I was recently in the market for an affordable, HD-capable pocket video camera. I knew Pure Digital’s Flip line of pocket camcorders like the Mino HD and Ultra HD were very popular in this space and as such I was just about ready to buy one. However, I decided to look around first and that’s when I discovered the $180 Kodak Zi8 HD pocket video camera. After having the Zi8 on hand for a few weeks, I believe it to be the best high-definition pocket video camera near the ~$200 price point on the market now. I’ll attempt to explain why in this review but if you’re looking for a quick answer, it’s because the Zi8 has an external microphone input, SDHC support and some interesting things I’ll get into soon.
Photo taken with D90 and my favorite lens: 50mm f/1.8 [click to continue…]
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Welcome to the third and likely final part of my series on High Dynamic Range photography. In the first part I covered what HDR imaging actually is and how it works while the second part went over DSLR camera setup for taking shots necessary for the HDR imaging process, in addition to configuring a regular Canon Point-and-Shoot camera for auto-bracketed RAW shooting. If you’ve been following along, you should now have several RAW images to use for HDR imaging. If not, take your camera outside and take some nice shots. I’ll wait right here. [click to continue…]
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This post is part of a series detailing what High Dynamic Range photography (well, there’s no such thing as HDR photography.. take photos first, use HDR process to come up with HDR images, not photos) is, how it works and how you can do it yourself! In the first post I went through the basics and some of the geeky bits about HDR photography: from showing off example HDR images, detailing why HDR images need to be processed and what you’ll need to get started. [click to continue…]
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Thanks to my second Ford Fiesta Movement mission (much more on this later once I get around to reviewing the 2011 Fiesta), I recently jumped head first into HDR photography. HDR, short for High Dynamic Range, is a “set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques” according to Wikipedia. In short, it involves taking several photographs of the same [click to continue…]
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The next gadget in my sights is actually a point-and-shoot camera. But why the downgrade from the DSLR? Nope, I’m not looking for a DSLR replacement – rather a complement. There are just some situations where a DSLR doesn’t make sense and I’ve come to learn that in the last year. Enter the upcoming Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T700. A point-and-shoot digital camera that is [click to continue…]
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It’s not often that an SD memory card comes out and creates a ton of fanfare. When that SD card has integrated Wi-Fi abilities to immediately upload your photos, then you start to understand why all the buzz is justified. I am of course referring to Eye-Fi’s long awaited wireless SD card. Amazingly, they were able to pack in 802.11 circuitry [click to continue…]
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