Sunday, June 16, 2002

I mentioned its arrival before but I forgot to tell you my review of the $130 Logitech Pocket Digital credit-card-sized camera and conversation piece is up at HardwareCentral.com, where it seems to be a scoop still unmatched by any of the actual camera sites like Digital Photography Review or The Imaging Resource (whose writers actually know what phrases like "aperture priority" and "white balance" mean; your correspondent is enough of an Ansel Adams to get the lens cap off and maybe, in a stretch, turn off automatic flash or switch from regular to macro mode for closeups). Anyway, the Logitech sure is cute and convenient to carry in a shirt pocket and whip out, 007-like, when you want to snap a shot, but you shouldn't expect more than snapshots — it takes 640 by 480-pixel images with no flash or zoom (I and all other reviewers are justly stern with Logitech's lie of "1.3 megapixel images" based on software interpolation, not sensor resolution) — and you can't help feeling that something without an LCD monitor to review or delete images doesn't fully count as a digital camera to begin with. Sunny outdoor shots can be pretty good; indoor ones cry out for your favorite image-editing software's contrast enhancement (used for Cooper the cat here); and most of mine show a rather artistic softening much like the "oil painting" filter or special effect available in Photoshop.  The cause?  Judging from my time with other digital cameras, either I have a mild, incipient case of Parkinson's or I'm just lousy at avoiding camera shake or no-tripod tremor, to which the featherweight (1.8-ounce) Pocket Digital might be the most vulnerable camera ever.  It's a cute gadget, but I'd tell anyone looking for images suitable for printing (as opposed to just e-mailing or Web posting) to set their sights higher — I like the $350, cell-phone-sized, 2-megapixel Nikon Coolpix 2500, but am now testing and loath to return the $400, camera-sized, 3-megapixel Olympus D-550 Zoom. 5:13:33 PM    commentplace ()

Damn my pale and maidenly fair complexion: Given the choice, most folks would probably rather have herpes simplex 1 (the above-the-neck virus) than 2 (the below-the-waist kind), and the vast majority of HS1 sufferers, who get small but unsightly, embarrassing cold sores on their mouths (as my dad did), might think I got off easy by getting a fever blister on my forehead when I was a kid.  I did, too, when I had enough hair to comb down to my eyebrows, but I got a bad sunburn at my niece's high school graduation the other Saturday and woke up Thursday with Satan's cooties — a three-inch, throbbing, black, crimson, crusty megazit that oozes goo and causes disorienting chills and fever.  In the movies, aliens burst out of heads that look better than mine.  I'm lucky I have no job interviews.  You're lucky I have no Webcam. 10:24:50 AM    commentplace ()