Review The Selphy CP780 is a tiny personal photo printer for producing lab-quality 6 x 4in prints. At just 176 x 132 x 75mm it can sit unobtrusively on a shelf or at the back of a drawer, ready to be brought out quickly for those occasions when you want an ad-hoc hardcopy of a photo you have taken with your digital Camera.
Canon’s Selphy CP780
Canon has resisted the urge to make the device cute at the expense of functionality, so it remains relatively plain, compact and rectangular. We tested the silver version; the white version would have been plainer still. If you want cuteness, buy the pink or blue versions.
Unfortunately, the impression of compact tidiness is destroyed when you plug in the power cable at the back and a USB cable at the side, leaving cables trailing in two directions across the table. Putting the two inputs together would have made the device appear classier.
A plastic paper cassette slots into the front of the unit, with a hinged flap on top acting as the output tray. The cassette is designed to hold any of a range of Canon-branded media including 6 x 4in photo cards, 100 x 200mm wide-format photo cards, and various sizes of stickers. Read the rest of this entry »
Review You’ve got to hand it to those marketing bods who are constantly on the lookout for a gap in the market. Not so long ago, digital SLRs were neatly divided into high-end/entry-level models, but now, consumer DSLRs come in a variety of specifications aimed at specific groups of users. Nikon’s D5000 is a good example. It’s described as an “upper entry level” DSLR, which means that it offers more than a budget DSLR, but just a little less than a mid-range model. So does the D5000 fill a gap or fall between two stools?
Nikon’s D5000 DSLR
Despite its model number, the D5000 sits firmly between Nikon’s D60 and D90 models, and Nikon clearly hopes that potential D60 buyers might be tempted to trade up to the D5000. However, the company also clearly desires that potential D90 purchasers will not be persuaded to trade down to the D5000 – hence, the carefully selected features and specifications.
The D5000 offers HD recording and Liveview operation and it uses the same 12.3Mp (effective) 23.6 x 15.8mm DX Format CMOS sensor as the D90, as well as the same 11-point AF system. Naturally, the D90 has a few cards up its sleeves, including a Pentaprism-based viewfinder, a 3in LCD screen composed of 920,000 dots, slighter faster continuous shooting speed (4.5fps compared with 4fps) and a built-in autofocus motor. Read the rest of this entry »
