A Whole New Way of Taking Photos

So I finally broke down and bought a new digital camera, and decided to make it a D-SLR.  Keep in mind I went from my last camera purchase way back when 2 mega pixels was king to using the camera on my Razer.  Needless to say I have not been taking great photos.  Sure they are passable for what I do with them which is mostly look at them on the computer or 360 and occasionally print some out on 4x6 or 5x7 stock, but I wanted something more.

Most importantly I wanted to solve two issues, the biggest was snapping photos of my son while he was still in the room.  All to often most of my photos are a blur of him passing by or heading off after a cool pose or great smile, I wanted to capture the moment not the moment after!  The next was battery life, currently I had been spending more time charging batteries than actually taking pictures.  I'll attribute this to a long life for the batteries but even today's normal batteries and so called "digital" batteries were no match for my old camera.

In any case yesterday I went to Best Buy and bought me a Nikon D40, I had been looking at the D60 but figured the 40 was good enough to get me into the D-SLR camp.  What I will say after just one day and about 50 photos later that this camera is truly a leap beyond where I've been.  I have already taken loads of great smile pictures and action shots, heck I even tried taking some photos of the fish in my aquarium which were normally ALWAYS blurry and they are coming out great.  The best part is that so far I haven't strayed a bit from the Auto setting.  This is a camera I can truly grow into and hopefully learn how to take great photos all over the place.

Most importantly however is that I can not quickly take great photos of my son, anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.  Heck the only downfall I can see is the loads of photos I'll be taking and putting on the computer.  But that's the great part about a Digital SLR camera, I don't need to keep running to the photo lab, I can just keep on taking photos!

del.icio.us Tags: D-SLR,Nikon-D40,Photos,Razer

PS3 Update Proves its Blu Ray First

Sony released the new firmware update for the PS3 today bringing with it first and foremost (and pretty much only) Blu Ray profile 2.0. It's important for PS3 owners (like myself) becuase it clearly makes the PS3 the most up to date Blu Ray player. Sure there are some features die hard video and audiophiles are still wishing for but for the mass majority of us it means we can play all the upcoming Blu Ray movies and thier features with no problems. Those new discs are soon to arrive (by Sony of course) within the next few weeks.

To me it clearly shows that the PS3 is first and foremost a Blu Ray player and thats okay. One feature that seems to still be missing is the ability to copy Blu Ray movies to your PSP but that may be simply becuase there are no movies that support this feature yet (a feature that will simply be just a smaller copy of the movie in SD already on the disc for copying purposes).

PSP/ PS3 connectivity continues to improve with this update and as of this writing it seems the PS3 now supports my Xvid videos (which it didn't before) the same way the 360 does and with fingers crossed it hasnt dropped the connection as it has done in the past, but that may also be because I've not only purchased a new router since I last tried it but also have gone to a wired connection as opposed to a wireless one.

The best feature added with this update is a very simple one, the ability to resume a DVD or supported Blu Ray movie even if you stop and eject the disc. Its something many DVD players have had for a long time and its nice to see it on the PS3.

The PS3 and the PSP are good media devices, the problem is that Sony has taken thier good ole time getting t hem to where they need to be. Yet if they can continue to make improvements along the way its worth it to go along for the ride.

If your looking for a Blu Ray player you should look no further than the PS3 (at least for now).

"Friend"ly Customer Service

Last night I literally spent three hours on the phone with a friend trying to get his new Zune connected and set up on his computer.  Me being the tech guy that everyone goes to when in need was pretty much the only one who was going to help out, that and I've been on his case to get a Zune so I felt obligated to help get it set up.  It should have been easy yet we fought an annoying problem in that many of the words next to buttons were simply not there!  Odd as it was the trouble was most prominent in the fact that when he was typing in his username and password to sign in to Zune those words were also not showing up!  Finally after hours of troubleshooting he hit the back space as many times as he possibly could and finally got signed in.

It was one of those situations that worked out since there was a happy ending, sure the text is still missing and hopefully he'll never have to type in his password again but for the time being he's enjoying his new Zune.

The problem for me is that I'm also the tech guy at work and tomorrow I've got an issue waiting for me to deal with.  A coworker's email is acting up, can't wait till morning!

del.icio.us Tags: Zune,Email,Troubleshooting,Customer Service

Great Idea or Waste of Time?

I did a post recently that mentioned among other things putting your DVD collection on your PC and streaming it across a network. Two things recently got me thinking a bit more about this, a conversation I had with a friend and an episdoe of Tekzilla from two weeks ago. There are tools out there that allow you to take a DVD and convert it to your PC or your portable media player much like you can with music. Yet this process is not for everyone, first of all it takes a LONG time depending on the speed and processing of your PC and if you're doing all this coverting on a PC it does't give you a lot of processing to actually watch movies. The idea here is to have a secondary PC do the work, which again is not something everyone has. Secondly while its not hard to do or figure out, its not real easy either, some of the better tools do a great job at making it simple but you have to have an idea what you're doing.

Of course if you do have the tools and you do know what you're doing it can be pretty cool to have your DVD collection become your own personal On Demand system. It's pretty neat to be able to browse your collection from the comfort of your couch and once you've made a decision the movie is just a click away. However unlike music which you tend to listen to alot and over and over, you don't really spend the same amount of time with your movie collection. Leading to the question is all the time it takes to put these movies into digital form really worth it. It could take up to 12 hours to convert a movie as opposed to the minutes to rip a CD, and the amount of hard drive space depending on your collection could be quite substantial (not to mention room to back it all up on second hard drive!).

At the end of the day it really depends on what you're working towards, having movies on hand across your network is really nice, especially if you've got kids, especially if you forget a favorite DVD at the in laws! Good quality rips will look nice on an HD TV as well as the old "regular" TV in the living room as well. You'll lose a bit of quality and digital surround sound (depending on your settings) and of course all the DVD extras. Which leads me to my final point.

When I get a CD I rip it and forget it, it goes into storage. From there it goes on the network and my Zune, no need to use that CD again. With a DVD's even after thier ripped I don't feel the need to store them away, I like seeing my collection! Plus when you really want the theater experience its better to have the quality and sound.

For me in this day and age I like having options, sure my Blu ray movies look the best and I still have my DVD collection available to me, but the convience of having these movies in digital form is also pretty cool. And from Blu ray to PC convert the quality isn't far from watchable.

In the end it really matters how much storage space and time you've got on your hands. Hopefully in the future real tools will show up to make it much easier and quicker to put your movies on your PC, until then keep to your movies and keep them to yourself.

Using my PSP Again.

Well I've been quiet recently so tonight I thought I'd get something posted in the blog. The Digital Life has been calmly pushing along and lately I've been using it all quite a bit. One thing that I've also been using quite a bit is my PSP. I recently purchased a 2GB memory stick for it on sale at Radioshack and that's opened it up a bit for me now. I've got some game demos, some actual games, some PSOne games I bought along with a few movie trailers and episodes of Tekzilla I need to watch loaded on the Memory stick. Plus I've got Hot Shots Golf loaded in the UMD drive. Throw in some photos and a CD or so of songs and I've got a nice little media player.

I've been taking it to work with me also a bit lately, not really sure why, I can't play it at work so I guess its just there for comfort! My Zune still handles the heavy lifting in podcasting and music so thats certainly not why its there.

Perhaps its my hope that the relationship with my PSP will continue to grow. I'm searching for ways to use it with my PS3 and my hope is that some features upcoming in a new firmware will help make it even better. I await more news on the PSP GPS to see how that will be (or if its only going to work with the "new" PSP Slim) and its nice to see Sony giving the PSP a good chuck of DLC lately. Not to mention the possibly future Blu ray movie transfers from discs that allow you to transfer a copy of the movie to your PSP.

So after a long time of just sitting around the PSP is back, I never would have thought it but as it stands it does take Sony a long time to get things up to speed these days. Of course as I always have said, this is why I don't trade things in, you just never know when they'll come back around!