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Indy Airshow Experience ’09

Airplanes are romantic. Bear with me here. First, motorcycles are sexy. Why? Engine roar, shine, and speed. Airplanes are like motorcycles, but they fly. I mean, Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer weren’t pedaling around on tri-cycles and gently floating around in zeppelins in Top Gun, were they?

No. They were in F-14 Tomcats and Cruise rode around on a 1985 Kawasaki Ninja.

In the movie Independence Day Randy Quaid doesn’t blog about how much he hates the aliens because they did invasive medical research on him. No he doesn’t. He flies an F-18 fighter jet right up their…

Seriously. That’s romantic.

We here at Roberts are enamored of airplanes, which is why we’re sponsoring the Indy Air Show Experience at the Indy Air Show on June 7th. $70 (tickets purchased over the phone at 800-726-5544 or in person at the store) gets you admission, parking, lunch and access to pro-lenses and perhaps some of the latest pro bodies. Representatives from Sony, Nikon, Canon, Bogen, HyperDrive, Pelican, and VisibleDust will be in attendance.



Portable Portfolios

I am increasingly fond of the idea of a paperless portfolio. Nevermind the technical reasons prints are still better (more reliable color accuracy, better dynamic range, smoother tonality), LCDs have gotten competent enough as a whole to be useful enough, and most photos will look considerably snappier on a good LCD than on a good print, if you ask me. I have a new PMP (portable media player, for those of you not in-the-know) on its way, and I’ve already exported a collection of pictures to load it up with in case I need to show off some work on the spur of a moment. Sure, the resolution isn’t the best, but t’s got a nice shiny screen that gives the contrast a bump and ends with things not looking entirely accurate, but certainly “poppy” enough for your average viewer.

That’s a Zune, the smaller screen of iPods might work less well for this. The iPhone and the iPod Touch, though, would make sharp little portfolios, and I bet in this business there’re already quite a few of you in possession of those.

And, when you need something more than just a little screen, there’s always the Digital Foci Photo Album, which got some attention way back when it was announced and which I have finally had a moment to play with myself.

My thoughts?

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Pocket sized HD camcorder

HD camcorders are getting smaller and smaller but the quality keeps getting better and better.  The new Sony HDR-CX100 is one of those new high end, high def camcorders.  It is really small, palm sized.  It comes equipped with 8GB of embedded memory and lets you record up to 3 hours on the internal memory.  You can add more memory easily with Sony Memory Stick Duo flash memory cards.  High resolution photos are an easy thing too, with 4 megapixel still image capture.  The 2.7 inch wide angle screen is high res too and easy to see.  Small, affordable, sharp.




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