Thoughts

DSLRs and video to converge

On September 24, 2007, I published my review of the Olympus E-510 DSLR, one of the first prosumer cameras on the market to feature Live View (TTL video preview, directly off the same CMOS sensor used for photographs). Unless people were to jump to conclusions, I wanted to make it clear that it won’t let you record videos — but I knew that market forces were aligning to bring some sort of video capability to DSLRs.

I myself was opposed to that idea. I thought it would bastardize a DSLR to make it record video. After all, a DSLR takes great photos, and it should only do that. I also thought that video camera manufacturers would squeeze photo-taking capabilities into video cameras, which would result in crappy photos being taken by gadgets that should have stayed video cameras. Well, I was wrong. I forgot all about how the market delivers what the consumer wants, and has a way of sometimes exceeding expectations.

Behold the Nikon D90. It is the first DSLR that takes video, and it’s not some low-res video that you can get from a point-and-shoot digicam; it’s 720p HD video. What’s more, it lets you control depth of field by manually adjusting the focus while shooting. Best of all, you’re already using a sensor that takes great photographs, and the expensive glass you already paid for. You don’t need to spend yet more money on a dedicated video camera. You get the best of both worlds: the interchangeable lenses of a DSLR, and the quality of a decent video camera.

I am truly blown away by the D90’s specs. If I hadn’t already invested in the Canon 5D and Canon lenses, I would be sorely tempted to get the D90. I crave (badly) the ability to take quality photos and video with a single device, but unfortunately, up to this point, that was not possible unless I carried both a DSLR and a video camera.

As good as the D90 is though, it will soon be eclipsed. Why? Market forces. How long do you think it will be before we’ll have a DSLR that can record 1080p HD video? Or how about an even smaller and thinner DSLR than currently possible? How about a DSLR that looks and weighs about the same as a point-and-shoot, but gives you photo quality that’s equivalent to (or exceeds) today’s DSLRs? It’s all coming.

Let’s look at what’s currently available. First, we have the new Canon 50D. You may think it’s been eclipsed by the D90 or the D300, but you’d be wrong. You see, Canon took things further than I thought possible with it, by giving us 15 megapixels in a cropped (1.6x) sensor that also shoots (natively) up to 3200 ISO. I didn’t think that was possible on a cropped sensor. I thought 12 megapixels was the max at that sensor size. I was wrong.

You know where else I’ll be proven wrong? Back when I attended the Olympus E-3 launch party, I talked about the camera’s (somewhat) limited 10 megapixel resolution, and I thought they had reached the limitations of the Four Thirds 2x cropped sensor. I thought the sensor’s surface area was too small to get more resolution out of it. But now that Canon has proven you can get 16 megapixels out of a 1.6x cropped sensor, I don’t see why you can’t get 12 megapixels or more out of a 2x cropped sensor.

Here’s where I get to the last part, smaller and lighter DSLRs than currently thought possible. Currently, the smallest DSLR on the market is the Olympus E-420, pictured below. Do you know what the Four Thirds consortium has come up with? It’s the Micro Four Thirds standard, which allows for thinner, shorter lenses, and thinner, shorter camera bodies. A Micro Four Thirds camera will look and weigh just about the same as a point-and-shoot camera with a decent zoom lens.

Wait, it gets even better. The current aspect ratio of Four Thirds cameras is 4:3. The aspect ratio of Micro Four Thirds cameras will be 16:9. That’s the same aspect ratio used in movies. Where do you think that’s going? It means your photos and your videos will have the same aspect ratio, and the line between photography and videography will get even more blurred, and it’s quite possible that in the near future, we’ll have 1920x1080p HD video recorded by a tiny little DSLR with a tiny little lens on it.

That’s just what seems logical to me, and I’m a fairly conservative estimator. You wait and see what the market will do. We’ll have some very interesting DSLRs to play with in the next few years.

[Images used courtesy of Canon, Nikon and Olympus. ]

Reviews

A glimpse at the new Snow Leopard from Apple

Snow Leopard, the new version of Mac OS X, was announced at the 2008 WWDC in San Francisco. It’s an important release for the following reasons:

Builds upon existing technologies and perfects them. It introduces few new features, but will allow Apple to really focus on delivering a very good OS by developing further the technologies introduced with Leopard. I for one am glad to see Apple slow down their frantic development cycle. That sort of rhythm can’t be sustained and leads to burned-out employees.
Optimized for multi-core processors. Truth is, most applications and operating systems aren’t optimized for multi-core processors. They’re not even multi-core aware. So while multi-core technology is here to stay and has already made it into all processor makes and models, applications are still hobbling along, relying on built-in chip technology for a sort of multi-core experience, not the real thing. I’m glad to see Apple pursue this seriously and make it easy for developers to build their apps for multi-core systems.
OpenCL programming. You know about OpenGL, right? Well, OpenCL will let developers take advantage of the amazing processing power of graphics cards (measured in gigaflops) to do computations previously reserved only for graphics applications. To get an idea of how powerful graphic card processing has become, have a look at FASTRA, a supercomputer built with 8 GPUs.
RAM limit raised to 16TB. I did a double take when I read that. I first thought they were talking of 16GB, which would have been impressive, but also a misprint. The Mac Pro can do up to 32GB right now if I’m not mistaken. But 16TB, wow! That’s amazingly high for RAM. Most machines don’t even have that much hard disk space, much less memory. That’s going to be very useful when building supercomputers with Macs. Keep in mind that 32-bit Windows operating systems (the prevalent ones on the market) STILL have a 4GB limit on RAM. Microsoft’s 64-bit OS versions (XP and Vista) are not usable yet, because there are plenty of compatibility issues with drivers and applications. For a clarification of this point, make sure to read my comment below.
Quicktime X. Apple’s venerable Quicktime will get an overhaul which will make it much more efficient, and will allow it to support more audio and video formats. Perhaps now we can look forward to Quicktime movie exports taking less than 24 hours? 🙂 Joking aside, I like Quicktime, and I hope it sticks around for a long time.
Faster Safari. It will use a new webkit that will make it 53% faster. Nice! I should mention that all the JavaScript used on AJAX-heavy pages like Google’s Gmail or Apple’s new MobileMe is what’s slowing down our browsers. The new Safari webkit is supposed to be able to render JavaScript a whole lot faster.
Native support for Microsoft Exchange. In spite of grumblings from various Apple fans, this is a biggie, and it will finally ensure that Macs play nice in Microsoft Shops. In addition to being able to network properly on Windows domains, which they could already do, now they’ll do exactly what Outlook is able to do on PCs, without having to bother with the kludgey Entourage. Mail, Address Book and iCal will communicate directly with Exchange, making it a whole lot easier for corporations to use Macs instead of PCs.
Faster OS, smaller footprint. Apple promises the new OS will work faster overall, and will also take up less space on our hard drives. Amen to that. OS bloat is not a welcome thing (just look at Vista), and a faster OS is always a good thing.
No support for PowerPC processors (source). According to documentation handed out to developers at WWDC, Apple will indeed break with the PowerPC line on this Leopard upgrade, as rumored. That means my iMac G5 won’t be able to use it. By that time, it’ll be outside its projected 3-year lifespan, but still, it would have been nice…

Image used courtesy of Apple, Inc. More information about Snow Leopard can be found in Apple’s original press release, and on the Snow Leopard website.

Reviews

The skinny on the new iPhone 3G

At the 2008 WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs introduced the new iPhone 3G. As it turned out, most of the rumors about it were true. Here’s the rundown on the things that made it into the new phone:

3G: YES. This was by far the biggest rumor, and it made sense for Apple to bring it to life. What’s nice is that it continues to support EDGE in addition to WiFi, so now users have three networks they can use.
Skinnier, hence the title of this post: YES, at the edges, which are tapered.
Less expensive: YES. $199 for 8GB or $299 for 16GB, BUT only with a 2-year contract with AT&T.
Built-in GPS for real-time mapping and tracking AND photo geotagging: YES.
iPhone 2.0 software, which includes support for third party apps, making it super easy to add functionality to your phone through the App Store: YES.
Enterprise features: YES. But we knew these were coming, because Steve Jobs and Phill Schiller had demoed them months ago. This includes support for Microsoft Exchange through ActiveSync, over-the-air push email, contact and calendar syncing, remote wipe and Cisco IPsec VPN.
Seamless integration with MobileMe, the replacement for .Mac: YES. We suspected this would happen when word got out last week that Apple had secretly purchased me.com for approximately 11 million dollars.

Now here’s what didn’t make it:

Unlocked phone: NO. I knew that sounded too good when people announced it. You can’t drop the iPhone to $199 and ALSO unlock it. It has too many features, it’s too advanced. When you have half-baked unlocked phones that cost $300 to $400, you’re not going to get an unlocked iPhone 3G for less. So, we’re stuck with AT&T, and with 2-year contracts.
Video chats through iChat/Skype: NOT SPECIFIED. This was my #1 feature request for the new iPhone. I’d really hoped they’d let us do video chats on the phone. After all, it has a camera, and it can record video. No official guidance yet on this. Does anyone have any specifics?
5 megapixel camera: NO. That’s annoying. Still stuck with an underpowered 2 megapixel camera. Perhaps the photos it takes are better this time around.
Cut and paste: NO. I know of several people that were eagerly awaiting this feature. Apparently, it didn’t make it to the iPhone yet. But thankfully it’s a software, not a hardware issue, so it can be implemented later.

New features introduced without rumors:

3G dock: YES. Apparently, faster, and will let you do speakerphone calls.
Compact USB power adapter: YES. It’s significantly smaller.
Bluetooth headset: YES. It’s made specifically for iPhone.

I was one of the people who held out for iPhone 2.0 –namely, this one — when the first version came out last year. Will I now purchase one? Not sure. I really wanted to be able to do video chats on the iPhone, and if it turns out that I still can’t, it may be a deal breaker for me. Plus, being hobbled with a 2-year AT&T contract is not the kind of commitment I enter into lightly. I don’t know, I’ll have to think about this. At any rate, I’ve got until July 11th to make up my mind.

Photos courtesy of Apple, Inc. More info can be found in Apple’s original press release and on the iPhone website.

A Guide To A Good Life

My favorite pair of casual shoes

–> Updated: these shoes turned out to be terribly put together. The sole came apart from the shoe less than a year after I got them. I asked LL Bean to replace them, which they did. They sent me a new version of the shoes whose soles also came apart from the shoes about a year after I got that pair. So while they were comfortable to wear, their durability was terrible. Caveat emptor.

I’ve been wearing a new pair of Keen shoes for the past few weeks, and I love them. If they haven’t got the showroom look in my photos, it’s because they haven’t been sitting in the closet.

I spotted them at L.L.Bean and couldn’t resist the design. They looked so comfortable and cool, up there on the shelf, that I had to try them on and get them. Indeed they are comfortable, even for extended walks, and they’re a lot of fun to wear.

One thing I should mention, if you care about that sort of thing: this particular design will make your feet seem smaller. I took a photo of one of my formal shoes next to one of my Keen shoes, just to show you the difference. Believe it or not, the formal shoes are slightly tight on my toes (length-wise, not width-wise). The Keen shoe looks smaller, yet my feet have no problems fitting in there.

While women may love having their feet look smaller, I understand that some men may not go for that sort of thing… Apparently foot size is associated with a certain other size in our vernacular. Personally, I’ve gotten over that, because I like these shoes a lot. Just thought I’d put that out there in case any of the women reading this are thinking about getting them for their significant others.

Reviews

Hardware review: Logitech Alto Connect Notebook Stand

I bought two Logitech Alto Connect Notebook Stands (with 4-Port USB Hub). One’s a keeper and the other is going back. I love its design and functionality, but there are a couple of things that you need to know if you intend to buy it.

This innovative stand is shaped like an X and wrapped in glossy, black plastic. Does the shape remind you of anything? How about OS X? Or the X-Men? Or the old saying, “X marks the spot”? Not that Logitech is copying anybody, but that shape looks cool, is very different from any other laptop stand on the market, and supports a larger amount of weight, meaning it can work with heavier laptops.

The stand comes unassembled in the box, and you must put the two pieces together (they dovetail precisely). The assembly time is 1-2 minutes or so. It may take you a try or two until you figure out the right way to join the two pieces together (there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll get it right the first time).

An added benefit of this stand is the addition of a built-in USB hub. The hub is self-powered, meaning that you’ll need to plug in a small adapter (included in the box). One port is located on the left front leg of the stand (visible above), and the other three ports are in the back, as you can see below.

As I said, I love this stand, and I think the design is wonderful. I have a lot of respect for Logitech. I’ve used wireless keyboards made by them, Kensington and Microsoft, and Logitech has consistently stood head and shoulders above its competitors when it came to battery life and ease of connectivity. I have a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse set right now, have been using it for almost two years, and have nothing but good things to say about it. Last, but not least, I like Logitech because they use ColdFusion on their website, and CF is my favorite programming language. 🙂

I bought the first one of these stands for my father’s MacBook, and it works just great with it. The X-shape allows for greater cooling than the flat stands, and it blocks none of the laptop’s ports. My father uses it happily. I noticed an issue with the built-in USB hub though, as soon as I started using it.

I have a Western Digital Passport drive, which I carry pretty much everywhere. That drive has worked with any computer where I’ve used it. I love it. It’s powered directly by the USB port, and that’s where the issue lies when it comes to the Logitech Stand. Right after I plugged it in on my father’s stand, I got a message on-screen (on the laptop) telling me that the USB port where I’d connected the USB hub had experienced a power surge and was shut off. I had to unplug the port from the laptop, and re-connect it without the drive.

Let me clarify. The USB hub built into the stand is self-powered. It has its own power supply. It should be able to power just about any USB device. Why then did it draw power from the laptop when I plugged in the drive? Obviously the design of the hub is defective in some way if every time you plug in port-powered devices like the WD Passport drive, it causes a power surge in the USB circuitry. The only way I could get the drive to connect to the laptop was to plug it directly into the laptop, which I did, and it had no problems there.

The only time when I’ve had issues with port-powered devices was when I plugged them into USB hubs that had no power supplies of their own. On those occasions, the devices would draw power from the hub, which would then draw too much power from the laptop’s USB port, would cause a small surge, and shut off the port. But when you have a self-powered USB hub, this simply shouldn’t happen.

Just so you’re not confused, let me state outright that USB flash drives, which have no moving parts and thus draw much less current, can be used just fine with the built-in USB hub in this stand. And USB drives which have power supplies of their own (the regular 3.5″ drive enclosures of products like Drobo or LaCie) will work just fine with the hub, too.

Second, although the stand will work with pretty much any laptop on the market, it will not work with the MacBook Pro line. That’s because it blocks the CD/DVD slot on those laptops. I didn’t realize this until I bought the second stand to use with my 15″ MacBook Pro, which I’d just bought as well. I brought the stand home, sat my laptop on it, and this is what I saw.

Oops… While I appreciate the need for a built-in USB hub (even a half-working one) on a laptop that has only 2 USB ports, I’m going to return this second stand. I’m not going to take my laptop off the stand every time I need to burn a CD or play a DVD. Incidentally, on the Logitech website, this stand is recommended for Windows, not Apple computers, but I bought both stands at the Apple Store, so I doubt Logitech intended it only for the PC market.

Otherwise, like I said, I really like this stand’s innovative design. It’s beautiful, functional and sturdy. It even has a built-in wire routing slot, which is a nice touch.

And let’s face it, it complements very nicely the design of just about any laptop.

If you don’t have a MacBook Pro, and you don’t mind the USB surge issue with the built-in USB hub, then give this stand a try, you might like it quite a bit. Have a look at the other photos in the gallery below to get a better idea of its looks.

One more thing… The good thing about the way it raises the laptop is that the height of the front lip is low enough to let you type directly on the laptop without discomfort, but the height of the display is high enough for you to maintain proper posture. Of course, you can also use it with a separate keyboard and mouse if you’d like.