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Canon’s Rebel XTi Soon To Lose Status As Flickr’s Favorite Son

flickr-iphoneFlickr is basically the best baseline for what our market is you could ask for: completely voluntary, community-driven. It has only a couple biases, and they fortunately happen to be the same biases our online store operates by: consumer- (versus professional-) centric, and of course skewed towards the opinions of consumers who are also web-savvy.

Sounds like online shoppers to me.

Anyway, it’s been a big deal around the tech blogs that the long-time top camera on Flickr– the venerable Canon Rebel XTi–is soon to be displaced by a new most-popular camera– the iPhone. No, seriously. Mock them as many of us might, the camera phone is clearly arising as the new snapshooter of preference in the internet crowd. Interesting to note, and it means I’ll pay a bit more attention to Sony’s continual efforts in that arena (boy they love putting megapixels into anything that’ll sit still long enough for them to).

Rounding out the top 5 cameras on Flickr are two more Canon’s and the legendary Nikon D80. Flickr also breaks down statistics by point-and-shoot (Canon owns the top 5), DSLR, brand, camera hone, etc.. So, if you’re looking to see what’s popular in the Web 2.0 crowd, here’s your new bookmark: http://www.flickr.com/cameras/



New Nikon

Nikon D5000Everybody  talkin’ at me, but I don’t hear a word they’re saying.
At least not until I can actually handle the new D5000 Nikon Digital SLR camera offering myself. The previews do look good for this soon to be in stores replacement of the much lauded D80.  Many of the features that are in the D90 are going to be available for shooters on a tighter budget soon.

The D5000 keeps the D80′s 11 point AF and gains a little more continuous shooting speed at 4fps. Another improvement is on the back of the camera, Nikon’s first swivel screen on a DSLR, couple that with Live View and that makes this camera a serious contenderand gives it an advantage ofer it’s direct Canon competition (even the Rebel T1 which is also coming soon).

Nikon also switched to a CMOS sensor instead of the CCD and upped the pixel horsepower at the same time. The D5000 Nikon Digital SLR shares the same 12.3 megapixel sensor as the D90 but gets the latest firmware version on the Expeed processor which features improved Auto Active D-Lighting and face-priority AF) and enhanced Live View AF.  Other neat Nikon Digital SLR accessories that work on the D90 also move down to the D5000 like the GP-1 hot shoe which tags GPS location information directly into the EXIF file data. Nikon’s industry leading wireless flash system also works on the newbie.

The new D5000 is expected to ship at the end of April.
Body only for $729.95 . Body/lens kit with the 18-55mm
VR lens for $849.95.

I’m going to let the D5000 do the talkin’ just as soon as I can get
my hands on one, then we’ll talk some more, cowboy.



Camera Nomenclature Bothers Me

So, there’s a lot about camera naming that bothers me. What, you might ask, has me on this rant? Well, two things.

The other day we had a call asking about trading a Pentax K1000, and it took me a minute to remember that was a film body, I was mentally confusing it with the K1000D, a somewhat dated but still nice consumer DSLR. 1 letter in this case is a big difference.

And, just now, we had a call about a Rebel X. Yup, just “X”, which was of course before the age of digital also, going back to a time when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were popular the first time around. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d get to use seriously.

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New Nikon Digital SLR Camera announcement

Today, Nikon announced the D90 Nikon digital SLR camera.  Looks pretty cool.  Has the same chip capabilities as the D300 and has the same screen size (3 inch).  Uses an SD memory card.  The really cool thing is that it can shoot video!  That’s right folks, it is the first SLR to be able to shoot 720P, high definition video!  Of course, I have not tested this yet, but I hope the video feature works well.  I can only imagine what this will open up for people!

Here is a look at the top features:

  • 12.9 megapixel DX-format CMOS sensor (effective pixels: 12.3 million)
  • 3.0-inch 920,000 pixel (VGA x 3 colors) TFT-LCD (same as D3 and D300)
  • Live View with contrast-detect AF, face detection
  • Image sensor cleaning (sensor shake)
  • Illuminated focus points
  • Movie capture at up to 1280 x 720 (720p) 24 fps with mono sound
  • IS0 200-3200 range (100-6400 expanded)
  • 4.5 frames per second continuous shooting (buffer: 7 RAW, 25 JPEG fine, 100 JPEG Normal)
  • Expeed image processing engine
  • 3D tracking AF (11 point)
  • Short startup time, viewfinder blackout and shutter lag
  • Slightly improved viewfinder (96% frame coverage)
  • Extensive in-camera retouching including raw development and straightening
  • Improved user interface
  • New optional compact GPS unit (fits on hot shoe)
  • Same battery and vertical grip as D80
  • Vignetting control in-camera
  • 72 thumbnail and calendar view in playback



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