Sunday, November 18, 2007

Memory card prices and new Canon compact


Have you seen that you can now get an SD flash card, 4 GB, for around 30 dollars? Holy crap, at those prices I think I will stop reusing the cards and just keep them for additional backup.

By the way, here is a really promising new camera that I'll get for myself for Christmas. Compact, nice looking, metal body, image stabilization, and really high image quality. And really reasonably priced too. Amazing.

From the review:
"I took a series of shots one evening just to show off what the PowerShot SD950 IS's image stabilization can do. The room was lit by nothing more than 60 watt bulbs (well, the fluorescent equivalent, which is a lot lower). ISO was set to High ISO, limiting it to ISO 800. And I got sharp shots with shutter speeds as low as 1/15 second, something I can't hand hold. [...] Considering that I couldn't do better than 1/60 second with the Canon SD900, that's easily a two stop improvement, and a great argument for upgrading to the PowerShot SD950 IS."

Look at this test image. Impressive.
This one is at the highest sensitivity, ISO 1600. Of course on such a small camera, that setting is very grainy (noisy). But I think actually the noise looks sort of interesting. Arty. Only not to be used if you need maximum detail.

(By the way, if you're interested in it and you're in Europe, be aware that many electronics manufacturers irritatingly still insists on different names for their products in Eu and USA, and in Europe this camera is called "Canon IXUS 960 IS". I fail to see that Canon or anybody else gains anything in the long run by this confusing tactic.)

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Would you be implying that there's no such thing as a Canon EOS 400D in the US ? ;-)

Anonymous said...

That is fucked up, fat Mrs. fucking Anderson!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Who? What? Where? Why?

Alex said...

I can see it with cars. Who, in a Latin speaking country would want a car called a Nova (doesn't move), and who in N America would want a Ford Lobo (actually means "Wolf", its an F250).

I am glad that the Astra/Kadette naming got resolved, but that car was also Le Mans, Racer and a few other names in the 90's.

Ford have started using "world cars", but they still rename them. I rented a Fusion last year, when I got to the UK they upgraded me to a Focus, which is bigger than the UK Fusion, but smaller than the US Fusion.

Mars make a chocolate bar in the US called a Milky Way. Being a fan of UK Mars bars, and not a fan of Milky Way I went 10 years before I tried one, only to find it was almost identical to the UK Mars Bar. The chocolate is thiner, and the nougat more mallowy, but apart from that it is pretty much the same.

Opal Fruits and Starburst!
US Coke and UK Coke taste different.
Le Royale.

International naming is too confusing.

Anonymous said...

Who? What? Where? Why?

Just fucking with you. I was watching a clip of a Season 1 episode of Deadwood.

You got a stagecoach to catch, or something? Slow the fuck up!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Deadwood is good.

Anonymous said...

Eolake said: "Of course on such a small camera, that setting is very grainy (noisy)."

The review of the camera links to a review of Imagenomic's Noiseware, which seems like a capable tool for alleviating this problem.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Anti-noise software (I have Noise Ninja) is a good solution. But it is limited by the fact that you can't remove noise without also removing details. You get odd, plasticky areas if you use too much.

Anonymous said...

Big E said:
Deadwood is good.

I loved that show, although I might have liked it even more if I hadn't known anything about the period or the real-life people - I hated knowing what would happen to Wild Bill.

Have you seen Rome? Another great show. It had some great lines, such as "It's hotter than Vulcan's dick out here!" or "If Triton can't keep me drier than this he can suck my cock!"

Anonymous said...

Mars make a chocolate bar in the US called a Milky Way. Being a fan of UK Mars bars, and not a fan of Milky Way I went 10 years before I tried one, only to find it was almost identical to the UK Mars Bar.

I'm not sure if we have Milky Way, but we certainly have Mars Bars. You wouldn't think they'd sell to identical chocolate bars under different names, but then do sell Butterfinger which is identical to Crispy Crunch.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I was fortunate enough to know next to nothing about the famous people.

I tried Rome, but it did not capture my attention.

I prefer shows with a solid dash of humor, like The Sopranos for example.

Anonymous said...

I prefer shows with a solid dash of humor, like The Sopranos for example.

I thought it had humour. A character being forced to overpay on a whore saying that she better fuck like Helen of Troy with her ass on fire - that's funny!

I liked the Sopranos, though not as much as a lot of people seem to have. It seemed like the same ground covered by movies like Goodfellas, but not as good. It did have the advantage of more time to develop characters. I watched the first season but lost interest. Good theme song though.

I have to say, I'm surprised you liked it, when overall it does kind of glorify gangsters. You panned Unforgiven for that reason.