On the recommendation of Marco Arment, I decided to invest in Beyerdynamic DT 880 headphones. When I purchased them on Amazon, they cost $225. Prior to this week, I’ve never spent more than $30 on a pair of headphones. So why the extravagance?
More and more, I find myself spending a lot of my time listening to music that I buy online. But more importantly, I find myself wondering what I’m missing. A lot of work goes into producing any album, and by playing them back on cheap-o earbuds or crappy speakers, we’re cheating ourselves out of the sonic fullness that we’re paying good money for. So I made the decision to splurge on one good set of headphones, rather than opting for an endless supply of generics.
After one day of use, I can safely say that the Beyerdynamic DT 880 headphones will change the way I listen to music. Not only are they super comfortable, they make my music sound amazing and bring out nuances that I just don’t hear through my speakers, and certainly not my earbuds. I was particularly impressed by how they render classical music, all of which sounds gorgeous. The day I got these, I spent more time listening to music than I had in the previous few weeks combined. My only regret is that some of my music from years ago was encoded at a lower MP3 bitrate than was optimal; time to go back into my old CD collection and do some ripping!
They are not meant to be used in a work-place as they are somewhat “open,” meaning they are designed for sound to leak out the sides. Anecdotally, I can say that the sound leakage is negligible, but I still wouldn’t use them in public. Instead, used strictly for private listening, these headphones will reveal things about your music you never thought possible.
Samsung has been handing out Droid Charges to a bunch of bloggers recently, so I was grateful that they came knocking on my door to give me one to try out as well. Some of my favorite gadget sites already do a pretty good job of giving an in-depth rundown of this thing (see Engadget’s review here and PC World’s review here), so I’ll spare you the technical details and instead just offer a few of my personal thoughts on it. In particular, I’ll be comparing this device to the smartphone that I currently use: the iPhone 4, which I love. First, some positives and negatives on the Droid Charge. Then, general impressions. Let’s begin:
Positives:
Gorgeous and huge AMOLED screen
Supports 4G LTE, which can be screamingly fast when it’s working correctly
Excellent Gmail/Google Apps integration
Supports Mobile Hotspots right out of the box
Excellent maps/navigation
Negatives:
Phone is so big that it is difficult to operate with one hand
Severe lack of apps and a generally crappier app store (Android Market) than iOS
Seemingly worse or inconsistent battery life than the iPhone 4 and other smartphones
Phone’s build feels light, plasticky, and cheap
Comes loaded with a bunch of horrible apps that I neither want nor need
Apps crash often or need to be reset in some way
Let me get this out of the way immediately: If the Droid Charge were the only smartphone I’d ever used, I’d be as pleased as punch. It sports a gorgeous screen and it adeptly does all the things that most people could possibly ever need (i.e. e-mail, internet browsing, etc.) But when compared with the latest consumer smartphones like the iPhone 4, its flaws immediately become apparent.
A few months ago, I gave my mother my old iPhone 3Gs. I only showed her how to use the FourTrack app (she likes to record music and notes for herself, as she’s a choir director), but on a recent visit home i noticed that she was using the email and internet browser with ease. She had grown to love the phone with no guidance whatsoever, a remarkable feat when you consider that English is her second language and she is not anywhere close to being a digital native.
I can’t imagine her having the same experience with this phone. Unlike the iPhone, the Droid Charge comes loaded with endless pages of apps, none of which I asked for nor needed. It’s not a user friendly experience and I don’t understand why Verizon continues to do this (I guess the money makes it worth it?). Several of the apps appeared to duplicate the functions of other apps, while some of them served no obvious function at all.
That being said, the Google-designed apps are excellent. Gmail syncs up beautifully and the Google Voice integration is phenomenal. Google’s voice search and navigation features also just feel easier to use on the Droid Charge than on the iPhone 4. I don’t think that will ever change.
I didn’t feel like I expected too much of the Droid Charge’s system resources during my time with it. I only installed a few apps from the Android Market, including Twitter, Stitcher, and Reddit. But running several apps at once seemed to really tax this thing. The official Twitter app crashed many times, forcing a reboot through the Task Manager. Speaking of which: unlike iOS, Android “lets” you manage the phone’s CPU usage yourself. Some may appreciate this level of control, but I couldn’t care less about how to optimize my phone’s CPU usage and I imagine it’s the same way with many users. Quite the opposite in fact; I was constantly worried that I had accidentally failed to close an app, thus draining my phone’s battery life unnecessarily. This is not a problem on iOS, which automatically shuts down background apps after a certain limit on resources has been reached (Update: apparently Android does this as well, although it’s questionable whether it does so as efficiently).
The Android Market ecosystem is lacking compared with the iOS App Store. Many of my favorite apps were unavailable. That being said, because it’s so customizable, there are some pretty neat apps for Android that will never appear on iOS (e.g. Swype). But none of these apps could be described as “killer apps.”
So, in general, I found this phone (and by extension probably many Android phones) to be more difficult to use than my iPhone. If I had no choice but to use a Droid Charge, I’d definitely be able to make it work, and would even enjoy it from time to time.
But why settle for a Droid Charge when you can just pick up an iPhone, especially now that both are available for Verizon? It’s possible that if the Gmail integration and GPS navigation in the Charge are that important to you, you’ll prefer them over their analogues on the iPhone. But the iPhone offers so many other benefits (i.e. solid design, great app ecosystem, general ease-of-use, automatic task management) that I can’t imagine that being the case.
The Droid Charge is currently available on Verizon. It retails for $569.99, or $299.99 with a 2-year contract.
After viewing the Strobist Lighting Seminar DVD Box Set, I was particularly intrigued by what photographer David Hobby was able to achieve using a cheap, simple collapsible muslin background created by Botero. I decided to buy Botero Background #023 (the same one in the DVD, apparently) and try to replicate the effects that Hobby created. So, I did a quick-and-dirty setup in my living room, got my roommate Matt to pose for 10 minutes, cranked up my f-stop to minimize ambient light, and fired away. Here are the photos that resulted.
In general, I’m extremely impressed that I was able to achieve this look in my living room, which, trust me, does not resemble a photo studio in the slightest. Here are a few of my notes:
I used two flashes: one flash aimed at Matt at a 45 degree angle to his left and above, fired through a Westcott 43″ umbrella on top of a light stand. The second flash is directly behind Matt, pointing at the wall, and was triggered via infared sensor.
The different colors were achieved by putting different colored gels on top of the background flash. It is amazing what a difference a $.50 piece of see-through plastic can create!
Unfortunately, the Botero background wrinkles extremely easily, exacerbated by the fact that it is collapsible. These wrinkles are also very, very obvious in photos where the background can clearly be seen. As a result, I had to shoot at high focal lengths (using my 70-200mm) in order to make depth-of-field more shallow to achieve the kind of bokeh that minimized these wrinkles. Unfortunately, I think I overshot it a little bit; there’s some image softness in a few of these photos and I think f4 would probably have been sufficient, given how close I was to Matt
On a related note, I bought the 5×7 Botero background for $65. Apparently they sell other, much larger sizes (a 10×12 and a collapsible 8×16). I think the 5×7 is a good combination of portability and big size, but I did find myself struggling on numerous occasions to crop out the edge of the background. In other words, this background is a bit small and will constrain your options, so if you are going to shoot with the 5×7 background, you need to use a 70-200mm lens (or higher).
It was surprisingly difficult to lean the background against anything that wasn’t a wall. Anything smaller would create an uneven shape, so just keep that in mind if you’re hoping to lean this thing on a chair or something.
Overall, I’m pleased with the purchase and am glad that with just a $65 item, I have another major asset I can add to my portfolio.
When the White House puts out a photo of President Obama, it’s frequently taken using a Canon 5D Mark II (Example: this iconic image). It’s the same camera that Jerry Ghionis uses. It’s one of the gold standards of DSLR cameras these days, in terms of image quality.
I recently acquired a Canon 5D Mark II after the unit went on sale at Best Buy. There are many reasons to own one, but the two primary ones for me were the fact that it sports a full-frame sensor (allowing me to take full advantage of my EF lenses), and the fact that it gets amazing low light performance.
Last night, I decided to put the latter to the test. I spent some time with my friend Rachell, during which I shot a few photos at ISOs 2500 and 3200:
On the way home, I shot a local band, Cradle to the Grave, who were performing at the Plough & Stars bar in Central Square. All of these photos were shot using ISO 3200 or ISO 4000:
My thoughts? The low light performance is spectacular. It is, in fact, so good that I’m pretty irritated I have not been using this camera all along. With my Canon 7D, I top out at ISO 1600 before the images become unusable, noise-wise, for any professional context. Yet with the 5D Mark II, even the ISO 4000 images are theoretically possible to use (realistically I probably wouldn’t go higher than 3200, but it depends on the situation. We don’t always get to choose our optimal ISO levels). And as you hopefully can see above, this makes possible images that I could only dream of prior to this point.
How many images have I missed out on because I did not have this camera before now? I shudder to think on it. But I’m glad this camera and I are finally together.
[Thanks to Alex Billington for hooking me up with the 50mm f/1.4 lens used in all these images. Extremely handy for producing sharp images in very dark situations!]
I had the opportunity to shoot two events this past weekend: Soccer Nights, held by Vineyard’s Cambridge church, and my friend Matt’s graduation party in Western, MA. For Soccer Nights, I took my trusty old 70-200mm f/2.8 on my Canon 7D, but I also packed along my new Fuji X100.
Soccer Nights is such an awesome, inspiring program. Volunteers from all over the city come to give kids a place to have community with each other. I was blown away both by the organizers and all the people who donated time to make this event as fun as it was:
All the wide-angle shots in the above photo set are taken with the Fuji, while everything close-up is done using the Canon 7D.
Quality-wise, I think you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two cameras. And as I am fond of mentioning, the Fuji X100 even gets better low-light performance than the 7D in many instances.
Focusing on the Fuji stinks. The manual focus (via focusing ring) is essentially unusable, but using regular autofocus is also a pain in the neck because you need to manually select “Macro” mode to focus on anything close up. I leave it in manual focus but hit the “AFL” button, which makes the camera automatically determine whether or not to enter macro mode or not. In low-light situations, this can still be problematic.
The dynamic range on the Fuji X100 is incredible. Images like this provide detail in both the sky and on the ground, in a way that my DSLRs simply do not do:
The Fuji X100 requires a lot more careful composing than other cameras. Since auto focus is slow, you need to choose your shots and your moments carefully. It helps when people generally don’t mind you taking photos of them, as was the case this past weekend at Matt’s graduation party (at which I used the Fuji X100 exclusively):
Overall, I still love this camera and how tack sharp some of these images can be. I just wish the focusing would suck a little bit less, and that the controls were a little bit more responsive.
The Fuji Finepix X100 camera is one of the hottest cameras on the market today. It is completely unavailable at any online camera store and there’s are good reasons why: not only does it sport an incredibly attractive retro look and feel, it takes spectacular images with its fixed-focal length lens (23mm). Recent events in Japan have also significantly affected Fuji’s production rate, making this camera extremely difficult to come by.
After repeated and failed attempts to purchase this camera at places like Amazon, Adorama, and B&H, I decided to try calling some local places. I was extremely fortunate to find a unit at the Hunt’s Photo down in Kenmore Square. It was the last one they had, and they had gotten it into the store only a couple of days before. In its entire lifetime, this Hunt’s Photo shop had only sold six Fuji X100s. I was number seven.
Here’s a video of me unboxing the camera:
You can’t tell from this crappy iPhone video, but the box and packaging is super sleek and classy.
Once you try to get your hands on the controls, it is immediately clear that this is not a camera for beginners. There are no “automatic” modes such as “landscape” or “portrait.” Instead, you’re greeted with these dials:
The X100 is strictly for intermediate or advanced users and even professional photographers have had problems getting a handle on how to use it. This thing is very quirky and there are a couple of nearly deal-breaking annoyances that I’ve had to contend with. First of all, the Fuji X100 takes amazing portraits, but due to the wide angle lens, you need to get really close to your subject. This necessitates switching into macro focusing mode on the camera to get the subject in focus, which involves going into the menu and making a specific selection. This is extremely cumbersome and I missed a lot of great portraits this way (the focusing also performs quite poorly in low light).
There’s also the annoying fact that I can’t replicate my normal DSLR shooting workflow while on this camera. When I’m shooting with, say, a Canon 50D, I’ll look through the viewfinder, take a photo, then hold the camera away from my face so I can look at the photo on the display. For some reason, the X100 doesn’t allow a similar workflow, as it has very limited “View Modes.”
There are a bunch of other things here and there that are annoying and just plain weird (example: the ridiculously overpriced lens adapter/filter/hood isn’t even available for purchase, due to constrained supply), but once you can overcome those, the images you can get are pretty incredible. Moreover, the hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen and looks like it came straight out of a Mission: Impossible film. It needs to be seen to be believed.
A few other things deserve mentioning. The low-light performance on this camera is simply phenomenal. This thing does better in dark situations than my much heavier, much more expensive Canon 7D. I can easily take images at up to ISO 3200 that are usable and that fact absolutely dumbfounding to me. Here’s an image I took at ISO 2000. In my opinion, the grain is barely noticeable!
For strobist purposes, the camera can also sync at much higher speeds than 1/250th of a second (the maximum sync speed on most DSLRs these days). This means I can experiment with flash using wider apertures in broad daylight, something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the chance to. I’m really looking forward to the images I’ll be able to create with off-camera flash.
Here is a photo set I took with the X100 at a farewell dinner last night. Judge for yourself whether the camera is worth the price and the quirks:
One of my most obvious needs for shooting photography gigs is an apparatus for storing compact flash cards. The world seems to have moved on to SD, but Canon’s 5D series, the 7D, as well as the 50D all still use compact flash, so if you want to use those cameras, you gotta deal with the cards. Sure, I could stuff them into my pocket, but this creates a number of difficulties (e.g. the cards can get dirty, crushed, and/or difficult to retrieve). Thus, I wanted some kind of card wallet for storing them.
Think Tank Photo’s Pixel Pocket Rocket seemed like just the right purchase for my needs (they make a smaller one that also holds SD cards). It’s cheap, well-designed, and it does the very simple task set before it. The Pixel Pocket Rocket feels durable, and has see-through mesh pockets for your cards so you can see which ones you’ve already used. It can store up to 10 cards and it’s super light, although when folded up, it can be a little thick to fit into a pocket (no thicker than average-sized wallet though). There’s also a neat see-through compartment for your business cards.
You can use the strap to attach it to a belt loop, other clothing articles, or even other Think Tank photo products. While the strap and the stitching that it attaches to feel solid, it doesn’t look that solid, so I did get a little bit nervous while using it. I feel like to use this product ideally, you’d loop the strap around your belt loop, then store this thing in your pocket and only take it out when switching cards. I personally would prefer something that doesn’t require you to put it inside your pocket (perhaps something that attaches to a belt), but that would be a different product entirely. Leaving the Pixel Pocket Rocket flapping around attached to your belt loop is NOT a good option for storing important cards.
Nonetheless, for $16, this thing basically can’t be beat. I plan on getting years of mileage out of it. Here’s my video review of the Pixel Pocket Rocket:
[Update: The creators of FilmPulse have responded to the tidal wave of criticism leveled at them]
Yesterday, I started seeing a few isolated tweets about a new online show named “FilmPulse” pop up on my Twitter feed. Most of them were incredibly derogatory in nature, so I sought out more information on Google. I couldn’t easily find anything, but this morning my colleague Devindra informed me of the details: FilmPulse is ComingSoon’s attempt at a new video film talk show “focused entirely around today’s hottest and most interesting topics.” ComingSoon is a pretty big, heavily-trafficked website, so any attempt that they made into the film commentary/media space was going to be closely watched. In this case, I think the amount of attention went far beyond their expectations.
The first episode just debuted on Tuesday, April 19th, and people had some pretty strong opinions about it. Legendary blogger Anne Thompson was no fan, and Quint from Ain’t It Cool News declared that if AICN had launched a similar show, he would have quit. Even the commenters at ComingSoon didn’t seem to enjoy it. One of them wrote, “This is the worst thing I have ever seen on the internet, and I saw a video of that American hostage being decapitated in Iraq.”
Let me preface the following by saying that I pretty much never write about other podcasts/shows unless it’s to praise them (look through the archives of this blog and you’ll hopefully see that I’ve consistently held to this). I believe that as professionals, it does us no good to tear each other down. That being said, the intense interest and hatred for this show leads me to make an exception, and to try to critically evaluate what is it about this show that inspired such a strong reaction.
I’ve watched the entire 15-minute episode, which consists of a 3-minute discussion between two unnamed hosts about film ranking service Flickchart, followed by a 12-minute interview with Morgan Spurlock with one of the hosts (Update: As Will Goss points out in the comments below, they are actually named with a quick lower-third at around 3 minutes into the show. Their names are Vic and Julian). Let’s take these segments one by one, starting with the latter:
The Spurlock Interview – This is a fairly boiler-plate interview with Spurlock, who is almost always a dynamic speaker. I found nothing particularly offensive about the interview and it seemed as though the interviewer actually took the time to do a little research into Spurlock’s career and tried to ask some probing questions. It’s not the best interview I’ve ever watched with Spurlock, but there is very little that makes this interview worse than what dozens of film/entertainment journalism outlets put out on a weekly basis (except maybe for the host’s egregious mispronunciation of the word “meta”).
The Flickchart segment – This is really what seems to be generating much of the controversy for the show. FilmPulse begins with a rambling 3-minute discussion of how films are ranked, leading to an endorsement of FlickChart. One tweeter remarked that “according to FilmPulse, pre-90s films have no cultural relevancy/artistic merit. I’d have a joke about that but it makes me too fuckin angry.” So what did they say that was so offensive? Here’s a rough transcript of how it opens:
***
Host #1: When someone recommends a movie, there’s a few things you can do to avoid wasting an hour and a half of your time. First point is, is that film privileged as a classic? Is that the context in which the recommender heard of the film? If so, they may be privileging it because it would be politically correct to do otherwise.
Host #2: I think the problem is that we were born at a time when films were getting really interesting. I think there was a lot of really interesting independent filmmaking going on in the early ’90s and we were around for that. Before that, if you actually watch some movies from the ’70s that are considered classics like Bullitt or The French Connection, they’re incredibly boring to people our age because we saw The Matrix when we were 10.
Host #1: And IMDB reflects the trends of those ’70s films particularly strongly. Those were very likely rated by people who saw it when it came out. If I saw a black-and-white film today, it would knock my socks if that’s all I had to compare it against.
Later on…
Host #2: …it’s a new generation. It’s time for the next generation of voices.
Host #1: That leaves room for a tool that actually does a better job of ranking, leaving out the cultural aspect. And that would be Flickchart…
***
There are a couple of things in this exchange that are worth noting. First of all, the hosts never actually say that they subscribe to the views of this “new generation.” But they do strongly imply it. It’s this kind of tone deafness that I think internet film writers are lashing out against. From a presentational standpoint, you only have one chance to make a good first impression. If you devote the first two minutes of your first episode to explaining why the knuckle-dragging yahoos from your generation (which you heavily hint that you are a part of) think some of the sacred cows of film history are “boring,” you are probably going to catch a lot of crap from it.
What’s sad is this: the hosts kind of had a point! The generation of today DOES view films differently. They do expect more flash, more action, quicker edits, better special effects, and so on. But rather than delving into the root causes of this, or evaluating this from a normative perspective, the hosts focus on how to give people what they want, i.e. how to use a service (Flickchart) to circumvent conventional wisdom about classic films. That’s what people find so galling about this opening salvo.
More broadly, I believe the hate against these guys highlights a number of trends. Online film critics are constantly fighting an uphill battle in the realm of legitimacy and credibility. Can quality film criticism still survive in the internet age? Several prominent film critics have decried the democratizing power of the internet, how it gives a megaphone to anyone with an opinion, and how it financially rewards those with attention rather than those with quality. The sight of these two hosts discussing the datedness of black and white films was a direct provocation for these people. After their brutal criticisms were out in the open, the bandwagon-hopping was swift and brutal.
Beyond that, FilmPulse’s first episode, and the furor surrounding it, is instructive in terms of how difficult it is to make a good show as a general matter. From the outset, one needs to be able to answer the question: why should the audience care about what you are about to say? The most unequivocal thing I can say about this show is that the hosts failed to adequately answer that question. That being said, I speak from experience when I say that starting a show is a tricky, difficult, harrowing proposition. If you heard my first podcasts, you’d probably opt never to listen to me again. But that’s what is so great about content-creation: it’s always a process of refinement, of bettering oneself and one’s product. It’s this learning experience that makes the whole enterprise so exciting. And it’s why I can forgive even the crappiest of first episodes, so long as you learn from your mistakes and try to move on.
Will these guys get a second chance to do the same? Only time will tell. Here’s their initial episode. Judge for yourself.