Techmouse

The Latest

2005-09-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

The latest gadget suddenly doesn't seem so important, compared to the devestation and dislocation in New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast. While I would love to write about, for instance, the new iPod Nano, I offer instead the following links to lists of charitable organizations offering relief to Hurricane Katrina victims:

The Network for Good
USA Freedom Corps

The Almost Windfall iBook Sale

2005-08-04T04:32:00.000-07:00

In a well-publicized agreement a few years ago, the Henrico County Virginia (Richmond area) public schools made a deal with Apple to supply iBooks to its public school students. Apparently, Apple was outbid by Dell this year, and the school system decided to transition to Dells. In another well-publicized move, the county announced an iBook fire sale--$1,000 iBooks would be sold to the public at $50 each. It is a G3 iBook with 320 megs of RAM, Airport card, 10 gb hard drive, CD-ROM drive, with OS 10.2.8 installed

Frankly, this sale is an obvious waste of money. With minimal effort, an iBook of this configuration can fetch around $300 and change on eBay. Henrico County schools are thus losing about $250,000 by this fire sale. Perhaps, unlike most other school systems, Henrico County schools are so flush they can afford to forgo a quarter of a million bucks.

In any case, recently the school system's web site announced that "The Henrico County Board of Supervisors has amended the County Code relating to the sale of certain surplus property. Accordingly, all of the iBooks for sale on August 16 can only be purchased by Henrico residents or taxpayers."

Somebody must have gotten pissed about the idea of a bunch of out-of-county carpetbaggers (like me, for example) swooping in to buy their $50 iBooks! If they're going to waste money, at least the Henrico County officials want to make sure that local residents are the beneficiaries.

Perplex City

2005-07-12T04:43:00.000-07:00

Is it any wonder that this ARG (Alternate Reality Game) is so popular? In our real cities, terrorists blow up civilians on transit systems, our government prosecutes a war with no clear goals, and, increasingly, violence rather than negotiation becomes the way to solve differences.

In Perplex City, intellectual achievement and puzzle solving ranks supreme. It is both a game and an escape fantasy, an immersive world that lives at right angles to the imperfect world we are really immersed in. But perhaps it is in our world the response to violence and terror--not the negative response of war, but the positive response of hope and resiliency--that provides for a positive outcome.

A good introduction to the game, by the way, is provided in this absolutely understated and hilarious interview with Michiko, the editor of the Perplex City Sentinel, found here:

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=170118#170118.

Legs, they're so passe

2005-07-10T20:07:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I took a tour by Segway of my home town, Washington, DC. I did get to see the WWII memorial, which I hadn't before, but mainly the Segways left a greater impression.

They're the closest thing to a magic carpet yet invented. It only takes a very subtle movement to make them go--basically, a little pressure on the balls of your feet, as though you are about to take a step, and the machine glides forward. Lean back a little on your heels and it glides back. Twist the handle and it turns. It's almost effortless.

Of course, one cannot pretend that one is getting any exercise, and the Segway does not reach anything close to the speed of a bicycle, so I'm not entirely clear whether it's a fancy teched-out scooter or a real transportation tool. It's all kinds of fun, though, and allows you to both be a pedestrian and be motorized, in a sense the best of both worlds.

Life on no screen

2005-04-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

In her book, Life on the Screen, author Sherry Turkle argued that interacting with and through computers has created new basic metaphors for how people think about a wide variety of issues, indeed, about life itself. Whether by a stroke of genius or marketing necessity, Apple Computers has sought to introduce a new metaphor to support the new iPod Shuffle: Life on no screen. Randomness. An interface that is no interface, lacking the ability to either see what's coming or (except in a very limited way) direct the next result.

Apple's advertising is pushing the idea that"life is random" and "randomness is the new order." I don't know whether or not that's true, but certainly the marketing of the Shuffle has been successful. I suspect that there are are certain number of users who literally use the Shuffle in the way that the advertising suggests. I suspect there are many others, like me, who put our audio books and new music toward the top of the "playlist" (there's only one on the Shuffle) so that they can be easily found, and then use the "autofill" function to randomly put music from our libraries on the remaining space. I suspect that there are others who manually load specific music to which they want to listen at that particular time. In these ways, a certain order is found, but it is not the searchable order of a visual user interface--it is, rather, the order of a mental image of a portion of our music libraries that we choose to carry with us that particular day, which the outside of the shuffle in no way reveals, and which therefore forces us to listen to discover and re-discover.

The inscrutable exterior blankness of the Shuffle, much like the monolith in the film 2001: A Space Odyseey, along with the fact that unlike other similar products, it is so very un-technological looking--not only no screen, but no fancy dials or buttons, just the simplest of controls; even the status LEDs are invisible if not on or blinking--calls forth a sense of magic. Can this almost-smooth piece of plastic really play music? Yes, and very well. It is a pretty piece of plastic candy with a surprisingly loud and robust sound. It is so light as to be almost unnoticeable, yet when it is noticed, it is pleasingly simple in design. I prefer to wear it without the lanyard in order to avoid a profusion of cords and strings, and to plug it directly into a USB port without a dock or extension for the same reason.

I'm sure most people who buy the Shuffle just want something relatively inexpensive and nice that plays music, and don't care too much about whether "randomness" is a lifestyle or not. I suspect that, in fact, the real revolution here is the utter simplicity of the device, a simplicity not only evident in its operation but expressed the Shaker-like plainness and functionality of its design. If it is through computer interfaces that we now find our metaphors for existence, the shuffle is the metaphor that is no metaphor--a device that just holds our music and then gets out of the way while we listen. You don't fuss with scrolling through libraries (well, not too much), or even looking at the device. You just turn it on and listen and can practically forget that it's there.

With the Shuffle, in the end, it's less about the player and menus and more about the music--and that, I think, is how it should be.

Canon Digital Rebel XT

2005-03-20T15:43:00.000-08:00

Despite statements in the review press warning against fixating on the megapixel wars, there is a temptation to seek out a camera with better image resolution and the capability to make larger, higher definition prints than whatever camera one currently owns. The consumer level holy grail is now at the 8-megapixel mark. This is a review of the new Canon 8-megapixel Rebel XT.

Disclosures: I recently purchased this camera; my previous camera (actually, the one I used to take the photographs of the camera being reviewed) is a Fuji Finepix 4700. This is a review of the body only, coupled with a
Canon EF 35-80 mm f/4-5.6 II lens.

Packed in the box: The body, which comes in both a black and silver-accented style. The body feels remarkably light yet tightly constructed. According to the specifications, the weight (body only) is only 17.1 ounces. Even with the lens, the weight of the camera felt virtually negligible to me. The various buttons and doors have a tight, precision feel.

A lithium-ion battery. The battery takes about 90 minutes to charge. A plastic cover to protect the contacts when the battery is out of the camera is included. The cover has a small battery-shaped cutout in back which can be flipped arbitrarily to indicate whether the battery is charged or not (the is no specific sign on the battery for this, but one portion of the battery has a blue label. I use this to indicate a charged condition). I cannot yet say how long the battery lasts on a charge, because I have yet to exhaust it after a week of owning the camera.

A dust cover to protect the sensor and mirror when the lens is removed.

A battery charger.

Two cables--a USB cable to interface with a computer and a video-out cable to view pictures on a television screen.

A wide, adjustable shoulder strap with an eyepiece cover. The purpose of the eyepiece cover is to block light from entering the eyepiece and affecting the light metering if the photographer's eye is not there, for example, if the picture is being taken remotely.

Manuals. These include a thorough 170 page instruction manual, a much shorter, shirt-pocket sized quick start guide with information on the basic settings, digital menus including autofocus and metering options, and image playback options. There is also a software guide, and these materials are also provided in Spanish.

Software. The software comes on three compact disks: A Canon digital solutions disk, which allows the user to upload the pictures from the camera to the computer, convert the Canon RAW files into TIF files, edit RAW files, stitch photos together; a disk containing software instruction manuals; and ArcSsoft Photo Studio image editing software. This latter is my first, and only, serious complaint about the camera. The camera is a robust, "prosumer" level camera; why package it with a fun but definitely amateur image-editor? For a camera this sophisticated, something in the industry-standard Photoshop family would have been preferable. We'll get back to the software; let's talk about the goods.

The camera:

From the top.

The controls on the top of the camera are simple and should be familiar to anyone who has used SLR cameras in the Canon Rebel series. There is an on/off button; the mode dial, which sets the camera to one of the "creative zone" or "basic zone" settings; the main dial, which is used to set the shutter speed or the aperture in either manual, shutter priority, or aperture priority modes; the shutter release; and the hot shoe for an external flash. In addition to the manual modes mentioned above, there is a "program" mode, in which the camera sets the shutter speed and aperture according to the subject's brightness; a fully automatic mode, which also includes "AI" autofocus; and a mode called "A-Dep," in which the camera selects the depth of field to include a near subject and a far subject, using the seven autofocus points. The photographer can also manually select one of the autofocus points, or all of them.

The basic zone settings include presets for portraits, landscapes, sports, close-ups, night portraits, and no flash. In each of these cases, the camera determines the optimum setting for the type of shot selected. For example, in the portrait mode, the camera will blur the background to make the main subject stand out (preumably by using a wide aperture to narrow the depth of field).

All those buttons.

The back of the camera is considerably more complicated. If one's previous experience is with a point-and-shoot camera, the myriad of controls and settings can seem daunting, but it's really not that complicated. First, if you want to start taking pictures right away, just use one of the automatic modes. Then, if you want manual control of either aperture (to control depth of field) or shutter speed (to freeze motion), simply select the aperture priority or shutter priority mode; adjust the settings with the main control wheel. Press the shutter release halfway to view both the shutter and aperture settings (and also to autofocus, if you are using that feature with your lens).

When you are ready to venture into a deeper level cf control, the buttons and LCD screen on the back of the camera apply.

They're a little hard to see in this picture (not an issue in reality), but the column of buttons on the left are, from top to bottom: menu, info, jump, play, and trash. The menu button is self-explanatory; "jump" moves from one menu tab to the next; "play" is for reviewing pictures you have taken; and trash, also, is self-explanatory. You can choose to either erase the picture you have been looking at, or all the pictures on the CF card. One point to note: the color LCD screen enables you to view the menus and to review pictures you have taken, but it does not act as a viewfinder. There is only an optical viewfinder, similar to a film camera.

What's on the menu?

The menu is fairly simple to operate; simply use the up and down buttons to the right to navigate between items, and the "set" button to select an item. One you have selected an item, there are probably several options, and you use the same procedure to choose the applicable one. There are a lot of configurable items; my experience is that one learns the basic, frequently used items quickly, and others may require some study. Many of the items are accessible only by the color screen, and this has one drawback--it tends to get washed-out and hard to read in bright sunlight. The LCD brightness can be set from the menu, but this setting can be difficult if you are in conditions where the screen is hard to see.

The first item is the image recording quality. The choices are uncompressed RAWS files, and small, medium and large JPEGs, as well as RAW+JPEG in all these sizes. Selecting the right image quality depends on your needs. The RAW files are large; in my experience, a 512 megabyte CF card will hold about 55. These images retain the most detail and are best for making large prints. The smaller JPEG sizes will be adequate for web viewing, and will save considerable space; about 400 medium JPEGs will fit on the same CF card. Since I'm never sure whether I'm going to want to print an image, I generally take RAW photos on the theory that these can be resized down, but you can't really add detail that isn't in the original image if you want to produce a good-quality large print.

The other items that I'll discuss are AF mode and metering mode. AF mode simply controls the autofocus. "One shot" is for a still subject, such as a portraint. "Servo focus" will constantly adjust the focus for a moving subject. AI servo will switch between "one shot" and "servo" mode if a subject starts or stops moving. This is a "sticky" setting that is retained if the camera is turned off.

There are also three light-metering modes from which you can select: evaluative metering, partial metering, and center-weighted averaging. Evaluative metering takes into account the entire viewing area, and is stated to be the preferred mode unless there is a large difference between the subject and the background lighting. In this case, partial metering, which measures the light in the center area, will allow the subject to be properly exposed. Center-weighted averaging measures the light in the center of the viewfinder then averages it for the entire scene.

Press the "jump" button to move on to the nextmenu tab. The first item, AEB, or "automatic exposure bracketing," is a useful item and also a somewhat frustrating one as implemented. Selecting this item allows you to automatically bracket your shots--that is, take one shot at the set exposure, and another one that takes the picture with a greater exposure, and one with a lesser exposure. Combined with the continuous shooting mode, which is set with one of the buttons to the upper right of the LCD, the camera will take all three bracketed shots with one press of the shutter release. This is a useful feature. Unfortunately, if you are taking bracketed photos--and in my view, there is no reason not to unless you are short of memory space, because bracketing increases the chances of getting a good exposure in difficult lighting situations--you find yourself constantly resetting this item, because it turns itself off every time the camera powers down (in addition to lens and CF card swaps). It would have been much better, in my opinion, to leave it set unless the photographer turns it off or there is a lens change. Another possibility would be to have a physical button to turn the feature on and off. I set the bracketing for this series at one f-stop:

The camera also has a similar feature, "WB SHIFT/BKT," that allows you to bracket white balance. The bracketing can be either in the blue/amber range or green/magenta range, and can be set in one, two, or three increments. My personal experience is that the default white balance of the camera is accurate, and using this feature adds a color cast to the images. The "Custom WB" menu selection allows you to use a photograph of a white objectg as the basis for the white balance. The instruction manual states that an 18 percent gray card (you can buy these at photo stores and even on amazon.com) can provide a more accurate white balance.

Another interesting feature is the "parameters" selection. This selection gives you the choice of setting the camera according to one of two preset modes, or choosing your own settings for contrast, sharpness, saturation, and color tone, with up to three user-definable presets.

This is very cool, but even more interesting, creatively speaking, is the black and white mode. Within the "B/W" setting, you can also choose to emulate the effect of color filters. A red filter, for example, will make red objects appear brighter, and objects of other colors appear darker, and can be used to make skies appear darker and more dramatic:

The remaining two items are indicated by icons of tools on the tabs, and they are items related to the user interface. You can set such things as the power-off time; LCD brightness; the date and time (this is handy for organizing photos, as the included software can set up folders based on the date and time); whether the file number is continuous or restarts when you replace the CF card; the language (there are 15 choices); and other items. The sensor cleaning setting moves the mirror out of the way so you can use a hand air blower to remove dust from the CMOS sensor if necessary, although the manual recommends that this be done at a Canon-authorized service center if possible. These items are all generally self-explanatory and also well-covered in the manual.

A word about the software

I'm not going to dwell heavily on all details of the included software. Many people buying this camera will already have favorite editing software. Canon ships with utilities for processing and making adjustments to RAW images, as well as converting them to .TIF files for editing. The package also contains a kind of fun image editor (PhotoStudio 5) from ArcSoft: if you ever wanted to make oil paintings but don't want to bother with a class, this is for you.

On a high note, Canon includes "PhotoStitch" software, which, as its name implies, merges a series of photographs to form a panoramic view. PhotoStitch was very easy to use--I didn't even crack (well, spin up--it comes on CD) the manual, and got an excellent result, with no obvious seams or distorted areas.

The bottom line: image quality

The image quality produced by this camera is excellent in terms of detail captured and color rendering. There is a minimum of noise and color artifacts. Here is an example picture and a detail from the same picture that captures these qualities:

Here is the detail: . This image has not been sharpened or post-processed in any way. There are some very slight artifacts around some of the smaller shapes, but generally speaking the image is still good even at this detail. The camera does a very good job of capturing the subtleties of texture, as in this image of the bark of a tree:

The end: Pros and Cons

Pros:

The camera produces strong images with excellent color and fine detail.
There are many creative options, and also easy-to-set automatic modes. The camera can even mimic black-and-white filter effects.
The battery life is excellent. I still haven't figured out how to drain the battery in a single day of shooting. The battery takes about 90 minutes to charge.
Canon lenses and accessories that fit the EOS Rebel line of film cameras will work with this camera.
The price is competitive for an 8-megapixel SLR camera of this quality.

Cons:

The LCD screen, which is necessary to access a number of settings, is not easily visible in bright light.
Many photographers would have wanted image-editing software in the Adobe Photoshop family to be bundled with the camera.
Automatic bracketing should be a "sticky" setting or turned on more easily.