for the price there is a lot of items that comes with it takes great moon pics and are clear but if ]there is wind pics may be blurred cause of the weight of camera and lens are weavy other wise it works great
Panasonic Lumix ZS20 14.1 MP High Sensitivity MOS Digital Camera
List Price: $399.99
Sale Price: $339.95
Today's Bonus: 15% Off
I have never believed that i can actually use a point and shoot camera to shoot weddings etc!,but let me tell you, if you are looking for the perfect camera that gives you everything you need to relive your Memories in an unbelievable crystel clear way ,then you better get the Panasonic Dmc Zs20!!!
Samsung UN55D6000 55-Inch 1080p 120Hz LED HDTV (Black) (2011
Whoah, I really did my research on this one (I always do when I make huge investments into things that I plan on owning for a long time) and I am not disappointed!!! For those that don't know, LED TVs are arguably considered the best class of HDTVs (including LCD and plasma along with all of their variants) and this particular model I feel is really the best in its class (considering all things: quality of picture, pricing, features, and, in my humble opinion, size I really didn't need anything larger than about 40-something inches for my purposes).
I'm going to go on a small side note: Some will argue that plasma has the best picture. However, LEDs have better picture at identical resolutions. I checked this model out on the floor at Best Buy along with two other (42") TVs that I was comparing, an LG LCD and a Panasonic plasma. The sales associate swore by plasma and couldn't even tell the obvious difference in contrast between the 42" and this model (the LED one was obviously better). I'm not going to patronize you on the pros and cons of each class of TV (although I could) but, all things considered, LED really is the best overall. Do your homework if you haven't.
Anyways, I noticed that some people whined about: 1) the sound, 2) the remote, 3) screen glare, 4) light leakage, or 5) whatever dud/lemon of a TV they got. I'm going to address these points with rebuttals in the following bullet points:
-1) In truth the sound is very decent (you're buying a stand-alone HDTV, what did you expect?) and most people may want to purchase a sound bar/system down the road. Plus there are multiple sound options that enhance and isolate individual parts of the sound that matter to you ("Clear Voice" is a good one sometimes).
-2) Hey, it's a REMOTE! Come on, people! Seriously though, the remote is intuitive enough and has some cool features (the menus are very simple and a joy to navigate once you get the hang of everything), like button back-lighting that you can toggle on and off with one glow-in-the-dark button. Plus the buttons have a good feel and good travel to them.
-3) Unless you keep the windows open and they're facing the TV, this is not really a huge issue at all especially when the TV is actually ON!
-4) Here's where I think that I will acknowledge some peoples' pouting and concern; on the upper and lower right and left corner portions of the screen, and even upper-center (where the light is sourced from), I did notice some faint circular light leakage/blooming spots when watching a movie at night. It is minor but they are there. However, this is only noticed when the following conditions are met: you're watching in a super widescreen letterbox-format picture, it's night-time or the house lights are off, and the movie scene is a really dark one. I'm not certain if this is normal of LEDs or not. Either way, it is very minor, can easily be ignored, and is definitely not worth taking my TV back for. I'm already too happy with it as you might guess.
-5) Mine arrived in perfect condition. I recommend a free trial of Amazon Prime. You can get this TV with free standard shipping rates or $4 for overnight shipping in the continental US.
-One last initial worry of mine that I wanted to insert into this review is concerning the bezel/frame style. the outer edge is surrounded with an additional clear edge that contains an even smaller and extremely subtle clear red edge. Aesthetics are an important thing for me so looking at this model in the store was a MUST. However, the red edge along with the clear edge was virtually unnoticeable in the store. When you do look closely and see it you will notice how stylish it all really is. The frame is ultra thin, black gloss, and sits on a mostly-glass base. the shaft of the base mount is clear glass so the TV kind of seems like it's floating. I think that that was what the designers were going for.
Now on to some of the features that previous reviewers didn't touch on... This TV has really got you covered. There are a multitude of sound and video options in a very intuitive menu interface. I haven't utilized any of the Internet-accessing options yet. My main plan was to hook my laptop up to the HDMI port and do a lot with that. But here is where the TV really shines for me: the HDD USB port. If you have a USB flash drive/external hard drive then you can view photos, play music, and even watch movies straight off of it. Playing movies has no slow-down whatsoever. If you somehow acquire Blu-ray disc movie rips or whatever video file type/extension you have, chances are great that it will play them all with no problem. The TV has played almost every movie file type that I've thrown at it. I love the streamlined menu within the videos. You can't ask for anything better in this aspect. And HD videos all look glorious.
Lastly, some people complain about the "soap opera" effect that HDTVs can suffer from. I believe other brands sometimes call this feature "Trumotion", but for this line of TVs Samsung refers to it as "Auto Motion Plus". Thankfully, you have the option to turn this feature off if you'd like or change it to one of five other settings.
Well, I'm not sure what else to say.. I didn't need or want a 3D TV yet... But everyone that has come over to our place sees the screen resolution and picture quality and is always immediately impressed. I highly recommend this TV to anyone. At 40 inches, do yourself a favor and get it for the picture quality and unbeatable price for an LED class TV.
EDIT: The one other draw for LED HDTVs is the extremely small off-chance for "burn in" if you view the same picture constantly without a change in picture. The manual warns something along the lines of being sure not to view the exact same picture for more than 5% of your total viewing time in any given week. Otherwise, it's a small chance (but possible) that you could get burn in on your TV.
(Update as of 6/27/11): The picture quality has always been utterly exceptional and without comparison for this TV. However, I have a very keen eye and will still at times notice the light leaking issue during EXTRA widescreen videos where the light is on the top and bottom borders and is darkest. I think that I am going to continue hanging on to this TV, however, notwithstanding this one issue although I am currently weighing the matter as it compares to the price and timing for this investment for me now. If I do contact Samsung, I would only want this same model again. Videophiles may just want to keep this light leakage issue in mind for their purchase.
I'm going to go on a small side note: Some will argue that plasma has the best picture. However, LEDs have better picture at identical resolutions. I checked this model out on the floor at Best Buy along with two other (42") TVs that I was comparing, an LG LCD and a Panasonic plasma. The sales associate swore by plasma and couldn't even tell the obvious difference in contrast between the 42" and this model (the LED one was obviously better). I'm not going to patronize you on the pros and cons of each class of TV (although I could) but, all things considered, LED really is the best overall. Do your homework if you haven't.
Anyways, I noticed that some people whined about: 1) the sound, 2) the remote, 3) screen glare, 4) light leakage, or 5) whatever dud/lemon of a TV they got. I'm going to address these points with rebuttals in the following bullet points:
-1) In truth the sound is very decent (you're buying a stand-alone HDTV, what did you expect?) and most people may want to purchase a sound bar/system down the road. Plus there are multiple sound options that enhance and isolate individual parts of the sound that matter to you ("Clear Voice" is a good one sometimes).
-2) Hey, it's a REMOTE! Come on, people! Seriously though, the remote is intuitive enough and has some cool features (the menus are very simple and a joy to navigate once you get the hang of everything), like button back-lighting that you can toggle on and off with one glow-in-the-dark button. Plus the buttons have a good feel and good travel to them.
-3) Unless you keep the windows open and they're facing the TV, this is not really a huge issue at all especially when the TV is actually ON!
-4) Here's where I think that I will acknowledge some peoples' pouting and concern; on the upper and lower right and left corner portions of the screen, and even upper-center (where the light is sourced from), I did notice some faint circular light leakage/blooming spots when watching a movie at night. It is minor but they are there. However, this is only noticed when the following conditions are met: you're watching in a super widescreen letterbox-format picture, it's night-time or the house lights are off, and the movie scene is a really dark one. I'm not certain if this is normal of LEDs or not. Either way, it is very minor, can easily be ignored, and is definitely not worth taking my TV back for. I'm already too happy with it as you might guess.
-5) Mine arrived in perfect condition. I recommend a free trial of Amazon Prime. You can get this TV with free standard shipping rates or $4 for overnight shipping in the continental US.
-One last initial worry of mine that I wanted to insert into this review is concerning the bezel/frame style. the outer edge is surrounded with an additional clear edge that contains an even smaller and extremely subtle clear red edge. Aesthetics are an important thing for me so looking at this model in the store was a MUST. However, the red edge along with the clear edge was virtually unnoticeable in the store. When you do look closely and see it you will notice how stylish it all really is. The frame is ultra thin, black gloss, and sits on a mostly-glass base. the shaft of the base mount is clear glass so the TV kind of seems like it's floating. I think that that was what the designers were going for.
Now on to some of the features that previous reviewers didn't touch on... This TV has really got you covered. There are a multitude of sound and video options in a very intuitive menu interface. I haven't utilized any of the Internet-accessing options yet. My main plan was to hook my laptop up to the HDMI port and do a lot with that. But here is where the TV really shines for me: the HDD USB port. If you have a USB flash drive/external hard drive then you can view photos, play music, and even watch movies straight off of it. Playing movies has no slow-down whatsoever. If you somehow acquire Blu-ray disc movie rips or whatever video file type/extension you have, chances are great that it will play them all with no problem. The TV has played almost every movie file type that I've thrown at it. I love the streamlined menu within the videos. You can't ask for anything better in this aspect. And HD videos all look glorious.
Lastly, some people complain about the "soap opera" effect that HDTVs can suffer from. I believe other brands sometimes call this feature "Trumotion", but for this line of TVs Samsung refers to it as "Auto Motion Plus". Thankfully, you have the option to turn this feature off if you'd like or change it to one of five other settings.
Well, I'm not sure what else to say.. I didn't need or want a 3D TV yet... But everyone that has come over to our place sees the screen resolution and picture quality and is always immediately impressed. I highly recommend this TV to anyone. At 40 inches, do yourself a favor and get it for the picture quality and unbeatable price for an LED class TV.
EDIT: The one other draw for LED HDTVs is the extremely small off-chance for "burn in" if you view the same picture constantly without a change in picture. The manual warns something along the lines of being sure not to view the exact same picture for more than 5% of your total viewing time in any given week. Otherwise, it's a small chance (but possible) that you could get burn in on your TV.
(Update as of 6/27/11): The picture quality has always been utterly exceptional and without comparison for this TV. However, I have a very keen eye and will still at times notice the light leaking issue during EXTRA widescreen videos where the light is on the top and bottom borders and is darkest. I think that I am going to continue hanging on to this TV, however, notwithstanding this one issue although I am currently weighing the matter as it compares to the price and timing for this investment for me now. If I do contact Samsung, I would only want this same model again. Videophiles may just want to keep this light leakage issue in mind for their purchase.
Canon EOS Rebel T3i Digital SLR Camera Body & EF-S 18-55mm IS II
The camera and the 18-55mm lens are great, but the 75-300 lens isn't. The Backpack fell apart after a couple of months of LIGHT use. There's a lot of junk, meaning low quality things in this bundle. Good price isn't good when the quality is low.
Sony DPF-D820 8-Inch SVGA LCD (4:3) Digital Photo Frame (Black)
I've had this frame for a week and it worked great out of the box. I was up and running within minutes with photos loaded easily, direct from my computer. The little remote is very handy and comes with a battery which I am very happy about because I'm not sure how to open it. I really like the slide show setting of "Time Machine" -at first I thought it showed the current date and time in the bottom right corner, but it actually shows the date and time the photo was taken, which is WAY cooler! The frame is programmable so you can make it turn on and off automatically any time you want. I love it!
Canon EOS Rebel T2i SLR Digital Camera Kit with Canon 18-55mm IS
Love the camera. Couldn't find it without buying the kit. the tripod is junk (leg fell off) the flash doesn't work period. SD card doesn't format for this camera, card reader doesn't work unless you press the card in at the same time you are trying to load. camera bag is cheap and small. Zipper broke 2nd day I had it.
Besides the camera and the two good lenses, all else is JUNK>
Besides the camera and the two good lenses, all else is JUNK>
Nikon COOLPIX S800c 16 MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Zoom
List Price: $349.00
Sale Price: $196.95
Today's Bonus: 44% Off
With the only review available, it was a little bit tough in making a decision buying the s800c, with it being the first phone with an Android operating system inside. Even though it is only running android version 2.3 (Gingerbread), it's smooth as hell, and sometimes you will forget that this was originally a camera. I caught myself treating it like my Samsung Epic Touch 4G, and with that note, taking pictures is so easy and once you take a picture, you can run any photo editing app (Instagram for one), and do whatever you gotta do right there on the spot. Why didn't they think of this sooner??? I think that cameras are deserving of an operating system, and in this case, the s800c runnign Android is a match made in Heaven!
Now that I have the camera, I do not know why the above reviewer got a 'grey market' item. Crutchfield.com makes a big fuss about how they DO NOT sell grey/gray market items, and this Nikon was up for sale on their site. So I took the plunge here on Amazon, and could not been happier. I was researching cameras for about a year before actually buying one, and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. I heard that the Galaxy Camera will come out soon, but I believe that it will be tied to a carrier.
In any case, as long as you are not an elitist photographer, this sexy little beast (mines white) will satisfy. Picture quality is good and especially in low light conditions. Lot's of fun modes, but now this is moot because now you have access to the Google Play store, in which a lot of photo editing apps are available. I really recommend Picsay Pro though. It reminds me more of photoshop than the actual photoshop app does lol!
October1 16, 2012 I can't leave this cammera alone!!! First time ever that I spend or put so much attention into a camera lol! This camera is a GO! Go get it!
Goal Zero 42005 Sherpa 50 Silver/Black Solar Recharging Kit
List Price: $509.99
Sale Price: $319.95
Today's Bonus: 37% Off
I live in Florida, so there is plenty of sunshine. I bought this kit directly from Goal Zero when the new Sherpa 50 first became available (for more than $100 more might I add). I have absolutely no regrets about buying this kit. I use the Nomad 13 solar panels daily to recharge my cellphone. I have a Samsung Galaxy S3, and set my phone out in the morning around 8 AM with around a 65% charge on my phone. By 11:30 AM my phone is close to fully charged. The solar panel even charges on cloudy days, although I usually get only a 90-95% charge. On absolutely rainy days, I use the Sherpa battery to charge my phone. I use approximately 20% of the battery to charge it from 50 to 100%. I have used the battery to recharge a 2nd gen iPad as well as power tool batteries (using the included 12V adapter). I can charge the iPad directly from the solar panels, but it took about 3/4 of the day, rotating the panels periodically. Considering it took me only ~4 hours to fully charge the Sherpa battery, it makes more sense to recharge the iPad directly from the battery than from the solar panel. Even though the new Sherpa is about 1/2 the weight of the old one, I would not recommend using this on casual hiking trips, as it still weighs more than 1 lb. with the solar panel plus the battery plus the inverter. For me, the whole point of hiking is to get way from everything, so I only take my phone for emergencies. I leave the tablet and other electronics behind. I use it on car camping trips and around the house, and couldn't be happier.
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Micro 4/3 Digital Camera & 12-50mm Lens
I recently purchased this for myself for Christmas and boy I'm glad I did. I've upgraded from a sony cyber-shot. I've only used the camera for less than a day but I can't seem to put it down. I've used mostly the auto settings so far and they've been absolutely fantastic pics. I've sent a bunch of pics out to my friends and most have asked what kind of camera I purchased because they couldn't get over the clarity. I look forward to really exploring what this camera can do. I'm a kid in the candy store again with this new gadget. Worth every penny. I'm also glad I purchased the bundle of goodies to go along with the camera. The case is excellent but if you need more than one lens your going to have a space issue. Other than that its great for what I need it for. The tripod is nice and light but built with good quality. It folds down to 16" and extends to 50" which is more than enough for me thus far, since I'm a novice for the time being. I hope this helps someone purchase this amazing camera. I cant say enough about it considering I just received it in the mail last night. You won't regret your purchase. Time to get clicking!!!!!
Canon EOS 5D Mark III 22.3 MP Full Frame CMOS Digital SLR Camera
Canon does a great job with this Canon 5D Mark III full frame camera. I called it a mini 1D, since it has the 1D AF system which is fast and lock focus right away. I can use all the old full frame EOS lens and third party lens without issue. Thanks for the effective micro focus adjustment. High ISO is usable all the way to 12800, which is smoother than the ISO 800 of 5D mark I! The jpeg output is very amazing, sharp and vivid. I am not the one who have the patience to do post-processing in front of the computer for hours. 5D mark III allow me to get the perfect shot right from the camera without processing. 100% viewfinder, speedy AF, 61 points AF tracking, mouth-opening high ISO performance, continuous shooting like a machine gun, super-fast digic processor that save photos in top speed. It also has the right weight to support those heavy L lens and the grip and handling are perfect. The quiet mode for shutter is a plus. The only thing that distract me is the Rate button, that I feel is not needed. However, I remember I can program it to do something else. The Custom C1,C2,C3 setting in the shift-protecting knob are very sweet, so I can save 3 set of customized settings. The vivid LCD screen is high-end and crystal clear and crisp. Video mode is also super nice, and I hate the lens AF for me, because I don't want motor-noise. From the outside, it may look like a Mark II, but inside it is a mini-1D for me without the bulk! Nice upgrade, built with quality, solid semi-professional DSLR which is a work horse for sure. Does it worth $4200, I would say yes :) I found this bundle deal with some goodies including a must have Sandisk 32gb extreme and Canon gadget bag , for about the same price this is the right way to go
Nikon D4 16.2 MP CMOS FX Digital SLR with Full 1080p HD Video
I pre-ordered this camera, and have now had it for about two months and taken over 10,000 shots with it. I'm upgrading from a Nikon D700. I'm not a pro, but I do occasional commercial jobs. I've updated this review several times, and will continue to do so as needed.
Vertical orientation: Nice. The vertical grip isn't nearly as contoured as the main horizontal grip -there's just not as much stuff to grab your hands onto (no deep pockets for your fingertips). Too bad. But when holding it for any length of time, it's sure a lot easier than holding twisting my arm above my head and rotating the camera. Note that the vertical grip has a programmable button on it, which I use for Mode (A/S/M/P). I understand the D3s didn't have this, which seems crazy -I use it all the time. I wish the vertical grip had all the buttons as the main grip does -e.g., there's only one programmable button, so if you want to use it for Mode, then there's no way to change EV +while vertical, or start taking a movie. Also, I wish the two function buttons (DoF preview, and the one above it) were replicated in vertical mode. They're not, which is silly -there's room right there for them.
I shoot one-handed a lot, at events where I have a flash in one hand an a camera in the other (using a set of PocketWizards). I thought the weight of the D4 would make this harder. But no: when holding it vertically, the D4 is a lot easier to manage than the vertical D700. (I never had a vertical grip for the D700, so I can't compare.) Even holding it horizontally, the larger grip makes it easier to manage the D4 than the D700 one-handedly -it makes the camera honestly feel substantially lighter. One gripe: the vertical joystick for adjusting the focus point is still a bit too much of a stretch to use with one hand.
Shutter: yep, it's 10 fps. Let it rip! Great for capturing faces of both kids and adults at just the right moment.
General ergonomics and build quality: Great. Totally solid.
Weight: Having never had a pro-sized body before, I feared it'd be too heavy. But no: once you throw a 70-200 2.8 on there, the difference between this and a D700 is pretty small, certainly not a big deal. I carry it around on an Op Tech slider strap bolted into the tripod port, plenty stable and strong.
Battery: 2000+ shots (including lots of live view and some movies), and it's down to half. That's plenty of capacity for me. The charger is a real monster to carry around, about 4x the size of a D700 charger, too big to just slip in a pocket. One BIG PROBLEM: after charging it the second time, I had the camera turned on and sitting out overnight. The next morning, the battery was completely dead. I have no idea what happened -the D700 never ever did this to me. Was the camera turned so the AF was being pushed all night? Or is there a bug in the auto-off? No idea, but I'll post if it happens again. (Update: This has now happened to me three times, where the battery has gone from 100% to 0% overnight. Very frustrating. The first time I thought it was because the camera was in my bag and the AF-On button was being pressed, so it was trying to focus all night long. But that's not it, since it was on a shelf the other two times. Since I don't see others who have had this problem, I'm sending it back to Nikon for service.)
[Update: Beats me what the root cause was, but Nikon replaced the logic board and I haven't seen the issue come back.]
Lit up controls: Nikon won't point this out, but they don't *all* light up! Most do, but not the trash, or playback, or EV+-, or Mode, or Live View. Huh? All the buttons on my cell phone lit up 10 years ago. It's not that hard.
XQD card: Fast to write, fast to transfer. I love it. Being able to shoot off dozens of RAWs without stopping is great. Nice of Nikon to include the card and reader (but really, I'm not sure they had any other option here -the market isn't exactly flooded with these cards).
Live View: Works a million times better than it did on the D700. It's kind of funny though: it now makes the pro-DSLR able to shoot as easily as a $200 point-and-shoot. But whatever: Live View is nice to have. It's fast and intuitive. One advantage that isn't obvious: you can use it to set the focus point to the far corners of the frame, well outside the small area of the sensor covered by the 51-point AF grid. How I wish Nikon would allow the main AF system to focus in the far corners too: those 51 points still only cover about 20% of the camera's full frame! More in DX mode, but come on, Nikon. This is probably my single biggest complaint about the camera (or any DSLR) -bigger focus area please!
Focus modes: I was initially bummed to see that the three-position focus-mode switches from the D700 had been removed, replaced by 'software' settings using the main control wheels. But after using them I'm fine with the change, even in favor of it. The number of focus modes has increased (because you can change between 9-, 21-, and 51-point tracking easily now, which were hidden in a menu before), and the design works pretty fast. Disadvantage is that it requires two hands to change modes, where you used to do it with one.
The built-in AF motor is noticeably faster than on the D700. Live View mode uses contrast-detection focusing which was ultra-slow on the D700 (especially using motor-driven lenses like the AF-D's), but pretty usable now.
Face Detection (in Live View) works great. It's super easy to get low-angle shots holding the camera away from your body. If the subject moves you'll see a green box on the LCD follow the face around -it's pretty cool to watch it track.
Believe it or not, Face Detection also works through the pentaprism viewfinder. It took me awhile to believe this, but it really does. I proved it to myself by displaying a photo of a face on my laptop's screen, and focusing the camera on it. And like magic, no matter where it was, the focus indicators would lock on to the eyes. If I panned so that one eye left the FOV, then the focus would jump to the other eye. This is really cool. However, in reality it only works moderately well... I mean, if you're shooting at 24 mm in a busy room, and there's a few people in front of you, the camera is likely to focus on the wall instead of the people. Switch to Live View and it'll lock right on to the faces. Switch back and it jumps to the wall. My thought is that when using the viewfinder, the camera is dong face-detection on the smaller 91,000-pixel metering array. When using Live View, it can use millions of pixels from the main chip. Small faces can get hidden in 91,000 pixels (that's sub-VGA resolution!), but are seen in the big chip. I'm not knocking it, since it's clearly state-of-the art... it's just not perfect.
One cool thing about face detection is that it also finds faces on playback (even if face detection wasn't used on that shot). Scroll the front control wheel and it'll zoom in to just the face on every image, so you can easily check focus on the parts you care about. Super.
Metering modes: Too bad that the three-position metering switch is now an electronic controller, set in the viewfinder. But it turns out to be no big deal, because the metering on the D4 is really an improvement from the D700. I used to have to go to spot metering a lot for faces in the shade, and the auto face-detection now catches that so much better than it used to, that I haven't been using spot metering very much. Really, the new metering is very, very good. It has its quirks though: like, let's say you're taking 10 shots in a row of someone's face. If on one shot they turn or are blocked and the face-recognition doesn't work right, then that shot is likely to be underexposed by a stop relative to the rest in the series (see my example photo of this posted on Amazon). In the end underor over-exposure by a stop or two is no big deal on this camera if you're shooting RAW, because the files give you tons of leeway to work with to fix the exposure in post. But it's always best to get the exposure right the first time, and the D4 does a better job of that than the D700.
'Quiet' and 'Silent' modes. Quiet mode is indeed a lot quieter than the regular shutter. It seems to move all the mechanical parts slower -so you hear it for longer, but it's definitely quieter. Limited to 1 fps or so, and it doesn't work in Continuous mode (except if you're in Live View, in which case it does). Silent mode takes 2 MP shots in Live View mode (essentially movie stills shutter must be between 1/30 and 1/125 sec, and JPEG-only, no RAW). I could see using it occasionally, though I wish the resolution were higher. Also, in order to *enter* Silent mode, you have to be in Live View, and you have to pull up the mirror to do that, which makes the normal 'chunking' sound one time. An interesting note: in Silent mode, the exposure counter increments like normal (DSC_0101, 0102, etc.), but the EXIF value for 'Shutter Count' stays unchanged, just like it should. ** Silent mode is exclusive to the D4, and isn't on the D800.
Image quality: Beautiful... really crisp and sharp and smooth. The D700 was great too. For some reason this looks better. The number of pixels and the ISO are only slightly improved from the D700... the improvement to my image quality is dramatically better, more than the one or two stop improvement would suggest. Maybe Nikon's color processing software's improved, who knows what. But I didn't expect much improvement in image quality, and I got it.
ISO: It's a stop or two better than the D700. The ultra-high ISO's (like 200,000+ = H4.0) are there, but pretty silly. Even in bright sun, they're so full of noise so as to be useless. In low light they're even worse. (I guess you could use H4.0 if you were trying to monitor license plates of speeding vehicles under moonlight, or something crazy like that... but no normal photographic application is going to use that.) Up to ISO 10,000 or so, images are very clean. Focusing works really well in low-light, better than the D700 for sure. A nice change is that Auto ISO can now be easily turned on/off by holding ISO and rotating the front control knob -no more going into the menus.
One big change to exposure calculation is that the shutter speed can now be set based on the focal length. In the past, you'd set it (in the Auto ISO menu) to use a minimum of say 1/30 sec, which is great at 24 mm, but not what you want at 70 mm. OK, terrific -I was really stoked on this, since it makes a lot of sense and is more accurate in setting the shutter speed. But there's a huge problem in how it's implemented, in that it's blind to whether you're using a VR lens! So if I'm at 200 mm, it'll pick 1/400th sec for me. But I paid the big bucks for the VR lens so I don't have to shoot at 1/400th... I know I can handhold it just fine at 1/50th. The net effect here is that you'll end up shooting at a higher-than-necessary shutter speed, putting you into high-ISO territory, when you'd be otherwise safe to shoot much slower at low ISO. Alas -maybe Nikon will get this right with the D5. I ended up turning off this focal-length sensitivity setting, and telling it to shoot at 1/100th or faster regardless.
Ethernet connection: Plug in a cable, and the camera has a built-in web server, for doing tethered shooting. Not something I'll use much, but it seems to work. No additional software needed -just a web browser. I also used it for tethered shooting through Aperture straight out of the box, and it worked fine, no new drivers needed.
Auto white balance: as advertised, seems to work better than before. No big deal, but a nice bonus. One weirdness though is that the white balance seems to be less consistent than it was before. For instance, shooting outside in the shade, in the past I could set the right WB correction in Aperture and it'd be right-on for every shot in the series. No more -a good number of individual shots require more hand-tweaking now. This seems like a bug, like maybe the RAW files are getting tagged with the wrong color temp. It could well also be a bug in Aperture's handling of the D4 RAWs; I haven't tried it with Lightroom yet. A bonus with
Display: Better than before. Not really a big deal to me. Minor point: the display itself is polarized such that if you're wearing your polarized Ray Bans, the screen will look dark until you turn it to vertical mode. The D700 was polarized, but at a 45 degree angle, so it was still visible in horizontal mode. The display has a really viewing angle, meaning that if you hold it overhead in Live View, you can glance up at it and at least get *some* sense of how your framing is, even viewing the display nearly edge-on. It doesn't pivot of course, but it's definitely usable for a lot of overhead shots.
[** Update: Nikon replaced the main display for me when mine failed. The new one is different, and is viewable in landscape mode while wearing polarized shades. I doubt it was an intentional change on their part, but for me it worked out as a minor bonus!]
Viewfinder: The image looks a bit bigger and fuller than on the D700. Not that big a deal -I could always see my subject just fine before. Maybe a bit less squinting necessary now.
Extra configurability: Nikon now lets you reprogram even more of the buttons than the D700 allowed. I like one of the options in particular: I've set the Fn button (below the DoF preview button, next to the lens mount) to go to image review. Normally it takes two hands to hit the image-review button, but now I can do it quickly and using the right hand that's already on the camera anyhow. Just one more thing I miss now going back to the D700.
HDR, timelapse, multiple-exposures: they all work as advertised. Probably won't use them much.
Video: I'm not a video shooter but I tried it out outside under streetlights, where the video was super-clean. Inside with a night light it was a total failure at high ISO's -too much noise to see anything at all. Others know a lot more about video than me, so read their reviews instead.
Minor operational change: On the D700, the control wheels went dead right after taking a shot, requiring a half-press to wake up the metering system again, if you used the control wheels to select through images. On the D4, they stay live after the shutter press. Awesome. This was always a minor annoyance before, and I'm glad it's changed. It's hidden on an obscure setting within Custom F10.
Flash: There is none. Occasionally I used CLS for remote triggers on the D700 and you obviously can't do that any more. And sometimes I don't want to carry around the PocketWizards for just a snapshot flash-fill. Oh well -can't have it all. For what it's worth, the PocketWizards (TT5's) work perfectly, no problems at all. I called up the PW people about an unrelated issue and they confirmed to me (as of June 2012) that the PW's work great on the D4... not working yet on the D800/800E, they said.
Flash exposure: The EV+and the Flash EV are now separated. It use to be that lowering the camera EV would also lower the flash output (so dropping the background while keeping the subject lit would require two sync'd setting changes). No more. Nikon took after Canon here, good to see. This stuff works fine with the PW's. ** This Flash EV setting (custom e5) is exclusive to the D4. It's not on the D800.
Reviewing images: You can zoom out to see 72 images at a time, and use the joystick to cruise around these. But regardless of all of the image-processing power onboard, it's still frustratingly slow to scroll backward by 500 or 1000 images. There's apparently no in-camera buffering of the thumbnails -they're reloaded from the card every time, so it may still take you a few minutes of slow scrolling to find that cool shot from a few days ago that you want to show someone.
Manual: 456 frikkin' pages. I like camera manuals and this one's pretty well written. It's not literature but it explains the settings clearly enough.
Why not the D800? 50 MB images are too big for me, and I'm not going to be printing any banners or posters from my work anyhow. Almost everything I do goes online. Virtually any camera has enough resolution for me. I'm more interested in handling / ergonomics / ISO / dynamic range / speed, than resolution. If I was doing landscapes instead of people, I'd of course go for the D800 instead.
Is six thousand bucks too much to spend on a camera? Probably. But Nikon bodies remain in high demand, and used prices are high. I can likely sell this in a year or two for not much less than I paid for it. (My three-year-old D700 has only lost 1/3 of its value since it was new, or about a thousand dollars over three years.) Is having a camera like that worth a dollar or two a day to me? Absolutely.
P.S. I'll answer any questions below. And if you found this useful, feel free to click and tell me so!
[Update June 2013. 45,000 pics and one year later, it remains awesome. I only have a few frustrations and minor things to add:
o I wish the front buttons -Function and Preview -were more programmable, and I wish Nikon put a duplicate set you could reach in vertical mode.
o I prefer the analog buttons to change exposure mode on the D700, over the menu here.
o I don't use Live View very much -it's just so much slower than viewfinder mode that even though focus on a face in the corner very nicely, I can usually do it myself faster.
o Don't mind the weight at all. Feels great in the hand. I use an OpTech slider strap into an arca-swiss knockoff plate bolted into the bottom.
o I use 10 fps *all the time*. On safari, with kids, anything. It's wonderful.
o XQD card is great, though I wish there was a good way to take advantage of its speed to download to my older Mac, which only has a USB2 and not USB3.
o Nikon replaced the main logic board after I reported problems with the battery suddenly dying overnight. No problems since then.
o I wish the 51 focus points went further across the FOV -they're all clustered at the center.
o I'm not a big bird shooter but I have been amazed at how well the focus tracking will follow a bird who moves in & out of the frame, well away from the original focus point.
o Picture quality is just great. I get a ton of keepers, and when I don't, it's always my fault and not the camera's.
I managed to drop the camera -8 inches onto carpet with an 85/1.4 on -and it knocked the camera completely out of focus, and apparently knocked the main display loose so it flickered a lot. (So much for indestructibility of a pro body...) I sent it back to Nikon explaining the situation, and they were nice enough to fix it for free, which involved replacing the front bayonet mount. But the camera spent *nearly two months at Nikon* to get fixed! It was on "parts hold" for over a month, and when they returned it, they sent to to the wrong address to boot -an old address of mine.]
Vertical orientation: Nice. The vertical grip isn't nearly as contoured as the main horizontal grip -there's just not as much stuff to grab your hands onto (no deep pockets for your fingertips). Too bad. But when holding it for any length of time, it's sure a lot easier than holding twisting my arm above my head and rotating the camera. Note that the vertical grip has a programmable button on it, which I use for Mode (A/S/M/P). I understand the D3s didn't have this, which seems crazy -I use it all the time. I wish the vertical grip had all the buttons as the main grip does -e.g., there's only one programmable button, so if you want to use it for Mode, then there's no way to change EV +while vertical, or start taking a movie. Also, I wish the two function buttons (DoF preview, and the one above it) were replicated in vertical mode. They're not, which is silly -there's room right there for them.
I shoot one-handed a lot, at events where I have a flash in one hand an a camera in the other (using a set of PocketWizards). I thought the weight of the D4 would make this harder. But no: when holding it vertically, the D4 is a lot easier to manage than the vertical D700. (I never had a vertical grip for the D700, so I can't compare.) Even holding it horizontally, the larger grip makes it easier to manage the D4 than the D700 one-handedly -it makes the camera honestly feel substantially lighter. One gripe: the vertical joystick for adjusting the focus point is still a bit too much of a stretch to use with one hand.
Shutter: yep, it's 10 fps. Let it rip! Great for capturing faces of both kids and adults at just the right moment.
General ergonomics and build quality: Great. Totally solid.
Weight: Having never had a pro-sized body before, I feared it'd be too heavy. But no: once you throw a 70-200 2.8 on there, the difference between this and a D700 is pretty small, certainly not a big deal. I carry it around on an Op Tech slider strap bolted into the tripod port, plenty stable and strong.
Battery: 2000+ shots (including lots of live view and some movies), and it's down to half. That's plenty of capacity for me. The charger is a real monster to carry around, about 4x the size of a D700 charger, too big to just slip in a pocket. One BIG PROBLEM: after charging it the second time, I had the camera turned on and sitting out overnight. The next morning, the battery was completely dead. I have no idea what happened -the D700 never ever did this to me. Was the camera turned so the AF was being pushed all night? Or is there a bug in the auto-off? No idea, but I'll post if it happens again. (Update: This has now happened to me three times, where the battery has gone from 100% to 0% overnight. Very frustrating. The first time I thought it was because the camera was in my bag and the AF-On button was being pressed, so it was trying to focus all night long. But that's not it, since it was on a shelf the other two times. Since I don't see others who have had this problem, I'm sending it back to Nikon for service.)
[Update: Beats me what the root cause was, but Nikon replaced the logic board and I haven't seen the issue come back.]
Lit up controls: Nikon won't point this out, but they don't *all* light up! Most do, but not the trash, or playback, or EV+-, or Mode, or Live View. Huh? All the buttons on my cell phone lit up 10 years ago. It's not that hard.
XQD card: Fast to write, fast to transfer. I love it. Being able to shoot off dozens of RAWs without stopping is great. Nice of Nikon to include the card and reader (but really, I'm not sure they had any other option here -the market isn't exactly flooded with these cards).
Live View: Works a million times better than it did on the D700. It's kind of funny though: it now makes the pro-DSLR able to shoot as easily as a $200 point-and-shoot. But whatever: Live View is nice to have. It's fast and intuitive. One advantage that isn't obvious: you can use it to set the focus point to the far corners of the frame, well outside the small area of the sensor covered by the 51-point AF grid. How I wish Nikon would allow the main AF system to focus in the far corners too: those 51 points still only cover about 20% of the camera's full frame! More in DX mode, but come on, Nikon. This is probably my single biggest complaint about the camera (or any DSLR) -bigger focus area please!
Focus modes: I was initially bummed to see that the three-position focus-mode switches from the D700 had been removed, replaced by 'software' settings using the main control wheels. But after using them I'm fine with the change, even in favor of it. The number of focus modes has increased (because you can change between 9-, 21-, and 51-point tracking easily now, which were hidden in a menu before), and the design works pretty fast. Disadvantage is that it requires two hands to change modes, where you used to do it with one.
The built-in AF motor is noticeably faster than on the D700. Live View mode uses contrast-detection focusing which was ultra-slow on the D700 (especially using motor-driven lenses like the AF-D's), but pretty usable now.
Face Detection (in Live View) works great. It's super easy to get low-angle shots holding the camera away from your body. If the subject moves you'll see a green box on the LCD follow the face around -it's pretty cool to watch it track.
Believe it or not, Face Detection also works through the pentaprism viewfinder. It took me awhile to believe this, but it really does. I proved it to myself by displaying a photo of a face on my laptop's screen, and focusing the camera on it. And like magic, no matter where it was, the focus indicators would lock on to the eyes. If I panned so that one eye left the FOV, then the focus would jump to the other eye. This is really cool. However, in reality it only works moderately well... I mean, if you're shooting at 24 mm in a busy room, and there's a few people in front of you, the camera is likely to focus on the wall instead of the people. Switch to Live View and it'll lock right on to the faces. Switch back and it jumps to the wall. My thought is that when using the viewfinder, the camera is dong face-detection on the smaller 91,000-pixel metering array. When using Live View, it can use millions of pixels from the main chip. Small faces can get hidden in 91,000 pixels (that's sub-VGA resolution!), but are seen in the big chip. I'm not knocking it, since it's clearly state-of-the art... it's just not perfect.
One cool thing about face detection is that it also finds faces on playback (even if face detection wasn't used on that shot). Scroll the front control wheel and it'll zoom in to just the face on every image, so you can easily check focus on the parts you care about. Super.
Metering modes: Too bad that the three-position metering switch is now an electronic controller, set in the viewfinder. But it turns out to be no big deal, because the metering on the D4 is really an improvement from the D700. I used to have to go to spot metering a lot for faces in the shade, and the auto face-detection now catches that so much better than it used to, that I haven't been using spot metering very much. Really, the new metering is very, very good. It has its quirks though: like, let's say you're taking 10 shots in a row of someone's face. If on one shot they turn or are blocked and the face-recognition doesn't work right, then that shot is likely to be underexposed by a stop relative to the rest in the series (see my example photo of this posted on Amazon). In the end underor over-exposure by a stop or two is no big deal on this camera if you're shooting RAW, because the files give you tons of leeway to work with to fix the exposure in post. But it's always best to get the exposure right the first time, and the D4 does a better job of that than the D700.
'Quiet' and 'Silent' modes. Quiet mode is indeed a lot quieter than the regular shutter. It seems to move all the mechanical parts slower -so you hear it for longer, but it's definitely quieter. Limited to 1 fps or so, and it doesn't work in Continuous mode (except if you're in Live View, in which case it does). Silent mode takes 2 MP shots in Live View mode (essentially movie stills shutter must be between 1/30 and 1/125 sec, and JPEG-only, no RAW). I could see using it occasionally, though I wish the resolution were higher. Also, in order to *enter* Silent mode, you have to be in Live View, and you have to pull up the mirror to do that, which makes the normal 'chunking' sound one time. An interesting note: in Silent mode, the exposure counter increments like normal (DSC_0101, 0102, etc.), but the EXIF value for 'Shutter Count' stays unchanged, just like it should. ** Silent mode is exclusive to the D4, and isn't on the D800.
Image quality: Beautiful... really crisp and sharp and smooth. The D700 was great too. For some reason this looks better. The number of pixels and the ISO are only slightly improved from the D700... the improvement to my image quality is dramatically better, more than the one or two stop improvement would suggest. Maybe Nikon's color processing software's improved, who knows what. But I didn't expect much improvement in image quality, and I got it.
ISO: It's a stop or two better than the D700. The ultra-high ISO's (like 200,000+ = H4.0) are there, but pretty silly. Even in bright sun, they're so full of noise so as to be useless. In low light they're even worse. (I guess you could use H4.0 if you were trying to monitor license plates of speeding vehicles under moonlight, or something crazy like that... but no normal photographic application is going to use that.) Up to ISO 10,000 or so, images are very clean. Focusing works really well in low-light, better than the D700 for sure. A nice change is that Auto ISO can now be easily turned on/off by holding ISO and rotating the front control knob -no more going into the menus.
One big change to exposure calculation is that the shutter speed can now be set based on the focal length. In the past, you'd set it (in the Auto ISO menu) to use a minimum of say 1/30 sec, which is great at 24 mm, but not what you want at 70 mm. OK, terrific -I was really stoked on this, since it makes a lot of sense and is more accurate in setting the shutter speed. But there's a huge problem in how it's implemented, in that it's blind to whether you're using a VR lens! So if I'm at 200 mm, it'll pick 1/400th sec for me. But I paid the big bucks for the VR lens so I don't have to shoot at 1/400th... I know I can handhold it just fine at 1/50th. The net effect here is that you'll end up shooting at a higher-than-necessary shutter speed, putting you into high-ISO territory, when you'd be otherwise safe to shoot much slower at low ISO. Alas -maybe Nikon will get this right with the D5. I ended up turning off this focal-length sensitivity setting, and telling it to shoot at 1/100th or faster regardless.
Ethernet connection: Plug in a cable, and the camera has a built-in web server, for doing tethered shooting. Not something I'll use much, but it seems to work. No additional software needed -just a web browser. I also used it for tethered shooting through Aperture straight out of the box, and it worked fine, no new drivers needed.
Auto white balance: as advertised, seems to work better than before. No big deal, but a nice bonus. One weirdness though is that the white balance seems to be less consistent than it was before. For instance, shooting outside in the shade, in the past I could set the right WB correction in Aperture and it'd be right-on for every shot in the series. No more -a good number of individual shots require more hand-tweaking now. This seems like a bug, like maybe the RAW files are getting tagged with the wrong color temp. It could well also be a bug in Aperture's handling of the D4 RAWs; I haven't tried it with Lightroom yet. A bonus with
Display: Better than before. Not really a big deal to me. Minor point: the display itself is polarized such that if you're wearing your polarized Ray Bans, the screen will look dark until you turn it to vertical mode. The D700 was polarized, but at a 45 degree angle, so it was still visible in horizontal mode. The display has a really viewing angle, meaning that if you hold it overhead in Live View, you can glance up at it and at least get *some* sense of how your framing is, even viewing the display nearly edge-on. It doesn't pivot of course, but it's definitely usable for a lot of overhead shots.
[** Update: Nikon replaced the main display for me when mine failed. The new one is different, and is viewable in landscape mode while wearing polarized shades. I doubt it was an intentional change on their part, but for me it worked out as a minor bonus!]
Viewfinder: The image looks a bit bigger and fuller than on the D700. Not that big a deal -I could always see my subject just fine before. Maybe a bit less squinting necessary now.
Extra configurability: Nikon now lets you reprogram even more of the buttons than the D700 allowed. I like one of the options in particular: I've set the Fn button (below the DoF preview button, next to the lens mount) to go to image review. Normally it takes two hands to hit the image-review button, but now I can do it quickly and using the right hand that's already on the camera anyhow. Just one more thing I miss now going back to the D700.
HDR, timelapse, multiple-exposures: they all work as advertised. Probably won't use them much.
Video: I'm not a video shooter but I tried it out outside under streetlights, where the video was super-clean. Inside with a night light it was a total failure at high ISO's -too much noise to see anything at all. Others know a lot more about video than me, so read their reviews instead.
Minor operational change: On the D700, the control wheels went dead right after taking a shot, requiring a half-press to wake up the metering system again, if you used the control wheels to select through images. On the D4, they stay live after the shutter press. Awesome. This was always a minor annoyance before, and I'm glad it's changed. It's hidden on an obscure setting within Custom F10.
Flash: There is none. Occasionally I used CLS for remote triggers on the D700 and you obviously can't do that any more. And sometimes I don't want to carry around the PocketWizards for just a snapshot flash-fill. Oh well -can't have it all. For what it's worth, the PocketWizards (TT5's) work perfectly, no problems at all. I called up the PW people about an unrelated issue and they confirmed to me (as of June 2012) that the PW's work great on the D4... not working yet on the D800/800E, they said.
Flash exposure: The EV+and the Flash EV are now separated. It use to be that lowering the camera EV would also lower the flash output (so dropping the background while keeping the subject lit would require two sync'd setting changes). No more. Nikon took after Canon here, good to see. This stuff works fine with the PW's. ** This Flash EV setting (custom e5) is exclusive to the D4. It's not on the D800.
Reviewing images: You can zoom out to see 72 images at a time, and use the joystick to cruise around these. But regardless of all of the image-processing power onboard, it's still frustratingly slow to scroll backward by 500 or 1000 images. There's apparently no in-camera buffering of the thumbnails -they're reloaded from the card every time, so it may still take you a few minutes of slow scrolling to find that cool shot from a few days ago that you want to show someone.
Manual: 456 frikkin' pages. I like camera manuals and this one's pretty well written. It's not literature but it explains the settings clearly enough.
Why not the D800? 50 MB images are too big for me, and I'm not going to be printing any banners or posters from my work anyhow. Almost everything I do goes online. Virtually any camera has enough resolution for me. I'm more interested in handling / ergonomics / ISO / dynamic range / speed, than resolution. If I was doing landscapes instead of people, I'd of course go for the D800 instead.
Is six thousand bucks too much to spend on a camera? Probably. But Nikon bodies remain in high demand, and used prices are high. I can likely sell this in a year or two for not much less than I paid for it. (My three-year-old D700 has only lost 1/3 of its value since it was new, or about a thousand dollars over three years.) Is having a camera like that worth a dollar or two a day to me? Absolutely.
P.S. I'll answer any questions below. And if you found this useful, feel free to click and tell me so!
[Update June 2013. 45,000 pics and one year later, it remains awesome. I only have a few frustrations and minor things to add:
o I wish the front buttons -Function and Preview -were more programmable, and I wish Nikon put a duplicate set you could reach in vertical mode.
o I prefer the analog buttons to change exposure mode on the D700, over the menu here.
o I don't use Live View very much -it's just so much slower than viewfinder mode that even though focus on a face in the corner very nicely, I can usually do it myself faster.
o Don't mind the weight at all. Feels great in the hand. I use an OpTech slider strap into an arca-swiss knockoff plate bolted into the bottom.
o I use 10 fps *all the time*. On safari, with kids, anything. It's wonderful.
o XQD card is great, though I wish there was a good way to take advantage of its speed to download to my older Mac, which only has a USB2 and not USB3.
o Nikon replaced the main logic board after I reported problems with the battery suddenly dying overnight. No problems since then.
o I wish the 51 focus points went further across the FOV -they're all clustered at the center.
o I'm not a big bird shooter but I have been amazed at how well the focus tracking will follow a bird who moves in & out of the frame, well away from the original focus point.
o Picture quality is just great. I get a ton of keepers, and when I don't, it's always my fault and not the camera's.
I managed to drop the camera -8 inches onto carpet with an 85/1.4 on -and it knocked the camera completely out of focus, and apparently knocked the main display loose so it flickered a lot. (So much for indestructibility of a pro body...) I sent it back to Nikon explaining the situation, and they were nice enough to fix it for free, which involved replacing the front bayonet mount. But the camera spent *nearly two months at Nikon* to get fixed! It was on "parts hold" for over a month, and when they returned it, they sent to to the wrong address to boot -an old address of mine.]
Nikon COOLPIX S31 10.1 MP Waterproof Digital Camera with 720p HD
List Price: $99.95
Sale Price: $89.95
Today's Bonus: 10% Off
We took the camera snorkeling in Hawaii. It took great photos. It is easy to use and no water entered the camera. It is really sealed up well. The only shortcoming I see, is that the screen was hard to see underwater so you were really pointing in a general area and shooting.
Apple Cinema 20-inch Flat-Panel Display
There was a time that I never considered buying an Apple display. I figured a Mac costs enough money, without spending $1000, or more, on a display. In late January 2005, I purchased the newest Powerbook G4 12 inch 1.5 GHZ G4, with superdrive. The notebook had nearly all the performance I was looking for, and the small form factor allows me to easily haul it around the house, or the world should I ever get to travel properly. However, I wanted more from my Powerbook, when at my desk.
Yes, I was already using my Powerbook with an external display. It was an analog Sony LCD. However, it was only 15 inches, with a resolution of 1024x768, so I actually had as little screen real estate on my external display, as I had on the 12 inch built-in display. I wanted more.
After deciding a 17 inch LCD would not be enough, I ordered the Apple's 20" Cinema Display, and I'm glad I did. Unfortunately, the box arrived beat-up, and there was even dirt inside. However, everything inside seemed to work ok, thankfully. Un-wrapping the cinema display was a joy, and I was eager to put it on my desk. The design of this display is stunning. The aluminium enclosure will please the eyes of anyone, and the back of the display is as beautiful, if not more beautiful than the front. There is a single cable that comes from the back of the display, which neatly goes through an opening on the aluminium stand. This single cable splits in the end into Firewire, USB, DVI, and a power connector that you plug into the power brick. I connected the firewire, USB, and DVI to my Powerbook, and then I connected the power to the display. Wow. It was perfect out of the box. I could never get the color profile right on my old external display, but the cinema display was out of the box the most beautiful display I had ever used. The brightness was exceptional, and it took a few days for me to get used to the brightness. Yes, you can lower the brightness with grace of your finger over the sophisticated tough-sensitive buttons on the right side of the display, but I loved the look at full-brightness.
My computing experience has been at another level, since the cinema display arrived. Whether I'm browsing the web, working in Photoshop and iPhoto, or making a movie in iMovie, the 20" cinema display and its 1680x1050 resolution is a joy to use. The display also gives me two USB and two Firewire ports directly behind the panel, which is incredibly convenient. If you're a gamer, which I'm not, you will appreciate the 16ms response this display offers.
Yes, your computer does all the hard work, but it is your display you interact with. A great display like the Apple Cinema Display allows you to get more done, with less work and effort. For example, you do not have to figure out how to fit all your Photoshop palettes on the screen, for there is plenty of room.
DVDs are quite the experience on this display as well. I popped in Shrek 2, and I was amazed by the images, but DVDs are far from the only reason you should want a widescreen. The widescreen aspect of this display allows you to work in the way our minds are designed and used to working. We read from left to right, so a display that is wider than it is long makes a lot of sense.
Overall, if you would like to save some money, there are other displays out there. Dell actually offers a 20 inch widescreen display, which compares nicely with this one, even supporting additional inputs. However, it does lack something. It lacks the beauty in design that the Apple Cinema Display offers, and it probably lacks some of the quality control that Apple strives hard to achieve. For example, Apple might reject some of the panels they use inside of this display, if they suspect quality concerns, where other manufactures may use any panel they are supplied with, without spending the time and money to ensure a quality panel. If you believe you would like to spend some money on a fantastic display to use with your Powerbook, PowerMac, or DVI-output PC, then you should not pass-up this beauty. It is truly a piece of art from an aesthetics point of view, and the images it displays are spectacular. This display will not look like "yesterday's" display anytime soon. In fact, it is a pleasure to enjoy a display that does not look like it should be part of a busy, cluttered office. This display oozes beauty and grace, and the stock Apple pictures do not do it justice. The Apple Cinema Display gives you the full computing experience.
Yes, I was already using my Powerbook with an external display. It was an analog Sony LCD. However, it was only 15 inches, with a resolution of 1024x768, so I actually had as little screen real estate on my external display, as I had on the 12 inch built-in display. I wanted more.
After deciding a 17 inch LCD would not be enough, I ordered the Apple's 20" Cinema Display, and I'm glad I did. Unfortunately, the box arrived beat-up, and there was even dirt inside. However, everything inside seemed to work ok, thankfully. Un-wrapping the cinema display was a joy, and I was eager to put it on my desk. The design of this display is stunning. The aluminium enclosure will please the eyes of anyone, and the back of the display is as beautiful, if not more beautiful than the front. There is a single cable that comes from the back of the display, which neatly goes through an opening on the aluminium stand. This single cable splits in the end into Firewire, USB, DVI, and a power connector that you plug into the power brick. I connected the firewire, USB, and DVI to my Powerbook, and then I connected the power to the display. Wow. It was perfect out of the box. I could never get the color profile right on my old external display, but the cinema display was out of the box the most beautiful display I had ever used. The brightness was exceptional, and it took a few days for me to get used to the brightness. Yes, you can lower the brightness with grace of your finger over the sophisticated tough-sensitive buttons on the right side of the display, but I loved the look at full-brightness.
My computing experience has been at another level, since the cinema display arrived. Whether I'm browsing the web, working in Photoshop and iPhoto, or making a movie in iMovie, the 20" cinema display and its 1680x1050 resolution is a joy to use. The display also gives me two USB and two Firewire ports directly behind the panel, which is incredibly convenient. If you're a gamer, which I'm not, you will appreciate the 16ms response this display offers.
Yes, your computer does all the hard work, but it is your display you interact with. A great display like the Apple Cinema Display allows you to get more done, with less work and effort. For example, you do not have to figure out how to fit all your Photoshop palettes on the screen, for there is plenty of room.
DVDs are quite the experience on this display as well. I popped in Shrek 2, and I was amazed by the images, but DVDs are far from the only reason you should want a widescreen. The widescreen aspect of this display allows you to work in the way our minds are designed and used to working. We read from left to right, so a display that is wider than it is long makes a lot of sense.
Overall, if you would like to save some money, there are other displays out there. Dell actually offers a 20 inch widescreen display, which compares nicely with this one, even supporting additional inputs. However, it does lack something. It lacks the beauty in design that the Apple Cinema Display offers, and it probably lacks some of the quality control that Apple strives hard to achieve. For example, Apple might reject some of the panels they use inside of this display, if they suspect quality concerns, where other manufactures may use any panel they are supplied with, without spending the time and money to ensure a quality panel. If you believe you would like to spend some money on a fantastic display to use with your Powerbook, PowerMac, or DVI-output PC, then you should not pass-up this beauty. It is truly a piece of art from an aesthetics point of view, and the images it displays are spectacular. This display will not look like "yesterday's" display anytime soon. In fact, it is a pleasure to enjoy a display that does not look like it should be part of a busy, cluttered office. This display oozes beauty and grace, and the stock Apple pictures do not do it justice. The Apple Cinema Display gives you the full computing experience.
Fujifilm FinePix S4500 Digital Camera - White (14MP, 30x Optical
I chose this camera because of the price point. $150 for a bridge camera with 30x optical zoom is fabulous and I like white. It should be noted that purchasing the white one forfeits any warranty on the camera as this color is an import model with no U.S. warranty. No matter. The camera has a nice balance in your hand, is easy to operate and has a built-in pop up flash. The zoom is very responsive and quick. The auto-focus however is average. While shooting an object in bright daylght the system had a hard time with near and far focus. It couldn't decide weather I was shooting the subject or the tree way in the background on a few occasions. The pictures are crisp and clear so you won't be dissapointed there. Purchase a good sized SDHD card and 4 rechargable AA batteries as this unit is power hungry. It comes with a lens cap that I recommend NOT attaching to the wrist strap as it gets to be a tangled mess since the lens cap teather is a bit short. I was surprised to find a sharp eyepiece much like a 35mm camera to aim with. You can use this or the bright sharp and colorful rear display. For the $150 price point it does what it should and then some. 7.9 out of 10 stars. Scotty Gumballs
Dropcam HD Wi-Fi Wireless Video Monitoring Camera
My review is focus on one aspect so as not to be too long, but still useful. **Please note the updates at the end**
The Dropcam is a very good, very easy to use device. Many of the top rated reviews here do an excellent job of listing the pros and cons. Also, the firmware has been updated since many of the negative reviews were posted, so there have been subtle improvements (not enough) with motion detection, and also the iOS and Android apps are now easy and great.
The best use case of this camera, by far, is indoor remote surveillance of a kids room, a family room, or a workplace.
Here's the real, overpowering negative about the device for me: it uses about 60GB of upload data capacity each month. The camera transmits its HD video feed to the DropCam cloud servers ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. The cloud service is what makes the user experience so easy, and what allows you to view your camera from multiple places, phones, tablets, all with just a userID and password. It's good in that you don't have to learn about firewalls, IP port forwarding and such just to make it work. But, that also means that it sends enormous amounts of video of a room with nothing at all happening in it. If your ISP has a quota or a limit to how much you can send per month, this camera WILL DEFINITELY USE A LARGE PORTION. In Canada and with some US ISPs, the limit is 50GB...i.e. less than this camera sends!
Lots of ISPs offer a quota of 250GB, so this camera won't put most US customers over their limit. Just know that this will soak up a good portion of your allotment.
Each additional camera will add to the bandwidth you use.
Consider that you are also downloading the video feed from your ISP, so if you are in the same place as the camera viewing it, it doubles the bandwidth used. Yep, that's right, your video goes up to the cloud server, then back down to you.
FYI, the upload rate is about 400-600 Kbps
The camera does use excellent compression, so the HD video is as compact as it can be in 2012.
If you have anything less than awesome Internet service, the camera will slow down your uploads of other stuff, like photos, attachments, etc. Upload speed is always much slower than download on consumer Internet service, and that's what this camera uses.
So, take this important point into consideration. It may still be a great product for you, but you need to know the costs. For me, I planned on using this at a lake house with slow Internet, so it doesn't work for me. I'll have to find another use for it.
****Update, September 2012
The camera has just received a software update that lets you switch between SD mode and HD mode. All DropCams that are turned on and connected to the Internet will get the update automatically. The standard definition mode uses half the bandwidth of the HD mode. Overall, there is a big improvement regarding the problem I cited in my original review. The update has other benefits in motion detection, etc.
As for me, the 30GB a month is still too much, so I will continue to use the available software switch to turn the camera on and off, and only enable it when I want to watch.
The Dropcam is a very good, very easy to use device. Many of the top rated reviews here do an excellent job of listing the pros and cons. Also, the firmware has been updated since many of the negative reviews were posted, so there have been subtle improvements (not enough) with motion detection, and also the iOS and Android apps are now easy and great.
The best use case of this camera, by far, is indoor remote surveillance of a kids room, a family room, or a workplace.
Here's the real, overpowering negative about the device for me: it uses about 60GB of upload data capacity each month. The camera transmits its HD video feed to the DropCam cloud servers ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. The cloud service is what makes the user experience so easy, and what allows you to view your camera from multiple places, phones, tablets, all with just a userID and password. It's good in that you don't have to learn about firewalls, IP port forwarding and such just to make it work. But, that also means that it sends enormous amounts of video of a room with nothing at all happening in it. If your ISP has a quota or a limit to how much you can send per month, this camera WILL DEFINITELY USE A LARGE PORTION. In Canada and with some US ISPs, the limit is 50GB...i.e. less than this camera sends!
Lots of ISPs offer a quota of 250GB, so this camera won't put most US customers over their limit. Just know that this will soak up a good portion of your allotment.
Each additional camera will add to the bandwidth you use.
Consider that you are also downloading the video feed from your ISP, so if you are in the same place as the camera viewing it, it doubles the bandwidth used. Yep, that's right, your video goes up to the cloud server, then back down to you.
FYI, the upload rate is about 400-600 Kbps
The camera does use excellent compression, so the HD video is as compact as it can be in 2012.
If you have anything less than awesome Internet service, the camera will slow down your uploads of other stuff, like photos, attachments, etc. Upload speed is always much slower than download on consumer Internet service, and that's what this camera uses.
So, take this important point into consideration. It may still be a great product for you, but you need to know the costs. For me, I planned on using this at a lake house with slow Internet, so it doesn't work for me. I'll have to find another use for it.
****Update, September 2012
The camera has just received a software update that lets you switch between SD mode and HD mode. All DropCams that are turned on and connected to the Internet will get the update automatically. The standard definition mode uses half the bandwidth of the HD mode. Overall, there is a big improvement regarding the problem I cited in my original review. The update has other benefits in motion detection, etc.
As for me, the 30GB a month is still too much, so I will continue to use the available software switch to turn the camera on and off, and only enable it when I want to watch.
Dell XPS 15z XPS15z-72ELS Laptop (Elemental Silver)
Bought this system based on a friend's recommendation who works for Dell. Also was a strong Dell loyalist for over 10 years because my previous laptops were all Dell. Unfortunately my experience with this system has been fraught with troubles.
My new laptop arrived and setup was a breeze. However within a week the batter stopped charging and was disabled. After hrs on the phone with Dell and everyone assuring me this was a unique problem, they sent me a new system. guess what same problem 10 days later. Another 2 days on the phone with their customer service folks in Hyderabad who kept trying to fix the problem. Ultimately they sent in a technician who replaced the battery and the system has been working fine since then. They extended my warrant by 4 months to compensate me for my troublesi guess i should have just bought a refurbished one which is what I essentially got for buying their top of the line laptop.
Now a month later, the wireless card has started acting up. If I step into a room away from where the router sits, it randomly disconnects and tries to connect. Its disconnected 90% of the time. Funny thing is I have a 6 year old Dell Inspiron which works fine and streams video movies without once dropping the signal sitting right next to this machine. I've tried new wireless routers but the problem persists. Called their customer service and they claim it is a software issue without even looking at it and want to charge me to troubleshoot the problem. Dell's service was one thing going for thembut i'm afraid that has started to suck too now.
I would strongly discourage anyone from buying this unless you enjoy being on the phone with a service technician being bumped from hardware to wireless to software to XPS support teams.Other than that it seems like a pretty decent machine that looks sleek, works well when no issues.
My new laptop arrived and setup was a breeze. However within a week the batter stopped charging and was disabled. After hrs on the phone with Dell and everyone assuring me this was a unique problem, they sent me a new system. guess what same problem 10 days later. Another 2 days on the phone with their customer service folks in Hyderabad who kept trying to fix the problem. Ultimately they sent in a technician who replaced the battery and the system has been working fine since then. They extended my warrant by 4 months to compensate me for my troublesi guess i should have just bought a refurbished one which is what I essentially got for buying their top of the line laptop.
Now a month later, the wireless card has started acting up. If I step into a room away from where the router sits, it randomly disconnects and tries to connect. Its disconnected 90% of the time. Funny thing is I have a 6 year old Dell Inspiron which works fine and streams video movies without once dropping the signal sitting right next to this machine. I've tried new wireless routers but the problem persists. Called their customer service and they claim it is a software issue without even looking at it and want to charge me to troubleshoot the problem. Dell's service was one thing going for thembut i'm afraid that has started to suck too now.
I would strongly discourage anyone from buying this unless you enjoy being on the phone with a service technician being bumped from hardware to wireless to software to XPS support teams.Other than that it seems like a pretty decent machine that looks sleek, works well when no issues.
Clarion CX501 Double-DIN CD/Bluetooth/USB Receiver
List Price: $299.99
Sale Price: $160.98
Today's Bonus: 46% Off
I bought this for a 2005 Chevy Colorado. I used a Metra 95-2009 Double DIN Installation Multi-Kit for Select 1995-2008 GM/Honda/Isuzu/Suzuki Vehicles installation kit and an Axxess GMRC-01 Class II GM Chime Retention Interface to keep my chimes my truck doesn't have On-Star or a separate factory amp. I also got the Scosche Mda-1B 1988 Up Gm Micro/Delco Antenna Adapter because GM uses a small antenna plug. All parts were exactly what I needed. The radio fit perfectly WITHOUT cutting the truck's metal rear support bracket inside the dash. The truck has Boston Acoustic speakers in the front doors and factory speakers in the rear. As a result I keep the fader set to the front speakers only. This truck has no dimmer wire or illumination wire so the dimming feature will not work. I did not need navigation because I use my Droid and I don't need DVD or movies in the truck. I had that feature in my last head unit for three years and never did watch a movie in the truck.
I like that it's compatible with my existing Sirius SCC1 receiver I didn't want to have to buy a proprietary Sirius receiver. That kind of thing just rankles me and it's a BIG reason I chose this unit. I just plugged it in and it simply worked. The unit will hold 18 Sirius presets and I can choose to display Artist and Track at the same time.
Also, the ability to read USB MP3 files is great I like to throw audio books on a USB stick for long drives. The Clarion will remember the track position even after the truck is turned off and the USB stick removed so when I put the USB stick in again the unit will shift to the USB source and start playing where it left off. This is a great feature for audio books. Fastforward/rewind is accomplished by holding the Next Track/Previous Track buttons.
Good bluetooth connection with my Droid X The unit connects automatically with both BT phone and BT audio at the same time. (My wife's much-more-expensive Pioneer AVIC will not connect both phone and audio to her Incredible at the same time; she has to choose one or the other and go through the cumbersome process to do it.) I can play music on my phone and sound comes out of the Clarion instead of the phone and I can pause, skip tracks, control volume, etc with the Clarion. The BT Telephone part also works great and the sound is fine. The microphone is built into the unit. The Clarion easily accepted my Droid X phone book although it wouldn't transfer the contacts in my favorites but I think that is a problem with the phone and not the Clarion I'm still working on it. It is not possible to add single numbers to the phone book. The Clarion phone book stores all the names in Last Name | First Name order which I don't like. Calls are not that easy to start from the Clarion unless it is redialing a recent call. Trying to direct dial from the radio while driving would be crazy because its way too complicated. However, incoming calls work perfectly (and mute the radio during the call) and I can make outgoing calls from the phone while it sits in the dock and then it's hands free speaker-phone over the Clarion. Overall I'm extremely happy with the bluetooth and this is another BIG reason I am happy with this unit.
Aux-In jack on the front haven't used this yet but its good to have.
Double Din Big two-line text thats easy to read while driving. The buttons are not all mashed together and the volume knob is big. It's easy to control the unit quickly and safely. I appreciate this after driving another vehicle with a single-din unit that had dozens of tiny buttons and practically unreadable text and button labels. However, I can't see the clock at the same time as anything else which is a negative in other words I can see Artist and Track, or Station or whatever but if I want to see the clock it will be all I see. They should have left a spot where the clock can always be visible.
The FM sounds pretty good better than the Sirius music stations I think. I can't compare the FM sensitivity to the factory radio because I took out the factory radio long ago...
Music sounds good enough with my BA speakers. Not outstanding, but good enough for me. In my younger days when I was more into music I would have demanded more and probably used an external amp and sub-woofer, etc (and also bought a more expensive brand just because of the name!) but nowadays I mostly listen to talk radio on Sirius. However, like I said, music sounds very acceptable if I don't crank it up way too loud. I actually removed my external Alpine amp at the same time I installed the Clarion. I don't feel like I need it.
The ability to change colors is very cool. Right now I have it on a custom yellow which looks real good.
The remote, which I don't use, has a mute button but the head unit does not. However it's easy to turn down quickly due to the huge volume knob.
I did test the CD part which was fine, but I probably won't be using that either.
There are three ipods in my house so I could test that feature but I just don't care enough to do it. I can use my Droid over bluetooth if I want to play portable music.
Bottom line is that I am very happy with the Clarion considering it's price and would certainly buy again if I needed another head unit.