July 17, 2003
Nikon Coolpix 5400
Shortly after Abby was born, we purchased a Nikon N70 35mm SLR. I had been trying to take pictures with a point and shoot camera and was pretty underwelmed with many of the results. The prints improved dramatically with the move to the N70 and even more so when I started taking my film to a mini-lab rather than a nearby drugstore or KMart. I had considered a digital camera but five years ago the resolutions available were still lacking.
When the twins were born digital photography had progressed somewhat so that you could make decent 4x6's and 5x7's with reasonably priced 2 megapixel cameras. I debated between something with more controls or something small and simple. I went with the original Canon Digital ELPH because of its simplicity and extreme portability. It's a camera that doesn't intimidate Michelle and we can easily throw it in her purse. Nonetheless, there isn't a lot you can control with the camera. I also noticed that the pictures weren't as sharp as I'd like due to the small optics in the ELPH. It's probably just a subjective issue. The biggest problem I had with the ELPH was that indoor pictures had a lot of issues with color casts and exposure. Many indoor pictures had blue casts that I would later compensate in the GIMP or Photoshop. I was starting to miss the quality of the N70 but liked the power of digital photography.
This past couple of days I've been looking at the new crop of 5 megapixel digital cameras from Canon and Nikon. Among the leading contenders are Canon's G5 and Nikon's Coolpix 5400 (shown at left, click for details). I went to Cameraland in downtown Nashua today to buy the Nikon. Their price was $50 less than ordering from Amazon.com or Buy.com. There's another review of the 5400 at DPReview. I haven't had much of a chance to use it, but it should be the best of both worlds. The power/control/quality of our N70 35mm SLR with the convenience of digital photography and the quality of high resolution. I hope to get some nice shots in Chicago.
Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle review - Last night I went with my co-worker, Will, to see Charlie's Angels. I really enjoyed it for what it was. It has no major underlying moral conflict. It's not award winning drama. It's a movie that makes fun of itself and doesn't take itself seriously -- much like the Austin Powers series but with fewer sex and body function jokes. It also has special effect action sequences that require almost as much suspension of disbelief as the recent Matrix Reloaded sequel did. In other words there was a lot of slow motion, almost gravity defying, odd camera angle action scenes. If you go into it with this expectation, you'll enjoy it. One of my favorite things about the movie was the short bit with John Cleese. He plays the part of Alex's (Lucy Liu's) father (see here). Due to a communication misunderstanding he gets the mistaken idea that his daughter and her friends are prostitutes. His visions of his innocent daughter are shattered by this and we watch as he tries to cope with what he thinks is her career choice.
NH Lawns are brown - Unless you live in shade or are watering like a madman, the lawns in southern NH are turning brown. The amazing thing is that it's not that hot outside! I think it's a combination of the length of the days and our sandy soil. I cut grass this morning and the mower had barely anything to cut even after two weeks. I noticed I had a receipt from the TruGreen guy who came yesterday to fertilize the lawn. He said it looked like the lawn was cut too low. My tractor is set near its highest setting. He also recommended that we water 30-40 minutes every day at this time of year. We can't do that! We have 50 sprinkler heads divided into 10 zones of 5 heads each. If we water according to that recommendation we'll be watering between 300 and 400 minutes each day! I don't want to risk drying up the well or burning out its pump with a watering schedule like that. We'll just wait a month and things should return to normal as we approach the onset of autumn. Currently every zone gets 45 minutes twice a week. It not enough to keep the grass green but I think it'll sustain it until we get past this season.
I'm following up on my own post because this page gets a fair number of search engine hits. I've had the Nikon Coolpix 5400 for a couple of months now.
I've been pleased with it for the most part. I want to delve more deeply into its advanced features soon but the basics work well. It certainly gets exposure and color cast better than my Digital ELPH did. Having 5 megapixels certainly gives you more cropping freedom without worrying about the picture becoming grainy when you go to print it.
I was initially a little disconcerted by the camera's preview window. It shows a blurry image initially and then a few seconds later shows the high res version. This is to give the camera's internal software time to load the full image from the compact flash card. Once it fully loads the image, you can pan around at various levels of zoom. But at first you get the knee jerk reaction that the focus was wrong or shutter speed too long. Just be patient and a couple of seconds later you'll see the image as it really is. I never experienced that kind of lag with my Canon, but the resolution was 60% less.
There are a few other times where the camera requires you to wait while it finishes its transfers to and from the flash card but it's usually not more than a couple of seconds. Perhaps that would annoy a pro but for a high end consumer digital camera, it's not that bad. There's a price to be paid for having all those additional pixels. Certainly the camera's internal RAM buffer helps alleviate a lot of the read/write delays.
If you have any questions on my experiences, post a comment.
Posted by: Scott at September 9, 2003 11:22 AM