The tabs build up as fast as I cut ’em down. This sweep is half photo-stuff, but I also have Second-Life humor, an Art-Rock conundrum, and what happens when you can’t write any more.
Second Life · I gave up on it myself, for the moment anyhow. So maybe it’s not like this any more.
GX-100 · I have speculated here that the Ricoh GX-100 might fill the fairly-empty “serious pocket camera” space. Finally, the mighty DPR has a full-on review. Summary: great ergonomics, weak sensor. I dunno, my Japanese colleagues’ seemed to be getting good results on indoor shots with their GX’s back in June; see Okazaki’s work here and here.
Pentax Gallery · Check out the Pentax Photo Gallery; there’s a lot of beautiful stuff there. I found that I actually disliked as much as I liked; the colours seemed supersaturated and the presentation generally hyper-real. I’m certainly guilty of cranking up the intensity in my own shots, but I thought these guys were really making it obtrusive.
Can You Tell Me Where My Country Lies? · I can’t tell make up my mind whether this is egregious art-rock silliness, or a triumph of composition, orchestration, and performance. Having said that, I couldn’t get the stupid tune out of my mind, so I slapped the CD in the van’s player while I was taking the boy out shopping. He, not sharing my burden of having lived through decades of Rock History, said he liked it.
I Forgot How to Write! · So complains Mark Cuban. Me too. If you’re gonna be in a meeting with me, I’m sorry, but my laptop will be on the table. Take it as a compliment; it means that I care enough to make sure that I’ll be able to use my notes, later.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Janne (Aug 12 2007, at 07:25)
About the GX-100: Look through the samples and test images they have in the review - DPReview is very good about posting a lot of material - and draw your own conclusions. It's just like when reading a scientific paper; you need to look at the data, not just the conclusions, since now and again you'll draw different conclusions from the data than the authors did. In this case I think higher of the image quality than the reviewers did.
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From: Kelly Jones (Aug 12 2007, at 10:09)
I glanced at a few of the indoor photos to which you linked and the exif data shows that most were shot at ISO 80 with and without flash. The indoor scene was fairly dark and the photos were dark, so I don't think that a data point about low light performance can derived.
That said, dpreview puts a lot of emphasis on per pixel quality. 10MP photos will rarely be viewed at 100% except by the photo's photographer. When you down size a 10MP image to normal print sizes and web sizes, the noise at higher ISO settings will be much less noticeable.
I like the fact that the GX100 has a really wide angle zoom, a hot shoe, and raw mode. I don't own a GX100, but it's on my short list of compact digitals that I'm considering as a companion to my K100D DSLR.
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From: Dan sickles (Aug 12 2007, at 18:27)
"egregious art-rock silliness, or a triumph of composition, orchestration, and performance"
as with much of early Genesis, it is both.
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From: Cedric (Aug 13 2007, at 10:13)
Your section title caught my eyes immediately... I thought "Mmmh, did anyone else ever use that sentence besides Genesis?".
Apparently not.
I can see how this may look silly to people who don't really like or know Genesis, but this still represents some of their finest moments in my opinion (they've had quite a few).
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From: Mark (Aug 14 2007, at 09:51)
If geek handwriting is on the critical list, how to explain all the blog posts about Moleskins and pens these days?
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From: Phillip Fayers (Aug 21 2007, at 01:34)
Looks like Canon are trying to get some of the keen photographer market in compacts. Their new Powershot G9 has some of the manual control features of the GX100. On the plus side is has a 6x zoom but on the minus side (if you like wide angle like I do) it starts at the film equivalent of 35mm.
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From: Stefan Tilkov (Aug 22 2007, at 13:48)
The song, BTW, is Dancing with the Moonlit Knight, from the Genesis album Selling England by the Pound". Listening to the studio version should erase any doubts.
IMO, the best album ever recorded.
And thanks a lot for linking to this -- I never knew there were any video recordings of the pre-75 Genesis ...
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