How can you run out of space with 16TB worth of DroboPro space. Well apparently it isn’t so hard with all the home movies and photos I’ve been taking. I have an old DroboPro with a mix of 3TB and 2TB drives and it is 98% full!

I’ve tried taking a few things off, but now that one of the drives is red, seems like it is time to see if I should continue with the Seagate 3TB drives I’ve been buying (fingers crossed, non have died yet!). I’m running in RAID 6 on both my storage devices, so theoretically two need to die for something really bad to happen (heck, since I have a pair, technically, I need to lose 4 of 16 drives . But time now to look again and see what is out there. Storagereview.com has been a good performance site and then I use the user reviews of newegg.com and amazon.com to gauge realiability.

Right now the recommendations are:

• For mass storage, there is a finally a set of reasonably priced 4TB drives. The 3TB drives (based on 800GB/platter) are still around at $160, but you can get a 4TB drive for $200 ($180 for the OEM version). Seagate makes one for the desktop, retail is STDB4000400 OEM model is ST4000DM000 (what a name!). It does spin slower at 5900 rpm vs 7200 rpm but still gives 140MBps vs. 160MBps for previous generation 3TB spinning at 7200 rpm, but that makes it great for archival storage (eg NASes). It only has a two year warranty though. 
• Seagate Momentus XT. This is a 500GB drive with 4GB flast at $130 that is a good compromise hybrid drive for a notebook.
• For a mainstream SSD, the Crucial M500 seems to be the best choice or get a last generation Crucial m4 or Samsung SSD 830 on close out (We have a bunch of Samsung SSD 830s and they are very good). For an older macbook, it probably doesn’t much matter what you get as anything is better than a slow hard drive. Kind of amazing speeds with 500MBps read and 400MBps write so something like 5x what you might get out of a traditional hard drive. The Samsung 840 Pro by the way is wicked fast. Crucial M500 (Amazon).
  

Spent an hour trying to get our Amazon Affiliate link back up for marketingplaybook.com. Just realized that it is because I have Adblock running so it appears in the source of the page, but not on the browser. I have to disable ghostery, noscript and adblock to see my own ads

Ming Thein really has a good analysis of what is available. Ideally, you want to buy one lense when you are 21 and then pass it on to your grand kids. Lenses are one place where you can really do that. His post on dSLR lenses is right on (IMHO) where he basically says validates all the research:

• If you are starting out fresh, then you should buy Nikon for your big 36MP monster. For a long time Canon had the lead in noise and so forth, but right now the D800E is probably the leader in image quality, so the best thing to do is probably to sell your Canon lenses in the still strong after market and move on. To what is the next question. And of course the big question is do you need a big dSLR anymore any way The wild card is Sony which is rumored to be revamping their A-mount line for launch in early 2014 to shake up the market. Makes it pretty clear it is time to move off of Canon and if you have to move now, then go to Nikon, otherwise, wait to see what Sony is up to. Certainly the SLT-A99 is a pretty amazing camera and Sony does make the Nikon sensors
• For most people, you don’t need a medium format camera, then actually the new ILCs and the choices are much harder. Basically the Nikon 1 isn’t high enough resolution for professionals, the Canon EOS-M is slow focusing and hard to use, if you are true afictionado, the Leica M (if you can afford it!). The Micro 4/3 is the most mature as Rennie knows!) with high ISO comparable to dSLRs of years past (but not current ones), so this is his choice right now although he does wonder a little bit with Sony being Olympus’s biggest shareholder.
• Sony NEX is the other contender for the best ILC system with great image quality, but the lens lineup is limited with a lack of fast lenses, so right now you just get the base lense or maybe a fast prime like the Zeiss 24mm F/1.8. He’s right I think, but the upcoming NEX-9 which is supposed to be a native full frame E-mount that can also accept A-mount and Leica M-mount, they are apparently trying to make Sony universal (makes sense as they are behind Canon and Nikon in lenses).
• Fuji X. He thinks it is just too slow even though the XE1 is faster although opinions vary.
• Samsung NX. The main issue here is the ergonimics and image quality is pretty good (although not as good as the NEX or OM-D)
• Compacts. His last point is that many compacts are really good now. Some good candidates are the Sony RX100 (but have an extra battery) because is has a 1″ 20MP sensor and a 28-100MM zoom which is a fast F/1.8 at the wide angle end. And as an aside, it is small enough to put on a DJI drone.

With my Canon 5D Mark II dead, it might make more sense, to see about selling all those lenses and then starting with an RX100 and then waiting for the Sony NEX-7N (24MP with 1/2 stop improvement in noise, 3.8M dot EVF, touchscreen, hybrid contract and phase detection AF, and Wifi) or the NEX-9 (which is rumored to be a full frame mirrorless like the Rx-1!) and wait for more lenses to come out and trying a Fuji XE-1 to see how it really is.

If you need a camera now, I’d say it would be Nikon D800, Sony NEX-7, Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the Sony RX-100 although the NEX-7N, NEX-9, OM-D E-M7 and Fuji XE-2 are around the corner according to Nippon Camera, so the main safe choice right now is the RX-100. Isn’t technology wonderful!

Had an hour and a half to think about this stuck at the border.

First is ur going up to Canada via peach arch stay left. There r more lanes open on that side.

When u come back the wait times are very optimistic. The sign says 40 minutes but we’ve been waiting an hour and a half. If u to peach arch stay left as lanes open there. But at pacific crossing stay left as lanes open to the right.

So if u see a line head to Lyndon or sumas. Go east young man!

Wow, Sony is basically using its electronic viewfinder technology to make $2K high tech binoculars (see Popphoto). It uses two 1/3.91″ (about a quarter ince) CMOS sensors that are 5 megapixels and beams them to a pair of OLED screens or you can capture the video as well. Plus compared with traditional binoculars, you get stablization, autofocus and brightness boosting digitally.

I’ve often used my Canon 5D2 as a monocular when watching sailing races a couple of miles out. Nothing like a 10x zoom optically plus using the screen to get another 5-10x. Really makes it easier to pick the lint on a boat

Scott also mentioned that the new glass coming out was getting much better because the sensors (see the post below) are getting great. Well, the first reviews of the Sigma 35mm F/1.4 DG HSM are truly amazing at $900 vs $2K for the Canon equivalent…

The Sigma 35mm f/1.4 is the finest lens I’ve ever used from the company. It has impressed me more than many of Canon’s own primes. Perhaps some of that is a bias because my expectations were slightly lower or I was at least cautiously optimistic about this offering. Either way, I have been thoroughly sold on the lens and have given up my quest for a Canon 35mm f/1.4L, even if Canon does replace their lens soon (which they should). It will likely retail for close to $2,000, putting the Sigma at half that. Canon would have to offer a significant amount of value for anyone to want to consider that over the Sigma, except possibly the most die-hard of Canon fans.

Thanks so much to my buddies, Bob, Scott and John. We’ve all been buying and looking at various mirrorless systems and my buddies have neatly split into three camps. NEX (Scott), Fuji (Bob) and Samsung (John). So what is a geek to think?

Well the main issue is how good the products really are. They are all quite similar from the external view. All are 16MP-24MP with APS-C sized sensor and are interchangeable lense. The big differences are the sensors themselves. And we’ve been debating the very confusing measures of performance based on how well the sensor perform in low light (low noise is critical here), how well they do dynamic range (good for landscape where you have big difference between light and dark) and of course how much they resolve detail. The confusion is that there are lots of different test methodologies and camera vendors are actually doing a lot of signal processing in the background, so you have to ask if the image they produce digitally processed or not. So here is a summary of the debate…

DxOMark’s measurements seem to track other accurate measurements of dynamic range and noise. It’s a very good metric. For instance, Bill Claff has done some really good work. His methodology is extremely solid and was developed independently before DXO. He works directly with the Raw data. In fact, his noise measurements for Nikon are based on the optical black pixels that are used for calibration in most arrays, eliminating the Raw process.

To understand noise in a digital camera, you have to account for several sources:

Photon noise – it is as random as random gets and is
Read amplifier noise – Amplifier noise is also pretty darn close to random Gaussian.
Analog to Digital Convertor noise – generally random, unless the ADC has design issues
Bad design noise – an example of this is the column readout noise seen in most Canon sensors, which shows up as streaks across the image
ADC offset – fixed offset variations in the readout across sensor columns, seen as darker or lighter areas in the image

Most modern designs eliminate the non-random noise in the amplification change. Non-linear jumps, are usually due to programmable analog and digital gain. For example, on the D800 for best dynamic range and noise performance in low light environments, you want to shoot at ISO 1600, which is the last ISO level that does not use digital gain, to allow the full use of the LSB in the ADC. Amplification can then be done in post-processing with your own software rather than what is done automatically. Every modern camera has a certain “native ISO” which is the last level before there is digital gain.

[As as aside, this is a pretty complex topic that stackexchange covers but in short, for older Canon cameras (7D, 5D2, 600D and older), ISO 1600 is the last native level so you don't need to shoort more than that. Canon then uses analog amplifiers to get to ISO 3200 and then digital amplification to get to above ISO 6400. Put another way, with these cameras, you should stop at ISO 1600 and process the rest digitally on your computer. Later Canon's have better analog amplifiers so you can get to ISO 25600 so you can shoot better. As an aside Sony Exmor sensors (used in Nikon and of course Sony) use a different sensor design. They work up to ISO 12800 natively but don't do as well in extreme ISOs vs Canon. On the other hand, they have barely any noise at ISO 100-400 so dynamic range is amazing. The main thing though is that it is hard to figure out what that transition to digital gain is. Scott says it is ISO 1600 on his D800, but this last piece implies it is a little further from that. Perhaps ISO 12800. Confused. Me too!]

If the sensor and image processing engine are well-designed, then offset errors and column readout noise are extremely low, leaving random photon and amplifier noise. Thus the reason why downsampling and averaging are valid techniques. Looking at cameras like the D800 and D4 and comparing to theoretical best case photon noise performance shows them to be about 1.2 stops away from the theoretical best possible noise performance.

http://home.comcast.net/~NikonD70/

http://home.comcast.net/~NikonD70/Charts/PDR.htm

http://home.comcast.net/~NikonD70/Charts/PDR_Landscape_scatter.htm

Fuji XTrans claims 1 stop better noise performance than the D7000. Given that the D7000 is 1.25 stops away from theoretical best dynamic range with only photon noise, that suggests that there is some “slight of hand” in Fuji’s claim. Removal of the anti-alising filter provides some of the improvement, since the filter itself creates loss within an octave of Nyquist (as can be seen when comparing the D800 to the D800e.

As for eliminating Moire, that’s crap. What they do is to apply a DSP filter across a much larger array section than a “normal” Bayer demosaicing algorithm. The filter will generally take care of color aliasing, due to the large number 2D samples being averaged. There will be errors that can be seen with pixel peeping, but across the image they will be randomized, eliminating the appearance of false color. What still remains is luminance Moire of repeating patterns at or above Nyquist. That’s just a fact of the physics. True Moire-free sensors will need a much higher pixel density that takes advantage of lens diffraction as the anti-alias filter.

Finally, I ran into this comparisons of out of camera jpgs from DP review. The interesting thing is to look at the resolution in the circular proportional scale on the right of the photo. Clearly there is something going on with the Fuji image processing. Looks like a bunch of averaging going on, which effectively makes for a low pass filter.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/12196364/samples/fuji_vs_nex5n.zip

Having looked at a few photos taken with the X-Pro 1 I’d say there is a nice “creamy” quality to photos taken. They seem to sacrifice resolution for that smooth look, which isn’t bad. I don’t know about the lens system, but if you’re looking for a camera that puts out good looking jpgs without post processing, that’s on the par with a Nex5, this isn’t a bad choice. If you process RAW files, then I’d probably go with something else.

Linux laptops. There is a dedicated site that helps you get Linux running on a laptop. Ludwig uses the ASUS Zenbook UX31XA although the later one looks like the UX32VD. Here are the choices by a quick skim for ultrabooks notebookcheck.net. Looking at this, they rated the Macbook Air 13 inch (mid 2012) as 89%

• ASUS Zenbook Prime UX21A. This is the 11″ version of the UX31A. It is 1920×1080 panel. The Zenbook UX21E uses the identical chassis. It has a 128GB SSD, 4GB Ram, IPS panel. 89% score.
• ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A. $1400 with Core i5 and 128GB SSD or $1500 with a 256GB SSD. (As a reminder the MacBook Air is 1440×900 vs 1920×1080). It is 20% faster than the older UX31because of the move to Ivy Bridge and faster SSDs. As an aside, you want an Adata MX11 but they will sometimes sue the Sandisk U100.
• ASUS Zenbook UX32VD. This is an side-date (I guess a sister). The UX31 is more expensive at $1100-1800 (how unintuitive is that) because it uses an aluminum unibody so is more durable, is fully SSD (the UX32VD uses a hybrid SSD+hard disk), but uses less powerful Intel HD 4000 embedded graphics (the UX32VD had dedicated nVidia graphics). The UX31 is 3.08 pounds while the UX32VD is 3.23 pounds.

So I got a Foswell PTZ camera to try for $130 or so from Amazon will report on that. The IZon is working just oK, it needs something for low light is the main issue. But up at the $600 range are some pretty interesting products particularly those that are ceiling mounted and that can see 360 or 180 degrees. CCPros has:

• GeoVision GV-FER521. $620 on Amazon, this is 5MP and i a fisheye lense system and includes sound detection. The reviews do say that the software is incredibly immature from GeoVision (you can’t use it with their GV-eye on IOS) and the various detection software doesn’t work either. They look like the same camera as the Axis. Also does POE. It is a 1/2″ sensor so pretty big.
• Axis M3007-PV. This is another 5MP sensor with either 360 or 180 degree panoramic views. $601 from B&H. 1/3.2″ sensor.
• Arecent Vision AV12186DN. These guys are doing truly high-end sensor with multiple cameras. These things look truly expensive with 12MP and Wide Dynamic Range  with 180 degree panoramic. B&H Photo Video has this for $1.8K with their older model a 4x5MP camera which is their AV20185 line