Don’s blog

(more) First thoughts about the LX3

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:21:17 -0700

Easy to use Manual Controls. I have owned several cameras that let you have full control over the aperture and shutter speed, but I personally find the set up on the LX3 to be the easiest to use. Once you have spun the dial to manual, you just move the joystick right or left to highlight the aperture or shutter speed and then push up or down to change it. If yu depress the shtutter halfway down, you get a light meter you can use to set exposure. My only slight quibble here is that you have to press the shutter halfway down to get the light meter to appear on screen. And if you don't start changing a setting withing 10 seconds, the light meter disappears again. Why not just make the light meter pop up all the time?

Accessing Quick Menu. Maybe it is just me (or my LX3) but I find it very difficult to access the Quick Menu. I frequently find I am changing the EV value or shutter speed/aperture instead of getting Quick Menu. My theory is that I am not pressing straight down on the joystick and am pressing it slightly to one side first, but even when I am very careful I still find it difficult to get quick menu to come up. Anyone else notice this?

Image Stabilty.Of the cameras I have used with some sort of of stabilization, the LX3 is really the first camera that has delivered on the promise of stabilization, allowing you to hand hold a camera down to very slow speeds like 1/15 or 1/8 of a second and still get a sharp picture. This is feeling is probably due to a combination of the 24mm (equiv) wide angle lens (camera motion is less of an issue with wide angles), the f 2.0 lens, and the quality of the system in the LX3, but either way the camera makes you feel like you can get shots you could not have taken before.

Dynamic B+W. While reading a flickr forum, the user daejn commented that they had put the camera on the dynamic black and white setting and were just gonna leave it there for a while. I must admit that I found this kind of funny. Now, I am a convert to this setting. I spent some time walking around my neighborhoood and got a few nice captures using Dynamic B+W. It really helps that the live preview shows you the image. It is the closest any digital camera has ever come to my days of tooling around with a 35mm Nikon in photo school just taking pictures for the fun of it with bulk loaded tri-x in the camera.

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First thoughts about the DMC-LX3

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:30:11 -0700

My DMC-LX1 arrived on Monday. Here are my initial impressions and observations.

The camera is a bit larger than the Sony DSC-T30 or the Lumix DMC-FX500 I have been using recently. Due to the lens sticking out, I can't use any of the small camera cases I have for wearing a camera on my belt. While I don't wear it every day, I do wear it most days while traveling, and being able to wear my small camera on my belt is important to me. I need to go case shopping.

The camera's abillity to capure useable photos in low light is really amazing. For example, this photo was taken in the very low light of a restaurant bar. While there is a fair bit of noise, it is still very sharp (1/8 sec ƒ2.0 800 ISO) and is useable.

One of my favorite features of the LX3 is the flash. You have complete easy control over if the flash will fie or not, so no more "I thought the flash was off" mistakes. More specifically, since the flash is on a little pop up unit it will fire if it is up, it will not if the unit is down. this is true even in the full iAuto mode. While I will probably keep the camera in apperture priority or manual much of the time, there is some benefit to using all of the built in logic of the auto mode. On most other cameras, I have found the auto modes to be useless because they are always turning the flash on when I want it off. (I am looking at you Rebel XT and DMC-FX500).

More to come...

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The secret to iPhone Super Monkey Ball

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:44:26 -0700

SMB Level 1 Complete

Super Monkey Ball was one of the first apps I bought on the iPhone, but I initially found the game play to be rather disappointing. Games where you need to roll an object thru a course like Mercury on the PSP and Labyrinth on the iPhone are usually pretty fun, and are perfect for when you have just a few minutes to give to a game.

By the way if you have not seen Labyrinth on the iPhone, you should check it out. I think it is the best example of how good the motion control sensor on the iPhone can be used to do very sublte things in game control. It is the first game I show people on the iPhone, it really feels like a little ball bearing is rolling around in your phone.

With Super Monkey Ball, I found the controls to be inconsistent. Sometimes the ball would move one way and sometimes the Point of View (POV) would move and sometimes it would not.

Tonight I decided to give SMB another shot and I realized that a large part of getting the feel of the controls is watching the little Monkey in the ball! Sounds kind of obvious once you know it, but I never thought to look at the little guy in there until now. Unlike Mercury or Labyrinth, where the ball is only affected by the tilt/gravity, in SMB the direction the monkey is facing, the POV, the tilt and the roll direction are all related. If you were like me and initially found the game control to be awkward and just not fun, give it another try and watch the Monkey.

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10 small, cool, new things in Leopard - #8

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:33:28 -0700

File Name Button

The Spotlight search results dialog added a File Name button. I don't know about you, but I have long been frustrated by the overwhelming results produced by Spotlight searches. I have trained myself for years to try to name files with relevant file names (and remember them for later) and those skills were useless when searching in Spotlight. Now, finally, some help for getting through the mountain of Spotlight search hits. Still, I think the Spotlight GIU could use a major overhaul, it is a great underlying technology with a horrible UI.

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10 small, cool, new things in Leopard - #9

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 06:56:14 -0700

Leopard Spotlight Menu

New icons for the Apple and Spotlight menus. Now they are the same color no matter what setting you choose in Appearance. I never realized how annoying the big blue spotlight circle was in the upper right corner until it was gone.

Get ready to start asking what color the Apple in the upper left corner is to novice users over the phone to figure out what version they are running.

Leopard Apple menu

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10 small, cool, new things in Leopard - #10

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 07:01:34 -0700

Finder Preferences

Finally, you can turn off the annoying "are you sure you want to do this?" dailog every time you change the extension name in a file.

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IPhone Headset

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:32:42 -0700

iPhone Headset

While unboxing my iPhone headset in front of an LCD display, I noticed the newton rings in the plastic packaging that the headset ships in and thought it might make an interesting photograph. I set the headset in the plastic packaging in front of my 22 inch Cinema Display showing a plain white screen (photoshop with blank file, hit f twice and tab to hide the palettes) and set my Sony T30 to macro mode. Since the light coming from the LCD display is polarized, the stress lines in the plastic are visible as newton rings. To fill in some details I used my 60 gig iPod screen for a bit of fill light. You can see the reflection of the iPod screen in the wire mesh of the ear piece.

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Convert this

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:42:05 -0700

Ever wonder how many human eyeballs it would take to balance a scale with an Airbus 380?

9763832.672

Figure out how many average bowel movements equal Tom Cruise at the Weird Converter

via Boing Boing

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New Year's Resolution - More Resolution

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 20:21:33 -0800

My wife and I just installed shiny new 40" LCD flat screen HD television. Here are a few first impressions:

- There are moments of sheer stunning picture quality
- Set up is complicated, we went through multiple phone calls with the TV support line and with the cable company to get it working on HDMI, and in general I think I understand more than most people
- The HD universe of content is really small, we get about 10 channels in HD
- Now nothing is on in different ways - "Nothing on in HD" - "Nothing on regular TV"
- I already miss my Tivo, we went with the cable company DVR until the Series 3 Tivo drops a bit more in price
- I hooked my Mac Book Pro, made me glad we went with a 1080 set. Within a few minutes, we were watching movie trailer via Front Row. The quality was very good, I am more of a believer that the iTunes Store can sell HD tv content that will look great on this set

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Where would you click?

nobody@vox.com(Don) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 07:13:22 -0800

This site records where visitors click in a series of rectangles. See if you click instincts follow the beaten path or are on the wilderness.

you

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