mark-eichin-blogspot-com: Thu Jun 24 00:27:00 2010

Thu Jun 24 00:27:00 2010

Next round of mobile toys

Finally picked up an iPad for myself, now that the 3G ones are out. (I was going to wait for a model with built-in webcam, but the weight of my normal laptops is bothering my knees - and the iPad totally handles reading/viewing without compromise, and that's the larger part of my computer time.) Continuing the mobile client tradition, I am composing this on the iPad using BlogPress and the on-screen keyboard. However, I actually want to write about cameras...

I've been carrying the dSLR with a big lens - either the 500mm mirror lens, or the 55-250mm zoom. I can't really snap off shots with it, like I did with the SX-10IS, it really needs to be aimed, and even in live view the auto focus isn't enough. I missed three shots on Saturday for this reason alone - a deer browsing above the retaining wall on route 2, a flipped over car on the outbound side of Belmont hill, and my car's mileage hitting 88888 (I did get a bad phonecam shot of it, but not really suitable for my gallery of numerologically interesting mileage readings.)

The end result is that there is a shiny new Canon, the SD4000IS, which has 320fps video, a backlit CMOS sensor with allegedly awesome low-light modes, which is now going to be my close-in/impromptu camera. I'm still going to carry the Rebel XSi with something long mounted, but that may go back to being an "event" camera. Who knows, I might even start taking pictures of people, instead of "things with wings" and architecture...