#Photography

The New Canon 30D

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Canon 30D

As I was doing my late-night news roundup, I stum­bled upon some inter­est­ing new Web 2.0 apps. The top two that are on my list to beta-test are Fold­era and Fly­spy. I can’t wait to see how Fold­era works, it seems that it’ll be use­ful at work and at home. As for Fly­spy, this thing should make it eas­ier for those of us “remotely” work­ing from home. I hope it saves me a ton of cash so I may have some left for some other good­ies later this year. Not to men­tion, a cou­ple of expenses dur­ing my big trips (Hawaii, Japan and P.I.).

Any­ways, a lit­tle birdie that a new toy has just been unveiled, Canon’s 30D. It seems that it is using the same sen­sor as the 20D. But a cou­ple of more intrigu­ing changes can be high­lighted as stated by Rob Gail­braith:

a 2.5-inch (diag­o­nal) rear LCD, increased burst depth, Pic­ture Styles, a shut­ter with a higher duty cycle rat­ing and a long list of other cam­era usabil­ity changes.

A cou­ple of things that I did like with the new 30D fea­tures are:

  • Canon’s more flex­i­ble Pic­ture Style menu, which replaces the Para­me­ters menu of the 20D
  • ISO 100‑1600 is now selec­table in 1/3 stop increments
  • Increased burst depth: 11 frames for RAW CR2 shoot­ing, 30 for Large Fine JPEG and 9 for RAW+JPEG
  • Switch­able High-Speed Con­tin­u­ous (5 fps) and Low-Speed Con­tin­u­ous (3 fps) frame rate set­tings are now included
  • An Auto set­ting in the Long Expo­sure Noise Reduc­tion Cus­tom Function
  • The abil­ity, like sev­eral more-pricey Canon dig­i­tal SLRs, to simul­ta­ne­ously apply long expo­sure noise pro­cess­ing to one pic­ture while cap­tur­ing another
  • The addi­tion of a 3.5% spot meter­ing mode
  • A more-precise 4-increment bat­tery charge indicator
  • No more new fold­ers cre­ated every 100 pho­tos; in the 30D, a folder can hold 9999 pho­tos (this one is a 50/50 like/dislike to me)
  • Dur­ing play­back, the image+shooting data screen will dis­play either an RGB or Bright­ness his­togram, file size and will option­ally dis­play AF markings
  • The Jump fea­ture dur­ing image play­back can now leap back and forth 10 pic­tures at a time, 100 pic­tures at a time or by the date shot

So yah, “nothin’ seri­ous.” It looks like it’ll be ship­ping mid-March (US) with an MSRP of $1399. $1399? That was how much I got my 20D for back in Decem­ber through Costco.com. Oh well, you can’t beat a rebate of $300 for it. Any­ways, I might have to take Costco up on their 100% return/warranty pol­icy later this year. Good times.

January Has Come and Gone

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stechico/93966403/
Here Ye! Here Ye! by stechico.

Wow! That was one fast month. The day seems to be get­ting shorter and shorter, and the weather changes more fre­quently than ever (at least in SF).

Since the start of the year, I cre­ated a new project for myself just to use my new toys more and get more expe­ri­ence as well with pho­tog­ra­phy. It’s pretty much a-photo-a-day. It’s hard to pick one photo that describes and sums up my day as I tend to take a bunch. But what can I tell you, so far so good. You may take a look at the Flickr set over here.

Amongst other things in the world of muah, I’ve been active as ever doing beta-testing for dif­fer­ent Web 2.0 com­pa­nies. It’s fun see­ing and expe­ri­ence people’s accom­plish­ments and cre­ativ­ity. Not to men­tion, it gives you ideas when the bulb is dim.

Besides the wait for my Yahoo! Mail Beta invite (still), I just signed up for a beta-test with OmniDrive. Hope­fully, I can grab one and see what the fuss is all about. Techcrunch’s Michael Arring­ton seems to like it ver­sus other com­pa­nies cur­rently in the online stor­age market.

Mean­while, board­ing sea­son is fun so far. I went up with a cou­ple of friends to North Tahoe for MLK Hol­i­day Week­end. I can’t wait to go up again. Hope­fully, some time soon but most likely for Biggy’s BDay first week­end of March around the South Tahoe area.

Any­ways, three big trips for me this year: Hawaii, Japan and P.I. Other than the major saving-up for cash, I also need to save PTO days from MA. Going to go to Hawaii for Farida & Brad’s wed­ding on the first week­end of August. I think it’s in the north-west part of the Big Island. Should be good times as the old roomies from 916 are com­ing. That’ll be cool too as I have never been to the Big Island but have been to Oahu back in the early 90’s with my family.

Then, dur­ing the first week of Novem­ber, Japan with some UCI buds. Belle seems to be the ring-leader of this trip. It’s just hard to get every­one on board this one as it is likely to span 10 days (a day or two more for relax­ation after we get back from the flight). Hope it goes through, and we get a good group size to go. I can’t wait to take pho­tos over there.

Last but not least, ever since my bro and I got here in 88–89, we haven’t spent Christ­mas nor New Year’s in the P.I. So, my grandma blurted out the idea that we should all go for the Hol­i­days this year. What can I say, it’s all gravy with my grandma’s idea. Damn, that should be fun.

From my mind to yours, if you are ever in a rutt… turn to your friends for some good times!

Update:
After writ­ing this, I got an email from Yahoo! Mail Beta regard­ing my invite. Finally! This thing is clean. I hope to see more new func­tion­al­ity. Dopeness.

Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah!

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It’s been 3 hours since most of the great peeps here at Mil­i­tary Advan­tage have left for the Hol­i­day Week­end. I was post­pon­ing my depar­ture for home as I was wait­ing on my early Christ­mas gift to myself, a new back­pack for my new toys. It finally came in 30 min­utes ago, and have been play­ing around with its fea­tures and stuff.

Now, I’m con­tem­plat­ing to see if I can even bring it with me on my flight later tonight to Bob Hope/Burbank Air­port. I usu­ally carry my photo-gear in a Canon 2400 Gad­get Bag along with my roll-a-way lug­gage. See­ing it first hand, this new back­pack seems to be about the size of one carry-on. So yah, now… I don’t even know what to do. I can either just pack my 20D and the smaller lenses in the smaller bag; or risk it and use the new back­pack, so I may bring my 70–200/2.8L IS along with me for the week­end. If I do do the lat­ter and get rejected, I might have to just check-in my roll-a-way.

We’ll see… we will see. Any­ways, Happy Chris­ma­hanuk­wan­za­kah!

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