Well, if you, like me, are just beseiged with things (Rock Band guitars, Apple Mighty Mouse, Remote control toys) that need AA batteries, then you have to get rechargeables, but what are really the best ones. Well, Sanyo Eneloops have really taken over as they don’t discharge over time but hold them like Alkaline and they do recharge. If you want to see which is better, then the folks are candlepowerforum.com have done their testing and you can compare. The long and short is that lithium AAs really hold their charge a long time in adverse conditions, so are great for that flashlight you keep in your car. For everyday use, the Eneloops are great (they are about $2.50 each) and the Maha Imedion have longer life as they store 2400 Mah vs. 2000 Mah, but are a little more expensive.
As an aside, Thomas distributing offers free shipping for orders over $75 and also there are coupons for an additional 5% off around too!
Both are finally out, so if you have lots of Canon glass, you have a low weight APS-sized alternative at least until the cool small camera come out that are mirrorless. Both are 18MP and have the new autofocus systems of the 7D with the newCanon 60D
Also, a bunch of cool new lenses are out. The most notable is the 8-15MM F/4L (that’s right 8MM) fish eye that is pretty cool. Also if you take lots of sports then the new 400M F/2.8 IS USM is the one to look at if you can afford it. Super fast and high zoom. In APS, that’s a 600MM equivalent!
And of course the big news is that Sony A55 continues to move really rapidly ahead introducing a translucent mirror camera. This means you get continuous autofocus in movie mode. Really too bad I have to much Canon glass! This is a big brother to the NEX-5 and seems easier to use.
Overall, if you want a lighter camera, then the main word is a wait a bit, there are so many choices just settling down. Sony has got some great technology in the NEX-5 but it is too hard to use. Nikon is rumored to be releasing a mirrorless design. And if you just want a lighter compatible Canon then the 550D looks like the ticket.
Can’t thank the folks at Desolatation Sound Yacht Charter enough, they are the closest sailboat charter to Desolation Sound. Their chart briefing alone is worth it.
Getting there is a little hard. Either take Kenmore Air up to Campbell River and then Sky High Shuttle down, but seems a waste. Too bad Campbell River doesn’t have a yacht charter. You can also charter a seaplane to Comox direclty, but that is expensive. In the end, the cheapest way might be seaplane to Victoria and then rent a car up there.
In terms of places to go, the Tuba Wildnest Resort is amazing. What an incredible view. And in terms of staying, the Seattle Yacht Club has a terrific outstation on Cortes Island and the Cove Restaurant in Squirrel Cove is delicious.
Don’t forget to get the Canadian plan with AT&T if you go and avoid that ridiculous data plan charge of $1/MB by getting a Rogers SIM for data if you can.
“Standard” is told to emulate Kodak’s Ektachrome 100 slide film emulsion. Also the “Portrait” and “Landscape” styles are told to emulate popular film emulsions.
“Neutral” is told to be tweaked to maximize the amount of information transfered to the RGB output (JPEG / TIFF file) and is therefore indicated for JPG shooters and RAW shooters who use DPP for RAW conversion only but do the remaining post-processing e.g. in Photoshop.
“Faithful” is told to be the closest to the human eye response. It seems to use the same tonal curve as “Neutral” but color tones / satuation are different.
Some personal notes of mine.
Picture Styles affect the JPG thumbnail embeded in RAW files and the histogram displayed by the camera. There are some threads in this forum about how to tweak the camera’s picture style and white balance to make camera histograms more usable for “Expose-to-the-Right”.
“Standard” is quite contrasty and saturated, what often leads to luminance and/or channel clipping in the RGB output. It worths to try “Faithfull”.
Canon uses a different approach in their PowerShot cameras. Instead of Picture Styles they have something comparable, called “My Colors”. I wish they would adopt Picture Styles in their RAW-enabled PowerShots at least – and issue Styles for each of those “My Colors”.
The new iPad is unlocked and the iPhone 4 uses a micro SIM which is pretty uncommon. But you can take any regular SIM (called properly a mini-SIM) by cutting it down according to the DIY Guide
Next, you’ll have to get a SIM template printed out at 100% (available here). Setting the printer at 100 percent is extremely important, since it will affect the overall size of the future card. And you’ll also need some scotch tape available at hand, plus a mechanical pencil (or even a normal one, but with a very sharp tip), a very sharp knife or cutter, and a pair of scissors (not a very small one, but being able to provide a very clean cut).
If you’ve gotten all the pre-requisites, let’s move on to the actual process.
Step 1:
Print the template at 100 percent size (very important step, that’s why we’ll be reminding you about it);
Step 2:
Place the SIM card over the template and fix it in position with the scotch tape;
Step 3
Turn the sheet of paper on the other side and you’ll be able to see the sides of the MicroSIM, which we’ll properly mark with the help of the sharp tipped pencil. Be careful to mark it on the inside, where there’s the cut out space;
Step 4
Using the sharp knife or cutter, trace (forcefully) the template of the future MicroSIM over the marked area. It’s for the better to trace just once, because several attempts might have some undesired results.
Step 5
Using the scissors, cut out along the lines traces with the knife or cutter. Remove the surplus material and voila! We’ve gotten a MicroSIM card inserted in the adapter. Perfect match.
Nikon goes first on August 19th, Sony does theirs on August 24th with a Petticle Mirror, and Canon has one scheduled August 26th. Nikon will likely be announcing the D3100, while Canon drops the 60D during theirs.
OK, I had no idea that the iTunes system was so insecure, but it makes sense, it is in essence a massive new credit card system and there hasn’t been 50 years of fraud detection builtin to get rid of unscrupulous merchants and it is entirely online so it is easy to skim. What happened is that when he started using iTunes for the first time, the next thing he knows, his iTunes shows zero charges, but his visa card shows all kinds of $7 and other charges. Here are some stories and the conclusion is, you really shouldn’t use iTunes with any kind of credit card right now, limit your liability to the amount of a iTunes prepaid card. Here are some scary stories:
Make sure that you have a strong iTunes password. Unlike eBay or any bank like chase.com, there are literally no standards for your password. But to remind everyone, make sure it has a number, special characters and capitals. This makes it hard to hack. Then they logon and change your email and user name so you can’t do anything. How clever. So make sure you have a tight password. For that matter, it is true on any account, but iTunes is such an easy target, unlike a bank with all kinds of secondary security. Try loggin
If you are hacked some other way, the bad guys have figured out how to disguise what they are doing by making it appear it comes from Apple. This is easy, just put the code APL*iTunes in the merchant string and everyone figures it is big bad Apple. So even if you see what looks like an Apple charge, go to your bank and make sure the merchant code is really from Apple. So what looks like an Apple hack is really something even worse, it is so you need to take any fraudulent charges seriously no matter how small. The thieves basically start with a $1 charge and then hammer up to whatever they can get. Clever. clever.
Finally, it could be that nothing was really hacked. Credit card numbers aren’t random numbers, there are programs that can generate valid numbers, then it is just a matter of trying that plus an expiration date like crazy until you find a valid number, then start charging. I’ve had two credit cards lost this way. No skimming that I could prove, but most likely a hacker finding a bunch of valid numbers and then selling them to others. The real nuance is now using charges that look like iTunes micro-transactions to test things. This gets under the radar of the fraud software that the banks have and there you have it.
The net is for security, you can move to prepaid on iTunes because there is going to be so much testing of accounts. Remember, iTunes does not have account lockout no matter how many retries. In sum, here are your lines of defense:
Make sure you have an ultrastrong iTunes password. A bunch of numbers, special characters and letters. If you are ultra paranoid (like me, change it regularly)
Use a prepaid card on iTunes just to be sure.
Study your credit card bill every month and look at all transactions even the small ones. I have to admit, I’m particularly bad on iTunes transactions because they are so small, which is another reason why using a prepaid card and thus keeping small thing out makes sense
I have not studied it, but gift cards are a pain, maybe a better solution is to give yourself a regular monthly allowance on iTunes, so you don’t have to always go to Costco to get the darn cards
And as usual, all the typical stuff applies, run antivirus, run a firewall, never click on anything in email. While most of the time, it is random number generators, if someone gets into your computer, it is trivial to install a keystroke logger that can get anything you type and more.
There are really dark side stories about Apple iPhone developers who have figured out how to scam the system and generate random charges for random people. This might be true and is really scary, so for right now, to be triply safe, try to stay in applications that are on the Apple Top 50 or ones recommended by real publications. They are called App Farms.
Ok, now that the government has said jailbreaking isn’t a violation of the DMCA, here is a current (it changes every 15 seconds!) guide to jailbreaking and unlocking as needed. Here are the key steps:
First you want to save your SHSH blobs and a jailbreakable firmware version. Right now everything up to 4.0.1 can be jailbroken, so for good hygiene save all the IPSWs you can find for your device by googleing IPSW
Now download Firmware Umbrella and plug your devices in, this saves a .shsh file and also sticks it up in the Cydia cloud for you to use later in case you need to download a down revision of the iPhone/iPad operating systems
If you have an iPad with 3.2 or 3.2.1, then you just type jailbreakme.com into your browser and it uses a PDF crash exploit to jailbreak. The iPad is already unlocked, so you can already insert any SIM. The only trick is that you have to saw a standard SIM basically in half because it uses the microSIM. Then go to Cydia and make sure to change the default password. Right now mobile terminal doesn’t work, so you have to go to the install OpenSSH instructions and then change the password with passwd after you login. This is super important as the default password is well known and hackers are always looking across public networks like the 3G one to hack your iPad.
If you have an iPhone 4.0 or 4.01, don’t download 4.1 as this closes the exploit, go to jailbreakme.com and you do the same thing with Cydia to change your password.
If you have an iPhone 3GS with 3.1.3 and old bootrom are running its associated 05.12.01 baseband you used to be stuck, but now you should be happy. First see if you have the old bootrom 359.3 by putting your phone into DFU mode the trick is that you usually want the oldest baseband you can stand as they will typically have the most exploits, so you have to use pawnage tool to build your own customer IPSW and then load it. Then restore it to your phone. Now you should have Cydia again, so you run ultrasn0w and change the root password and you are set.
If you have an iPhone 3GS with 3.1.2 i are running the older 04.26.08 baseband, then you preserve the old basebad (rather than the new 05.13.04 that comes with iOS 4 for 3GS) by using the Pwnage Tool. 4.01 to build your own custom IPSW. To do this, you need that tool and the original IPSW that comes from Apple for 4.01 (not 4.1!!) If you don’t want to create your own custom firmware, then you can use stuff cooked by others
Been getting excited about using the Canon 5D Mark II as a professional quality video camera. Need some add-ons as there is no electronic viewfinder and the screen is way too washed out and hard to see as well as the fact that it won’t focus while shooting, so you have to focus manually. But sites like Cinema5D are so inspiring as are the videos being shot professionally now. And some great guides. Although all of this is so complicated maybe getting an APS-sized dedicated camcorder like the Sony NEX VG-10 is easier and cheaper.
The first thing you should do when switching your DSLR from still to movie mode is to make sure the Sharpness setting is turned all the way down. This won’t come close to eliminating aliasing under all conditions but it should reduce your camera’s problems. You need to reduce sharpness because to get from 21MP to the 5MP of an HD image, the camera skips scan lines, so you get artifacts when the camera sharpens. Its a good reason to use the custom settings of your Canon And also you need to turn contrast all the way down as movies don’t like lots of it. You can also download custom picture styles which do this for you like ultraflat.
Because large CMOS sensors scan top-to-bottom instead of all at once like CCDs, fast movements and pans can cause the image to appear to wobble, so pan slowly.
DSLR’s operating temperature rises to the point where the camera either shuts down automatically, or the image becomes noisier due to the excess heat. This generally happens after several minutes of continuous shooting; so shoot only a bit at a time.
Get a DSLR rig which is bulky but makes the camera stable which is good and really necessary for video because you can’t just snug it up to your eye and shoot like with stills. Redrock Micro, Zacuto, Cavision, and Cinevate make the high end ones that can cost more than the camera! DVTec has a well rated one and the Vocas did very well but is incredibly expensive. Fig Rig is a simple one. Another basic one is the Zacuto Target Shooter for about $500 is less obstrusive.
Variable neutral density filters because you have to film at a set shutter speed of 1/40 is you are shooting 24 frames per second or 1/60 if you are shooting at 30 frames per second. You also want to shoot relatively narrow depth of field for many things, so f/5.6. This means at wide open with a slow shutter speed, in normal daylight, everything is going to get overexposed. The solution is a 2-8 EV neutral density filter. The expensive one is a $500 Singh-Ray Vari-ND or you can get a $100 Fader ND Mark II by Light Craft Workshop
And you need a loupe so that you can actually see the LCD from The Zacuto Z-Finder for $400 is the ultra premium and the LCDVF at $180 is the budget but high quality mainly lacking diopter correction are both quality view finders. And without anti-fog, the Z-Finder Jr doesn’t seem like a good buy
Finally a follow focus which makes the focus very long throw so you can make minute adjustments as manual focus is all you have with the current generation of cameras. And you use the loupes to magnify so you can see the screen. Or if you have $1500, you can get a Redrock micro Focus which uses an iPhone to do the focus work as a touchscreen. Wow!
Then for editing, you either use iMovie which is slow or bite the bullet and spend $800 for Final Cut Pro. Ugh!
