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› archive for June, 2009

EOS 40D vs The Living Dead

40d not dead

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mark the passing of a giant, a giant that caught us unawares. The EOS 40D was not just a camera, but it was a Canon. Proud, and bold and… wait… What? What? You’re kidding me? It’s not actually dead?

But, it was replaced, by the 50D, which even outperforms it (especially in AI Servo AF), and which doesn’t even have as much noise once you downsample the 15.1 megapixel images to match the 40D’s 10.1 megapixels. That’s a fault of peepachus, not the 50D, right?

And, we can’t even get ahold of any. We have none in stock. But, it’s not dead you say?

Weird.”



Eye-Fi Goes Pro

eye-fi pro

Click to See Eye-Fi's Page

Continuing our “the editor was out last week, we’re behind, please forgive us” series of posts to this blog, next up we have the Eye-Fi Pro.

So, Eye-Fi, makers of the infamous line of wirelessly enabled SD cards, has finally addressed a few of the beefs levelled at them by pros. Namely, they’ve added:

  • RAW support
  • Ad-hoc wireless
  • Mystical voodoo that lets your photos exist in the ether until you turn your computer on at which point WHAM! they automatically download themselves.

It’s probably a reasonable bet we’ll end up stocking these. We have all the others afterall. Actually, I’m kinda surprised it hasn’t hit my “To Add” list yet. Keep your eyes peeled.



Rumblings For Olympus

There’s a lot of rumbling right now waiting for Olympus’ Micro Four Thirds announcement. Officially, there’s no word on when any of this might happen. Olympus is buttoned down tighter than a nun in a straight-jacket on the issue. The internet seems to think there’ll be something tomorrow, but the internet also thinks Rick-Rolling is hilarious, so how far one trusts it is a dubious decision. Whenever the announcement comes, you know we’ll be all over it like cheap polyester on the cast of “Fear And Loathing”. Whew.

We’ll leave it as an exercise to our readers to persue your own unsubstantiated rumors (try Wired and Engadget, *cough cough*), but what we can show you is the by now old hat Blendtec viral marketing video for the m4/3′s line. Go ahead, it’s Monday, help yourself to a little wanton destruction of electronic equipment, it’ll make you feel better:



The Sony Big Dog is here!

We finally go ‘em in stock and it really is a cool camera!  The new Sony Cybershot camera DSC-HX1 arrived the other day and it has some very cool features that most of the competition just doesn’t offer.

The HX1 sports a 20x optical zoom that starts out at 28mm (equiv. 135).  It has a panorama mode that takes all the work out of the process called Sweep Panorama.  This 9.1 MP monster has a 3″ titling LCD screen that is very bright and sharp for shooting as an HD camcorder.  That’s right!  It shoots in full 1080p, 1440×1080/30P!  This really is an all-in-one.  Long zoom, great stills, great video!



Walkabout Sits It Out

So, sorry to say this to you all, but Nick and I are stressed, tired, and busy this week, and we’re bowing out this week. We recommend spending the time with your families, friends, or– as we’re likely to do– your Lightroom and a good pillow. Next week is 100% a go, we’ll let you know the time once we have it ourselves.



Panasonic LX-3′s back in stock

Attention, Attention!!!!  We have received a VERY limited amount of the extremely popular Panasonic LX-3 cameras.  This is THE Panasonic digital camera that everyone is all hot and bothered about.  We have turned away a lot of customers the past couple of months because we had trouble getting any from Panasonic.  If you still want one of them, act quickly!  Call us today before it is too late!



Where All Da White Lenses At?

So, as some of you may or may not know, I’m a fairly large NIN fan. I’m not to the level of obsessive tell-you-which-halo-is-which-by-number, but I dig them. They’re currently on tour with Jane’s Addiction (presumably so the tour can be called “NIN/JA”, because, well, ninjas rock). I saw them recently here in Indy. This all matters for ye olde day job because NIN and Jane’s Addiction got together and made the best decision in the history of modern concerts: they decided to allow recording equipment in. From Trent Reznor, lead man for NIN:

In an effort to allow you to document your experience at the upcoming NIN/JA performances, we will be relaxing our photo/video policy (5/7/09 – 6/12/09 only). Fans will be permitted to bring in their personal cameras, video and audio recorders. This is not not an open door policy for any and all recording devices. Please try to use common sense as we are trying to ensure this experience is great for everyone attending. Don’t show up with a television crew and a recording studio.
To be clear: this applies only to the North American NIN/JA tour.

Examples:

I have a nice SLR camera and lens and I want to shoot photos. YES.
I have a high-quality camcorder and want to record video / audio. YES.
I have a shoulder-mounted broadcast-quality video camera and want to shoot the show. NO.
I have a flash-based audio recorder with a stereo hand-held mic and want to record the show. YES.
I have a full Pro-Tools rig running off a generator and want to record the show. NO.
I don’t have any recording devices but I’d kind of like to make out with Ilan. NO (probably).

Now, this was about the most exciting thing ever. So, I threw my 14-54mm in ym girlfriend’s purse, smacked my 50-200mm on my E-3, and nervously paraded up to the security gate… where they didn’t bat an eye and let me straight in. But I was shocked to be the only friggin’ personI saw with a half-way pro rig? Where was everybody? Seriously?

OK, mind you, it did rain like heck during the show, which probably discouraged a lot of shooting (although not me, man I love that camera). I was still sad to see so few of you out there shooting. Anyway, pictures below:



You Can Haz Video!

I announced back here that you kooky 5D Mark II users would soon have the quite boffo firmware update for your camera to gain that elusive “manual” “control” over your camera’s video functions. And that day is NOW.

Yup yup, official from Canon USA, go get your hot new firmware: http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=MultiMiscPageAct&key=EOS_5DMKII_Firmware&fcategoryid=139 (scroll to the bottom and click the red link at the bottom of the poster).



A Touch for Summer

School is out for some and will be for almost everyone soon. Now comes the time of vacations, summer jobs, camping or leisure. Now is the time of the year for Nikon Digital Camera sales in Indianapolis! I am a big fan of the new Nilon S230 point and shoot digital camera. With five colors: Jet Black, Cool Blue, Plum, Warm Silver and Gloss Red you could have a Nikon Digital camera for any mood. But I’m not here to talk about color, I’m here to tell you about what this digital camera can do better than any of others that I’ve tried (and I’ve tried a lot of digital cameras out Indianapolis!). Heck, even Nikon has had a couple of other touch panel models themselves, but this camera is what I like to call a hybrid. No it won’t get you better milage on your way to Key West, it might get you better pictures quicker. I call it a hybrid because it still has some physical buttons on it as well as virtual touch panel controls. The two buttons on the back of the camera are “camera/video/scene” on top, and “playback” on the bottom. There is also a physical toggle zoom control under the shutter button on top. Having just these three controls makes this the fastest, easiest touch panel The physical zoom button instead of a virtual one speeds the procees of framing your shots immensely. Pressing the ‘camera’ button brings up a set of options: Auto Mode, Scene Mode, Smile Mode and Movie. Tapping one of these icons on the panel then brings up that settings mode or scene options in the case of the scene mode. Other options are right on the screen if you want them by touching DISP (display) to show or hide them. Pressing the play button ionce brings up your shots, pressing twice shows options to edit, copy or modify them or options to view by dates or just show your saved favorites. Fun, fast, easy sure sounds like summer to me. Want to hear the even better news? This week Roberts Distributors sin Indianapolis and Carmel are running Nikon’s Dads and Grads sale, and these honeys are $30.00 off their regular price. The fastes easiest Nikon Digital Touch Panel Camera is now (for a limited time) under $200. Add one of our Kingston or Sandisk flash memory SD or SDHC memory cards and you are ready to touch your way to albums full of awesome summer images!



Scott Kelby’s Second Annual Worldwide Photo Walk

scott-kelby-photowalk

So, this wasn’t our idea, but you know Mr. Henry and myself do nothing but approve of this (and, indeed, you will find that we are already registered attendees for the Indianapolis branch), but mark your calendars for July 18th, because that’s the second annual worldwide photo walk. This is a big event and a great idea all around, so we’ll be horrendously disappointed in each and every one of you if you don’t attend your local branch (or, if there’s not one near you, start your own) and get out there and take some jawesome piccus.

There’re still like, 30 or so spots left in the Indy walk. This is unacceptable to us here at Roberts. Get on over to the site and register so we can see your sunny, happy faces through the barrel of your lenses as we assault the cannal with our photographic visions. If that’s not enough, you should come out and meet the gal brave enough to date everyone’s favorite insane webmaster. If I can get her to wake up early for this, the rest of you have absolutely no excuses ever. Be there!

Click the graphic above to be shot straight over to their site. Or, if you’re in Indy, click HERE to go straight to our registration page.




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