MAMA's Techno-Geek Thread

[GadgetGav]

Quote: Originally Posted by blalor (original)

(Is it now "cool" or Web 2.0 to drop the last "e" in a word? Flickr's cool; the rest are poseurs. )

Don't you mean posurs..?

[GadgetGav]

Ha..! Have you seen the great deal Amazon are offering with the nuvi 370 now..? Buy it and the nuvi 350 for some unspecified price..?! You'd have to have a serious GPS fetish to need two pocketable, self contained GPS units..! It's not like the nuvis are hard to move from car to car..!

[blalor]

Do you *really* get a discount when you do it that way, or do they just try to make the maths easier?

[jwardell]

I bought a new camera this weekend! A 35mm point & shoot from target for $4.95.
A bunch of friends decided to go on a last-minute trip to vegas in two weeks and I promised to go when I missed the last one. Considering they managed only 4 hours of sleep over three days that time, I don't expect it to be a very safe environment for any expensive camera. I figure my best bet is a camera that I don't mind getting lost or destroyed. I'm bringing along some york mailers and can drop it in the mail before I leave, the photos will probably be posted online before I wake up two days later.

Quote: Originally Posted by blalor (original)

Do you *really* get a discount when you do it that way, or do they just try to make the maths easier?

Never--usually the discount is around ten cents, if at all.

[blalor]

Price dropped another $20 yesterday and Price Protectr let me know about it. Sweet! That's about a 10% drop inside of a week! Go, baby, go!

Video question for everyone here: my CruiseCam arrived yesterday and I took it for a spin with my video camera (a Canon ZR-700). Overall it worked pretty well, but a couple of issues. First, the camera rattles a bit when you shake it, and that was picked up by the microphone. Very irritating. It sounds like of like the tape, but still makes the noise when the tape's out. I'm going to swing by Best Buy or Circuit City today and see if any other cameras do that. Anyone else had that problem?

Secondly, the mounting is so rigid that I get some pretty noticeable shake over even fairly small bumps. I'm going to have to go back and watch Josh and Jason's videos for comparison. It's hardly noticeable on the small screen, but watching it on TV, it's annoying. Anyone solved that problem?

[snid]

Quote: Originally Posted by blalor (original)

Secondly, the mounting is so rigid that I get some pretty noticeable shake over even fairly small bumps. I'm going to have to go back and watch Josh and Jason's videos for comparison. It's hardly noticeable on the small screen, but watching it on TV, it's annoying. Anyone solved that problem?

I'm not familiar with the cruise cam. I've got one of these:


http://www.ioportracing.com/Merchant...gory_Code=IOPP

The big red thing is "a special polyurethane bushing to help eliminate the high-frequency vibrations found in the race environment." I'm not sure if you could sandwich some PU between the mount and the camera with your setup, but it might help.

I honestly don't remember if I have the camera's vibration reduction feature turned on or off. I'm pretty sure it's off because turning it on takes away too much sharpness from the image. But I could be wrong.

[snid]

And I really need to get a remote mic solution figured out for this season. My camera has a mic in port, so it should be easy to just stash a mic under the seat or something and avoid the wind noise that plagues all my videos so far.

[jwardell]

Back when I got mine, canon's camcorders stunk, and I guess they still aren't that great.

If your picture loses sharpness when you have anti-shake on, that means your CCD is not higher resolution than ntsc (often, they are still even lower), and it has to do a digital zoom to make room for the motion. Though the 1 megapixel is a joke for still shots in mine, that's why I got it, so it does not have to sacrifice quality. Of course now they can finally make optical image stabilization cheaply instead of only featuring it on the pro camcorders.
Oh yeah: your best defense against vibration and shaking is weight.
That's one place where my 2000-era camcorder plus its extended battery certainly have an advantage over today's pocket recorders. No one said you can't strap some lead to it though.

[blalor]

It's not sharpness I'm having an issue with, it's more like bumps to the camera. Like someone whacked the camera with their hand, but not as extreme. The mount is very rigid, so it's not unexpected. I didn't have the (electronic) IS turned on, but I think that only works in the horizontal plane, and this seems to be more in the vertical. Ah, hell, I'll just post an example. Give me a couple hours. :-)

I went by Circuit City today after work, hoping to see Sony's DCR-HC96 in person, but I missed the little note that said it's web-only. If you jiggle the Canon in your hand, you can hear the mechanism moving around. If you do the same with the Sony, it's still there but not as prevalent. I may just return the Canon to B&H and get the Sony from Amazon. It's nearly twice the price, however, and I'm just not sure it's worth the difference.

[blalor]

Sample video, 2.8MB (yes, I eschew YouTube)

I'm going to send this thing back. I'm very disappointed in it. I desperately *don't* want to spend the additional, but any audio recorded in the car on that mount is utterly worthless. I can get the same effect just jiggling the camera in my hand (which isn't watchable, but still). Hopefully B&H won't give me a problem...

[jwardell]

I think the shake is very minor and is simply flexing in the seat. See if turning on IS abolishes it, it should because it is so minor.
But what is that sound...it sounds like there's some pebbles inside it!

If I were to spend any money on a camera I would want one that has a progressive output, since everything I make is destined for web, where I have to through the extra step of de-interlacing and that also reduces resolution.

[blalor]

Yeah, pebbles is right. Dropped that sucker off at Staples for its return voyage to B&H. Hopefully the next one doesn't suffer the same problem.

Doesn't progressive output put you way up into another class of camera? Like well over a grand?

[GadgetGav]

Do they have progressive output on consumer cameras..? Even my HDV Sony still does interlaced (1080i). Isn't the interlacing an integral part of the NTSC standard..?? Don't you have to go to a DVCAM format before you can do things like 'film effect' 24p..?

[jwardell]

Because a lot of new cameras are not recording to tape and instead to hard drive or flash and in an mpeg-2 format, I think you an get something with progressive output pretty cheap. Probably not 24p, but probably 30p. How about this new Canonthat does 720p and is a consumer compact. The line between digicam and camcorder gets progressively (hah) blurred with each generation.

[GadgetGav]

Oh yeah, that thing is pretty cool.