This topic came up on Twitter today and I thought it might be worthy of a post. Lots of people ask me (and other photographers) what camera should they buy, and quite often: which is better: Canon or Nikon?
I’m personally a Nikon guy for a simple reason: when I decided to get a DSLR, a number of close friends had Nikon cameras. This meant that I immediately had access to more gear than I could possibly afford, and friendly folks that could help explain how it works and ideally, would trust me enough to lend it to me for the weekend to play with.
A similar situation happens all the time with computers: people often purchase the same or similar computers that their friends have because of the built in support they can get from people they know and trust.
I personally think that many of the digital camera brands out there are fantastic…they all can take great photos. Canon and Nikon seem to have bubbled to the top but Pentax, Panasonic, Olympus, Kodak, etc all make great cameras in all different price ranges. I just happen to have spent enough on my Nikon gear to make me stick with them and many friends have done the same. Even my point and shoot camera is a Nikon since it can work with some of my DSLR gear should I want a little more out of it and leave the DSLR at home.
Sometimes though, depending on your needs or maybe a cool new feature, you may want to stray from the pack and get something that nobody (you know) has. This can be exciting and fun while at the same time a little scary since you’re on your own.
I remember when I bought my first Apple laptop (a white iBook – one of the first models) – all of my friends had PCs and they all wondered how I’d manage without certain PC software that wasn’t available on the Mac. Well, it didn’t take long before almost all of them switched after seeing my experience with it (software was a non-issue).
So if you’re prepared to blaze some new trails and be adventurous, try something different. If you’re just starting out with your first DSLR for example, you may want to stick close to your friends that can lend you gear and assistance when you need it.
Bonus tip: if you’re getting a DSLR, don’t skimp on the lens(es). If you stick with it, you’ll end up replacing the camera body long before the lens will stop being useful. Do your research, talk to friends with lots of gear (borrow what you want to buy before you buy it) and make an educated purchase….or at least buy it from a place with a good return policy in case you realize it’s not your thing.
I’ve had my Kia Soul for just over a month now and it’s still a fantastic car that I really enjoy driving. Kia’s done a great job at promoting this car, including this very creative video shot on the docks where my actual car would have sat before heading to Canada:
and I just stumbled across this behind the scenes video too:
These kinds of things are what is putting Kia on the map and breaking out of the mold of many other car companies.
After finally acquiring a shiny new iPhone 3GS, I started playing around with the new camera and video features. Rather than talk about it, I thought showing the video on a number of different online services would better illustrate it. So this is handheld iPhone 3GS landscape video shot while driving over the newly opened Golden Ears Bridge at dusk (approximately 9:30pm):
YouTube:
This video is the full trip across the bridge…once home, I pressed the ‘Send to YouTube’ button on the iPhone and it compressed and sent it to YouTube as you see above.
Flickr:
I trimmed the video down to 1:30 on the iPhone using the new trim feature. Flickr seemed to handle the video just fine.
Vimeo:
Note there is no sound on Vimeo…this is probably a codec issue that I’m sure Vimeo will fix very soon.
Both Flickr and Vimeo were manual uploads of the same source file so in theory they should be higher quality than the YouTube version since it was compressed on the phone before upload. I also tried MobileMe but couldn’t get the video to playback properly from my account, as well, there is no embed option on the video there so I’ll keep trying to play with it.
So far, I’m very happy with the camera/video upgrades the 3GS has – I’d probably upgrade just for those alone, nevermind all the other new things I’m still exploring on the phone. I can’t wait to try more things with the new camera!
Looks like Rogers is about to repeat their PR nightmare from last year’s iPhone 3G launch by holding back the pricing of the iPhone 3GS for current 3G owners until the last possible minute.
There hasn’t been nearly the same level of outrage as last time around but the rumours and speculation are running rampant…being dodgy about tethering policies and pricing certainly isn’t helping.
I’m still expecting some surprises from Rogers/Fido for current customers….last year they relaxed the upgrade rules a few weeks after the initial launch…most likely to boost sales after the initial rush.
The thing most people aren’t realizing is that they got the iPhone 3G was a subsidized device….the initial iPhone cost $499US when it launched in 2007 from AT&T then dropped to $299 in 2008 under a subsidy. I would expect those with a high monthly iPhone bill to get a break on the ‘rumoured’ full, no-contract prices for the 3GS of $699/$799 for the 16gb and 32gb respectively since they’ve most likely paid a fair bit of their subsidy down. But since Rogers/Fido uses a fairly complex tier scheme to catagorize their customers, the prices will most likely vary by individual account…possibly another reason why they are keeping the prices quiet since they may not have a blanket price for all 3G owners that want to upgrade.
On the bright side, it looks like there will be a full unlock/jailbreak by the weekend for the 3GS….hello Ultrasn0w!
I guess we’ll have to see what transpires over the next couple of days leading up to the release on Friday of the 3GS.
UPDATE: As I predicted, Rogers came out with decent upgrade pricing for iPhone 3GS. You can read the specifics on the Rogers and Fido websites. Pricing varies by your account specifics but assuming you got an iPhone 3G last year before September and have a certain level of voice/data plan combination, you should be able to upgrade for the ‘new customer’ price of $199/$299.
As I said on Twitter to the Rogers PR person, “RogersKeith“, I hope that he relays to his superiors the frustration felt by many customers (not just me) by leaving the pricing details to the last minute. It’s not a good way to engage and endear customers to your brand, especially in the fast moving social media world we now live in.
While not quite the angry mob like last year, anger was certainly growing online because of the lack of information when other carriers around the world had made their plans known in advance. Hopefully they learn from this experience for next year when Apple will inevitably release another version of the iPhone and all the 3GS owners will want to upgrade. RogersKeith said on Twitter, “iPhone launches aren’t typical” to which I replied that iPhone users aren’t typical either….this isn’t your daddy’s Blackberry hardware refresh.
UPDATE 2 (June 20th): The good news is that I finally have an iPhone 3GS. The bad news is that it took over 6 hours of wasted time to get it. I went down to Wireless Wave bright and early on launch day (19th). I was first in line of about 5-6 people. I expected the computer systems to be totally overwelmed and of course they were so the dealer wasn’t even able to log in and see my availability for a long time. I’m pretty sure Rogers computer systems are running on Vic-20’s. I waited about 4 hours at the store for them to be able to process my phone upgrade which they were unable to do. I don’t blame Wireless Wave, I blame Rogers unpreparedness for this portion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wait at the store any longer as I had to leave for Whistler. Since I was leaving town, I basically had to give up the phone I had on hold – I was hoping to get one from a dealer en route to Whistler but alas all were sold out. I came back from Whistler on Saturday morning and called the same Wireless Wave to see if they still had stock. I was told they didn’t over the phone. A friend had called the Apple Store and was told they were doing upgrades as well as new activations so I stopped by there on the way back from Whistler and was told they weren’t doing upgrades in the store right now. I then had a friend check in with Wireless Wave if they had any stock left and they did so I was back in the line for one. I was told they would process the order and it should be ready by the time I got to the store. It wasn’t. They basically set it aside for me and were going to process the paperwork when I actually showed up. Then began the 45 minute wait on hold for the Rogers dealer person to confirm that I was in fact eligible for a hardware upgrade (at $299). Once the dealer finally got through, they confirmed I was eligible. There was a problem though – the Rogers computer system (Sales Central) didn’t show that I was eligible for any kind of upgrade. The manager at Wireless Wave wouldn’t process a manual transaction for the phone because it’s their policy to not do them as there is a chance the paperwork will fall through the cracks and they won’t get their commission. The manager did call his bosses who confirmed that he wouldn’t be able to sell me the phone despite being eligible. A visit to another store in the mall confirmed the same thing. It wasn’t until I got a tip from Gary that there was a store in another mall that had staff that should be able to help me as he had a similar issue with his upgrade. I drove over to that mall, and within ten minutes of dealing with Thomas and Kelsey, left the store with my 32gb iPhone 3GS. They appeared to have no issue doing a manual transaction with the approval of the dealer call centre.
So what are the issues here? Well, inconsistent policies for handling customer upgrades – even between stores of the same dealer. I really suspect that the reason Wireless Wave didn’t want to sell me the iPhone was that because I wasn’t a new activation, they weren’t going to make as much commission. The fact that they led me on for over 6 hours also pissed me off. I know the systems were busy but I didn’t get a sense they were really trying too hard to get the answers they needed to get. There seemed to be a lot of policies that threatened termination if not followed correctly that the staff kept bringing up. The fact that other customers were able to get iPhones also pissed me off as I know that some of those people had the same account setup as me. A couple of friends that came with me to the store on launch day all had different experiences with getting the upgrade but had similar account/upgrade configurations as me.
I even decided to reach out to the Rogers PR person on Twitter who ultimately wasn’t needed to help me get the phone but did result in my getting a call from an advisor from the (Rogers) President’s office who wanted to know the full story. We had a good discussion about the problems I encountered and had I not been successful the day before, I’m pretty sure he would have helped me get a phone today. I wanted to make sure they understood this iPhone thing isn’t a fad and there will be another update next year so hopefully they will fix some/all of these issues – which are really more communication issues between Rogers and their dealer network. Customers shouldn’t have to run all over town to get a phone upgrade if they’re eligible.
Overall, I feel that Rogers did everything they could *for me* given the situation. Twitter was instrumental in helping me get in contact with the right people to escalate my concerns. So we’ll see what happens in 2010…I sure hope I’m not writing another deja vu post.
This past Friday, I was invited to attend a special media boat cruise up Indian Arm aboard the 68′ ketch, the Island Odyssey. Yeah, I know it’s my second nautical themed event this week, life is rough sometimes.
The purpose of the event was to let the local community know more about Bluewater Adventures which was recently proclaimed “one of the Best Travel Companies on Earth” by National Geographic Adventure Magazine who rated them 93.6% overall and 100% in customer satisfaction.
Compared to the other event, this was a much more intimate affair. It was like a floating kitchen party.
Did I say kitchen? Of course there was food:
The sailing tours (or ‘adventures‘ as they call them) cover pretty much the entire West Coast from the Gulf Islands up to Alaska and most points in between including the Queen Charlotte Islands. These trips also focus on a number of ‘eco-actions‘ including the entire trip being carbon neutral.
After getting to experience an afternoon on the boat, I can see why this form of touring the West Coast is so appealing and was honestly something that I’d never considered doing myself. It’s a very relaxing way to travel with all the comforts of home onboard. Something else I wasn’t aware of was the fact that a biologist accompanies all tours to help answer any questions guests have about the environment.
One thing that really hit home this past week of boating is how freakin’ amazing BC really is. We really do take for granted the beauty that is right around us and people from all over the world come here to experience it. This whole ‘tourist in your own town’ thing is really under-rated.
I thought it might be fun to clamp a camera to the boat and make a little time lapse of our trip and it turned out pretty well:
You can view my entire photoset on Flickr – and all the photos are geotagged so you can see exactly where each one was taken along the trip up Indian Arm (click the ‘map’ link on each photo).
Earlier this week, I had the priviledge of being invited to attend a boat cruise to help introduce Wantsa to the local social media scene. They’ve been pretty quiet about what Wantsa’s all about and then they went and hired my friend, Colleen Coplick who has the awesome title of ‘Professional Loudmouth’ for Wantsa. She’s not the quiet type and knows how to throw a party. In this case, it was on a boat:
Wantsa CEO David Strebinger says a few words:
The core of Wantsa is it’s recommendation engine as explained on their site:
The Wantsa Engine is an application found within social networks that lets you and your friends exchange recommendations on trusted businesses, services and organizations. In return, you enjoy exclusive discounts and incentives from a valuable network of recommended companies. Even better, every time you engage with a business or organization, we’ll make a donation to the cause of your choice.
A pretty amazing way to spend a beautiful evening on the West Coast that won’t soon be topped in my books. Congratulations to the Wantsa team on an epic preview to the local scene. I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re cooking up.
I shot a ton of photos and a few quicky videos during the event so check out my full set on Flickr – all the photos are geotagged so you can see the whole route we took on a map.
Today Apple unveiled the latest iteration of the iPhone, the iPhone 3GS. The ‘S’ stands for speed. It will be available in North America on Friday, June 19th.
This is a big deal for a number of reasons. I won’t get into all the new features of the device (and 3.0 firmware update), just a few that stand out to me since there is a lot to talk about.
First of all, for me personally, it means that I’ll have a new, faster, bigger iPhone in less than two weeks as my iPhone 3G was stolen last December so I’ve been getting by with my first gen iPhone for 6 months now. While it hasn’t been that bad, I really do miss the 3G speeds, the GPS and having double the storage space (16gb vs 8gb).
We also finally get an improved camera now at 3 megapixels with touch auto-focus and macro! While 3mp isn’t the most amazing thing ever, it’s still an improvement. I’ve been a big fan of the iPhone camera and all the fun apps that have taken advantage of it. I can’t wait to have a little more pixels to play with. With it also brings the ability to shoot video (too bad it’s only VGA quality and not HD). It also will be able to do some minor editing on the iPhone itself. It’s unclear if the video function, combined with new APIs will open up the app store to Qik and UStream type applications. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Apple approves.
The new Voice Control feature also comes with the 3GS. I’m going to reserve judgement on this one until I get to play with it myself…voice apps have always been disappointing and you ALWAYS feel stupid yelling at a device in public because it doesn’t understand your mumblings…although the voice activated bluetooth feature in my car is making think that voice recognition software may have improved a fair bit in recent years.
Pricing has been set at $199/$299 for the 16gb or the 32gb iPhones respectively and that appears to be the price in Canadian dollars according to the ‘Social Media guy’ for Rogers which is hopefully a welcome sign that Rogers might be catching on. Unfortunately as I write this, specifics about the upgrade path for those that got the iPhone 3G last July (11th) haven’t been released yet. Considering it’ll be about 3 weeks shy of a year between those dates, hopefully Rogers allows those that waited in line on launch day to simply extend their contracts from the July date forward and pay the new customer price. Rogers and Fido have also stated they will be reintroducing (for a limited time), the 6gb for $30 promotion. With tethering now a fairly straightforward affair for those with the 3.0 firmware, having that much bandwidth may finally start paying off.
It’s also interesting that the ‘older’ iPhone 3G will still be available at the very attractive price of $99 at Rogers and Fido on June 19th.
And finally, something that I’ve been eagerly awaiting is TomTom’s iPhone application which was finally announced today. Until the 3.0 firmware, iPhone developers were restricted from creating applications that used the iPhone GPS for turn by turn directions. TomTom even created a nice iPhone windshield mount which extends the GPS antenna and charges the iPhone. It can also rotate to hold the iPhone in portrait or landscape…which is also a nice touch for watching video in your car (while parked of course). I’ve used TomTom GPS units for years…I even had the software installed on my Treo 650 and used it with a bluetooth GPS module on my dash which worked perfectly since you could search for a location and even get and dial phone numbers for stores and restaurants.
Here’s their video demoing the application and windshield mount:
It will be interesting to see how they price both the app and the windshield attachment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they take advantage of the new subscription model (for the map data) the app store now allows under 3.0 not to mention the fact that the dedicated in-car units have seen quite a price drop over the last few years thanks to competition.
Earlier this week, I was invited (via Twitter no less) to attend a private tour of the Vancouver Police Museum. As well, there would be a walking tour of parts of Vancouver’s downtown area that would highlight some of it’s ’shadier past’.
They even have a morgue and autopsy room:
After touring the building’s exhibits including a special show and tell of confiscated weapons, we headed outside for the walking tour:
If you’re really lucky, you might even learn how to play Fan Tan:
The tour was supposed to take about 2 hours but I’m pretty sure our guide, Chris, could have continued on for hours more…he was bursting with history knowledge he wanted to share with us. If it wasn’t so hot outside with cold beer calling us, the whole group may have gone on all night. I was also surprised how much I learned about various aspects of Vancouver and even some landmarks that I’ve walked over/near many times without knowing their significance.
So if you have a few hours and want to learn a ton about Vancouver that isn’t in any tourist books, check out the Police Musuem tour. Make sure you ask to see the ping pong ball too.
The fine folks at Phottix sent me their latest creation, the Geo One GPS module. This is an almost exact replica of the Nikon GP-1 GPS module I reviewed previously with a couple of minor differences.
The most notable difference is price. One of my main (if not only) issue with Nikon’s unit was it’s price. Listed at £95 on the Phottix UK site, it’s a fair bit cheaper than the Nikon version which comes in at slightly more than double that price. (I couldn’t find any North American pricing or availability – I’ll update the post once it is).
Like the GP-1, the Geo One comes with cables to connect it to a number of Nikon DSLR models including the D90 and D300 among others. It also has similar ports to the GP-1 except that the package also includes a wired remote shutter release which connects to the GPS module using a mini jack connection. A nice bonus that makes the price even more compelling since you have to purchase the Nikon cable separately.
As you can see in the photo above, the Geo One is slightly larger than the GP-1. This is barely noticible on the camera.
So how does it perform? Pretty much exactly like the Nikon version. Very fast satellite acquisition time, similar build quality and seamless interaction with the camera. EXIF data was captured exactly like the GP-1 and I had no trouble uploading photos to Flickr with the geotags being picked up and mapped correctly:
It also comes with a similar plastic strap clip to allow you to move the module from the hot shoe if you need to use it with a flash. As the module has the same USB port as the GP-1, you can use it with your computer and even came with a mini cd with some navigation software but I haven’t tried since it won’t fit in my MacBook Pro’s dvd drive.
Overall, an impressive module, if not a near exact copy of the GP-1. Assuming North American pricing is consistant with the UK, it should prove to be a nice inexpensive alternative to the Nikon module and I’m sure they’ll sell a ton of them. A lot of people seem interested in my GP-1…until I tell them what it’s worth. Phottix just may have hit the sweet spot with it’s extras and lower cost.
I’m back at home after a whirlwind weekend in San Francisco to attend WordCamp SF 2009. It’s a one day conference for users of WordPress which is what this site is built with.
I’ve talked about WordCamps before and even gave a talk at WordCamp Whistler earlier this year. Like Whistler, I was joined in San Francisco by John & Rebecca from Sixty4Media and Duane & Dale from BraveNewCode which I referred to more than a couple of times as Team Canada.
During Matt Mullenweg’s ‘State of the Word’ talk, it was cool to hear BraveNewCode’s plugins (WordTwit and WPTouch) getting mentioned as two (out of 3) of the most popular plugins for WordPress users based on a Twitter poll Matt ran before the event.
This year I was asked by Lloyd to help out in the Genius Bar – basically a bunch of passionate users/geeks helping others with any questions or problems they have about using/installing WordPress.
During my shift I only answered a handful of questions due to a ‘genius to customer’ ratio of about 10 to 1… admittedly it was towards the end of the day and smack in the middle of a couple of well attended sessions. We did manage to come up with a few terrible WordPress themed pickup lines.
After a day of geeking out at the conference, it was time to head to Automattic’s space at Pier 38 for the WordPress 6th birthday party featuring WordPress themed cupcakes and a whole lot of awesome food and drink:
If you’re interested in any of the topics covered at WordCamp SF, keep an eye on WordPress.tv as most, if not all, of the sessions were videotaped and should appear online as soon as they are edited together. Rebecca also covered a lot of the sessions with her excellent day blog.
Considering the amount of camera gear I brought down there with me, I didn’t take a lot of photos…mostly because there wasn’t a lot of time between trips to and from the airport. I think next time I do a quick weekend trip like this, I’ll scale back my gear a lot more. I didn’t even get any decent photos of Team Canada….of course I blame the tequila.
