Warm again

[altivo]

I suspect that's the end of the snow for this season. Birds are going crazy, and I think I've heard a fox once at night now. The frogs are starting up too.

Amazon took all day and into the night to post the results for the next cut in the ABNA. I just got the list, and I didn't make it. I refuse to take this too seriously, since the first cut was based on a 300 word pitch and this second cut was based on amateur reviewers evaluation of the first 5000 words of the manuscript. It would have been nice to get past this second hurdle because then the professionals start reading the entire manuscript, but... eh.

Happy whelp day to farthing who I assume will see this eventually. He's a really sweet wuffy.

Got a new camera today, the one I ordered a few weeks ago. It's a Kodak, and has an awful lot of features and settings for a small snapshot camera under $100 in price. It will take me a while to figure it all out. It doesn't help that instead of providing the instruction manual in the box, they tell you to download it as a PDF from their website. The URL they give gets a "page not found" error. It's a new model of camera, so I'm guessing they just didn't get it posted yet, but I sent them a snippy note about it. The software download, which is triggered when you plug the camera into USB, was grossly overinflated. And it's Windoze only, of course. I went ahead and let it download into my virtual Windows XP setup, but I probably won't use it much. The main advantage seems to be that it will allow the camera to upload to Flickr, Facebook, or the Kodak Gallery directly, using menu selections made on the camera's own display. I usually prefer to crop, scale, and edit my photos on the PC before uploading anyway.

Linux does recognize the camera when it is plugged in, but I don't know yet whether it can load pictures off directly. The memory card is standard SD so I should be able to get at stuff by just pulling the SD card out of the camera and popping it into the Linux machine, which is what I've been doing with Gary's Olympus when I borrow it. Oddly enough, there were batteries included in the camera box but no SD card. There is enough internal memory to hold a dozen images or so if you reduce the size of each shot, and that's it. Fortunately I had a spare 2GB SD sitting around and could just pop that in. Now to experiment and see how well it actually performs. Seemed to do pretty well in a couple of experimental snaps I did using just the artificial light in the living room.

Warning: This means more photos should be forthcoming from me, as I intend to keep this camera with me much of the time so I can snap at will. It's small enough and light enough not to be a big nuisance like a regular SLR would be.

Comments

[moonhare]

The iPod had no manual with it, and I downloaded and printed it at work: well over 100 pages. Our HP camera had no memory card, either- they all come with just enough memory to tease you and make you want that extra room. After opening the box I went online and ordered the power supply and case as well.

Looking forward to pics. I'm a 'visual' kinda guy and usually like to include at least some little illustration or another with my postings, so post away! My carry around camera is my cell, but the pics are mediocre, at best; they bring back memories of my Polaroid 'Swinger.'

[altivo]

They e-mailed me the PDF manual. I still find it inexcusable that they would actually ship a new camera model without completing their online setup for it.

This thing is deep. I like the ability to set film speed and various modes manually. I got some snaps in the barn and outdoors just now that look much better because I could override the automatic guesses the camera was making. I'm pretty sure that Gary's Olympus also can do some of this, but the features are so difficult to reach that neither of us ever learned to use them.

It also turns out that Linux support for Kodak digital cameras is pretty complete. Kodak's PTP protocol has open documentation, rather than being a proprietary secret, which is great. Buying a brand new model is not so great, as it doesn't appear in the list of supported cameras; but I suspect the generic PTP camera setting will do the trick as soon as I add the definition to udev.

[schnee]

They didn't even include the PDF on a CD or so? Wow, that's a new low as far as shaving off the last fractions of a penny is concerned.

[altivo]

It's getting to be typical. Someone has decided that buyers won't read the manual anyway, so why spend a nickel to include it? The software installation was pretty slick, but would have been a nightmare to do over dialup. Fortunately I had access to Gary's 3G modem. You plug the camera into USB and Windows sees it as a CD drive first. The CD has the installation stub which then downloads the latest versions of the software over the web. Nice in that you never get outdated software in the box, but suffers from the usual bad assumption that everyone has access to broadband internet. I find that stupidity really irritating.

[schnee]

Or any kind of Internet access, or that they want the company to know that they bought the camera (what kind of information does the stub installer transmit, anyway?).

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I've had issues with pulling big video files off sd cards without a card reader, oddly enough the pictures are fine but the camera times out eventually when I pull a big card.

The little canon I have is the best camera I've ever had...barring an old haminex quick shot camera and dad's Lumix ZC-70 I think it was.

I've tended to find Olympus digitals surprisingly difficult to use, yet I like their film cameras.

[altivo]

I do have an SD card reader that works with Linux. I probably won't be doing much, if any, video in any case. I don't imagine the video quality is that great. Still photos, though, are amazing for an inexpensive camera. I guess megapixels and speed really do help. (This one is 10 megapixels to the Olympus' 2 or so, and ISO up to 1600 compared with probably 400 max for the Olympus.)

I had looked at Canon and Nikon cameras, but they were all too expensive for my budget. The Olympus we have is easy enough to use in the "auto" modes, which is all we've ever done with it. My main problems with it were size and weight, and the fact that I often wished I had it available precisely when Gary had taken it to some event or other.

[farthing]

Thanksies for the B-day wishes! *hugwags*

[altivo]

*hugback* My pleasure, really.