.HTM. All those links are to reviews at a very awesome site, “Image-Resource.com”:http://www.imaging-resource.com. Another good site with lots of info and in-depth reviews is “Digital Photography Review”:http://www.dpreview.com/, which has info on most, if not all, of the same cameras I just mentioned.

Anyway, I’m going to go through each camera and give some highlights on why I like each. Then I’m going to go to sleep. And later, at a yet-to-be-determined time post more as part 2 of this post.

  • “Fuji FinePix E550 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM
    This camera is awesome (second “review at DPreview.com”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilme550/ also available). It has nearly everything, the biggest downside is that it only has a 4x zoom, as opposed to the Olympus’s 5x. I don’t mind that it’s a 6.3 megapixel resolution (Olympus and Canon models have seven), six is plenty. A camera with five megapixels I might consider if everything else was awesome enough, but four or lower is a hard sell. It goes from point-and-shoot to full manual control, with lots of options. DPreview says that timing-wise, this thing goes from off to ready-to-shoot in 1.5 seconds, zooms from widest to maximum in 1.5 seconds, and takes a picture about 0.6 seconds after pressing the shutter release fully! That’s a speedy digital camera! All very suitable to my shooting style. Without the flash on, it’s also ready to take a second shot 1.5 seconds after the last, also excellent. My current camera takes 4-6 seconds to be ready for another, and it feels like an eternity most of the time, and it’s pretty bad in the other timing areas, too. But all these cameras here are faster than my existing one, so let’s go on. Oh yeah, it uses the xD Picture Card storage format: more expensive than most but not killer. Two other plusses include interpolated (before compression) pictures up to 12 megapixels from the 6.3 MP sensor, and (according to DPreview) “excellent color and exposure.” It’s also the cheapest of them all! Around $300; unfortunately a Fuji rebate of $50 just expired the end of January :-(
  • “Olympus C-7000 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/C7000/C7KA.HTM
    I’m equally balanced between the Fuji and this Olympus right now (this one has “a review at DPreview.com”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympusc7000/ as well). For one, my current camera is an Olympus. Actually, that’s a downside :-) But DPreview says it goes from off to ready-to-shoot in 1.4 seconds, a full-shutter-release-press (in one motion) takes a picture in 0.5 seconds, and runs 1.7 seconds shot-to-shot. All of which are just barely on either side of the times for the Fuji E550. But, this thing is a seven megapixel camera. Downsides include low battery life (still sky-high compared to my current one!) and a two-second delay before showing the next picture when browsing through existing shots in-camera. The others here are supposed to be much faster than two seconds to pull up a preview. Note again, that in comparison my current Olympus D-450 Zoom can take 4-6 seconds to display a preview of a picture in the camera, which is again an eternity, especially when trying to “scroll” through the shots! Nicest thing about this one over the Fuji (I think) is that the zoom is 5x optical vs. 4x. It has a fast zoom, extending at startup in one second (not sure on speed while zooming but I would assume it’s equally impressive). Media is xD Picture Card.
  • “Casio EXILIM PRO EX-P600”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P600/P60A.HTM
    This one isn’t directly reviewed at DPreview, but the next model up, the EX-P700 (substituting seven megapixels for this one’s six) has a “review at DPreview”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/casioexp700/ instead. The EX-P600 is about $80 cheaper than the EX-P700, and some of my info here is from the DPreview info on the EX-P700 instead of the 600. First of all, the timing appears to be very close to the above cameras, except it takes an extra second to turn on and be ready-to-shoot. Like the others (Except the Canon at 1.8″), it’s got a 2.0″ LCD display in addition to the viewfinder. I didn’t see the zoom speed mentioned, but shot-to-shot times were 2 to 2.5 seconds, a bit high. It’s got a 4x optical zoom, the minimum of these cameras. I haven’t gotten in-depth into this camera yet but it looks like a good backup option. Uses SD storage, just like my Treo 600!
  • “Canon Powershot S70”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CS70/S70A.HTM
    Also has a “review at DPreview”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons70/ and it’s a seven megapixel model, like the Olympus C-7000. Optical zoom is only 3.6x, a downside. It does have lots of scene presets for different conditions, and looks cool, being the only black one of the bunch. DPreview says the camera is “not a particularly speedy camera” and focusing in low-light can cause a lot of hunting. Picture playback speed also suffers. Almost three seconds from off to ready-to-shoot. Shooting lag time is one second (higher than the others), and zooming full-wide to telephoto takes 1.8 seconds, admittedly not horrible. A good last choice with high resolution but less zoom and speed.

That’s it for my first roundup! I’ll follow up when I get the chance. And when I make the purchse, whenever I happen to save up the money (sooner if I get the Fuji! :-)

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