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iPad mania hits Photogeek

Philip — Sat, 29 May 2010 05:14:07 +0000

Well it didn’t take long, the iPad rocked up at 9.30 AM and the rush was on to see and feel how good it would be. The fact that I knew I would love it was not as useful as what else might happen. Looks like the WordPress app is a lot easier to use and so there may be some way to post from any location without as much difficulty as was the case.
Telstra sold me a micro sim card for $30 and offer pay as you go 3G at $20 for 1 Gig. Not too bad and I like the Telstra network for speed.
Also worth mentioning is the wifi speed and network capability of the iPad. It screams over wifi and ADSL 2. Work needs to be done on the Elgato app as video is not up to par for this bigger screen. I have spent a bomb on iPad apps and will be getting to those as I get time to digest.
Cheers.

RED Digital have blown away all others

Philip — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:34:08 +0000

Announced today, the most important shift in camera hardware since the release of the Hasselblad some 40 years ago.

RED Digital Cinema Camera’s have announced a new system that covers most camera types in use today from the prosumer low end HD video to the 6X17 wide format stills camera. All camera manufacturers will be hit with the magnitude of this new concept. Everything interchangable, all possible ergonomic configurations covered from a hand held stills system, shoulder mounted video, extreme high end feature film kit, and yes even 3D. This new camera system is the RED DSMC (Digital Stills and Motion Camera)

For most stills shooters a 24 MP stills camera that can take a Nikon or Canon lens is enough to get some interest. For video prosumer a fixed lens 2/3″ sensor shooting a 3K image is astounding. For those at the high end the options are equally staggering, a true 6 x 4.5 digital still camera at 65 MP or a file for feature film production at 9K and 50 fps.

This will sink in over the next few months as the options become clearer for those willing to add it all up. The big advantage they claim is RED have made obsolecence obsolete, and I am onboard as of now.

Get on to RED USER and see the rest of this story.

Infra Red

Philip — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:45:35 +0000

Here is a nice link for those into infra Red.
We discussed the conversion of Jay’s Nikon Coolpix during last weeks podcast, and the resulting images achieved.
This is a site called Life Pixel and there is a great video of the process.
Sample pics.

No Drobo for YOU!

Philip — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:30:40 +0000

I received an email from David Herington of Data robotics today. It seems we will have to wait for Drobo to ship internationally next year before Australian photographers will see one.
There should be a Gigabit/eSata version available by then I would assume, so perhaps the delay is a good thing and we can have an option of network attached storage that has the unique Drobo disk management backup system.
I hope that answers the questions of the photographers who have been asking Big Trousers for a quote.

Hello Phil,

Thanks for getting in touch. We are shipping Drobo in North America only. We currently plan to start shipping internationally in 2008. We will keep your contact information and let you know when we starting shipping outside of North America.

Regards,

David Herington

Data Robotics
Director of Sales and Business Development
dherington@drobo.com; 650.526.3621 (o); 650.888.4856 (m)

Nikon D3 rumors abound

Philip — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 21:30:40 +0000

It seems the rumor of a high end Nikon are out and about.
On the message boards at DP review there is talk of an 18.7 megapixel almost full frame sensor made by Sony believed to be at the heart of the new Nikon.
This would be a radical departure for Nikon who in the past have stated they will not use a full frame sensor.
Rumored to be the Nikon D3, the new Nikon is supposed to handle low light better than it’s predecessors and would be a welcome arrival for Nikon shooters hot on the heels of the release of the Canon 1D Mk 111.
From CNET:

All Nikon’s digital SLRs so far, by comparison, use the company’s DX sensor size with a 1.5 factor. Some D3 rumors, though, say the D3 will use a 1.1 factor, meaning that the sensor is nearly full-frame. That constraint would likely mean that the newer DX-specific lenses wouldn’t work.

Below a mock up of the D3.

Thanks to Ajay.

The VanceCam VC25P Camcorder

Michael — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:26:17 +0000

When Dan Vance decided to make “Cold Day in Hell”, an independant Sci Fi feature, he wanted a tapeless digital camera. Instead of paying big bucks for an advanced HD Cam from Sony or without waiting for The RED digital camera, Dan made his own.
The VanceCam VC25P Camcorder is a 25 fps progressive scan digital cinema camera that records to a hard drive.
Based on a Hitachi HV-C20A/E 1/2″ 3 CCD format with 700 lines of resolution The VanceCam uses a mechanical shutter and the component signals from the camera are fed through an analog component-to-firewire converter (ADS Pyro A/V link) which feeds the DV signal directly to a Laird CapDiv hard disk recorder, for a tapeless system.

This is a Geek masterpiece, I wish I had thought of the idea.
Well done Dan Vance, you are PhotoGeek of the week.

Camerons new EOS 1D Mk 111's

Philip — Fri, 25 May 2007 11:48:42 +0000

After a few weeks wait Cameron finally got his new gear.
Not one, but two EOS 1D Mk 111 bodies.
All wrapped up in a new Crumpler Barney Rustle Blanket and Bucket Insert BU-02A bags. I have no doubt Cameron will have plenty to report on next week’s podcast.

Pic courtesy Ben from CRUMPLER

Drobo Data storage unit

Philip — Wed, 23 May 2007 07:41:27 +0000

Recently released a 4 drive data storage unit described as fully automated data storage.
The Drobo is unique in that it can have drives of unequal size inserted and removed as your requirements change. Have two 500 GB drives and a few old 100 GB drives when you start then just replace a 100 GB for another 500 GB. Drobo will release the extra drive space as storage on the fly, even while the drive is being accessed by a computer.
I am thinking this will be a useful device for photographers with ever increasing storage requirements. It also acts as a hard drive redundancy system so that in the event of a drive failure no data is lost. All you need to do is take out the dead drive and replace it.

From their website:

The task of managing storage is quickly becoming a concern for anybody who has digital assets they hope to keep forever. Data Robotics has developed new storage technologies, and products, based on storage virtualization and cybernetics to handle the complexity and management of making these digital assets forever accessible. The patent-pending technology within Drobo is not RAID and was developed specifically to perform data management and configuration tasks automatically so that you don’t have to. Drobo does utilize advanced storage concepts such as virtualization, but it is not a derivative of RAID.

I can see this device being used in conjunction with the recently released Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n base station with network storage via a USB connection.

Check out the video online that shows the drobo in action.

Elgato Turbo.264 hardware encoder

Philip — Thu, 17 May 2007 23:42:08 +0000

Elgato have released their USB dongle style hardware based video encoder in Australia.
This means for Mac owners at least dramatically improved conversion speed to H.264.
It comes at a time users are coming to terms with the process of automating playback from various sources including HD TV onto TV screens through hardware such as the AppleTV unit.
What this means is that Free to air TV can be recorded, re encoded, then added to iTunes at break-neck speed so that the content will show up on your TV screen as content available for immediate playback.

I also think that this will be an invaluable piece of gear for those who create content for the web.
It will speed up the process of production even on smaller machines like the MacBook.
Ideal for those creating 720p video for distribution via iTunes as video podcasts.
I feel sure one will arrive in the PhotoGeek headquarters courtesy of Elgato retailer Big Trousers.

From the Conexus Press release:

You have a collection of videos on your Mac. They’re movies you downloaded from your camcorder or digital camera, or perhaps projects you created yourself with iMovie. They could be short video clips that friends and family sent you by email, or TV shows, music videos, and movies that you recorded with EyeTV.

How do you make them iTunesÂ¨-ready for your iPod or Apple TV? How do you put them on a Sony PSP?

And how do you speed up an export process that can be agonizingly slow?

The solution is Turbo.264, a blazingly fast and easy-to-use video encoder with a high-perfomance engine.

UPDATE:
Upon closer inspection it looks like the AppleTV export is set at 800 x 600 max and does not support conversion from Elgato 1080p to AppleTV 720p.
This is a little disappointing as the product is made by Elgato for AppleTV hardware.

Canon PowerShot Teleconverter

Michael — Mon, 14 May 2007 22:59:54 +0000

These two images explain the extent that a teleconverter alters the image when applied to The Canon Powershot A620.
The first image was shot with the standard lens at it’s widest.

The second image shows the teleconverter with the standard lens set at full zoom.