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Last night I went to an amazing party. I got to see all kinds of beautiful women, one of them I am lucky to be married to. I took pictures of some fake celebrities in a Vegas like framework that reminds me of an AOL Christmas party many years ago, but sadly, after I unpacked this morning, I found I packed the wrong cable for my camera. So for now, you'll have to deal with my various cell phone pictures, which sadly are superior to my Nikon Coolpix in the single factor they can take pictures in low light.
I really should have been told, "The Nikon Coolpix L4 is great for taking pictures of things in sunlight, or any subject less than 2 meters away from the flash. Anything else will take 3-5 seconds for the picture to take, use the flash, and all the photos will come out dark and grainy. If you disable the flash, the brightness level will be correct, but the picture will be blurred to the point of being useless. Like a solar panel, it is designed for outdoor use only." Have I complained ENOUGH about this camera? I am totally aware I have posted paragraphs of angst with gritted teeth about it since I got it in 2006, but I can't help myself; I have to let it out. I actually punched the camera last night. That's not very mature... but to give you an idea, the photo on the right was taken with my cell phone. The same photo on my Coolpix is almost completely a dark brown with only dots and lines to give a hit that there are dim shapes of women with feathers on their heads.
Well, I am off to the aquarium before they shut off Canal Street again.
Posted in:
camera
,
new orleans
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Aww yea! In preparation for my trip to Japan we've bought a new camera, the
Lumix TZ3. I'd originally planned to buy it in Osaka at a much lower price, but I'd rather get used to the camera before I go on the trip.
So far I'm loving the camera. The uber-versatile lens is proving its worth, being good at both wide-angle shots and telezoom. It has a rather complete feature set and the menus are very easy to navigate. Honestly, even Marli figured most of it out in half an hour's time!
Speaking of Marli: being the tease that she is, she called me at the office to tell me that she'd open my parcel and play with the camera. Fully expecting me to whine that I wanted to go first, she pouted when I offered no objection :P Knowing that I'm a horrible geek, she did surprise me though: she took pictures of the unpacking, just like most of us Apple-geeks do with their new toys :)
Now, it's well known that the camera has some downsides, and the most noticeable is the noisy sensor. If you'll browse through my trial pictures, you'll notice quite a lot of noise in the darker pictures. It's a shame, but I'll take it as it comes because overall the camera's great!
Gallery with test shots. I'll add more later as they come.
Posted in:
awesome
,
camera
,
lumix
,
panasonic
,
tz3
*
A few weeks ago I read about
PhotoRec on the
Life Hacker website (a productivity blog).
PhotoRec is a handy commandline utility that will help you retrieve lost pictures (and other files) from borked memory cards.
PhotoRec will search any device you point it at for a variety of file types. Before running the search it'll ask you some in-depth questions (partition type, file system, etc) and then it'll run until it's covered all of the device.
In my case I needed to search through my Powershot's CF card, since apparently the old Canon doesn't deal well with cards that've been mounted through a normal USB reader. PhotoRec worked like magic and retrieved all of the pics still on the card. Now I can safely re-format the CF card for reuse.
I cannot recommend
PhotoRec well enough. The best thing? It's both free and cross-platform! So it'll run on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and various other Unices. Awesome!
Posted in:
camera
,
cgsecurity
,
photorec
,
picture
,
recovery
*
For a while now I've been lusting after the
Panasonic Lumix TZ3. It's a great little camera, with an uber-huge analogue zoom. Unfortunately the best price I can get it at in the Netherlands
is around 300 euros.
Thanks to the greatness of
teh Intarwebs and its plethora of fora and Price Watch pages I've learned that this camera can be had quite cheaply in Japan.
This means that I'll definitely join my mates when they travel down to
Akihabara (a district in Tokio). It's a great place to just browse around all day... Or so I've been told ;)
EDIT: Hmmm... The price seems to have come down in the Netherlands as well. It's down to 260 euros at specific dealers. That makes it less worth it to get it in Japan. By buying in the NL I'll be able to take pics with it during the -whole- trip for only a few bucks more.
Posted in:
akiba
,
akihabara
,
camera
,
lumix tx3
,
shopping
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On A Lack Of Updates (The Dave Today (Albino Eatpod)) by Dave Starling
It is pretty obvious that my site has been a little neglected lately, but hopefully that will change. I have got many more topics about which I can write, and hopefully a few mini-reviews of some hardware I've picked up in the last few months (including the Dell 2405, the M-Audio Projectmix I/O, and the Zakk Wylde Les Paul Custom Camo).
I've also invested in a new camera, so fingers crossed there will be some interesting shots to post soon.
Posted in:
audio
,
blog
,
camera
,
dell
,
guitar
,
les
,
m
,
music
,
paul
,
projectmix
,
site