Earlier this week I upgraded from my first DSLR, the Nikon D60, to the new Canon EOS 550D. My first tests with it were done in Delhi in bright daylight as well as tricky indoor low-light situation and I am very happy with the upgrade.
While the Nikon D60 is a great camera to get into DSLR photography I have come to my limits with it quite quickly and was ready for the next step. For about 1.5 months I evaluated both Nikon and Canon systems, fairly early decided that I want to give the Canon system a shot now.
Then for the actual camera my requirements were:
- 15+ megapixels
- 1080p HD video recording
- Liveview
- high FPS for continuous shooting
- >3400 ISO
- user-friendly menu/settings
- ideally dedicated ISO setting button
My initial candidates were the 7D and the 550D but with the 7D costing over £1,000 body-only I narrowed in on the 550D soon, while being continuously tempted by the 9 fps and dual DIGIC processor speed as well as the sturdiness of the 7D. Now having bought the 550D I’m confident that I made the right choice given that I’m still a beginner but I’m still very intrigued by the 7D. The 50D is at the end of its lifecycle and I’m curious to see what Canon will do about it in the next months and the price points it will settle on after a few months of its introduction.
To take a look at the Canon 550D on amazon check: http://bit.ly/daXW1q
The Canon 550D offers:
- 3.7 fps
- 1080p HD movie recording
- 6400 ISO (expandable to 12800)
- 18 megapixels
- liveview
- SD cards, specific support for EyeFi cards
- built-in flash
- built-in mic and speaker, also has socket for external mic
- mini HDMI socket
As I bought the 550D in duty free on a business trip I had a few restrictions to deal with when capturing the unboxing on my iPhone 3GS, running OS 4 beta 3. The lighting was more than tricky and I had no way of fixing the iPhone, but anyway, here is the unboxing video.
My Nikon D60 is for sale on Amazon if you’re interested with an 18-55 kit lens for £319.99. As I look after all my gadgets extremely well it is in mint condition and only has seen 1,000 shutter releases.
If you’d like to take a look at the listing check this link: http://bit.ly/c1fQ9u
For quality assurance and re-packing pics please see: http://bit.ly/94KdvD
Now if there were two things, and there are, that are not to my liking, I’d have to say:
Exchange support does not include Calendar!!!!!!!
No HTC Sense UI
Now while there are ways around both issues through apps (paid-for ones), it is just not the same. For a while I pondered to sell my Google Nexus One and get the HTC Desire instead so at least I can get the HTC Sense UI. This would be intriguing if it wasn’t for one crucial difference in hardware between the Google Nexus One and the HTC Desire, the hardware-based noise reduction tech. Since I’m using the Google N1 mostly for business it is quite crucial that I get the best voice quality possible. So after long deliberation and having found a good set of pretty good replacements for some key components of the HTC Sense UI I’m finally leaning towards keeping my Google Nexus One and not pawning it off so I can get the HTC Desire instead.
HTC Sense UI replacement apps:
Basic home theme: “GDE – The new home experience!” by MiroMind [paid for], with the “Hero Theme for GDE” by Diceman4 [free]
Clock/Weather Widget: “Weather Widget” by Android Apps [paid-for], with the H7C skins for clock and weather [free]
I’m aware that this is by far not an exhaustive list of all HTC widgets it is still a good enough work-around, short of having to root the device and flash the HTC Desire’s ROM onto my Google Nexus One.
Other replacement features to match HTC Desire:
“FlipSilent” by Maven Peter: this mutes your phone if you turn it face down
Great replacement for complete Exchange sync/push access:
“Exchange for Android” by NitroDesk, Inc. aka Touchdown [paid-for]
We’re the most delighted and happy owners of a Roomba 581. Ever since we openend up the box we have several extra hours available to do meaningful things every single week.
This week two events take place in London that I will cover live via twitter. If you’d like to follow the stream of updates from the areas that I cover, please follow @geekpub on twitter. In case you hadn’t heard about geekpub yet, it’s a little thing that I started in the summer this year to organise drinks amongst like-minded folks. The initiative is in the early stages, free, and open to anyone who likes to chat about gadget, technology, games, etc. For more info please visit http://geekpub.me.uk/ . Besides organising the little meetups I’ve also decided to do all the live microblogging under the geekpub name so as to separate it from the everyday updates under @geofas. Read more…
I’m excited to report that a week’s worth (well about 25 hours in total) of research on work has come to fruition.
After having learned what I need to know about Amazon’s cloud computing web services EC2 & S3 I moved geofas.com over to the new architecture and it paid off. The site runs about twice as fast now which makes me very happy.
If you care to compare bring up http://blt.me.uk/ which on the previous web-host alongside http://geofas.com/ which is now running on Amazon EC2.
Later this year I’m going to post a how2 for setting up a wordpress powered blog on Amazon EC2 and move content over, a particular scenario that I believe has not been properly covered clearly in the blogosphere, so hopefully this may be of help to fellow bloggers.
Update: For cost reasons I’ve decided to go back to my original webhost since I had already paid there for 2 years of hosting.
Now, I don’t know about you, but my mac power adapter gets quite warm when it happens to lie on carpet, bed or couch, not that that’s a surprise. Also these pop-out claps only help to organize the thin cord leading to the mac. Wouldn’t it be great to have a little gizmo that not only helps to keep the power adapter aired but also lets you organize the full length of the cables on both sides? Hit the Read more link to meet the solution, named “PowerCurl“.
