Equally, I’ve worked my way up the heap in a predominantly Windows-world.  Beginning with Windows 3.1, 3.11 for workgroups, then on to 95, 98, the worst idea ever – Millenium, then on to XP, Vista (a.k.a. Windows 7 beta), and finally to Windows 7, I’ve become intimately familiar with the inner workings of each of these operating systems.  During that time I also became pretty familiar with Apple systems:   Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, and today’s Snow Leopard.

Last but not least, my phones started with the LG Flip Phone, before I migrated to a Blackberry, then an  HTC.  On the heels of that, I’ve also used the Samsung, Motorola Droid, Motorola Droid 2, and last but not least, the Motorola Droid X.  This past weekend, I finally caved…

I now am the owner of an Apple iPhone 4s.  The circle has been completed – working from home primarily on an Apple Macbook Pro, an iPad 2, and now an iPhone 4s – this Windows certified technology geek is now pretty much an Apple fanboy!  I gotta admit – it is pretty cool gear!  I do still work with Windows systems, primarily XP and 7 (along with the server equivalents), and am still pretty well-versed on the Android systems as well (I did a roll-out of over 250 phones on my last contract job including Windows Mobile, Android, Blackberry, and Apple devices.)

I’ve resisted the single-source ownership of computing devices for as long as I could – but the deal was just too good to pass up (psst…thanks Verizon for being out of the iPhone 4….the 4s is a great device at the discounted rate I got!)  Why did I switch?  Touch screen more than anything else.  Every smart phone I’ve had (primarily the Motorolas), the touch screen has lost sensitivity to the point where I have found it difficult to even unlock the phone or answer a call.  My upgrade window at Verizon kicked in Jan 1st.  I debated long and hard about it as the iPhone 4 was a $100 upgrade cost, and the iPhone 4s was a $200 upgrade.

After trading in my Droid X and an old iPod Touch, I had about $94 in credit due…so figured for $6, I could try it once.  A visit to the store and I was told that the iPhone 4 was out of stock – would I be interested in the 4s?  Well sure, but I had not intended to pay more than my original upgrade cost.  Well, Mr. Anderson, since you’ve been a faithful Verizon customer for so long, let’s see what we can do.  I walked out of the store with the 4s for $6!  Sort of a no-brainer…

Are you resisting the trend?  What are your platforms?  Am I joining your fold or have I betrayed the open sourced cause?

#1 – Understand the data

I was out two weeks ago with this money (probably burning a hole in my pocket, and came across an HP monitor in none other than Best Buy.  The price was right ($249), as were the dimensions (23″).  I was looking at some of the other monitors, and none really filled the bill like this one did.  The only downside was that there was no USB port (or so I thought).  The salesman also pointed out the contrast ratio of 40,000:1!  Without thinking about it to much, I figured it certainly wouldn’t be a bad monitor – so why not give it a whirl!  After all, a 30 day return policy to the brick-and-mortar worked in my favor.  So, home it came for setup.  A few landmines awaited:

Size – While the dimensions of the monitor are always important, another consideration to take into account is the elevation or lift you get.  My old faithful Dell had a telescoping arm that elevated it nicely over my Drobo, and kept it right at eye level for me (or very near it to prevent me from hunching over too much and becoming Lurch!.  The HP 2310m had no such benefit and I then found myself shopping around for monitor stands.  Subtract another $40 for a decent quality stand (Allsop).

USB Ports – I neglected to consider that the HP had no USB ports.  I previously had 3 things coming off the old monitor – a printer, my mouse, and a dangler I could connect my card reader to easily.  So, some rewiring was in order.  But, this helped me clean up some cable management issues, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Contrast Ratio – If you take away nothing else from this post, consider this:  contrast ratios are meaningless!  That’s right, they are meaningless numbers, generated by each vendor to measure their own “belief” of what the expected performance could be of the monitor under the most extreme settings.   I got a hard knock here, recalling after some collaboration with the crew over in the NAPP forums (thanks to Andrew Rodney for the reminder).  As it turns out, pretty much anything past 1000:1 is meaningless under a calibrated workspace, because monitors just aren’t made to produce a useful contrast past this once calibrated.  Some of the really price ones from LaCie and Eizo do, but those are in the thousands of dollars range.  So, keeping true to my budget, I had to settle for consumer grade gear.  But, I wish I would have known that before buying, because the decision was made in haste and on bad information.  So, lesson learned – know the important data!  Contrast Ratio = 1000:1 or greater is fine!

#2 – Don’t Be Afraid to Settle

After finding out all these little caveats, I also got an email blast from Newegg, touting their Halloween deals, and of course, a monitor came up in the laundry list.  An ASUS 25″ for $230!  I was floored.  Two more inches of real estate, for $30 less!  So, I started digging into the reviews, forums, and consumer reports.  I’d purchased a few of their motherboards over the years and was happy with those.  A trip back to the NAPP forums did alert me to a few misgivings some had about the brand though, so I decided against returning the HP in exchange for the ASUS.  After all, it was only $30 difference in price, and would have possibly got me in a situation where I may not have been able to return the ASUS without getting an ugly restocking fee.  And besides, the low profile and lack of USB were also present there, so there wasn’t much to gain.  Then I saw the LG.

It was on display at Sam’s Club, and I’d seen these things in use in lots of retail settings, including warehouse environments, retail, and even doctor offices.  The seemed to be of  decent enough quality, although the contrast was  always way over cranked.  I could fix that with a calibration though, so checked the price:  $189!  A savings of $60 (figure in tax).  That would negate the $40 spent on the monitor stand and give me a little change back in the wallet.  Off to the web I went for more research.  Turns out this isn’t that bad a monitor.  I decided to go for the savings and returned the HP, bringing the LG home.  Now, all that was left was to set it up, and I was off to the races!

#3 – Calibrate it!

Last but not least, I set the LG up to calibrate.  After twenty minutes trying to dial in the color, contrast, and brightness, I was beginning to understand the differences between vendor makes and accuracy.  I’d heard of monitors that just wouldn’t calibrate and was suspecting that this was the case for the LG.  (The luminance was just way to low, and the colors would never fully align to center in my Gretag Macbeth colorimeter.  I finally gave up, and went to take the colorimeter off.  On doing so, I noticed that the ambient light filter was still on the puck that I had used to measure ambient light.  That explained it!  Sans filter, I placed the colorimeter back on the monitor, and within 5 minutes, had things dialed in pretty close to perfect.  My luminance is 0.5 off, the color is at 6500, and contrast is spot on dead center.  It’s got 30 days to satisfy me (and assuming nothing else goes on sale…)  So, word to the wise – when calibrating your monitor, remove the ambient light filter – it can save a lot of headache!

I’ve now moved the 19″ into the secondary position, the 23″ has become the primary, and the added benefit of the monitor stand has given me two new rows of surface area to store things like my thumb drives, media cards, businesss cards, and other bric-a-brac.  More storage in an increasingly cluttered life is a good thing!

So, watch that contrast, check to calibrate, and exercise caution in spending habits – especially if you can’t return things easily.

Thew New LG Monitor

Now it’s your turn – got any purchasing stories or tales to share where you learned something in the experience?  Sound off in the comments, let me know your thoughts on the above, or to share your own “war stories”.  Thanks for stopping in and we’ll be back tomorrow with more photo goodness.

P.S.  Another heads up reminder, that the November Newsletter will be coming out this Friday, so if you’ve not signed up – make sure you pick up a subscription for it either in the sidebar or here.  It’s free, and only available to subscribers!

1. Megapixels – I really don’t make huge prints…16×20 is my usual upper limit, and if I need to go higher, post production tools can usually handle a notch or two higher.  So, for my purposes, I really wouldn’t want more than 15 MP.  Call me crazy, but I’d rather see larger pixels that blend nicer than smaller ones that produce more noise.
2. Video – Yeah, it’s a staple in the P&S category and slowly creeping into the SLR ranks, so I may as well add it in here.  But let’s not get all lame and only throw in low end video quality…and if you think I’ll settle for the HD-like caliber of 720p, you’d be mistaken.  No, make it the full HD 1080p!  It’s already arrived, so also being realistic!
3. Frame Rate – SLR’s ar ranging anywhere from 3 to as many as 18 fps.   I am not trying to capture a speeding bullet, nor am I a sports shooter for the NFL, but a frame rate on the order of 6-10 fps (raw) would be ideal.  Since I am only asking for a Megapixel count of roughly 15, it’s not like the sensor would be hard pressed, so again, very  realistic here, right?
4. HDMI support – The Canon 1D Mark IV has it, so it clearly will become a staple of at least the higher end model SLR’s if it isn’t already, so I’d better have it here.  Besides, the ability to directly display movies and photos directly on your HD TV would be super cool!
5. Internal wireless and Bluetooth – the EyeFi card is a neat technology, but really?  Think of the space a wireless card takes up these days and there is easily room inside an SLR body for that.  Let me push my jpgs from shoots directly to the web for sharing.  As for the Bluetooth, imagine being able to shoot and have your images pushed directly to a hard drive of 500GB sitting in your back pocket?  Awesome!

Forget the first five features?  Stop back here to give those a read and share your comments there.  Or, if you haven’t commented yet (or even if you have and there’s more you’d like to share) be sure to chime in with your own thoughts and feature requests for the ideal camera!  There’s more to come, but I promise, we’re almost done, so be sure to stop back some time soon for yet another 5 features in the DREAM CAMERA!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!  Any features you’ve thought of that I am still missing?  Care to share?  Don’t forget to sound off in the comments!

I’d also like to take a moment and thank those of you who have been perusing the archives of the blog.  Enough people have commented that the “49 Tips Cheat Sheet” I posted back in 2009 was missing that I decided to re-publish on request.  It’s available in the store tab here for a “Dollar Download”.  (Most attachments get deleted after being in the archives for 30 days, so here’s your chance to get a very handy guide for about 2 cents per tip!)

Last, but not least, a reminder that we’re starting to wrap up March as the halfway point has officially passed, so be sure to get your photos up in the Flickr contest thread for a chance to win a Cheetah Quickstand.  Details here.

Yes, that’s right, I am looking at the T2i, but like everyone else, my look is virtual rather than real, so for those expecting a hands-on review, you’ll have to wait until it ships.  For what it’s worth though, here’s some initial thoughts on looking through the specs that Canon released.  First off, their PR description from the landing page on their website:

“The new flagship of the EOS Rebel line, Canon EOS Rebel T2i brings professional EOS features into an easy to use, lightweight digital SLR that’s a joy to use. Featuring a class-leading 18.0 Megapixel CMOS Image Sensor and increased light sensitivity for low light photography, the EOS Rebel T2i also has an advanced HD Movie mode for gorgeous Full HD movies. Able to capture up to 3.7 frames per second, it’s ready to go the minute it’s picked up. Advanced Live View, a new wide-area screen, plus features like Canon’s brilliant Auto Lighting Optimizer and Highlight Tone features ensure brilliant photos and movies, easily. With some of the most advanced features of any digital SLR, it’s simply the best Rebel Canon has ever created.”

So, wow, right off the bat, they are calling it the new “flagship”.  Impressive words, but I am a little surprised by this as flagship is usually used in reference to the top-of-the-line in a product, which in Canon’s case is the 1Ds Mark III. Well, it’s a Japanese company though, so a minor nit…now, on to the nitty gritty details.

Media: First off, Canon has changed from the venerable CF format card to the SD format card for their entry level lines…which I think is a first (I am sure someone will sound off in the comments if I am wrong though).  This includes support for the traditional SD, as well as the high capacity, and the extended capacity cards (SDHC and SDXC respectively).  This is kind of cool as my P&S uses those card types, so this means buying fewer types of media for newcomers to the SLR world.  One point for Canon.

Megapixels: Weighing in at a whopping 18MP count – this is kind of surprising, given that the sensor is is the crop format – that’s an awful lot of pixels to be cramming onto a sensor that size.  With Nikon holding the edge in noise handling, I am afraid of what kind of noise this MP count will produce at anything above 400.  I remember my Canon XT (which had less than half the MP count at was pretty rough above the 400 ISO setting.  We’ll see, but for now I am afraid this is one point against Canon.

ISO/Shutter Speed: Well, they went and did it…not only did they jack up the MP count, but they also brought the super high ISO settings to the entry level cameras.  You can now shoot in High ISO mode (12800), so the amount of noise that is going to appear here will likely be screamingly high which is not a good thing.  Sure, it enables more low light shooting, but at what expense?  Give me better noise handling and I’ll be impressed, but with the 18 MP count, I am not holding my breath.  On the shutter speed side, also a little disappointed.  They’ve upped the ISO, and MP count, why did they leave such a cheesy shutter in there?  Only 1/4000ths of a second?  This is the same that the Rebel XT had some 4 years ago – you can’t improve shutter quality in 4 years?  How depressing….another 1/2 point off for a total of more more gig against the body in this category.

Video: Not a big shocker here as most cameras are moving to add the video recording capability in SLR’s.  The big advantage of having video in an SLR is that you can change lenses where formerly you needed super-expensive video equipment to do this.  The fact that Canon has extended the HD recording capacity to its entry level line of DSLR’s is impressive with a full 1080p.  It seems the format is also in the popular .MOV style which is probably one of the most portable ones available.  Kudos to Canon here, so one point for them on the video.

Frames per Second: No surprises here, the entry level is still not very fast with only 3.7 fps.  One of the reasons I upgraded to the 40D and am now looking beyond that is the burst of 6 fps that comes in mid range models, so am happy to leave that behind.  The fact that they were able to eke that much out with the new MP count is impressive, but stil,l very much “entry-grade” in the shutter fps count.  One point against ‘em (sorry guys).

LCD Monitor: I am glad to see that Canon has adapted in this regard and is now providing higher resolution screens for the entire lineup, with the entry level “flagship” weighing in at 1,010,000 dpi – something that my 40D doesn’t have!  The large 3″ size should be a notable nod as well so one point for you in this element.

Focusing Points: Only 9?  Really?  Disappointing, as this is available in many of the P&S line-up.  Pony up a little here Canon and give ‘em a few more to choose from.  A little surprising that they haven’t raised the bar here – given the advances in technology.  Sorry guys, but gotta dock another point here for not bringing up the count.

Price: Ah yes, the final point to consider when buying an SLR – how many sawbones are leaving your bank account.  The MSRP for this is not surprising given the market point as an entry-level DSLR:  $899  This does include the kit lens of an 18-55 IS lens…so if we take that price from B&H of $170 off, that means the body only will weigh in at roughly  $729.  Once you stock up on a spare battery, media, and swapping out what I am sure is the cheap-o strap (which is still the one provided in their high end 1Ds Mark III camera which boggles my mind) for one with decent padding, your price is right back up into the $800 range for the body and required accessories.  This really starts getting into the subjective element here, but for me, when I see entry level SLR’s in Target, Wal-mart, Costco, and the like for $600, and high end P&S cameras in the same category, shelling out an extra $200 for the feature set doesn’t really seem worth it to me.  I’d rather save the $200 for the accessories, with a lower end SLR from the big box stores, or get a high end P&S from B&H that pretty much does everything this does except the interchangeable lenses.  That, combined with the economy being what it is, and this seems a tad over-priced.  Sorry guys, but another notch against you here…you gotta adjust to market conditions and given the rest of your product line, it’s just not worth it!

So, what’s the final tally?  let’s take a look and see:

Points For: 3

• +1 – Media
• +1 – HD Video
• +1 – LCD Quality

Points Against:  5

• -1  – Price
• -1 – Focusing Points
• -1 – Frame Rate
• -1 – ISO/Shutter
• -1 – Megapixel count

The final tally has more cons than pros, which means I can’t in good conscience say that this body is worth jumping into the DSLR range for beginners.  Save some moolah and go with the XS – it’s got roughly the same frame rate with an MP count that is more appropriate for a crop sensor camera.  Granted, you don’t have the HD video and are dealing with a slightly smaller screen (2.5″ versus 3″), but how much are you really planning on using that screen for checking image sharpness anyway…probably not much – that kind of evaluation comes in during post.  And you save $320 in the process.  Start off with this and some nice glass and you can upgrade to the mid-range down the road which will give much better features in terms of IQ, response time, and the like.

So, there you have it- my first look/thoughts on Canon’s latest release.  Have you looked at the details yet yourself?  What do you think?  Is it worth it or a waste?  Am I off in my estimation?  Sound off in the comments, as your feedback and input is really what matters… enjoy the weekend, and we’ll see you back here on Monday!  Until then, happy shooting!

It worked!  Not only did I get a clean (relatively) garage floor – I also got a brand new 14 gallon ShopVac from Lowes.  A few extra attachments and a spare filter only set me back about $120, so all in all, it was a good deal!  (Although I realized how much junk I’d managed to accrue over the last 16 months…)  Just goes to show you that with all the gadgetry in the world, there is always something out there you still want and/or need!  Ladies and Gentlemen…I give to you – my new ShopVac (and now clean garage!):

Ain’t she pretty?  And the job she did on the garage was pretty amazing too!

Okay, sorry for the photo interruption, but I just had to share now that I have a clean garage space – first time in over a year…back to photography:

Stay tuned tomorrow for my full write-up on the new Canon Rebel (the 2T I think), and some great creative challenges for you heading into the weekend.  In the meantime – anyone else have any non-photo gadgets that they got and suddenly realized they should never have been without?  Mine is definitely the Shop-Vac!