Recently I had the chance to get several new toys I haven't talked about
yet.
I got myself:
I will also mention a bit about Adobe Premiere Pro at the end even if it is
not a piece of hardware.
Now it's time to briefly review them.
Creative Muvo2 MP3 player:
I was looking for a n MP3 player to replace my
Samsung Yepp YP-E32 for a while. After 3-4 years of service, its earphone
jacks started to get loose and the quality of sound was dropping. I was looking
for something bigger but I didn't want to buy something too big. The
iPod being above my needs and budget,
the Muvo2 seems the right choice. I also looked at the
iRiver
but it was a bit pricy.
The Muvo2 is a very good player: it is small, light and the quality
of sound is excellent. The only drawback so far is with the amazing drain
loading music put on the batteries: I didn't have enough juice with the battery
fully loaded to upload 4GB of MP3 files. I should have upload my music while
having the Muvo2 still plugged in. In resume:
|
Pro |
Cons |
Size, weight
Sound quality
Powers up very quickly
When powering on, it resume playing exactly where it stopped. This is something my Yepp didn't do.
When just playing music, the battery shows endurance |
Uploading music is a real drain on the battery. When uploading
music, plug the Muvo2! |
Panasonic GS-100K 3CCD video camera:
My trusty old
Sony
TRV-20 slowly dying (it doesn't take pictures and the zoom isn't reliable
anymore), I had to find a replacement. I had selected a long time ago the
GS-100K to replace it but almost never got it. This camera being a bit pricy (I
finally paid 128,000 Yens), I always put away its acquisition. When I finally
decided to buy it, all the stores I went to didn't have it in stock. It's been
replaced by the much smaller
GS-200K. The problem I have with the GS-200K is its size. It is way too
small for the hand of the tall gaijin I am. Also its resolution isn't as
good as the GS-100K
I was finally lucky enough to find an e-store in Tokyo with one camera still in
stock. So far it's been a pleasure to use. The size is right: it just feel good
in my hand. The color are bright, much better than those of my Sony. And the
3.2M pixels images and bright and well contrasted. In resume:
|
Pro |
Cons |
Size: perfect for a gaijin's hand. It's not too heavy!
Color are more vivid than on Sony models
Much cheaper (almost half the price) than the
Sony TRV-950, a now quite outdated model
The tape load from the top so if you use it on a tripod, you don't have
to take it off the tripod to change the tape.
Pictures quality is very good too.
Still pictures can be taken in manual mode too. On the Sony, everything
was automatic
|
Not that good in low light
The angle of view is quite low. But it is the case on almost all digital
video camera.
The screen displays way to much information even when the option for
minimal info is set.
The battery indicator isn't as accurate as on Sony digital video camera.
Manual only available in Japanese.
Menus on the screen are only displayed in Japanese |
Nikon D70:
I longed for a good digital camera for a long time. I had a serious look
at the Canon Digital Rebel (a.k.a
the 300D or the
Digital Kiss) when it hit
the market but couldn't convince myself to buy it (I found it quite pricy). I am glad I didn't. A few
months later Nikon released its Nikon D70 that just blew the Canon away. I read
gazillion reviews (these
two were the
ones that really convinced me) but its a combination of two events that made me
run to the store to get one:
- A friend of mine bought one and let my wife and I try it. I was convinced and
my wife really like to handle it and loved the pictures she took with it.
- Bic
Camera had a good sale last week-end: The D70 body,
two
lenses, one
256M memory
card, a spare battery and a tripod for 159,000 yens
After a week and a half, here are my impressions:
|
Pro |
Cons |
The battery seems to last forever: I took close to 1200 pictures
without recharging the battery.
It feels just right in the hands. The control are all well located
except the main command dial that is a bit awkward to turn with the eye
looking in the viewfinder.
The image have very little noise at ISO200.
The color are well balanced and saturated.
The 28-80 lens is very good at capturing the vivid colors of the
flowers. It has a very good "macro" capability.
Although I bought it in Japan, all the menus can be displayed in French
and the
manuals are available on the net in French, English and German.
Nikon is much better than Panasonic for that...
The flash is good enough to shot portrait inside.
The EXIF metadata saved with the file are quite detailed.
Instant power-on
No delay between the moment the shutter release button is pressed and
the picture taken |
Weight: it is damn heavy, especially with a 70-300 zoom (over 1kg)!
You can't really carry it unprotected. You gave to get a good bag to
carry it with its lenses.
The auto focus is quite slow when shooting distant subject: I didn't
manage to get good pictures of the moon.
It is not possible to set the white balance manually when in automatic
mode. Even if the shutter speed and the aperture are set automatically,
I still want to be able to set the white balance myself
Using the automatic mode, pictures are quite dark in foggy condition.
When shooting simultaneously in RAW and in JPEG, it saves only in low
resolution JPEG. I know this saves memory on the CF cards and that you
can generate any level of quality JPEG from the RAW file but sometime is
is handy to have a good quality JPEG file you can quickly e-mail without
having to convert format before sending the file.
The continuous shooting mode is not as fast as expected.
The base of the camera has only one hole for the tripod screw. It would
be nice to have a second one to add stability when used with a tripod
plate that has a main screw and a smaller pin (like the
Velbon CX586)
Since the equivalence factor is 1.5, even the 28-80 zoom isn't as wide
as it would be on a conventional camera. I wish I could afford a "shorter"
lens
to
take
shots with a wider angle.
The auto-focus isn't always reliable in low light situation.
Here is another issue with the auto-focus. |
Adobe Premiere Pro:
I've been a long time user of Adobe Premiere 6.0. It was a good product but very
unstable even on my "high-end" hardware (dual MP1800+, 2GB RAM, 72GB RAID0 SCSI
array). This has changed with the Pro version. It's been rock solid since I
installed it. I edited long movie with a lot of video effects and it almost
never crash. The interface has been updated too. It was annoying the first hours
I used it but now I am used to it. A great update from Adobe.!
10:08:38 PM Google It!  - See Also: Adobe Premiere Multimedia Trackback:
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