Saturday, September 17, 2011

Clik Elite Pro Body Sport CE708BK Camera Backpack Review



Good quality, comfortable, carries most of what I need.


Recommended

My love and hate relationship with Apple and Windows.



Apple Loves:

1)  The interface is clean, simple, not a lot of unnecessary features.  This usually translates to time saved working rather than hunting for apps.

2)  I think Bonjour is a better networking protocol.  I have far less stability problems connecting to share drives in and out of my macbook pro.  Connecting to a SAMBA linux server has also been much more stable and permanent for me.

3)  File handling seems to be more efficient and fast.  Example:  When using Lightroom, browsing my photos tend to be faster and smoother.  There is less wait time.

4)  They do try to be innovating as much as possible.

5) The hardware is nice to look at.  Unique, and very different from what anyone else is doing.


Apple Hates:

1)  Expensive hardware of course.

2)  Software updates are too infrequent.  I would like to see stability, security, and performance issues fixed faster.  I'm okay with monthly or weekly updates for these things. Lion needs some serious updates and Final Cut Pro X, well that is a whole different subject.  Updates were promised 2-3 months ago for this summer, and here we are at September 17rd.

3)  This one is macbook pro specific, but the edges of the casing are amazingly sharp.  Skin on my thumb has worn off from this.

4)  Sometimes they try to make a big deal about nothing...examples
  • Live demos that feature cheesy webcam graphics, that any web cam vendor has been doing for the last 10 years.
  • Promoting updates for the delivered calendar and mail software.  Boring.. I don't use these anyway.  
  • Making a big deal about full screen applications.  This isn't rocket science, Windows has had this feature for years.  I don't use it in Windows and don't plan to use it Lion.
  • iPhoto.. there is so much better out there than this.  

5)  I tend to always be doing storage management in my Apple environment.  I have a laptop that has a 500 gb main disk.  I quickly had to purchase additional portable drives to maintain my photo and video needs.  Working from share drives in an Apple environment is difficult to mostly unusesable for applications such as FCPX.  I feel constrained from this all the time.  Unless you get a Mac Pro Desktop, which is somewhat dated now, I think you will always be storage challenged.

6)  Somewhat of a false sense of security.  Just because the OS X platform doesn't have a lot of security breaches doesn't mean it couldn't.  Less is publicly written about virus' on mac because less people have mac's.


Windows Loves:

  1. Lots of software and hardware devices and components available for it.  Lots of good freeware, such as Cobian Backup, which I love. 
  2. Windows 7 is generally a good stable operating system, even though I'm through some challenges with it lately.
  3. My use of storage is not generally limited on my boot operating system or other drives. 
  4. You generally know what to expect and the usability is high.
  5. They seem to have their security methods correct as far as reacting quickly to a security hole, fixing it, and releasing the patch.

Windows Hates:

1)  Slow to innovate and expand functionality.  Where is the Windows version of Airplay?
2)  When things go wrong they can go very wrong.  I went through 2 months of crashing twice a day and couldn't figure out what the issue was.
3)  Windows search is useless
4)  Finding your programs can be difficult if you have a lot of them.
5)  Diagnose performance issues is terrible.
6)  I can't do inplace upgrades of software.  I typically have to download a version, click the install file, shut down the old version, let it update, and then often have to do reboot.  This is tedious.  I would prefer appstore style updates.




Sunday, September 11, 2011

Synology NAS 1511+ - Sept 2011 - Update

Synology NAS 1511+ - Sept 2011 - Update by Creative Outlet Images Photography



I can't tell you enough how great this product is.  I'm trying to setup a central backup server and media server in my house.  So far this has been extremely reliable.  I had it up for 32 days straight without error before I installed some new firmware.  There are a lot of NAS products available on the market but this company excels at the software used to manage the NAS.


I wasted to many weekends trouble shooting all flavors of linux to keep a stable environment running.  This is so much better than wasting all that time again.


That being said the real test is when there is a disk failure or problem.  


Please help support this website by using this link:

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Fuji x100 Review


Review Summary = Overall Rating = A-

The pro's even though its a shorter list outweigh the cons in my opinion. The images are really amazing.



Pros:
- Picture quality - with strong emphasis on this.
- Color reproduction - with strong emphasis on this.
- Small in size
- Low profile camera
- No fiddling with lenses.
- Good for night shots, low light.

Cons:
- Very slow to start up. This is a big drag.
- Auto ISO always seems to default to the highest available. However, this is the same as my Canon 5D Mark 2.
- Red Eye Reduction doesn't really work. However, I have the same experience with other built in flash cameras.
- On/Off switch is easy to accidentally switch.
- With macro mode off, focusing distance isn't that great.
- The menu button is a little to small.
- Missed shots / hit rate. Due to the slow start up and difficulty locking focus on moving subjects, my keeper rate is lower with this camera.
- When in low light conditions and high ISO the viewfinder can have a scrambled effect to it causing you to think its broken.
- Price
----------------


Edits for more information:  1)  I'm using a Sandisk 16gb Extreme Pro SD card. 2) I'm using firmware 1.1.







Examples:


Please help sponsor my website:



Thursday, September 1, 2011

Fuji Guys - Fujifilm X10 Part 1 - First Look

I

I like the design and innovation of this camera! Good job Fuji!