Uncategorized
Tofino 2008
Spending a week in Tofino, trying to chill and forget about work etc. Staying at the Pacific Sands Resort which is nicely priced and situated between 2 much higher priced hotels - the Long Beach Resort and the Wickaninnish Inn. For those of you that might not know, Tofino is located on the west coast of Vancouver Island, about 2.5 hours from Nanaimo. It is situated right on the coast, and our beach (Chesterman Beach) faces open ocean, clear to Japan. It really is a fantastic area, highly recommended. This is the 3rd time we have been here and I’m sure it’s not the last. It’s a great area for surfing, apparently, as the waves can get pretty high at certain times of the year. Right now, the rating is “moderate” for the Wave Warning posted on the way into town. Incidentally, since the last time we were here several Tsunami Area and Tsunami Evacuation Area signs have been put up. We’re in one of those zones, let’s hope we stay status quo ;).
Hope to post pics to Flickr at some point and keep blogging. Wifi is sparse, though, as of right now the only place I can get a signal is out here on the ocean facing deck - darn ;).
The Upgrade
Finally took the leap, although it didn’t take much convincing. Picked up a Nikon D300 on the weekend and have been spending as much time with it as possible ever since.
There are many reviews out there, but the general feeling is that this camera is amazing. From what I know and have seen of it so far, I totally agree. The things that stand out for me at this point are:
- Up to 6400 ISO - Clean ISO was almost unheard of in a non-pro camera until this one. The D300 can go to ISO 3200 (that’s about 10 stops of wiggle room in low light, people!) without overbearing noise, which is amazing. It can go to ISO 6400 before it looks like most cameras do at ISO 1600, which is completely amazing.
- Focus system - 3 main modes including single, multiple and dynamic areas. The focus is pretty quick (apparently not as fast as it could/should be, which might mean a firmware update someday) and is typically bang on. I can be as selective as 1 of 51 points or as broad as all 51, letting the camera figure out what to focus. Lots of options in between as well, including face and 3D tracking (which I haven’t experimented with yet).
- Colour level and saturation - really cranks it up 10 notches from my older camera, I can get eye-popping colour out of it if I want to. I actually set the camera at Vivid and +1 saturation and had to dial it back, it was so strong.
- 6fps out of the box. That’s fast, for me at least. I can goose it up 2fps more with the optional battery pack as well. I’m not a frequent rapid-fire shooter, but maybe I’ll become one now.
- Lossless compression on RAW files. Since I like to use RAW files, this is great. Tons of storage requirements, but I’m willing to give that up for the ability to start with what is basically a pure image.
As for image quality, I have one picture that I can share with you right now. This was taken on the weekend at a Field Hockey tournament. Conditions were early morning, fairly bright sunlight. This image was converted from a lossless RAW file and I actually had to dial down the saturation a bit:
Taken with a Nikon 18-200mm VR lens. Should be noted I did photoshop this a bit, but only for cleanup and retouch of a couple of key points (glare on the plaque, coach’s eyes needing fixing, white flecks on grass, etc.).
Can’t wait to see what else this baby can do. Expect a lot of photos to my Flickr page.
MacBook Air Overview
As many already know, Apple introduced a new notebook to their lineup on Tuesday. The MacBook Air is a sub-portable, very thin and light, and fills a niche that Apple has not yet competed in. There has been a lot of text already on the unit, so I thought I would give both a quick overview and some links to other sites to make reading up on it a bit easier.
Overview
- Thin thin thin, from .16-.76″ (40-194mm) - it slopes to thinness on all edges to make it look even thinner than it is
- Light, only 3 pounds (1.36kg)
- 13.3″ LED backlit screen with 1280 x 800 resolution - nice widescreen display, same as the current MacBooks
- 1.6Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor - shrunk down specially for the Air
- 80gb 1.8″ hard drive - same drive as in the iPod Classic
- Full size keyboard - backlit with ambient sensor, too!
- Large multi-touch trackpad - multi-touch gesturing a la iPhone, very interesting to see where this goes
- 802.11n wifi support
- Bluetooth 2.0
- Comes with Leopard and iLife ‘08 (as do all MacBooks)
- $1899 CDN
- The “uber-Air”, 1.8Ghz with a 64gb SSD instead of a hard drive is available for $3248 CDN - ya, sure….;)
Pros
- Size and weight
- Style
- Multi-touch trackpad
- LED backlit screen
- Backlit keyboard
Cons
- Price - the curse of early adoption
- Performance - would have been nice to get more for the price, but still decent
- Battery not removable - not usually an issue as most people don’t carry spares, but it should be mentioned
- RAM not upgradable - again not a huge deal as it comes with 2gb
- Tiny mono speaker - this is kind of annoying but I can understand why they did it
- No built-in drive - thin costs, especially this thin. At least there’s an external for $99
Unknowns
- Sturdiness - it is made of aluminum which will no doubt help, but it’s so thin I have to wonder about warping and how delicate it is
- Heat - there is a fan inside but metal does conduct, so I’m wondering about heat sitting on my lap
- Scratches/Scuffs - again, it’s aluminum so I’m curious.
Competitive Products
My Thoughts
Well, first off, I ordered one so that pretty much says what my final opinion is on it. There are competitive products out there (see above) but the Macs themselves do have one thing going for them that the rest don’t - they can run OS X and XP (and Linux of course) if desired. That leaves room for a lot of flexibility, to say the least. When comparing the MacBook Air, Pro and standard with each other it basically comes down to size (and price in the case of the Pro). The Air is considerably lighter than both the Macbook and the MacBook Pro, which for me is a major factor. I expect to be carrying this thing around in a backpack frequently when taking pictures, being out and about, etc. and it’s funny how a few pounds can make a big difference. Not to mention an inch or more of thickness when the pack already has a camera, lenses, and more.
Overall I am going with the Air because of its size and because it’s a Mac, it’s that simple. I want convenience and flexibility and for that I’m willing to give up a few cycles on a processor and I guess a few hundred dollars. A fringe benefit is that this thing is slick looking and sometimes that is justification as well since I probably won’t get tired of looking at it or showing it off for quite some time!
Linkage
- Apple - Specifications, overview and Guided Tour
- Macworld - Hands On With the MacBook Air
- Forbes - Into Thin (MacBook) Air
- Gizmodo - Hands On
- Inquirer - Apple launches MacBook Air
- ExtremeTech - Photo slideshow
- Crave - Photos: MacBook Air
- John Biehler’s post on his upcoming MacBook Air
I’ve been told my Air will ship on Feb. 6th and should arrive by the 13th. As soon as I have it in my hands I’ll post my impressions, photos and whatever else I can think of ;).
Events
