Archive for February, 2008

Canon Powershot SX100 IS Full-Review Posted

Monday, February 25th, 2008

Canon Powershot SX100 ISIt has been very busy here since the full-review of the Canon Powershot SX100 IS was posted over a week ago on Neocamera, but the SX100 deserves a special mention as one of the few compact ultra-zoom cameras. By compact, we mean between 1″ (2.5cm) and 2″ (5cm) thick and by ultra-zoom we mean 10X or more optical zoom. This category of camera was born in the form of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1. Panasonic followed that model with the TZ2 and TZ3 early last year.

Although there were already a few small cameras with between 5X and 7X of optical zoom, a large number of consumers keep demanding more zoom and smaller cameras. As such, having cameras which advance on both fronts is quite appealing. That is why Canon and Sony did not wish to be left out of this category of digital cameras. So, last year, Canon and Sony introduced the SX100 and H3, respectively. Both feature 10X optical zoom, image stabilization and more controls than the Panasonic TZ-series does. The battle has begun! Healthy competition like this one always favors consumers who get increased choices and better prices.

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The Moment It Does Not Click

Monday, February 25th, 2008

The Moment It ClicksThe book called The Moment It Clicks, by award-winning photographer Joe McNally, did not click with me, not at all. This book came with some good recommendations, so I bought it quickly. As soon as it arrived, I looked though all the pictures. To my disappointment, they were mostly uninspiring and rather boring. Not a good start for a photography book, but perhaps the writing was educational enough to redeem it… I was wrong again.

Now, I have no doubt that Joe McNally is an award-winning photographer but photography, like all art, is a matter of personal taste and our tastes differ a lot. It seems very hard to learn the art of photography from someone who has a completely different vision than yourself. That is why images in a photography book are so important: they convey the author’s style and vision. Writing is another art, yet it has more rules than photography. Unlike the rule-of-thirds, rules like grammar and spelling are not meant to be broken, yet Joe breaks them again and again. I mean, when the introduction is called Da Premise, it makes you doubt that you got the English version of the book!

Artificial is the best way to describe Joe’s photographs. Most of them feature a stiff subject in a context that seems overly set-up. The lighting though is far more disturbing. He uses so many lights and gels that the results scream “fake”, light seems to come out of nowhere and take on random colors. Now, even if you do like that particular look, most set-ups described in this book are beyond the reach of most photographers: a dozen or more lights (strobes, flashes and whatnots), sand-bagged stands, reflectors, redirectors, remote triggers and at least one assistant holding and moving stuff around.

The advice in this book is mostly about stating the obvious and it gets repeated over and over. Even the footnotes often read like deja-vue. In at least in five-places, the honeycomb spot grid is described with the exact same words. Same for ripping film and color-temperature-orange. Seems like he was being paid per-word! Speaking of words, I think he tries to be charming with his obviously poor spelling and grammar, but it just comes across as badly written.

In the end, this book is quite a fiasco. Poor photography, bad writing, repetitive advice and unaccessible set-ups all contribute to its failures. For better photography books, see Neocamera’s Book Review section. The Moment It Clicks did not make it there because I do not feel like I could recommend this book to anyone.

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Over-the-Air HDTV

Saturday, February 16th, 2008

In less than a year, analog television will cease to exist in the US. Other parts of the world will phase it out at their own rhythm, but it won’t be long before digital television becomes the only type of television signal being broadcast. The most common form of digital television – HDTV – brings a drastic improvement in image quality over traditional television.

With that in mind, I started to transition after the reception of a Sharp Aquos 42″ LCD 1080p HTDV in early January. Although there are models supporting intermediate resolutions, the idea was to make the full transition in one step to something capable of the highest HDTV resolution (1080p).

Not being a frequent television watcher (about 1-2 hours/week), I could not really justify getting cable or satellite, so I always relied on over-the-air television. After all, each year of cable subscription equals at least a medium quality lens, a camera or a plane ticket to a close by destination. Over-the-air TV, on the other hand is free. With HDTV, free just got much better. Not only better quality but there are also far more channels available too. That is because certain channels broadcast several digital channels simultaneously. Your mileage may vary but my television counted 35 channels (including 12 analog ones).

The quality and number of digital-television channels you can get over-the-air depends on numerous factors including your location and the antenna you use. I doubt anyone will move just to get better HDTV reception, but there is something to do about the antenna.

For my brand new HDTV, I got to try 5 indoor antennas, each producing different results. I am not sure how these results would translate to other LCD HDTVs, but I expect little difference for other Sharp Aquos LCD televisions. For those wishing for something bigger, Sharp has a 46″ version and a 52″ version. Here are the five models:

This NexxTech antenna was bought specifically because it was said to be optimized for HDTV signals. In practice, it perform extremely poorly. With the amplification off, the signal was very unstable and noisy. As soon as amplification was turned on, the signal was crushed and no channel could be received. Definitely the worst antenna of the bunch.

 Nexxtech Antenna
Jensen Antenna

The Jensen antenna was ordered based the recommendation of a salesperson who told me that although he did not carry then, Jensen’s antennas were better than the RCA ones he carried. Turns out the Jensen antenna faired better than the NexxTech one. Without amplification, reception was decent but nothing great. Once again, turning the amplification on crushed digital signals. So much for being HDTV-compatible! On the other hand, amplification help a bit with analog channels. I therefore moved this antenna to an analog TV.

This is the classic rabbit-ears plus loop antenna for analog television. Since I moved the Jensen antenna to an analog-only TV, I tried its antenna on the HDTV. Despite this being the cheapest antenna I owned ($19), the reception of digital channels was good and clearly better than with the Jensen antenna ($52). This antenna was able to tune into more channels than the the previous two.

 RCA Passive Antenna
RCA Antenna

The final one I tried on the Sharp Aquos LCD was also previously bought for an analog television. This is an amplified RCA antenna with two non-extending dipoles and a rotating UHF loop. There is a new version with a built-in clock, but I am not sure if there are any differences in signal reception. This antenna turned out to be the best for the reception of both digital and analog channels. While I got the same number of channels with the non-amplified RCA one, the reception of analog channels is clearly better and digital channels show less error-artifacts. I recall buying it for $29, a few years ago, before companies starting labeling their antennas for HDTV.

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