I’ve written before about the digital camera industry’s misguided megapixel race, leading to ever more pixels crammed onto the same size sensor in each next generation of camera. The problem is that increasing the density of pixels damages the camera’s ability to cleanly pick up detail. So I wanted to call attention to a recent review of Canon’s new EOS 50D digital SLR at Digital Photography Review, one of the best photography review sites out there.
The new 50D, an upgrade to Canon’s year-old 40D model, includes a 15.1 megapixel sensor, up from 10.1 on the previous model. But the greater number of pixels are simply crammed on the same 22 mm by 15 mm sensor plate (known as the APS-C format in the industry) as the earlier model. So what do you think happened when reviewers tested the camera? Major disappointment:
Considering the disadvantages that come with higher pixel densities such as diffraction issues, increased sensitivity towards camera shake, reduced dynamic range, reduced high ISO performance and the need to store, move and process larger amounts of data, one could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that at this point the megapixel race should probably stop. One consequence of this is that the 50% increase in pixel count over the 40D results in only a marginal amount of extra detail.
We’re by no means saying the 50Ds image quality is bad but it’s simply not significantly better than the ten megapixel 40D. In some areas such as dynamic range and high ISO performance it’s actually worse and that simply makes you wonder if the EOS 50D could have been an (even) better camera if its sensor had a slightly more moderate resolution.
Here’s the review’s comparison, for example, of close detail in photographs taken at a high ISO rating by the 50D and 40D:
All of this makes one more than a bit disappointed that Canon and others in the industry can’t get over the marketing benefits of the megapixel race (”hey, it’s got more pixels so it must be better”) and move onto to promoting features that actually make a difference.
The category of mini low-cost laptops, known as netbooks, seems to be growing rapidly and not just with copy-cat “me too” offerings but with innovative new features continually cropping up as well. Today I’m intrigued by the latest Hewlett Packard netbook, the HP Mini 1000. It has one of the best physical designs I’ve read about and includes multiple options if you want a wireless 3G card. PC Magazine’s Mini 1000 review concludes by praising the look and feel: “Design is a huge win for the 1000, as the flush screen, inlaid patterns, and large keyboard are superior to what its rivals offer.”
But, of course there are problems. PC Magazine complains about the mouse button placement (at the sides of the touchpad, as you can see above). More puzzling is the lack of good options for storage:
While competitors are offering netbooks with 120 GB and even 160 GB drives — and drives that spin at a performance-enhancing 5,400 RPM — Hewlett-Packard is for some reason offering only a crummy 60 GB drive spinning at a performance-sapping 4,200 RPM. So I guess I am still awaiting the perfect netbook.
The past few weeks, I’ve been getting an increasing number of followers on Twitter. Gee, I thought to myself, I didn’t realize my random complaints about professional sports and financial news coverage were soooo insightful. Then I started checking out just where a bunch of these new followers were coming from. I ended up on a lot of Twitter accounts that looked like this:
This isn’t an ordinary person’s account. All of the tweets here are actually links to a web site for some weird looking work-at-home site. I’m afraid that I even visited. Hopefully, Firefox protected me from any zombie viruses because MUST EAT BRAINS, MUST EAT BRAINS…right, lame joke…anyway…
I think the strategy behind this Twitter account is that some people will almost automatically follow anyone who follows them. That means the weird web site links get distributed over Twitter to any of those people. It’s sort of a no-cost distribution network for spammy web links. As you can see, it hasn’t worked too well for this site, which has followed 1,342 people on Twitter but has only tricked convinced 56 people to follow them, about a 4% uptake rate.
Still, there seems to be a proliferation of these spammy web site Twitterers. I now block them as soon as I discover what they’re up to. I only wish I knew the proper or popular label for these guys. Spam tweeters? Spameeters? Twammers? Taking suggestions from the peanut gallery in comments!
Spent a good bit of Saturday morning cleaning my office, but I cheated. Sure, I threw away lots of obvious trash, old magazines, empty coffee cups and the like. But I went with the piles of paper method. They’re hidden away, certainly. But I guess I really put off for another day the more difficult and time consuming task of sorting, filing and stashing the real mess. Looks like the window panes could use a good scrub down, too. Next time…
Don’t you love it when software designers listen to their customers? Gives me a warm feeling all over. So kudos to the authors of the incredibly useful Firefox bookmark synchronization add-on Foxmarks. After the demise of Google’s great browser synching tool back in June, I turned to Foxmarks to keep everything in tune on my various Macs. But unlike Google, Foxmarks only synced bookmarks, not passwords, cookies or browsing history. Of the three missing features, syncing passwords was easily the most useful. So I’m happy to report that Foxmarks new version 2.5 adds a solid password syncing capability.
The implementation is straightforward and easy to use. Password syncing is off by default so you must first go to Foxmarks’ preferences and activate it. The first sync requires that you create a password for password syncing and obviously you should create a long, twisty, turny one. The first sync was pretty darn quick. Then on other computers, you simply activate the feature and input the password.
I’m not a computer security expert but it does appear that Foxmarks has taken good care with the new feature. Transfers between browsers and the Foxmarks server are encrypted. And if you don’t trust Foxmarks, you can name your own server. If you ever want to erase all the passwords, there’s a handy button in Foxmarks’ preferences called “Delete Passwords From Server.” Furthermore, I would never trust Firefox to save passwords for critical web sites like my bank in the first place, so Foxmarks’ security is less than a critical need for me.
I do have one problem or issue with the new password sync feature. If Foxmark encounters a conflict — you have different passwords for the same web address — it presents a conflict resolution dialogue box. It shows both passwords blotted out. But just hit the giant, how-did-I-miss-it-earlier button labeled “Show Passwords” to see exactly what’s been saved on each. But the two conflicting passwords are both blanked out with dots so how are you supposed to know which one is correct? And there’s no option to simply type in the current password for that web site. Needs improvement here.
Semi-related aside: when Firefox notified me that there was an upgrade available for Foxmarks, it also decided to offer me the chance to install a few other popular add-ons. I decided to see if ColorfulTabs might help me sort through bunches of open pages. The add-on colorizes each tab you have open in Firefox with a different color (see picture below). After about 10 seconds, I decided that the various colors were more distracting than useful. It’s easier to simply read the black text in each tab to see what page it’s on. The clashing colors distracted my brain as I tried to read across the tabs. No thanks.
(Updated 10/21/08) Steve Jobs and Co. rolled out their new line of laptops today, making big changes to the existing Macbook, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro models. But with one exception, the new models are more of a step backwards, a lost opportunity, than an improvement.
The one indisputable improvement is with the graphics chips. Nvidia’s new GeForce 9400M chip and the even faster GeForce 9600M GT version are a gigantic improvement over the integrated graphics controllers in the previous Macbooks and Macbook Airs and a solid improvement even over the Macbook Pro. If you’re into playing computer games, this is a must-buy, must-upgrade justification. For everyone else? Not so much.
Look at what else changed. Again, we have Jobs’ useless emphasis of the thinness of the new models. Does anyone actually care about this? It’s like laptop anorexia. Despite the prettier dressings, the new Macbook Pro models are the same weight as the old ones, a feature people do care about. I really am not very interested in how many chips are inside my laptop or whatever other invisible, irrelevant improvements Apple made.
In addition to the lack of weight savings, the new models have about the same battery life (BUT SEE UPDATE2 BELOW) and got only mild speed bumps for their main processors. I do like the fact that hard drives on the new Macbook Pros are accessible/upgradable by users.
A couple of the other changes, however, are actually worse options than what was on previous models. There’s no longer a matte-finish screen option. All the laptops come with hyper-reflective glossy displays. Ugh. And they all come with the chicklet-like keyboards that aren’t as good for quick typing as the flatter keyboards on earlier Macbook Pros. More minor annoying changes include the loss of Firewire 400 and DVI ports on the Macbook Pro, which still has a Firewire 800 port. The Macbook loses Firewire connectivity completely. There’s a new port for connecting to displays (dubbed, logically enough, the “Mini Displayport”) but no cables or adapters in the box to connect it to any of your existing hardware. For $29, you can get a dinky cable to plug your DVI cable into the new Mini Displayport.
And of course, there’s the prices. An old model of the Macbook was cut to $999 from $1,099 but new models are at or above the old prices. These are tough economic times and a price cut could have a game-changer (as some Wall Street analysts were expecting).
Bottom line, from a laptop user’s perspective? Crappy displays and less useful keyboards are a hard pill to swallow when the only real benefit of the new lines is better graphics performance.
BetaNews reports on Jobs’ post-presentation remarks, including his view that the low-cost netbook segment (cough - hackintosh - cough) is “a nascent market that’s just getting started” and “we’ll see how it goes.”
The price is jumping 33% to $399 — more than the current Kindle — but in return Sony has added a new touch screen that lets you turn pages with a swipe of your finger a la the iPhone and without the half second flicker that occurs on exisiting e-ink screens (as an aside, I used to think the flicker was a big downer but I don’t even notice it on my Kindle anymore). The device will also include an on-screen keyboard (again like the iPhone), a surrounding lighting system and a note-taking function.
Paul Biba of the Teleread blog attended the unveiling and reports the bigger if overlooked news that Sony is also planning a major push to improve its ebook store. Sony’s ebook store currently lags so far behind the Kindle store in price and selection it’s not even funny. Plus you still have use your computer to buy books and then load them onto the eReader with a cable. Sony says it will double the number of books available to “about 100,000″ by the holidays. That’s still considerably less than the 183,000 ebooks available right now in the Kindle store. And Sony has been notoriously high in its prices, sometimes double the price of the Kindle store. I’ll say the jury is still out on the Sony ebook store improvements.
Biba also reports that Sony has a wireless version in the works, but no predicted timeframe. A Sony official tells Biba that the company want to offer consumers a choice of ebook stores available wirelesslessy. Negotiations to make that happen have delayed the arrival of a wireless Sony ereader.
That’s a plausible explanation but holiday season 2008 is around the corner and Sony will again be competing with the Kindle with a lesser ebook offering and now at a higher price point as well. I’m kind of excited by all improvements in ebook devices that bring us closer to normal but there may be more flash and less substance to Sony’s improvements than meets the eye. Raising prices seems like the opposite of what the ebook market needs at this point.
As I argued back in May, despite the proliferation of e-books and Amazon’s Kindle and all that, there is still a place for an intelligent bookstore. To repeat:
Amazon.com is fine with its computer generated suggestions and Barnes & Noble has all the best sellers fit to print. But only at HBS and its ilk do I find tables of recently released obscurities in the spotlight, staff-written recommendation notecards taped on shelves across the store and a cadre of knowledgeable, intellectual staffers ready to assist if I look the slightest bit lost or needy.
Here’s an obscure piece of Mac voodoo that hopefully few people will ever need. I opened up my sleeping Macbook Pro this morning (the 15″ 2.2 GHz mid-2007 edition) and the keyboard backlighting was on full blast. Pressing the F8 key to turn it off did nothing. In fact, the backlight brightness display appeared with a little circle with a slash through it (what Apple calls the “prohibitory sign”).
So I tried using the keyboard preferences to turn off background illumination. No luck, still stuck. I tried rebooting but no luck, still stuck. I tried rebooting and zapping the PRAM. No luck, still stuck. I tried messing around on Google for a solution someone else used. No luck, still stuck (with apologies to my kids’ favorite book, One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root).
So how did I finally turn off the stuck keyboard backlight on my Macbook Pro? I found a slightly hidden article on Apple’s support website describing how to mess with the Macbook Pro’s backlight ambient light sensor. Simply place a palm over the lefthand speaker grill, where the ambient light sensor lives, make your MBP think it’s in the dark, and, abracadabra, the keyboard backlighting turned off and the F8, F9 and F10 control keys were functioning once again.
Well, after all that waiting for Canon to update its cheapest digital single lens reflex camera with a “full frame” sensor, the new model was finally announced today. The EOS 5D Mark II, announced today, retains the full frame sensor of the 2005 model and gets a host of amazing, 2008-y upgrades like the ability to record high definition video, a new version of Canon’s Digic processor (the computer brain’s of the camera), faster burst mode, an HDMI connector to link directly to a high-def television set and a wifi option. The bottom line? $2,700 without a lens, to be available starting in November. I guess I know what I want for Christmas…Digital Photo Review already has a comprehensive preview up.
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