Amazon.com has a one-day sale on the Flip Mino HD in black finish, $119.99 while supplies last. Amazon says that this offer is only valid on December 16, 2009.

I gave Kathleen a Flip Mino HD just like this one last Christmas and she loves it. It has allowed us to quickly and easily shoot family videos in 720p. It makes a great companion to an iMac or a MacBook, especially if you don't have an iPhone 3GS.

The Flip Mino HD has a one-hour recording capacity. Flip now has a second generation Flip MinoHD Camcorder that records up to two hours of video. This is also a great choice, but the price difference between the Flip Mino HD and the second generation would make me think twice.

This is a good gift for someone with a fast laptop. The built-in software is a pretty good video clip manager and editor, especially if you use a PC. On my Mac, I use iMovie, which gives me enough control to produce video that's not boring to our family.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the few nagging problems I've experienced with my iPhone is a photo saving problem. This has been described in several different ways by other iPhone users out on the Internet:

• iPhone "disappearing photos" bug experienced by Jeffrey Zeldman back in November 2007.
• iPhone Camera Problems: Blank White Thumbnails mentioned in June on iPhoneGuru.org

This problem started happening to me a couple of weeks ago when I was still running iPhone Firmware 1.0. I had hoped that the 2.0 Firmware Update would solve this problem, but it didn't. At that point I had to start doing serious research, otherwise my camera would have been useless to me.

Apparently there is some recurring issue with saving photos taken with the internal iPhone camera once more than 1023 photos have been saved. In my case, the problem started happening when the LastFileGroupNumber was at 1043. It is not clear to me whether all iPhones have this problem, if all first-generation iPhones have it, or if this is only affecting users of the first-generation iPhone under certain circumstances.

The best solution to this problem that I've found so far was first discussed in Topic : Camera will not save pictures to phone after snapping photo, an Apple support discussion. About a quarter of the way into the thread, a contributor named "JKeenan" said the following:

Continue reading "A Solution for iPhone Photo Saving Problems" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Before I hit the hay on Friday night, I want to point out Jonathan Greene's blog article Nokia N78 - Feature Pack 2 and plenty to love. This is a great first look at the newest N-Series phone and includes a nearly 20 minute long video of him putting the N78 through its paces.

He has a lot deeper knowledge of the Nokia N-Series handset line than I do. I can tell this because he talks in depth about the new features in the N78 that stem from Symbian S60 Feature Pack 2. He explains that the software is more user-friendly than that which has been included on phones like the N95. He's right.

He also points out correctly that the N95 is intended for a technology-savvy person, while the N78 is aimed at someone who wants many of the same features but with fewer controls and complex options.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Operation Gadget Films is pleased to present Jimmy's Snowy Day starring my two-year-old son Jimmy Aiello in his streaming video debut. This short film (2 minutes and 40 seconds) was shot on February 22, 2008, near our home in Newtown, PA.

This movie was shot with a Nokia N95 mobile phone, one of the best small standard-definition video cameras I've ever seen. It produces 640x480 video at 30 frames per second, which makes it great for home movies like this. I received this phone courtesy of the Nokia Blogger Relations program. This is the first movie I've ever shot with it that I've shown to the public.

I edited the movie using iPhoto '08, part of the Apple iLife '08 package that I got for free when I bought my MacBook Pro in March. It took me a while to start making movies using iMovie '08, but I now have an large amount of video from the Nokia N95 and this is the third finished movie that I've produced.

Continue reading "Debut of "Jimmy's Snowy Day," a Short Film Shot on the Nokia N95 and Edited with iMovie '08" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen, Jimmy, and I went to Roberts Ridge Park in Newtown Township earlier this evening so that Jimmy could play on the playground there. While we were at the playground, a man began flying a kite. This attracted Jimmy and another boy who is about the same age.

I took out my iPhone and started shooting photos. I was surprised at how good many of the photos looked when I got home and docked the iPhone to my Mac. You can see more in my Jimmy and the Kite photo set on Flickr.com.

I'm not a photography expert, but I am struck by how good the pictures from my iPhone look to me when I'm shooting in the "Golden Hour" right before sunset. The pictures in tonight's set are quite different from the ones I published in my First Photos with My iPhone set from last July, but a couple of the photos Kathleen and I took while we were on the Circle Line cruise around Lower Manhattan have that same sort of "Oh wow" feel for me in their unretouched state. The photo above called "Statue of Liberty at Dusk" is a great example.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Stuff We Like: The Dave Laptop Stand on Lifehacker: "The Dave (oh Ikea, you and your names!) features adjustable height and angle, and can double as a TV tray or simple end table when you're not computing. If you've been looking for a better way to surf the internet from the comfort of your couch, the $25 Dave might be just the ticket."
• Optimizing File Sharing on Your Home Wi-Fi Network on Web Worker Daily: "A lot of people who have successfully put in a Wi-Fi network neglect to optimize the way files are shared between computers in a home or workgroup. You can choose ways to organize shared files, and ensure that files are shared securely or not visible to other users on your Wi-Fi network very easily...." Good instructions on how to do this whether you have Windows or Macs
• StrechCordz Short Resistance Training Belt on Cool Tools: "The StrechCordz resistance training belt makes expensive, complex, "endless" pools obsolete. At one end of a 4-foot, black rubber tube is a nylon belt with a simple plastic snap-clip that slips around my waist. On the other end is a loop I attach to the deep-end ladder of our modest home pool. That's it... just tether up and start swimming. Swim as hard and fast as you like yet stay in place."
• Cycling Photography Tips: Shooting Head On on Spare Cycles: "Shooting head on is both difficult and easy: difficult in that the rider is moving at you very fast so your margin for error is very little, but easy in that you don't have to move your camera very much at all."
• Easter's early this year. Deal with it. on God Plays Dice: "...the cycle of Easter dates repeat themselves every 5,700,000 years. The cycle of epacts (which encode the date of the full moon) in the Julian calendar repeat every nineteen years. There are two corrections made to the epact, each of which depend only on the century; one repeats (modulo 30, which is what matters) every 120 centuries, the other every 375 centuries, so the air of them repeat every 300,000 years. The days of the week are on a 400-year cycle, which doesn't matter because that's a factor of 300,000. So the Easter cycle has length the least common multiple of 19 and 300,000, which is 5,700,000." [ via Slashdot ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The 2007 Amgen Tour of California is taking place this week on the West Coast, so the cycling blogs are back publishing cool content for the new season.

My friend Frank Steele from TDFblog.com published a great article on photographing a bike race that comes from personal experience Frank has had taking pictures at races in Georgia including the Atlanta Olympics and the Tour de Georgia.

Frank points out that you don't have to have the newest Digital SLR to get good photos at a pro cycling race if you know your equipment and choose your shooting locations carefully. He shows off a bunch of photos he took at the Tour de Georgia, some of which he chooses because they show the problems with trying to capture action shots with modestly-priced digital point-and-shoot cameras.

Frank and I were together for the 2005 Tour de Georgia Individual Time Trial and my photos from that day are in the 2005 Tour de Georgia Album in the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery. My shot selection was different than Frank's that day. The big reasons were that I covered every stage of the 2005 Tour de Georgia, I had already taken hundreds of photos with my old Canon PowerShot A95, and I knew intuitively how much shutter lag I had to deal with.

I was also at the Tour de Georgia in 2005 with the goal of capturing what was going on behind the race, things like how the race officials supervised the race on the road and how the television camera crews captured the action. I guessed correctly that people wouldn't care about my action photography with so many pro photographers following the peloton.

My advice after taking photos at two Tours de France, one Tour of Georgia, and one USPRO Championship is:

• If you're serious about capturing action shots, get yourself a Digital SLR with as many manual control capabilities as you can afford. These can be bought if you have that kind of money, or you can rent them from professional camera stores.
• Use glass lenses with the lowest F-stops you can afford. These are the lenses with the fastest response.
• Get media credentials if you have the connections and a legitimate publishing capability. I did this for the 2005 Tour de Georgia and the 2005 USPRO Championship and it gave me the ability to ride in official cars, park my car in places that spectators couldn't get to, and just be there when the key moments happened.
• If you just want to take your point-and-shoot and get some good close-up photos of the riders, go to the stage start. Arrive 90 minutes before the start if you can. Look for where the riders "sign-in" and decide which side of the cordoned-off area will be the best place to shoot from. Focus on getting good pictures. Don't try to mix taking pictures and getting autographs.

Frank also pointed out an article from Spare Cycles called Shooting cycling photographs with a Canon Digital Rebel that was published last year. This article goes into even more technical detail about Digital SLRs and how best to use them to cover this sport.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jimmy at the Christmas Meeting
of Kathleen's Book Club: Here's the
picture of my son Jimmy that
everyone in Kathleen's Book Club
wanted.

Kathleen took our new Canon PowerShot A540 to the Christmas meeting of her book club on Sunday. This is always a really nice affair, and it got everybody who was able to attend in a festive mood.

When I got home from my hockey game on Sunday night, Kathleen showed me the photos she had taken, using the LCD screen on the back of the camera. When she got to this photo of our six-month-old son Jimmy, she said that this was the photo that everyone said they wanted a copy of.

I thought a few of Operation Gadget's regular readers would want to see it as well. Seeing it puts me in a little more of a holiday mood myself.

I think that this is the kind of photo that shows the PowerShot A540 at its best: a snapshot of a person or a small group of people where the subjects are relatively still and well within the camera's flash range. We keep the PowerShot A540 in the "Pets and Kids" scene mode most of the time, so that we get the best possible photos when Jimmy is part of the picture.

This is a very good camera for the money, although it isn't as good at stopping subjects that are in motion as our old Canon PowerShot A95 was.

Technorati Tags: Canon PowerShot A540, digital camera reviews, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I bought a Canon PowerShot A95 in December 2004. Over its life my wife and I have taken hundreds of pictures with it, and it's been well worth the $325 we paid for it.

A couple of weeks ago my wife took the PowerShot A95 with her to the American Academy of Pediatrics National Convention and Exposition in Atlanta. While she was there, the camera developed a power switch problem that apparently caused the batteries to drain quickly. I confirmed this problem when she got home.

I started looking into the cost of repairing this problem using a Canon-approved repair method. I went to Canon's Online Repair Estimator, and found out that Canon will repair the A95 for a flat fee of $97 plus tax. That sounds reasonable until you look at the cost of replacing the A95.

The Canon PowerShot A95 is a 5-Megapixel camera with 3x Optical Zoom. The cost of purchasing a similarly-featured camera from Amazon.com, the Canon PowerShot A530 costs about $130.00 this week at Amazon.com. So, for a little more than 1/3 of the price of the A95 two years ago, you get a 5-Megapixel 4x Optical Zoom Camera that requires two instead of four AA batteries, and uses SD memory instead of Compact Flash.

Needless to say, I decided to buy new rather than repair a two year old digital camera.

However, I didn't buy the A530. I stepped up to the Canon PowerShot A540 for about $170.00. This is a 6-Megapixel camera with a 4x Optical Zoom. The biggest reason I chose the A540 was that reviews I read said that the cycle time between shots was better on the A540 than the A530. My wife and I take a lot of pictures with our A95 indoors using the flash, and we would like the cycle time to be lower if that's possible.

I was surprised at how much the cost of digital cameras had come down in two years. The prices fell so much that it really didn't make sense to repair our trusty old PowerShot A95. Hard to believe a two-year-old digital camera would qualify as a "trusty old" camera, but in these times, I guess it does.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was really disappointed when I read the extent of Kodak's restructuring announcement earlier today. The deal to outsource "certain camera design and development functions" to Flextronics sounds like the end of the Kodak tradition of innovation in the consumer-oriented camera market.

It's one thing to outsource manufacturing to a company like Flextronics. That's Flextronics core competency. Lots of companies with strong growth prospects do that. Apple is a great example of this. When they do that, however, the companies keep R&D in house.

Over the past year, Operation Gadget has talked about potentially ground-breaking projects like the Kodak EasyShare One and the Kodak EasyShare V570. The V570 in particular is a camera that's received favorable reviews. Do you expect Kodak to produce unique cameras like these in the future, if they are paying a contract manufacturer to do R&D for them?

A quick look at Kodak's web site indicates that it's in three core businesses: digital cameras, health imaging, and commercial printing. I think Kodak wants to stay in all three markets, but it realizes that it's not competitive in the consumer digital camera space at the moment. In order to continue to grow the business, they are right-sizing the consumer digital camera business and pouring additional resources into their other, more profitable businesses for the time being.

This may make Wall Street happy, but I think it will constrain the company's growth potential in the future.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thom Hogan wrote a great review of the AF-S Zoom-Nikkor ED 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF DX VR. That's a Nikon 18-200mm Superzoom lens to you and me. This is a great review because Hogan goes into great detail about why it's so unusual for a camera manufacturer to ship a great all-purpose lens with a high-end prosumer camera like the Nikon D200. Most people don't buy the D200 with this lens, but it is an option. Hogan writes:

One of the surprises with the D200 announcement was that it could be purchased with a new DX wide angle to telephoto zoom lens. Having a kit lens for {a} consumer camera isn't new for Nikon, but this was a doozy: 18-200mm focal lengths plus vibration reduction and AF-S speed. This looked like the do-all, be-all lens for virtually everything except extreme wide angle, extreme telephoto, extreme macro, and extreme low light. In other words, a lens you would use most of the time....

He goes on to point out that this lens performs as advertised, for the most part. He delves deeply into the technical details, including the significance of the "DX" designation on Nikkor lenses when used with Nikon digital SLRs.

The key take-away for me is that these DX lenses (there are six others) are a lot more compact than previous lenses with similar performance characteristics. However, it's not the ultimate telephoto lens for sports; Hogan says:

What VR (or VR II or even VR III when it appears) won't do {his emphasis} is to allow you to shoot your daughter's night soccer game at 200mm and 1/15. That's a recipe for fuzzy players on sharp grass.

I know we dwell on sports photography sometimes here on Operation Gadget, but I also shoot digital photos in every day situations that are far from the hockey penalty box or the roadside at pro cycling event. This lens is a spectacular choice for everyday photography if you have a Nikon DSLR.

Technorati Tags: Nikon 18-200mm Superzoom, Nikon D200, Nikkor DX lens, Nikon DSLR, digital cameras

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Popular Photography and Imaging recently published a useful review of the Kodak EasyShare V570. The V570 is a compact camera with a unique dual lens / dual imaging sensor image capture mechanism. According to the article:

Kodak's dual lens design is useful. For example, if you combine the ultra-wide, fixed focal length 23mm (equivalent) f/2.8 lens with the V570's in-camera stitching function, you can easily create an almost 180 degree panoramic photo without a computer. Plus, the fixed focal length design lends itself to less distortion. Even with the V570's distortion correction feature turned off, we measured less distortion from the Kodak's 23mm lens than we did from the 24mm setting of the Zeiss T* zoom lens built into Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-R1.

The review includes "certified test results" that rate its color accuracy as extremely high, and the image noise as low to moderate between ISO 64 and 200 light sensitivity. You can jack up the sensitivity to 400 or 800, but the results are deemed unacceptable. [ via The Digital Photography Blog ]

Technorati Tags: Kodak EasyShare 570, digital camera reviews

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A new cycling blog called Spare Cycles has published an excellent how to article called Shooting cycling photographs with a Canon Digital Rebel. The author is a novice cycling photographer with a Canon Digital Rebel 300D who shot photos at a several stages of the Amgen Tour of California. He also spoke with a professional photographer named Tim Gasperak who published a pretty amazing set of Tour of California photos on Flickr.

One of the key insights in this article is that you need a better lens than you will get in a complete Digital Rebel Kit. This will seem obvious to you if you walk the finish line at a pro cycling race, but it's still a useful tip. The lens that's recommended in this article is a Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM Telephoto Zoom Lens which is similar to the Nikon lens that Harvey Levine used to shoot the cycling photo of me at the Covered Bridge Metric Century in 2004.

Congratulations to Spare Cycles for a great cycling photography how to article. I learned some things about cycling photography from this article that will help me for when I can afford to step up to the digital SLR level. I'm definitely going to be on the lookout for more interesting stuff from this new website.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Martin O'Donnell pointed out an article by Dave Gussow of the St. Petersburg Times that talks about a number of new developments in the digital camera and photo printing businesses that were publicized at PMA 2006 earlier this month in Orlando.

The main focus of this article is that digital camera manufacturers have discovered that women are the main photographers in many traditional families, that they purchased a slim majority of the digital cameras in 2005, and that they buy almost 60 percent of the photo paper to be used in printers. Many of the marketing approaches discussed at this industry trade show were designed with this research in mind.

The article goes on to say that women prefer shiner, more stylish cameras, while men like cameras with black cases. Kodak promotional materials say that women focus on features like the print size cameras can produce, rather than more technical specifications like megapixel resolution and zoom lenses.

I find this type of market intelligence very interesting, but I wonder if everything the digital camera manufacturers' research tells them is actually correct? I don't think I ever cared if my digital camera was black or silver, although I've owned cameras of each type. All I want in a digital camera is something that takes good pictures, has understandable controls, has a reasonably fast picture-taking cycle, and is fairly compact. I think cameras like the Canon Powershot SD450 do pretty well on all of those criteria.

Who cares what color the camera's body is? If you do, I'd love to know why.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This Chistmas, my father and my sister-in-law both received digital cameras as gifts. My father got a 5-Megapixel Nikon Coolpix 5600 and my sister-in-law got the 4-Megapixel Nikon Coolpix 4600. This was an interesting coincidence, because the cameras were purchased independently by different people.

In my sister-in-law Mary's case, she received the camera and a set of four rechargeable AA-sized batteries, but didn't receive a memory card on which to store photos. This means that she has plenty of power available to shoot photos but can only store between 10 and 15 shots in the Coolpix 4600's internal memory before having to upload the photos to her PC. The question then became which memory card should be purchased for this camera?

I shot about 150 photos on my Canon PowerShot A95 on Christmas Eve and didn't fill up a 256-Megabyte memory card, so I recommend that people buy memory cards for their digital cameras that have capacities of 256 Megabytes or higher.

I looked at the cost of SD memory cards at Amazon.com and I was surprised to find that you can get a 512-Megabyte SD Card for less than $35 including shipping. Look for the Kingston 512 MB Secure Digital Card for that deal. In my opinion, if you are willing to buy a memory card from an on-line retailer like Amazon.com and you're not in the market for anything else at the moment, you need to try to buy one that costs a bit more than $25 to take advantage of the Free SuperSaver Shipping offer. Most of the 256-Megabyte SD memory cards I saw at Amazon.com fall just above or below the $25 minimum order threshold.

I also want to point out that most of the digital cameras currently being marketed by Canon, Kodak, and Casio generally take SD card memory. Fujifilm cameras take xD memory cards instead.

Technorati Tags: digital cameras, Nikon Coolpix 5600, Nikon Coolpix 4600, Secure Digital Memory Card, xD Memory Card, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Saturday, Scott Shalom, Bill Maurer, and I officiated a men's college ice hockey game between Drexel University and Villanova University in Philadelphia. I thought it would be interesting to see how Nokia N90 video clips of a hockey game would turn out, so I lent the camera phone to my friend Shane Hanlon who was at the game to evaluate our on-ice performance.

Before the game began, I gave Shane a 90-second explanation of how to shoot video with the N90. I showed him how to open the camera so it went into video camera mode, how to start and stop recording, and how to zoom in and out using the Carl Zeiss Optics Tessar 2.95/5.5 lens. Shane gave the N90 back to me with three video clips of the game on it. I decided to publish two of them as-is. I'm not publishing the third clip because it's very short and doesn't really show anything. It's pretty clear that Shane was just getting used to the camera at that point.

When you look at these two video clips, you'll probably ask, "Why is the camera focusing on the officials and not the play?" It's because Shane is there to watch the officials. He spent a lot more of his time taking notes than playing with the N90.

Drexel vs Villanova, December 10, 2005, 1 minute 09 seconds.

The point I'm trying to make by publishing these clips, however, is that the Nokia N90 is very easy to use and does a surprisingly good job of capturing the action in one of the fastest sports commonly played in the Northern Hemisphere. The lighting conditions inside the Class of '23 Ice Arena at The University of Pennsylvania in Philadephia are not very good, yet you can easily see the action and identify individual players and officials on the ice.

Drexel vs Villanova, December 10, 2005, 3 minutes 24 seconds.

Remember, these videos were shot with a palm-sized Nokia N90 mobile phone, not some dedicated video camera. These video clips are displayed at 246 x 210 pixel resolution here on Operation Gadget, but they are recorded at 352 x 288, so the image you see when playing the video directly off your PC with a media player is approximately twice this size.

Technorati Tags: Nokia N90, N-Series, Nokia, N90, hockey

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times published an article by David Pogue called Digital Photos Even a Miser Can Enjoy. In it Pogue and a group of 20 friends rated the images produced by 12 cameras priced at under $300. According to the article:

The {Canon Powershot} A610's photos were top ranked in an astonishing 12 out of 20 tests; this camera just takes fantastic pictures in almost every situation. Not bad for $250, especially considering you also get a 4X zoom and a flip-out rotating 2-inch screen - great for shooting over people's heads, or down low for baby shots.

On the other hand, the A610 is the biggest, ugliest camera here. Canon seems to be forcing the issue: Do you want good-looking pictures, or a good-looking camera?

I have a Canon Powershot A95 which is quite similar in size to the A610. I honestly think calling the A610 the "biggest, ugliest camera" is a bit excessive. It's only considered big because the fashion in digital cameras is as small as possible. I'd say a camera was big if it didn't fit in my coat pocket. Every Canon Powershot A-Series camera I've ever seen fits in my coat pocket.

I've always preferred photo quality and performance over style, so my preferences from their group of cameras they evaluated are:

1. Canon Powershot A610
2. Fujifilm Finepix F10,
3. Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ2,
4. Kodak EasyShare v530,
5. Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z57,
6. Nikon Coolpix S1,
7. Olympus Stylus 600,
8. HP Photosmart R817,
9. Konica Minolta Dimage X1, and
10. Pentax Optio S6

Technorati Tags: digital cameras, Canon Powershot A610, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A friend of mine told me that Rush Limbaugh has been raving about the Sony Cybershot DSC-N1 digital camera. Apparently, he got one from a national sponsor that is a computer retailer, and he was struck by the high resolution and the 3-inch touch-sensitive screen on the back of the camera.

I did some research into the camera and found that it has a pretty unique design. The DSC-N1 is supposed to be both a digital camera and a portable photo viewer. In spite of the small size, the Cybershot N1 can shoot an 8.1-Megapixel image that's optically zoomed up to 3x. It's also designed to allow you to organize your photos into albums so you can play slide shows of your recent photos. To me this means that it's unlikely that a DSC-N1 user would also have a Video iPod, but I doubt that most DSC-N1 or Video iPod users would push the limits of either machine for storing and showing off photos.

The DSC-N1 has very few controls other than the touch screen. This is probably a good thing in the minds of people who like to take their camera out of a pocket and snap a picture immediately. It would take getting used to for a lot of veteran camera users. On the other hand, on-screen menu navigation can be quick once you get used to it, thanks to the large screen and absence of buttons. The N1 also comes with on-board photo editing tools, including tools for simple line drawing and cartooning. So, the Cybershot DSC-N1 actually has more UI features than could easily be represented in physical switches and dials.

Another potential issue I see with the DSC-N1 is that it requires Memory Stick Pro add-on memory, such as the 1-Gigabyte Memory Stick Pro. The price of this memory has come down a lot, but it's still more expensive than widely-used SD cards.

More good information about the Sony Cybershot DSC-N1 is available on The Digital Photography Blog.

Technorati Tags: digital cameras, Sony Cybershot DSC-N1, Video iPod, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Canon Powershot SD200, on clearance at Amazon.com, is currently the number one product on the Amazon.com Camera & Photo Top Sellers List. This compact, 3.2-megapixel camera with 3x Optical Zoom is a very good choice for people who have never had a digital camera before. The SD200 has a sleek design that attracts attention whenever you pull it out of your pocket. It has enough resolution to produce very good 5x7-inch prints, it has plenty of automatic functions that can make a newcomer to digital photography look like a pro. The Powershot SD200 also uses Secure Digital memory cards which have fallen substantially in price recently and are faster than Compact Flash memory.

Canon digital cameras are occupying all of the top 5 spots on the Camera & Photo Top Sellers List at the moment. The models on the list are:

1. Canon Powershot SD200, 3.2-Megapixel, 3x Optical Zoom, great deal
2. Canon Powershot A520, 4-Megapixel, 4x Optical Zoom, slightly larger and more expensive than the SD200
3. Canon Powershot SD450, 5-Megapixel, 3x Optical Zoom, similar in size to the SD200
4. Canon Powershot SD400, 5-Megapixel, 3x Optical Zoom, slightly less expensive than the SD450
5. Canon PowerShot A510, 3.2-Megapixel, 4x Optical Zoom, really inexpensive

I have a Canon Powershot A95 which I bought about a year ago. It's just a terrific camera for the money, and it's successors in the Powershot A-Series are even better. The Powershot SD-Series are terrific cameras as well. While not the smallest digital cameras on the market today, they combine small size with excellent photo composition and great ease-of-use.

It's amazing how inexpensive digital cameras have gotten. Now is a great time to be in the market.

Technorati Tags: digital cameras, Canon Powershot SD200, Canon Powershot A520, Canon Powershot SD450, Canon Powershot SD400, Canon PowerShot A510, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Toy Wishes Magazine has released its ever-popular Hot Dozen Toys for 2005. This list is intended to forecast which toys will be the most popular during the 2005 holidays. We can safely assume that if the magazine is correct, many of them will also become hard to find in stores at some point in the near future.

Dora's Talking Kitchen: One of my
favorites on the Toy Wishes Hot
Dozen Holiday List. Product photos
courtesy of Amazon.com.

The Hot Dozen List includes (in alphabetical order):

• Black Belts Karate Home Studio DVD: an inexpensive active play set with a video component.
• Dora's Talking Kitchen; My wife Kathleen says that the kitchen play set at her pediatrics office is the most popular toy in the waiting room.
• Fly Wheels Assortment; Couldn't figure out which toy this was, so I'm recommending the Fly Wheels Rapid Fire Launcher for the moment.
• Furby: an electronic friend that comes in multiple color combinations.
• iDog: an electronic dog that dances to music that's being played in the room. Accessories are also available.
• iZ: an interesting combination of cartoon character, speaker for music playback, and music mixing tool. You change the beat of the music by twisting iZ's ears and pressing on his belly.
• Leapster L-Max Learning System: portable version of Leapster learning system. Requires new games, available separately. Works in conjunction with TV, if connected.
• The Magnetix MagnaWorld Series: lead by Magnetix MagnaWorld City. MagnaWorld Clock Tower, MagnaWorld Magna Central, Rescue Center, and Airport also available.
• Pixel Chix: including Pixel Chix Cottage House, Beverly Hills House, and Miami Loft. Interesting electronic house simulators. Kids interact with a Pixel Chix Pal, paying attention to the Pal in order to keep advancing in the game; Ignore and Pixel Chix Pal moves out.
• Shell Shocker Radio Controlled Toy: a toy with a "bio-mechanical design" that can shift from a rolling bowling-ball type shape to a reptillian-looking robot and back. Requires a Tyco Pro Flexpak Battery and Charger and a 9-volt battery, which adds to the cost.
• VCam Now: digital camera / video camera designed for kids. Holds 480 pictures or 7 minutes of video.
• V-Smile Pocket: portable version of V Smile-- a 2004 favorite. Uses the same cartridges as the bigger unit, potentially a big savings.

VTech V-Smile Pocket:
Little brother of the V-Smile Learning
System, which was a big hit in 2004.

If the 2004 Hot Dozen list was heavy with electronics, the list is overloaded in 2005. There are only two toys on this list that don't have a big electronic component: Black Belts Karate Home Studio DVD (also available in VHS) and the Magnetics MagnaWorld Series. I bought a set of Magnetix building toys for my nephew, Ben, a year or two ago, and I really wish they had been around when I was a kid, because they're fun to build with.

Last year, Operation Gadget readers bought a lot of VTech V-Smile, a video game-based learning system for preschoolers. In my opinion, this either means that V-Smile Pocket will be a similar hit, or it will be a dud. VTech has a strong lineup of add-on cartridges compatible with both devices based on Winnie the Pooh, Mickey and Friends, and the Little Mermaid. If these cartridges are entertaining as well as educational, I'm sure parents and grandparents will buy them, and many hours of fun will be had by all.

I'm concerned that the mix of electronic and non-electronic products in the Hot Dozen has tilted too far toward the electronics this year. Will there be hits in the non-electronic genre this year, in spite of the lack of attention? What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Hot Dozen, Toy Wishes Magazine, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

Nikon has released two digital cameras with built-in WiFi capability. The Coolpix P2 is silver and has a 5.1-megapixel image sensor and a 3.5x optical zoom lens. The Coolpix P1 is black and has an 8-megapixel image sensor and a 3.5x optical zoom lens. Both cameras have nice-looking 2.5-inch LCD displays.

Wilson Rothman of Time Magazine featured the Coolpix P2 as the Time.com Gadget of the Week back in September. He felt that the camera was a little less capable than it should have been, because its WiFi reception wasn't as strong as two laptop computers that he was using in the same part of his house.

He considers this is a problem because he wants to use the WiFi capability to transfer photos to a computer while he continues shooting. I believe that the WiFi capability is actually intended to be used to wirelessly upload your photos to a PC after the photo shooting session is over. Therefore, WiFi would only be used for short periods of time, and somewhat weaker reception could be tolerated because the camera would be close proximity to a PC and a WiFi access point.

Wireless photo upload with WiFi makes a lot more sense than Bluetooth when you think about it. I transfer a lot of data with Bluetooth when I sync my Treo 650 to my Blogging Workstation. I can't imagine trying to transfer a 256-Megabyte SD card full of photos using Bluetooth. Bluetooth just doesn't have the bandwidth to make big data transfers quickly.

I think wireless photo uploading will make sense to a lot of people, and the Coolpix P1 and P2 can deliver on that expectation. I don't think the functionality is there to upload photos directly from the camera to Flickr, muchless to do moblogging or photo journalism from the local Starbucks.

Technorati Tags: Nikon Coolpix P2, Nikon Coolpix P1, WiFi, Bluetooth

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just noticed that the Canon Powershot SD400, a 5-megapixel member of the Canon Elph digital camera family, has soared to number 1 on the Amazon.com Camera & Photo Top Selling Products Listin the past few days. The reason for this is that Canon has recently cut the price of most of the Canon Digital Elph cameras. The SD400, with it's 5-megapixel image capability, 3x optical zoom, and competitive price, occupies a particularly sweet spot in the digital camera market.

I think the Powershot SD400 is a great idea for holiday gifts. It would make a great upgrade for someone who already has a low-end, second-generation digital camera and has pushed its limits. I can think of a couple of people in my family who would use their digital camera a lot more if it had the features and the responsiveness that the Powershot SD400 has.

If you're looking for an even less expensive way to give the gift of digital photography, check out the Canon Powershot SD200. This is a 3.2-megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom that costs less that $190.

Other recently reduced Canon digital cameras include:

• Canon Powershot SD500, 7-megapixel with 3x optical zoom
• Canon Powershot SD450, 5-megapixel with 3x optical zoom
• Canon Powershot SD550, 7.1-megapixel with 3x optical zoom

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flickr Offers Photo Printing at Target
[ image created by Dave Aiello, courtesy of Flickr ].

Flickr announced the introduction of a photo print ordering service for users in the United States. The service is offered in conjunction with Target Stores. You have the option of picking your photo order up at your local Target store or having the order mailed to you.

One nice feature Flickr added was the ability to control who is allowed to order prints of your photos. This is done through a Photo Printing preferences page where you can choose:

• Only You
• You and your family
• You and your friends
• You, your family and friends
• You and any of your contacts
• Any Flickr member

I think Flickr is a great service. I use it all the time to share photos with my friends and family. I'm sure the pressure will be on me to enable this feature and upload my photo backlog before Christmas.

Update: I posted on Operation Gadget this with the BLOG THIS feature of Flickr. It was an interesting experience. Flickr timed out waiting for a response from Operation Gadget confirming that the post had been successful, so I mistakenly triple posted this article. Flickr also doesn't check to see if you wrote all of the necessary HTML for the article; It goes ahead and adds line breaks for you and inserts some inline CSS for good measure. I had a bit of clean up to do when I came back to this site. [ via Atmaspheric | endeavors ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just noticed that Amazon.com is offering Corel Paint Shop Pro 9 while supplies last for as little as $19.99! Paint Shop Pro is a great photo editing tool for people who don't need all the complexity of Adobe Photoshop Elements, but who still want to do things like:

• fill flash filter correction
• digital camera image noise removal
• anti-aliased text addition

I use Paint Shop Pro to do quick image editing nearly every day. From what I hear about Version 9, you need a fast computer with plenty of memory and a large screen to take best advantage of the photo editing features, but it's hard to beat the price.

To get the $19.99 price, you need to apply for a rebate, but even if you don't, you get Paint Shop Pro at 50-percent off the list price.

Why such a great deal? Corel's going upscale with Corel Paint Shop Pro X, the new version which was released last month. The list price of Paint Shop Pro X is $129.99, it's on sale for $99.99, but you can get it for as little as $69.99 after rebate.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wanted to ask for a photographer's vest for the Dodge Tour de Georgia, but I didn't feel that I had the right camera to make it worthwhile. If I had one of those vests, I could have stood inside the barriers just beyond the finish line and gotten shots of riders throwing their bikes at the line to try to be first.

The right camera would be a very good digital single lens reflex camera, like the Canon EOS 20D. This is an 8.2-megapixel camera capable of shooting 5 frames per second for 23 consecutive shots. It has a startup time of 0.2 seconds. The EOS 20D isn't the most expensive digital SLR out there, but it has a good price/performance trade off, and it uses a better grade of some of the same technology that I already use in my Canon Powershot A95.

In order to do this right, I'll need a very large Compact Flash card that can be written to at the fastest possible speed. The Lexar Media 2-Gigabyte 80X Pro Series looks like a good choice. If I wanted to economize, there's a 1-Gigabyte version of the same product.

The lens that we would want to shoot finish line photos at a pro cycling race could easily cost us a lot of money. If you remember the article about the photo that professional sports photographer Harvey Levine took of me riding my mountain bike, he used a 400mm F/2.8 Nikkor lens for that. The cost estimate on it was $6,000 used. Most people rent it.

The closest Canon lens available through Amazon.com and its affiliates is a Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM Super Telephoto Lens. It's much cheaper and probably significantly slower. Some people say it's fast enough for sports and that might be true if the action is coming right at you, as in a pro cycling race finish line shot.

If I'm shooting, I want something smaller so I can use it without a tripod or monopod. How about the Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM Telephoto Lens? That's half the cost of the 400mm Canon lens, plus it's significantly smaller, lighter, and faster. I can deal with only having a 200mm telephoto lens if I have a photographer's vest. About the only thing to think about here is the lack of image stabilization.

If I need something to stabilize my shot I'm going to try a Manfrotto 684B Bogen Neotec Monopod, although I'm sure someone will come along and tell me I'm wrong. I've never purchased a monopod before, what do I know?

The whole rig, camera, memory card, lens, and monopod will set us back something like $2450 and we'll also get a Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 autofocus lens for the shots a normal person's camera could take. This setup won't turn me into Graham Watson overnight, but I'll be a thousand times more likely to get the shot that they use on the cover of VeloNews or Cycle Sport than I am with my PowerShot A95.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

FujiFilm Z1: One of the new compact digital
cameras announced today by FujiFilm. These are
cool cameras, but they lack an optical viewfinder.
[ Photo: FujiFilm ]

FujiFilm announced the FinePix Z1, a 5.1-megapixel digital camera that's thinner than a standard deck of cards and has a 2.5-inch LCD screen that is supposed to be bright enough to use to frame shots in low light. It will come in a satin black or brushed silver finish, and looks like the kind of camera that will come out in other colors as well, if the model proves to be popular.

I agree with the guys at Gizmodo who say that the FinePix Z1 is aimed at competing with the Sony DSC-T3 which is similar to the DSC-T1 currently on sale at Amazon.com affiliates like Ritz Camera. Time will tell if FujiFilm has hit the mark.

One of the things that concerns me about the Z1 and several other cameras that FujiFilm just announced is their lack of an optical viewfinder. I've found that my best digital camera photos are taken when looking through the optical viewfinder, because using the LCD to frame shots often results in a lack of steadiness that can best be remedied with on-board image stabilization.

FujiFilm marketing manager Ron Gazzola commented on their decision to leave off the optical viewfinder as follows:

Fujifilm U.S.A. conducted extensive consumer research concerning LCDs and our findings showed that with a palm-sized camera, consumers feel comfortable framing their pictures solely with a LCD as long as the monitor is large, durable and performs well in low light. The advanced LCD of the FinePix Z1 has it all and should be an attractive feature on an already attractive camera.

I'm willing to be convinced that this is a good thing. I'll have to get in touch with FujiFilm and try to get one for review.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Flickr Photo with Notes Attached:
John Cloninger added notes to a photo
that he posted on Flickr. I took
a screenshot of the photo and cut it down
to accentuate one of the notes. Follow
this link to view the complete photo.

My friend John Cloninger used his Flickr account to publish an interesting photo called storm2 which had a more informative description DOGGIE SMELL COFFEE!!!! The photo depicts a dog and his master standing in front of the Starbucks Coffee in Summit, NJ.

To the photo, John added two rectangles with notes attached: "Doggie" and "Overpriced coffee". When you view the photo on Flickr and mouse over one of the rectangles, both of them are highlighted and the rectangle overwhich the mouse sits shows its attached note (see the photo attached to this story for an illustration of this).

The "notes feature" in Flickr adds an additional entertaining or educational dimension to photos that employ it.

According to Corrante Many to Many the Flickr Notes feature is intended to be read/write compatible with Fotonotes. This is a technology that Greg Elin has been working on since at least 2003, but Flickr is the first place where I've seen it deployed in a way that's accessible to me.

I think Flickr Notes is really interesting and I'm going to try adding some to a photos I post in my Flickr photostream.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Canon USA announced the Canon PowerShot A510 yesterday as a replacement for the inexpensive PowerShot A75 that has been one of the most popular digital cameras at Amazon.com for most of the last year. The A75 has been a good performer in the 3.2-megapixel range and the A510 seeks to build on that reputation with a few key enhancements:

• 4x optical zoom, instead of 3x,
• MMC memory cards, instead of Compact Flash Type 1,
• requires 2 AA batteries instead of four,
• slight decrease in overall size and probably a noticeable difference in weight when loaded with batteries.

When I first read about this camera, I thought that it didn't make sense to switch media (from CF to MMC) in an upgrade to the least expensive member of the PowerShot A product line. It made more sense when I realized that this is probably the key to being able to run the PowerShot A510 on half as many batteries. I would still recommend using NiMH rechargeable AA's, but cutting the number needed to run the camera in half still represents a measureable savings after a year of use. [ via Gizmodo ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salon published a really good article about the many uses of Flickr, the on-line photo sharing site that I've been using for the past 10 days. The article points out some interesting statistics:

• 176,000 members,
• 2.2 million photos, growing at a rate of 30,000 per day,
• 82 percent of those photos are available to anyone, so the photo owners chose not to keep them private to friends and family.

This is interesting because I made most of the first photos I uploaded private because they were taken on Christmas Eve and Christmas when my wife and I were exchanging gifts with friends and family. I like keeping photos of family events mostly private, while I make public my photo blog / moblog-type photos available as soon as I can in my Flickr photostream. I also separate the photos that are specific to Operation Gadget into Operation Gadget's own photo gallery. This is the best of all worlds for me.

Salon makes you buy a subscription or sit through a little commercial before being able to view the complete article. It's worth reading if you are interested in the social aspects of Flickr, like I am.

Oliver Travers pointed to the Salon article from his weblog. His article also contains some a couple of links to the FlickrBlog (written by the folks that run Flickr) that discuss the complexities of running a rapidly growing site and upgrading on-the-fly.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Home Office in Snow: One of
the photos I uploaded to Flickr
for Operation Gadget readers to look at.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

Earlier this week, I promised that I would point to my Flickr account when I had some digital camera photos to share with the public. The account is mine, not Operation Gadget, hence the URL:

http://flickr.com/photos/dave_aiello/

Right now there are about 30 photos of hockey, ice rinks, and Christmas festivities. There will be more later.

Flickr has been a lot of fun for me so far. I like the Flickr Uploadr desktop photo transfer tool a lot. It turns the process of getting photos uploaded into a background task. I also like the Organizr photo viewer very much. At times, it's hard for me to believe that Organizr is a web-based application.

Comments about the photos can be posted on Flickr. If you have any thoughts that you want to share with me about how the Flickr Photo Sharing Service works, email me at daiello [at] operationgadget.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although Operation Gadget has its own Coppermine Photo Gallery, I wanted to find a different web-based solution for casual photo sharing. I decided to give Flickr a try, uploaded a few test photos, and invited my wife, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, and my sister to view the photos.

Anyone can have a Flickr account, but the free accounts being issued have relatively small monthly upload quotas. I wanted to do a much more in depth test of the service, so I contacted the people at Flickr and they offered me a Flickr Pro account for a one month trial.

I uploaded about 100 photos from my new Canon PowerShot A95 already this morning. I'll be inviting more friends and family to view them and to comment on how they like Flickr. I'll take this feedback, incorporate my own feelings about it, and let you know what we think of the service.

I'm also planning on uploading at least a few public photos, so Operation Gadget readers can participate in this test. When I've got some photos up there that you can see, I'll let you know.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Kodak EASYSHARE-ONE: Killer
design, WiFi-capability, big screen,
lots of built-in memory.
[ Photo: Kodak ]

The International Consumer Electronics Show begins tomorrow in Las Vegas and

Kodak has taken the early lead in the race for media attention. The company that previously made digital cameras for non-gadget people rocked the media who arrived early with the announcement of the EASYSHARE-ONE. This new 4-Megapixel camera includes a WiFi capability, 256-Megabytes of flash memory, and a three-inch touch-sensitive screen. Fully tricked-out with wireless it's expected to go for around $700.

Martin O'Donnell is off-line at the moment, on assignment in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. When I related Kodak's announcement to him, we both came to the same conclusion: this camera is going to sell like hotcakes at the Apple Store near you.

If you can't look at this and see another iPod mini, you have to sharpen your trend-sensing skills. Every Kodak competitor will have its interpretation of this camera rushed into production. If Kodak has done its homework on quality user experience, it will have a significant advantage for at least a little while.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

David Cardinal recently wrote a useful article for PC Magazine called Troubleshooting Your Images. In it he tries to address some of the most common flaws in digital photos that some digital camera users repeatedly experience:

• blurry images,
• pixelated or grainy images,
• images too dark or light, and
• poor color.

Cardinal visits a sensitive and not often discussed topic right at the beginning, lack of feature knowledge on the part of the digital camera owner:

Nothing is more frustrating than looking at a photo you took of a once-in-a-lifetime event only to find that it didn't turn out. Maybe it is blurry, dark, or "noisy." Many new digital-camera owners become so frustrated that they give up entirely, or keep replacing their cameras, hoping to find one that magically takes the photo they want every time.

I've been learning how to use my new Canon PowerShot A95, and I've taken my share of photos that "didn't work" with it already. However, I am really intense about figuring out why a shot looks lousy.

Usually the problem lies in my lack of understanding of a feature of the camera, not flaws in the way the camera operates. The best example of this is probably that the red eye reduction lamp shined so brightly when it was used that I found myself squinting whenever I was in the picture. I had to figure out how to shut that lamp off unless I really needed it. It sounds like some digital camera users never bother to go that deep into the features of their cameras.

This article is useful, but PC Magazine is hurting itself by letting advertising dominate many of its pages.

Take a look at the so-called introduction page where there are two paragraphs surrounded by dozens of links and advertisements. Don't miss that little next> link to the right of the in-line square in-line advertisement, otherwise you won't even see 85 percent of the article.

While I'm at it, how about making the example photos a bit larger than thumbnails and put meaningful caption on them? This way people might realize that these images were meant to be part of the article. [ via Digital Photography Blog ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Canon PowerShot A95:
My new 5-Megapixel digital camera. See
more of the first photos I took with it.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

I uploaded the first small series of photos taken with my new Canon PowerShot A95 digital camera. I actually uploaded these photos shortly after I posted the story about Unpacking My Canon PowerShot A95, but I didn't have time to create the story pointing to this album.

I'm going to try to sit down in the next couple of days and write about the Canon digital camera utilities like ZoomBrowser, CanonWindow, and PhotoStitch. They seem like pretty good utilities, considering that you get them for free. I'm coming at this as a veteran digital camera user who had an early prosumer digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 950), so there are aspects of the bundled software suite that are totally new to me.

I've learned a few things about working with a modern digital camera already. It's easy to upload hundreds of photos via a USB 2.0 connection with a camera like the Canon PowerShot A95. It's another thing to choose photos for a photo gallery, edit, and caption them in way that readers who are not relatives or close friends will find interesting.

I hope I'm doing a good job. If you have comments or suggestions, let me know by emailing me at daiello [at] operationgadget.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Canon PowerShot A95:
My new 5-Megapixel digital camera. See
more photos of the box unpacking.
[ Photo: Dave Aiello ]

December 23rd was a fun day at the Home Office. I received my Canon PowerShot A95 digital camera from Amazon.com. I started unpacking it right away and took a couple of test photos. Check out the box unpacking photos in the Operation Gadget Photo Gallery.

In case you're wondering why it took me a week to get these photos up on the site, I didn't have a working digital camera until I received the PowerShot A95, so I had to take these photos with my trusty Nikon N50 film SLR and get them developed the traditional way.

Hopefully now you'll begin to see a quicker turn-around on getting photos posted on Operation Gadget. Now I need to get the PowerShot A95 connected to my PC and copy the first photos off of it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Chris Pirillo discussed his initial experience with a Nikon Coolpix 8800. I thought his perspective was interesting, since he's been a Canon user in the past and decided to give a Nikon prosumer digicam a try. It seems like he will post additional comments soon, so I'd keep an I on Pirillo.com.

I finally bit the bullet and switched the other way. I was a Nikon user (film and digital) and decided to give the Canon PowerShot A95 a try. I got it on December 23 and shot about 200 photos on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I'll have more comments on my experience in the next day or so.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times published an interesting article on Kodak's digital photography strategy yesterday. It talks about how Kodak rebounded from a 5-percent share of the U.S. market in 2000 to 19-percent today. That makes them number two behind Sony and just ahead of Canon.

There are a number of interesting points in this article, including that the Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock that works with the with many of Kodak's digital cameras is a popular accessory with some consumers. I have a tendency to forget that a lot of people aren't as tuned into issues like photo printing consumables costs as Operation Gadget readers are.

Kodak executive Pierre Schaeffer reportedly pointed out, "The reason people buy a Canon is not fundamentally ease of use, and the reason they buy Sony is not ease of use." Kodak's product line focuses on ease of use, as it did in the Instamatic and Brownie eras when its slogan was "You push the button and we do the rest." The Kodak model has never been about "cheap" necessarily, but it's definitely been about "easy". [ via Tomalak's Realm ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amazon.com had a sale going on digital cameras that ended this week. They replaced that promotion with a new one-- if you buy a digital camera from them, you get a free 64-Megabyte memory card that's compatible with the camera or you get a discount on a larger-capacity memory card. The biggest restriction on this offer is that you have to buy the camera from Amazon.com itself, not a third party selling on their site.

If you go to the free memory card offer page, you'll see links on the right to different types of memory cards that are available. Clicking on each of those links brings up a list of compatible cameras. This turns digital camera shopping on its head-- normally I find a camera I want, then figure out what memory card format it supports. You can also find the camera you want and see the memory card offer down toward the bottom of the page.

I've been watching the Canon Powershot A95, waiting for the right moment to buy it. (This is driven by credit card billing cycles more than anything else). The price went up about $19 since the last time I looked, but I get a 64M Compact Flash Card or a $24.99 credit toward another memory card if I buy now. I think the deal is better for me now, since I would need a large memory card to go with the camera.

Just to make things a bit more interesting, Amazon offers different credit amounts for different memory card formats. I guess we could break down which type of camera would be most economical based on the net price of the larger memory cards. I started to do that and the difference is only a couple of dollars here or there, so I recommend that you skip that exercise unless you are a real savings geek.

This promotion runs until January 4, 2005, so people buying gifts for themselves after the holidays will be able to reap the benefits as well.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Digital Photography Review published a Panasonic review of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX7 by Simon Joinson. This review has particularly good photos of the camera, providing a good idea of how the Lumix FX7 would fit in your hand.

The top features of this camera are a 5-megapixel CCD with 3x optical zoom, a gigantic 2.5-inch LCD display-- so large relative to its overall size that there is no room for an optical viewfinder, and image stabilization.

The Lumix FX7 comes in both silver, which is shown in the review, and black. The black finish is slightly more popular, according to Amazon.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dan Washburn of ShanghaiDiaries.com visited 18 Chinese provinces on a single trip recently. Now he's reported on how each of his electronic gadgets fared during the trip. Included in his report are evaluations of the:

• 40-Gigabyte iPod from Apple,
• Media Reader for iPod from Belkin,
• Backup Battery Pack for iPod from Belkin,
• iTalk iPod Voice Recorder from Griffin Technology,
• iPAQ h2215 Pocket PC from Hewlett-Packard,
• PM828C Compact Flash GPRS Mobile Internet Card from Panda,
• Foldable keyboard for iPAQ from HP,
• eTrex from Garmin,
• PowerShot S30 from Canon, and
• PowerShot A80 from Canon.

I particularly liked what Dan had to say about the PowerShot A80:

... this little camera saved my ass, and it does everything my PowerShot S30 did … and more.

With the S30, I was often forced to take more vertical shots than I would like to due to the way the camera focuses. The A80 fixed that issue, by adding focus hot spots throughout the field of view. The S30 only had three hot spots, left to right across a horizontal shot. The A80 has nine hot spots, located everywhere. So now, horizontal landscape shots can now have the sky and the land in focus and colored properly. What a concept.

The A80 also boasts a pull-out LCD monitor that swivels, rotates and turns. So the photographer doesn’t necessarily need to be pointed at the same thing the camera is. This is perfect for taking candid shots of people who think you’re busy looking at something else. Finally, the A80 uses four AA-batteries, not the Canon-only rechargables the S30 did. So, if you happen to be in a remote area, unable to access electricty, all you need to do is pack some extra batteries or buy some at a store.

The Powershot A80 is very similar to the Powershot A95 that I discussed yesterday. His findings sort of confirm my suspicions about why you might want an A95 if you were purchasing today, instead of an A75 or A85 (neither of which have the "Variangle" LCD (pull-out LCD monitor that swivels).

Kathleen and I visited Guilin, Yangshuo, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in 1996, and our experience with use of technology was similar to Dan's. If you venture outside of major cities take your ruggedest, most flexible gear, otherwise you may be disappointed. I'm surprised that he tried to bring a Mac-formatted iPod with him. That seems unlikely to be useful, even eight years after my visit to China.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen and I didn't make the trip to New York City yesterday specifically to shop for a digital camera, but we ended up looking at them at both The Apple Store and B&H Photo and Video. I got to look at the Canon Powershot A85 side-by-side with the Canon Powershot S1 IS. Surprisingly, I prefer the Powershot A85, primarily for price and form factor reasons.

I think the Powershot S1 IS is a terrific idea with a great feature set, but it's noticeably bigger than the Powershot A85. In spite of the fact that the 10x optical zoom and image stabilization features are features I'd like to have in a digital camera at some point, if I bought it I'd have to deal with the following things I consider problems:

• Price: It's more expensive than a compact Powershot A85 and you are giving up resolution.
• Size: The Powershot S1 IS is half an inch wider and taller than the A85 and over 1 inch deeper. That doesn't sound like much when you look at the numbers, but it's really noticeable when you hold the cameras or try to put them in a pocket or purse.
• Size of the LCD: Although the Powershot S1 IS has a "Variangle" LCD (one that flips out from the camera body and rotates), it's 1.5" and looks small compared to the 1.8" fixed-position LCD on the Powershot A85. If you move up to the Powershot A95, it has a 1.8" Variangle LCD.
• Viewfinder: The viewfinder on the Powershot S1 IS is a tiny LCD with a diopter control, but the LCD viewfinder and the main LCD screen freeze during autofocus and in continuous shooting mode. The Powershot A85 has an optical viewfinder which shows less than 100 percent of the actual image, but there's no way for it to freeze.

As I suggested in my last point, the big decision for me is whether to buy the Powershot A85 or the Powershot A95. The biggest differences between the two seem to be the fact that the A95 has a 5-Megapixel image sensor while the A85 is "only" a 4-Megapixel model, and the A95 has a Variangle LCD. The Variangle LCD would be helpful in situations where I want to hold the camera above my head or close to the ground. This is something I have done in the past with Nikon digital cameras with articulated bodies, so I am inclined to consider the flip-out LCD an important feature.

I hope this information is helpful to Operation Gadget readers who are deciding which Canon digital camera appeals to them as an experienced amateur photographer.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Joshua Waller of DigiCam Reviews published new review of the Kodak EasyShare CX7330 3-Megapixel Digital Camera. The CX7330 has a 3x optical zoom lens and a 1.6-inch color TFT screen. It has 16-Megabytes of flash memory built in and takes a SecureDigital card for additional storage.

The review has a number of example photos taken indoors, outdoors in daylight, partial sun, and at night, and in the macro mode. There are also good photos of the camera, its controls, and the information displayed on the screen.

Waller said, "The camera generates good pictures, with rich saturated colour, and especially good skin tones.... {This} camera offers very good value for money, as an easy to use digital camera, with some clever features such as the orientation sensor. If you want a very easy to use digital camera that produces decent 3 megapixel images on a budget, printable up to 8 x 6 inches, then this is definitely worth considering, and I would not hesitate to recommend it."

This camera is clearly being positioned as one of the best values for the money for the 2004 holiday season. It's on sale everywhere I look, from Amazon.com to Wegmans Food Markets store in Princeton. If you are interested in getting an inexpensive 3-Megapixel digital camera with decent features, you should try to pick one up before the stores you frequent run out. At these prices, the CX7330 will sell out at many stores well before Christmas. [ via Digital Photography Blog ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a nice nice review of the Canon PowerShot S1 IS up on Photoexels.com. I talked about the Powershot S1 IS on Operation Gadget back in September and this review validates my thoughts about it. The reviewer places this camera in the "Beginner to Serious Amateur" category and tells you what you need to know to decide whether it's the camera for you right off the bat:

The Canon PowerShot S1 IS is our recommended digital camera for someone starting in photography and desiring a full featured and affordable ultra zoom model.

Not only does the Canon S1 continue the PowerShot S series tradition of high-quality and easy-to-use digital cameras, it also incorporates some high-end features usually found only in more expensive prosumer models.

As you know, I'm looking for a new digital camera, and the first one I buy is probably going to be either the Canon Powershot S1 IS or the Canon PowerShot A85 depending on how much money I have and how compact I decide I want the camera to be.

The review has a number of good sample photos. It also provides a few pieces of information about the camera that I had not known earlier:

• In Continuous Shooting Mode the camera doesn't do too well if you move it to try to follow action. Also, the Electronic View Finder freezes each time the shutter fires. That's got to be annoying.
• Image Stabilization and noise reduction apparently really help in long shutter speed situations.
• The camera has good fit and finish, in spite of the fact that the body is mostly plastic.

The reviewer has a lot more insights into the practical use of the Powershot S1 IS. I just knew a lot about this one before I read the review.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Nikon D70 Digital SLR:
Popular Photography and Imaging's
2004 Camera of the Year.
[ Photo: Amazon.com ]

Popular Photography and Imaging is out with their 2004 Camera of the Year Award, and the winner is the Nikon D70 Digital SLR Camera. The editors said that the D70 adds "some sophistication, features, fine-tuning, and, well, 'maturity' to what the {Canon EOS Digital Rebel} had wrought". The Canon Digital Rebel came out at the end of 2003.

I like the Nikon D70 because it reminds me of my Nikon N50 film SLR, both in terms of its form and in how the controls are laid out on top. The control layout is two generations newer than mine, but I feel like I understand most of it intuitively.

I look to publications like Popular Photography and Imaging for insights like the D70's color accuracy is "the best of any digital SLR {they've} ever tested", and that it has "a burst mode that gives you more than a dozen fine-quality JPEGs at 3 frames per second."

I'm looking forward to the day that I can afford to spend $1,000 for a prosumer digital SLR body. (There's a long way to go before I get there, in some respects.) As far as I'm concerned, the D70 and the Canon Digital Rebel are both fantastic cameras-- if you're choosing between the two, you probably already have a manufacturer preference.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nikon D2H Pro Digital SLR:
Harvey Levine used this with
a Nikon 400mm f/2.8 lens
to shoot cycling photos.
[ Photo: Amazon.com ]

John Cloninger asked what camera Harvey Levine used to shoot the photo of me that was taken at the Covered Bridge Metric Century that I featured on Operation Gadget?

Harvey reports that this photo was taken with a Nikon D2H Pro Digital SLR Camera and a Nikon 400mm f/2.8 lens. This is a premium setup to be sure.

I was telling John that you can't get the photo that Harvey took of me, or the photos he's taken at Penn State Football games, without having a long lens with fast focus and excellent sharpness. The Nikon 400mm f/2.8 lens apparently delivers this in spades. According to a review of the lens on FredMiranda.com:

...for what it does, this lens is the fastest and most accurate focusing lens I have ever used. It is also sharp beyond sharp and delivers a bokah {blur outside the depth of field} like a portrait lens. I have used it for field sports and racing. On my D2h body, it will follow a player running at me or diagonally across the field at full speed and it will follow an Indy car coming straight at me at 200 mph. The short {depth of field} when it is wide open, or close to it is wonderful for isolating a subject from its background, and it remains plenty sharp wide open, although it seems a bit sharper at f4.

A review on KenRockwell.com says that the Nikon 400mm f/2.8 lens costs about $10,000 new and $5,500 used. Many people apparently own the D2H body and rent the 400mm lens from a full-service camera store. I don't know whether Harvey owns or rents the one he was using that day.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this week, I talked about the Nikon Coolpix 8800, one of several new digital cameras recently announced by Nikon. I think the Coolpix is going to be a great camera when you can get it and if you can afford it. One thing I noticed while looking at competing models on Amazon.com is that Canon is dominating the digital camera market at the moment. By my count this morning, 7 of the top 10 cameras at Amazon are Canon PowerShot "S" or "A"-series cameras. The top sellers are:

Canon PowerShot S1 IS:
for those who think that optical zoom
is the key feature of digital cameras.
[ photo courtesy of Amazon.com ]

1. Canon PowerShot S410 Digital Elph,
2. Canon PowerShot A85,
3. Canon PowerShot S1 IS,
4. Canon PowerShot A95,
5. Canon PowerShot A300,
6. Canon PowerShot SD110 Digital Elph,
7. Kodak EasyShare CX6200,
8. Canon PowerShot S500 Digital Elph,
9. Sony Cybershot DSCP41, and
10. Sony Cybershot DSCW1.

My favorite of these cameras in this list, in terms of price and performance is the Canon PowerShot S1 IS. It's a 3.2-Megapixel camera with a 10x optical zoom. I got to play with one the other day, and it fits well in my hands, although it's larger than almost all of the other PowerShot models. That's not surprising because the PowerShot S1 IS is a model that has an SLR-like form factor.

Most of the others are compact digital cameras that produce 3, 4, or 5-Megapixel images, but only have 2x or 3x optical zoom. Once a consumer digital camera gets into the 3-Megapixel class or beyond, I am a lot more interested in the optical zoom capabilities than in increased resolution. The only reason I might de-emphasize optical zoom would be if small size was a greater priority than camera versatility.

Getting back to the list of sales leaders, I think that the timing of product lifecycles may have something to do with the fact that Canon is dominating to this extent. Canon may in fact have done their new product announcements a couple of months before their competitors, but they seem to have a lot more different cool little digital cameras than most other manufacturers. That's got to tell you a lot about what digital camera buyers want these days.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about a mid-priced digital camera that emphasizes optical zoom capabilities over image size. That camera, the Canon Powershot S1 IS blows the optical zoom capabilities of my film SLR camera away, at least with the lens I use for every day photos.

A couple of days ago, Nikon announced a new series of digital cameras that also emphasize optical zoom capabilities. The top of the line prosumer model, the Nikon Coolpix 8800, combines the 10x optical zoom feature that I like so much in the Canon with an 8-megapixel still image capture capability. This lets you shoot an image that can be printed at 20 by 30-inches, if you are so inclined.

This camera is going to be tough to get before Halloween, but retailers like Amazon.com are taking orders now.

The other key feature on the Coolpix 8800 is vibration reduction. This is the first consumer-oriented Nikon digital camera to incorporate this technology, which makes high resolution pictures clearer in less-than-optimal shooting conditions. A situation where vibration reduction will improve pictures is in low light. When the flash isn't powerful enough to illuminate the entire subject of your photo, the camera's shutter has to compensate by staying open for a longer time. Without vibration reduction, shots like these are often impossible without a tripod or a monopod.

I'm looking forward to getting a Coolpix 8800 in my hands. I want to see how much vibration reduction improves the quality of photos that rely on my unsteady hands. As is the case with all digital cameras that produce big images and have large zoom capabilities, I want to see how fast and how accurate the zoom controls are.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Canon PowerShot S1 IS,
photo courtesy of Amazon.com.

I have a Nikon 850 from back in the old days of digital cameras. I think it produces 2.1-megapixel images. Ever since I saw a high resolution photo from that camera displayed at full size on a computer monitor I've wondered when the digital camera manufacturers would stop increasing the size of the photos and work on other ways of making digital cameras take sharp pictures.

Canon is pursuing this idea with the Canon PowerShot S1 IS Digital Camera. The photos it produces only come out with 3.2-megapizel resolution, but the camera makes up for it with a whopping 10X optical zoom and image stabilization. The lens has a 38 to 380mm zoom capability, in 35mm SLR terms. Compare that to the everyday lens on my Nikon N50 35mm camera: a 28 to 100mm. The lens on my film camera only provides a 4X optical zoom.

The PowerShot S1 IS lets you shoot photos that are really difficult to get with other cameras. I went to a professional baseball game this summer to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday. I tried to get a shot of his name on the scoreboard on the opposite side of the stadium when they honored all of the birthday guests-of-honor. I was taking pictures with my 35mm camera and a 28 to 100mm lens. After I developed the film, I couldn't read his name! With most digital cameras, I would have gotten a very large image, but his name would still have been difficult or impossible to read. I know I could have gotten the shot with the PowerShot S1 IS.

This camera is such a different approach from most consumer-oriented digital cameras on the market today, that I'll make a special effort to be nice to my contact at Canon in order to get a review unit. I think it's worth a long-term evaluation. And, if I were buying a mid-priced digital camera today, I'd definitely give the PowerShot S1 IS a try.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, CNET published an article called Separated at birth: bargains on cloned products, which examines similar electronic products that are available from more manufacturer at different price points. The article lists similar products in the following categories:

• portable DVD players,
• plasma TVs,
• front projectors,
• headphones,
• DVD recorders, and
• digital cameras.

I wanted to take a look at a product pair that was listed in the article, to see how similar the products are, and how much could be saved at Amazon.com. So, I checked out the Panasonic Lumix DMC-F1S and the Leica D-Lux digital cameras.

The Leica D-Lux is a 3-megapixel digital camera with a 3x optical zoom. It's aimed at camera buffs who are interested in a digital camera for quick snapshots. According to Leica's website, "As a constant companion it one can capture the encounters and events in life and document them as in a visual diary. It has clearly arranged functions and is delightfully easy to use. With numerous possibilities for individualization, it is not merely a camera, but a valuable accessory - with you everywhere and at all times to preserve those precious moments you never want to forget."

Panasonic does a lot less to describe the way that the Panasonic Lumix DMC-F1S fits into its owner's lifestyle, but it's $450 cheaper.

I compared these two cameras in every way I can think of, and they almost have to be the same camera. They have the same:

• lens,
• effective resolution,
• maximum still resolution,
• maximum video resolution,
• memory card slot,
• built-in LCD,
• physical dimensions,
• weight, and
• rechargeable battery.

Apart from the brand name, the biggest difference appears to be the size of the memory card that's included: Leica includes a 64-megabyte SD card, while Panasonic only includes a 16-megabyte card. You can buy a 64M SD card from Amazon for $20 to $25, so you'll still be ahead $425.

I'm glad I did this analysis. It reinforced the idea in my mind that deals on electronics are out there if you do the research.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

PhotographyBLOG reported that Konica Minolta is about to announce the Dimage Z3, a new mid-priced digital camera with a 12x optical zoom. The site also reports that Konica Minolta is now releasing new digital cameras that theoretically obsolete the existing units every six months. What's an Operation Gadget reader to do?

Think carefully about whether the existing product meets your needs, and then make the buying decision. The Dimage Z2 is a very nice, 4-Megapixel digital camera with 10x optical and 4x digital zoom. This is a better digital camera than I own at the moment. I could produce great 8x10 color images with it. For my needs, it's more than enough.

I'll put it on my Amazon.com wishlist. Feel free to send it to me. I'm sure I'll be happy with it for a couple of years.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anita Hamilton wrote a short piece on the Bushnell Instant Replay Digital Binoculars in the June 28 edition of Time Magazine. This is the second time I've seen Instant Replay Binoculars this week. On Saturday, my wife and I and a couple of friends attended the Philadelphia Phillies - Kansas City Royals game at the new Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

In between innings, I ducked out of the right field upper deck stands to buy some refreshments. When I reached the concession area, the crowd around a guy standing there with what looked like a video camera was bigger than the line for food. I quickly bought my hot dogs and drinks, and joined the crowd to see what was so interesting.

It turned out that a Phillies fan had been using a set of binoculars with a small video screen on them. He was showing people replays of pitches because hits were hard for him to follow. I guess he hadn't had the binoculars for very long. When I got home, I quickly browsed the Internet, and found that Bushnell had a set of binoculars on the market that looked like the ones I saw.

The article in Time Magazine says that the Instant Replay binoculars cost $600, but they are available from Amazon.com and a number of other resellers for considerably less. I think that these binoculars are an interesting fusion of binoculars, a digital camera, and a clip-length video camera. It has 2.1-megapixel still image capture capabilities. That would allow you to capture a pretty good 8x10 photo, if the digitizer is good. The video capabilities are probably not unlike that found in some mobile phones today. Unit specs say that it can capture 30-second video clips.

I think that Bushnell Instant Replay Binoculars are an interesting idea. I'd definitely consider buying a set if I was a season ticket holder for one or more professional sports teams. If I had that much money to spend on entertainment, an additional $300 or 400 for a gadget like this probably wouldn't hurt too much. I'll have to look around the Internet some more and see if there are sample images and clips captured by the binoculars.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I learned earlier today that Amazon.com is running a sale on Olympus digital cameras. I looked through the less expensive cameras for a deal that I thought was particularly good and I found the Olympus D-540. This is a 3.2-megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom and a 3.3x digital zoom which can be combined to get you to 10x effective zoom with some degradation of sharpness. The D-540 has a 1.8-inch LCD display and a pretty good flash. It stores its images in JPEG format on xD cards.

The reviews I've read of this camera elsewhere are very good. For example:

• Digital Camera HQ:

  The compact, 3-megapixel Olympus D-540 is a good choice for beginner photographers looking for simplicity and style. With a very similar design to the 4-megapixel Olympus D-580, the D-540 offers fully automated controls, a 3x optical zoom, and seven preset scene modes. Thanks to its "Auto Connect USB" capability, the D-540 can be connected to almost any computer for instant image downloads -- no software required.

• Steve's Digicams:

  ...the Olympus D-540 zoom offers a good value to families desiring a digicam combining good image quality with ease of use. Its uncomplicated automatic features produce properly exposed images, its sharp 3x optical zoom lens offers a versatile range, and its 3-megapixel imager has enough resolution for 8x10-inch prints or cropped prints of smaller size.

I liked the D-540 more than the Olympus D-395, which is $40 or 50 less expensive, but gives up truly useful features like the optical zoom.

There's a $25 usage credit at Ofoto available if you buy the D-540 by June 30, 2004. That's a pretty substantial bonus considering the low price of this camera.

If you are looking for an inexpensive digital camera with good resolution and logical controls, the Olympus D-540 is worth checking out. I like this model, and I think I could produce good 8x10 prints of family photos shot with it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rob Galbraith Digital Photography Insights recently published an outstanding expose of Sports Illustrated's Digital Workflow. Eamon Hickey got to watch as the photo editors from SI poured the photos that they took at Super Bowl XXXVIII and he's captured tons of interesting details.

No hobbyist has the resources to do what these guys do, but, it's sure interesting to read about how they processed over 1 million images shot at or leading up to the biggest single sporting event in America. [ via The Gadgets Weblog ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fazal Majid asked an important question on Saturday in an entry on his weblog entitled Are Americans becoming second-class consumers? He cites several situations where manufacturers shipped products with the same name in two different markets, but the U.S. version had fewer features or lower quality components than the equivalent product destined for other markets. He cites:

• the Sony Clie PEG-TH55 Handheld, which ships without Bluetooth in the U.S. This was discussed on Operation Gadget on March 5.
• The Canon EOS Digital Rebel with 18-55mm Lens, which "has the smooth and fast USM ultrasonic motor in Japan, but uses the inferior AFD micro-motor in the US". That's news to me.
• The Epson Stylus Photo 2200 Inkjet Printer, which "does not include in the US the gray balancer, special software and calibration sheets used to improve the neutrality of black and white prints."

Majid also cites laptops and portable electronics imported by vendors like Dynamism that U.S. subsidiaries of international electronics companies consider poor fits for the largest single electronics market in the world.

These are all good points. But, when we discuss products that make it to the U.S. market late or not at all, how about GSM phones like the Nokia 6600 that's been out in Europe and Asia for months, but has only been made available in the USA by T-Mobile within the last week? This phone is hot and it's hard to understand why Nokia would not want to ship as many of these in this country as it could. I'd think this would be particularly important, considering Nokia's recent problems achieving predicted handset sales volumes.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Doc Searls recently picked up a Nikon Coolpix 5700 and likes it. He says:

In my CES Report, I said the digital camera I found myself liking best was the Nikon Coolpix 5700. Well, a few days ago I got one.... I love the high quality of its photos, its materials and construction, its grip, and its range of options and features (e.g. white balance adjustment, which is subtle and amazing).

As with any true power user, he goes on to cite 12 specific areas where the Coolpix 5700 could be improved. There's nothing like comments from an actual owner to help you decide whether to put down your own money, is there?

A little research indicates that Amazon.com has a really good deal on this camera when you figure in the mail-in rebate.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a recent article, I mentioned that the Digital Imaging Marketing Association had a Digital Camera Shootout at the DIMA Annual Conference in Las Vegas back in February. They picked winners in seven different categories based on retail price range, and an eighth for digital video camcorders. The winners were:

• In Point-and-Shoot Camera categories:
  • HP PhotoSmart 735 for the $100 - $199 price range,
  • Minolta Dimage X20 for the $200 - $299 price range,
  • Casio QV-R51 for the $300 - $399 price range,
  • HP PhotoSmart 945 for the $400 - $499 price range, and
  • Olympus Camedia C-5060 for the $500 - $799 price range.

• In Prosumer/Professional Categories:
  
  
  
  • Olympus Camedia C-8080 for the $999 - $1299 price range, and
    
  • Leica Digilux 2 for the $1300 - $1799 price range.
    

• And, in the Digital Video Camcorder Category, the
  Sony DCRPC330 Handycam took the honors.
  

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

TechTV did short reviews of five good digital cameras with street prices under $200. The cameras they reviewed include:

• Olympus D-395 (3 megapixel),
• Fujifilm A210 (3.2 megapixel),
• Nikon Coolpix 2200 (2 megapixel),
• Kodak EasyShare CX6330 (3.1 megapixel), and
• Gateway DC-T23 (2 megapixel).

All of these cameras are great deals for the money. Some offer stronger features in certain areas than others. Beyond better resolution, things like optical zoom capability and camera startup time are important.

One more that I would have included is the
HP PhotoSmart 735. It's a 3.2 megapixel digital camera that recently won its price category at the 2004 DIMA Digital Camera Shootout at the PMA 2004 Convention and Trade Show in Las Vegas. I haven't seen too much coverage of this competition on blogs similar to Operation Gadget, but the approach used to evaluate each of the 50 cameras in the competition was quite rigorous. [ via PhotographyBlog ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guideline Research released a report on the America's appetite for multifunction wireless devices. According to the news release, 49 percent of those surveyed have "no desire" for devices that allow them to multitask with their gadgets-- either make phone calls, in the case of mobile phone, or hold data, in the case of PDAs. James Belcher, co-administrator of the survey, said:

Multifunction devices don't reflect the consumers' preference for dedicated, simple devices. With the exception of the PC, most consumers just don't want to do multiple things with a single device.

In spite of the apparent sweeping conclusion, the article goes on to point out that 40 percent of survey respondents were "anxious to have a multifunctional device" and 10 percent already own a multifunction device. Last time I checked, 40 + 10 = 50. Isn't that just about even, 49 versus 50 percent?

I think that the survey underestimates the public's appetite for multifunction gadgets because it neglects some critical issues:

• knowledge of the features of specific handhelds versus hypothetical feature pairings,
• availability of third party software and services,
• pricing of handheld devices, and
• pricing of wireless services.

Operation Gadget readers are clearly in that 50 percent that either is anxious to have a multifunction device or already owns one. We know that our gadgets simplify our lives, even if they confuse some of our relatives and friends. We didn't buy our Blackberries and Treos for them, we bought them for us. [ via BargainPDA ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the weekend, a bridal shower was held for my sister, Julie Aiello, who will be married to Robert Howson in April. I "made an appearance" in order to help setup the party room, entertain the groom-to-be while the shower was taking place, take photos at the end, and probably most importantly, help with post-shower gift logistics.

During the picture taking part of the shower, my sister's bridesmaid, Marijo Yates showed me her FujiFilm FinePix S5000, a 3.1-megapixel digital camera with a rather unique design that includes a 10X optical zoom. This is a very substantial feeling camera which feels surprisingly more like a film-based 35mm SLR camera or a Canon EOS Digital Rebel the more compact designs typical of this price range. However, I liked the way it felt in my hands and I could see shooting a lot of pictures with it.

I really liked the fact that it had both a 1.5-inch LCD display on the back of the camera body and a 0.33-inch electronic viewfinder. However, the button to switch between the two seemed slightly counter-intuitive to me when I first picked up the camera. That's probably because I expected the viewfinder to be a traditional through-the-lens type, like the one on my old standby Nikon N50 35mm SLR.

Some of the reviews I've seen of the FinePix S5000 are somewhat critical of FujiFilm's choice of JPEG compression methods because this camera will shoot a 6.1 megapixel raw image (2,816 x 2,120 pixels) but typically stores images in JPEG format at a 3.1 megapixel effective resolution (2,048 x 1,536 pixels). In my opinion, you can look at this from two different perspectives. Most regular folks are going to find the 3.1 megapixel JPEGs that this camera produces fine for most applications, including traditional 8 x 10 inch photo prints to frame and hang on the wall.

Camera enthusiasts may look at this camera as an economical way to shoot good to very good quality 6.1 megapixel raw images. Compare the price of the S5000 to higher-end cameras like the soon-to-be-released Fujifilm FinePix S7000 or the current prosumer digital camera gold standard, the Canon EOS Digital Rebel. I think you'll agree that the S5000 represents a substantial savings, if you know how to get the most out of it or can pick up advanced digital camera shooting techniques.

I'm not that familar with the storage media that the S5000 uses, XD Picture Cards, nor the economics of it relative to CompactFlash or Secure Digital cards. I'll have to familiarize myself with the storage format and do a little comparison shopping to see whether this was a good choice for FujiFilm to make.

I was really impressed with the fact that my sister's friend Marijo had a FujiFilm FinePix S5000. This is not your see-one-everyday, fits-easily-in-your-pocket digital cameras, and it shows that she and her husband have done some careful shopping in order to make this choice. I think it's a very good camera for the money, and I know that a lot of Operation Gadget readers could get a lot out of it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

My friend John Haley has been using Sightspeed Real-Time Internet Video Communications and is really happy with it. This is a video instant messaging service for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh that works at up to 30-frames-per-second.

Here are some tips that John offered for using this service:

• Go with their webcam recommendations. Top cameras are:
  • Logitech Quickcam for Notebooks,
  • Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000,
  • Logitech Quickcam Orbit, and
  • Apple iSight FireWire Webcam for Apple computers.
• Use a separate microphone or headset.
• Make sure you have adequate lighting aimed at you for your webcam to pick up a quality image.

John says, "I've been using it and it's lots of fun. There is a 'buddy list' so you can see who is online with Sightspeed and 'ring' them up."

The cost of this service is $4.95 per month for unlimited use. It can be used for 15 days on a free trial basis. If cost is an issue, you can continue to use it for free for up to 15 minutes per day for as long as you like.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, I had a nice conversation with the woman working at the Photo Center at the Target Store in East Windsor, NJ. From time to time, I go there to pick up and drop off film from my 35mm SLR camera that does not need special processing. Normally, I have the choice of one hour service or one day service provided by the Kodak.

The woman said that she could not accept film for one hour processing because they are hopelessly backed up for the time being. I asked why. She told me that so many digital photos had been dropped off since Christmas that they cannot keep up with the demand for prints.

Apparently, the photo processing machine that they have at that Target Store can only make digital prints at a rate of one print per second. Before she arrived for work today, someone dropped off 300 digital images and asked for double prints.

This last situation sounds familiar. When I got my first digital camera, I used it in much the same was as I used my 35mm SLR, I just shot many more pictures. I got prints made of nearly every photo I took because I was a successful consultant and business was good. At the time, the only labs capable of doing a good job of digital prints were firms like Ophoto and Shutterfly. These labs did a good job then and still do.

Local one hour places like Target are now competing in this space. But, they are not equipped to handle the kind of volume that at least some of them are apparently receiving.

Here are some tips for you new digital camera owners:

1. Get a good piece of digital photo management software for your personal computer. An example would be iPhoto2, part of iLife for the Macintosh, or Jasc Paint Shop Photo Album 4, a Windows program that is discussed elsewhere on Operation Gadget.
2. Pick the best few prints.
3. Have them printed locally or by a remote lab.
4. Figure out a way to show the rest of the photos to friends using a PC or TV, if they are physically present, or via a web page or email, if they are not.
5. Don't print every photo you keep on your camera.

The fellow camera users in your community thank you.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, The New York Times reported that the video that first showed Saddam Hussein in U.S. custody was shot with a Sony PD150. The DSR-PD150 is a professional-quality mini DV camcorder that retails for about $3,900. According to the article:

Sony PD 150's are the same cameras many photojournalists use, but some combat camera operators, like the one who shot Mr. Hussein's medical exam, still manage to give their video a raw, low-fi look. Perhaps that's because they are often in the dark about what to shoot until the last minute.

"They'll say, `We got a mission; you need to be there in half an hour,' " {Staff Sgt. Wesley Wooten, a combat cameraman} said.

I'm not sure anyone is going to want to pick up one of these just because it's the military documentarian's tool-of-choice, but, I thought I'd point it out. [ registration required for the New York Times site, via Lost Remote ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you take a lot of digital photos, you've probably wanted a way to archive images in the field in order to clear space on your flash memory cards. One of the choices you have in this area is the SmartDisk FlashTrax FTX30 and its brethren, the FTX40 and the FTX80. They are portable, battery-powered, Linux-based devices that contain 3.5 inch LCD displays and hard drives of 30, 40, and 80 megabytes, respectively.

When I'm shooting digital photos at a sports event or a family gathering, I often find that I'm with someone who wants to look at recently taken photos even while photo opportunities still exist. With a FlashTrax, I could simply swap two flash memory cards, copy the photos into the FlashTrax, and let the person who wants to review the photos use the FlashTrax's photo browser.

This looks like a good deal compared to very high capacity flash memory cards. It gives you an extra browsing device, and the 30 gigabyte model can store about 15,000 1.6 megabyte digital photos. This means you could leave the laptop home when you go on a vacation, if you want to.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, I was flipping through a copy of the November 24, 2003 issue of Forbes Magazine when I came across a reference to the Panasonic SVAV100 D-Snap MPEG4 Camcorder in the Digital Tools column written by Stephen Manes. The D-Snap is a tiny digital video camcorder that records directly onto Secure Digital memory cards.

The reasons to have a tapeless camcorder at this point are for their size, weight, and output format. The entire device is 1 1/4 x 2 1/8 x 3 1/2 inches and weighs less than 5 ounces. This is smaller than most digital still cameras, so you can carry it to places that you would never think of bringing a larger camcorder. The camera stores its recordings in either the MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 format. This means that clips can be emailed and played by others quite easily.

The drawbacks of this type of camcorder are recording capacity and limited editing software support for the tapeless camcorders and the MPEG-2/MPEG-4 formats. According to the Forbes article:

The D-snap can record just ten minutes of top-quality full-screen video on a 512-megabyte SD card. One comes with the camera; additional cards cost more than $150 each. At that rate, you'd go broke trying to record something like a wedding without an assistant to transfer the data to a computer. And since the price forces you to keep erasing and reusing the memory cards, you'd also have to figure out how to keep track of gigabytes of data and maintain the originals. Tape makes more sense: A one-hour MiniDV tape costs about $4, cheap enough to serve as its own backup.

Unlike MiniDV, MPEG-2 video is hard to edit. Panasonic's rudimentary software doesn't so much as let you combine two shots into a single scene. And the camera produces files whose names are unrecognizable to most third-party programs, though Windows Media Player can open them after momentary befuddlement.

Until I started studying the D-Snap, I had not realized that products like relatively advanced digital editing software like Final Cut Express from Apple Computer doesn't support camcorders like this one. I'm sure that support for devices like the D-Snap will happen. But, I'm not sure when the market will mature to the point where including that support becomes important to the editing software companies.

Only the true pioneers in the Operation Gadget community will be able to cope with the compromises necessary to use a camcorder like this at the moment. Buying this product now would put you so far out onto the bleeding edge that you would have difficulty sharing the experience with most other digital video enthusiats. But, I hope that as the price of SD memory cards declines, and software begins to support MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 editing better, a product like the D-Snap will become much more attractive.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Martin O'Donnell reports from the West Coast Bureau:

I was at Costco yesterday and noticed that there was apparently a major price drop on the Kodak DX4530, a 5-megapixel model with 3x zoom. Earlier this month it was $390, yesterday it was $340, and the Kodak site now reports MSRP of $299. We had been looking at the cheaper DX4350 (same camera in 3-megapixel) and found it to be fairly well reviewed.

....One feature {of the DX4530} that I liked was a particularly large (32MB) internal memory. I'm hoping that is big enough to allow us to put off buying SD format memory for a while.

BTW, I was seriously looking at used, open box, etc., on eBay. Cameras from sellers I wanted to buy from were going for about $200 delivered for 3 and 4 megapixel models, it didn't seem worthwhile compared to the price we found for a new 5 megapixel with a warranty.

The Kodak EasyShare DX4530 is one of the most aggressively priced 5 megapixel digital cameras on the market today. The only 5 megapixel digital camera that we could find that is priced lower than it is the
Gateway DC-M50.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The BBC is reporting that the Pentax Optio S was voted the top gadget of the year in the UK. This was the result of a poll of the readership of T3 Magazine.

The Optio S came out slightly ahead of the Apple iPod MP3 player and the Sony Ericsson T610, both profiled recently on Operation Gadget.

In typically British fashion, the magazine went on to choose booby prizes. The ugliest gadget of the year went to the Motorola A830 3G mobile phone, while the most overrated gadget went to the NEC e606, also a 3G mobile phone. Neither of these phones are available in the United States.

The Pentax Optio S is a 3.2 megapixel compact digital camera with a 3x optical zoom. It is going out of production, and is generally characterized as "available while supplies last". It is being replaced by the Pentax Optio S4, a very similar 4 megapixel model.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My birthday is a little more than three weeks before Christmas. So, in November, my family starts pressuring me to hint at the gifts I'd like to receive in December. My trusty old Nikon Coolpix 950 has given up the ghost, so I decided to look for a new digital camera to add to my wishlist.

I spent some time looking at product catalogs, as well as reviews and user comments on a number of websites. There are more than 100 digital cameras that can be considered consumer or "pro-sumer" oriented, and it was really difficult for me to decide on one that I would say I wanted.

I finally chose the Canon Powershot S400. I was initially attracted to the unit by a review I found in a Forbes Magazine article called Gadgets We Love. Bruce Upbin said:

There are lighter, more function-rich and better-reviewed ultracompact digital cameras than the Canon PowerShot S400, but something about this one gets everything just right.... {You} can't take pictures if you don't have the camera with you. The S400 is so small, a business card across and two fingers high, I don't think twice about grabbing it before leaving home.

When I bought my Nikon Coolpix 950 several years ago, I spent the money necessary to buy one of the best pro-sumer cameras available. Now, I don't feel that I need the absolute best camera. I'd like something small that produces good high resolution pictures when I want them, but is also good for quick family photos. The Canon PowerShot S400 seems like it's in a sweet spot in the market: it's a reasonably-priced 4 megapixel compact digital camera. That's why it's on my wishlist.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)