I’ve been on a real film kick lately. I’ve bought a bunch of vintage film cameras on e-bay and stocked up on film from B&H Photo. It’s been a lot of fun so far. Pics will come soon!
Apr 19
April Showers
You know, when they say April Showers one assumes it’s rain showers. We keep getting snow showers here and I’m sooooo sick of it. C’mon spring, WTF?
Feb 20
Snow Storm 2011
We had a few days of 50 degree weather here, but now winter has returned in full force. It’s starting out as snow but it’s supposed to turn to ice/freezing rain late tonight. Should make the trip to work tomorrow “exciting”.
Jan 28
First in High Definition
Today WILX TV 10 made local history. We were the first station in the area to make the transition to High Definition.
Jan 27
Canon Powershot S95
Canon Powershot s95 for the win!
In my last post I mentioned a couple of great compact cameras. As usual, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to purchase one. I picked up the Canon Powershot s95 at B&H Photo and should have it by Friday. I sold my trusty Canon SD780is which has been quite reliable, it just lacked a lot of the manual features that I love in my DSLR’s. Hopefully I didn’t make a mistake selling my old compact but if all the talk online is true I made a wise decision. Stay tuned for photos on Saturday night.
Jan 24
Great Compact Cameras
Canon Powershot S95
I usually don’t pay close attention to the world of compact cameras, especially since I use Digital SLR’s about 99% of the time. However there are two models out there that have grabbed my attention recently. The first one being the Canon Powershot S95. It’s not your everyday point and shoot night on the town camera. It offers a lot of the same features my DSLR’s offer, just in a smaller package. It shoots RAW files, full manual exposure control, and shoots HD video with stereo microphones. It also features an f/2.0 lens which is really fast for a compact and helps in low light situations. I’m not saying the image quality is equal to my DSLR’s, but it’s better than practically any compact camera I’ve seen before.
Samsung TL500/EX1
The second Camera is the Samsung TL500. Samsung has never been on my radar before but I have to say I’ve been impressed with their new cameras. The Samsung offers a rugged aluminum body with rubber grips and has a classic look. This particular camera has the fastest lens (f/1.8) that I’ve ever seen in a compact camera. This helps provide shallow depth of field, which makes the photos from this camera look more like something from a DSLR and not a point and shoot. I honestly like the look and feel of this camera over the Canon, however it has a few short-comings. The lack of HD video recording is the main issue, and a weird RAW file format that Adobe Lightroom doesn’t play well with.
So if you’re looking to upgrade your digital camera, you can’t go wrong with either of these. I’d personally lean towards the Canon for a couple of reasons. It’s smaller and fits easily into you pants pockets and it shoots HD video. If you’re not a video person and like the look and feel of a more classic camera, I would definitely check out the Samsung.
Jan 22
Codec FAIL!
If you’re in the Creative Services field the odds are you’re probably using some version of the Adobe Creative Suite. I’m using the Master Suite CS5. If you use any of the video tools such as Premiere, After Effects, Media Encoder etc. I have some words of warning for you. Don’t install any third party video codec packages. XP Codec pack for example will trash the output codecs of your Adobe products. Uninstalling the codec pack doesn’t help a whole lot either. At the moment I’m uninstalling the entire Creative Suite and reinstalling it in the hopes that it will restore all of my video codecs back to the way they were. I’ll keep you all posted and let you know if it works.
Jan 19
Under The Weather
Wish I had something more interesting to write about, but I don’t so deal with it. It’s January which means it’s winter here, which also means it’s time to pick up a cold. It seems like every year around this time I end up with a cold of sorts. They always seem to hit while I’m at work as well. To add insult to injury, on lunch I went to the Sam’s Club next door to buy some Sudaphed and they were closed because they were out to lunch. So then I went over to Target, and they’re Pharmacy was closed as well. So I bought some cough drops to help my throat and will return to Sam’s after work. You would think the stores would have more than one pharmacist though. That way when one leaves on lunch, the other one does whatever it is pharmacist’s do. That would make sense though, and now a days you can’t expect that from anywhere…
Jan 17