Xmas Gift Guide 2011 was the year when compact system cameras (CSC) really began to hit their stride. Late to this year’s party were the Nikon 1 J1 and V1 models, but we’re still waiting to on Canon to show its hand in this arena. More to the point, Canon has yet to deliver a successor to its revered PowerShot G12 which is showing its age now. A PowerShot Gx is rumoured, but we’ll not be seeing it this year, for sure.
Lens swapping has its appeal, but so does fast access to functions from dedicated controls. Indeed, 2011‘s batch of affordable system cameras sacrificed buttons for reasons of cost, while pricier dedicated compacts kept the tweaks within easy reach, but had fixed lenses. When it comes to respectable pocket shooters, 2011’s models gave photographers something to think about when on a spending spree: point and shoot with accessories galore or a touch of class with customisation at your fingertips?
1. Leica X1
Packing a 12.2Mp APS-C sensor, the Leica X1 takes a no-nonsense approach to compact shooting with its fixed 28mm f2.8 fixed lens, equivalent to a moderate 36mm wide-angle lens on a 35mm Camera. 2011 prompted a firmware update for this model to improve focusing performance and JPEG image quality but that wasn’t going to make a difference to the X1’s Achilles heel; its 2.7in screen with a mere 230k-dots. Still, Leica also makes an optional clip on optical viewfinder if you prefer old-school shooting. Read the rest of this entry »
Android App of the Week Each too simple to warrant a full App of the Week write-up, these five dinky free programs caught my eye over during the past 12 months and have since taken up permanent residence on my Desire HD.
1. App Cache Cleaner
Does exactly what the title suggests and takes a broom to all the guff stored by your apps in their caches. After six months of not bothering to do this, I discovered that I was losing just shy of 300MB of space to cache files, which came as a shock. ACC’s killer feature is an auto-clear setting that can be programmed to run at anything from every hour to every three days.
Review Spending a couple of hours at the wheel of a new car at a press event is all well and good, but to really get under a vehicle’s skin you need to live with the thing on a day-to-day basis. This is especially true of one with an alternative drive train.
So it was with some interest that I watched a shiny new white Nissan Leaf roll off a trailer outside my house for a week-long trial. Tony covered the Leaf’s technical aspects more than thoroughly when he briefly drove it back in April, so if you want the basic details, take a shufti there.
Looks and feels a bit too American
The self-imposed brief was simple: dock the Mercedes and live with the Leaf as my only car. This would involve a fair amount of motorway driving, a quick trip to Leeds plus my usual urban and suburban local running about. Read the rest of this entry »
Geek Treat of the Week Hats off to Belkin for coming up with some really neat iOS-oriented gadgets just lately. Following on from its kitchen stands for the iPad, it has now come up with some handy little photographic accessories for the iPhone. The first one to arrive is the LiveAction Camera Grip, with an external microphone and remote control unit on the way as well.
The Camera Grip might seem unnecessary to anyone that just wants to point-and-shoot with their iPhone Camera, but the thing I’ve noticed since getting an iPhone 4S is that the improved clarity of its new 8Mp Camera still tends to be marred by the shakiness of my hands when I’m taking pictures. For me, it’s the act of tapping on the screen that always seems to shake the shot up. Read the rest of this entry »
Product Round-up There’s only really one choice of technology for Printing photos well and economically. Inkjet printers produce better quality photos than traditional silver halide, one of the reasons digital photography has superseded it.
Most of the major printer manufacturers produce inkjet printers and even the most basic of these can print good photos. When you’re buying a new printer, though, you usually want it to be able to print plain paper pages, too. These ten printers can do both and most can handle copying and scanning. There’s something to suit all budgets, with top of class performance from most.
1. Brother DCP-J125
All Brother’s SOHO machines look similar; neat and with a small footprint, more like an old fax machine than a modern all-in-one. This entry-level photo inkjet still includes memory card slots and a colour LCD, though not the wide-screen display which is a hallmark of Brother’s dearer models. It prints photos slowly, taking around three minutes for a 15 x 10cm print, under test. Print quality is fair on lighter shades, with natural colour rendition but, as with many inexpensive inkjets, dark hues can be murky and merge into each other. There’s a third off the RRP, if you shop around.
