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Tips, Tricks and Traps from the Tong’s

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Canon lense quality

September 28th, 2008 · No Comments · Geek

SLR Gear has a good analytic review set for lenses. Canon is a focus here, but they have Nikon too of course. Unlike many reviews, this one is quite quantitative with good recommendations for what aperture and focal length to use for maximum sharpness:
Canon EF 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6L IS USM. Image quality 8.61/10. Best results at [...]

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Smaller than a dSLR recommendations

September 16th, 2008 · No Comments · Geek

David asked me, OK, zooming back (no pun intended), if you want a smaller camera, what are the realy choices:

Canon or Panasonic point and shoot. If you just want a point and shoot like the Instamatic of old, then pretty much anything in the el cheapo 8MP range is going to work. Last year’s SD850 [...]

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Final decisions on ultracompact cameras: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX35 vs. Canon Powershot SD790 IS

September 16th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Geek

Well, unless you are going for a pro-grade compact camera like the soon to launch $500 Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3, probably your main criteria is being small and OK pictures which is what you are going to get. Overall, it is interesting how cameras have not improved much from my trusty SD500 and Fuji F11 [...]

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Less sophisticated but ultracompact

September 7th, 2008 · No Comments · Geek, Photography

So it looks like the advanced compact cameras are really a turkey shoot between the Panasonic DMC-LX3 and the upcoming Canon G10. As an aside the 5MP camera we are replacing is a Canon SD400 which is 5.7 cubic inches and 130 grams. So it would be nice to get something about the same size.
What [...]

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Ricoh GX200

September 6th, 2008 · No Comments · Photography

Ricoh really pioneered the idea of a high end compact camera that could actually take good pictures. Photographyblog.com has a good review. Note there is also the Ricoh GR Digital II which is essentially the same but with a fixed 28mm lense. It’s pricey at $600, but it is a high end camera.

111mm x [...]

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Panasonic DMC-LX3

September 6th, 2008 · No Comments · Geek

While SLRs are getting incredible, the whole compact end is stagnant. Even with a 14 megapixel sensor, the small size means they are noisy and getting a decent shot at ISO 400 is nearly impossible. That plus slow lenses means I really don’t like the quality. This is a semi-professional camera much like the [...]

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Webcams

May 12th, 2008 · No Comments · Geek

Dave was asking me about webcams. Since we use Macs mainly, I haven’t really studied the PC market (all Macs have iSight webcams which are decent, but most importantly built in).
Cowboyfrank.net has an amazing number of webcam reviews. He likes the Creative Notebook Pro, but the top rated notebook one is the Logitech Quick Cam [...]

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