Weblog entry #110 for ajt
See all weblog entries made by ajt.
I could:
* Get a Nokia N800
* Get a Canon EOS 400D or even a 40D
* Get a new home server/cascade my desktop to server
I already have a nice Canon EOS Elan (50E) 35mm camera and selection of lenses, so it would be nice to have a digital camera body as well. I've been putting of buying a digital SLR because the prices keep falling and the features keep improving - too much deflation for me to splash out £600...
I really need to replace my home server built from scarp from work. I could either get a new desktop/laptop system and use my current desktop system as the server, or get a new deskside server straight off. If I did get a new desktop system then I'd give my dad my current TFT screen and get a new one.
Finally there is the Nokia N800. It's £250, just £70 less than a cheap Dell laptop. It's ever so cute, it runs Debian but what would I do with it?
Alternatively I could buy some cheap shares of a UK bank and wait for the price to rise once the silly season stops...
Comments on this Entry
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Getting a new camera would get me out and about a bit more, as I can't use the excuse of cost and delay with slide film any more.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
But since this is "debian administration", I should point out that
- The Canon digital SLRs run DOS!!! Yes really!!!
- They don't mount as storage devices over USB; they do work with the gphoto program, though it is rather slow for me. I use a CF-to-USB adapter instead.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Running DOS isn't so bad, South West Trains brand new Siemens Desiro trains run either Windows 3.1 or Windows NT 3.x - can't tell which I've not been close enough when they reboot the train...
Connection to Debian being a pain is not good, I run Debian for my desktop, server and laptop systems, we're a Windows free household.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
> either Windows 3.1 or Windows NT 3.x
A friend of mine was stuck for a while on a broken-down Virgin Cross Country train somewhere in the back of beyond; eventually a bloke turned up, opened a panel and rebooted it. Off they went.
As for the camera, the 40 is quite a bit heavier, if that matters to you. I would probably spend the extra on a nice lens rather than upgrading the body.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
I like heavier cameras they are easier to work with, my EOS 50E is much better with the 4xAA battery pack on than without it. I've already got some nice prime EF lenses so I'm not planning on getting any more in the near future!
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
I like the idea of a camera, it gets me out of the house and away from my computer!
that was what i was going to tell you :) I own a 400D myself and is a great 'amateur' DSLR. And if you own some lenses better, don't forget that the lens itself is more important than the camera [1]. (In fact, it's not totally right because some things [2] can't be possible with or without a very good lens... but to start with DSLR i think it's a good option).
30D/40D may be good, but i think the real difference is between 400D and its APSC captor and full frame cameras like 5D... the difference is to have a big angle or very big angle. (with APSC, you have a 1,6x factor on your lens, your images are cropped)
The fact that it's not UMS (i just try and in fact it's not) doesn't really matter, a cheap 30euros usb card reader is sufficient to avoid the problem
sorry for the very bad english photography vocabulary, but i don't know it... in French it's sufficiently difficult :)
[1] moreover if they are good lenses
[2] number of AF points, ISO and quality of ISO, number of images in 'rafal' mode, etc.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
I don't like the focal length shift you get with the smaller imaging size of digital relative to 35mm film - but at least it will allow me to use my 20mm lens in the UK - it's great in the Californian deserts but not much use in rural Hampshire.
Digital is more expensive that film, the EOS 400D is a lot more than the EOS 30 which is probably a higher grade of camera, but you save in the film processing stakes. I suppose at over £12 a throw for a roll of film and processing, digital can pay for it's self if you take a few pictures.
If I get a camera it's a good job I upgraded my desktop system with more RAM, some of those image files can get really big!
Where in France are you? My better half is French so we are there often. In fact I've blogged about better Linux coverage in France than the UK before, if I only I spoke French our problems would be solved!
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
For my lenses I avoided the consumer grade lenses and have all amateur-grade USM models mostly fixed focal length primes but non of the silly money 'L' series stuff.
yes, USM lenses are good. I just own a 50mm f/1.4 myself but it's a great one, the quality is better and it's faster than my poor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 than i kept from an EOS 3000N.
The L are in fact... too expensive :-(
I don't like the focal length shift you get with the smaller imaging size of digital relative to 35mm film - but at least it will allow me to use my 20mm lens in the UK - it's great in the Californian deserts but not much use in rural Hampshire.
Yes, it depends of you photo usage. I found that my 28mm on the APSC, so I got a 42mm-equivalent (not really, but it's too complicated to explain and it's not the point here), is too much to a lot of my use cases: landscapes and urban architectures.
If I get a camera it's a good job I upgraded my desktop system with more RAM, some of those image files can get really big!
In fact, the RAW files that my 400D generate are 9-10 Mb big. I use RAW files now, but under Linux it's not a simple problem, rawstudio and ufraw are good programs but they are still far behind proprios ones (which i don't use and don't really know). The purchase of a new PC was a big breath of air to my digital processing, digikam was really suffering before that :)
Where in France are you? My better half is French so we are there often. In fact I've blogged about better Linux coverage in France than the UK before, if I only I spoke French our problems would be solved!
In live in the south of France, near Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. If you pass nearly, feel free to send me an e-mail.
... and I wish i better speak English... (google don't help me much :(
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
I like landscape, trees in particular, so I should be able to get by with my current lens mix. With digital I'm essentially shifting them all up a category, 20mm -> 35mm, 28mm -> 50mm and so on.
I see there is gimp-ufraw, which uses dcraw to read the RAW files. My box is reasonable, an AMD64 with 2Gb of RAM and plenty of spare disk space. So I should be able to work with the RAW files from a EOS 400D without a problem.
My better half is half Breton half from Aisne. We try to go to Brittany often as it's pretty and easy to get to from the south of England.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
In fact, Brittany (= Bretagne) is really good. I lived near and studied there and really like it, people is very sympathic, but... the weather is so bad... (but can I say that to english people? ;-)
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Weather wise I'm from the north-west of England and except for a few years in California, I'm use to cool and wet weather, so too me Hampshire is mild and Brittany is almost tropical! We've camped three times now and it's always been very good in July-September!
One year a small rural supermarket had a Linux magazine with the cover story of installing Debian on old SPARC kit! Here in the UK you are lucky to see a Linux magazine and if you do it's all about dual-booting your XP box with some desktop friendly disto. It's nice to see Linux in the UK, but we are so far behind the rest of Europe on Linux is a bit depressing.
If you ever come to Basingstoke you should say hello...!
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
i bought the 770, but only because of the plummeting price this summer ($400 -> $150). $150 is about the limit of my "computer toy" price limit, so even if i didn't get a lot of use out of it, it was financially justifiable.
what do i use it for? surfing, ebook reading, music listening, im-ing, server administrating, and email checking. i have an 8 year old thinkpad, but even if i had a smaller, lighter laptop, i would still stick with the 770 for those tasks due to size, weight, and overall convenience. unless i'm typing a lot, i don't mind the onscreen keyboard (and the n800 even supports bluetooth keyboards). it fits somewhere between a pda and a laptop.
my pda is a palm z22 and is used strictly as an organizer (calendar, phone numbers, todo, reminders, etc) as it's not capable of doing much more. my z22 and 770 don't really conflict because the 770 is less specialized, bigger, and heavier than my z22 (which goes everywhere with me). if necessary, the 770 does fit in some pants' pockets and can run gpe.
work (development & productivity)? desktop.
reading (couch, bed, kitchen table)? 770.
errands? pda.
business trip? laptop.
vacation? 770.
to give you a feel, here are the applications i use on my 770:
- browser (w/ opera or gecko engine)
- pidgin
- media streamer (until i can find/choose a foss upnp audio player)
- xterm
- openssh
- otpcalc
- fbreader
- mplayer
- claws (mail)
a friend was considering purchasing a 770 for use as a 802.11 sip phone (~$100), so i tested it against his asterix server, and it worked okay (though looks odd in public talking to an internet tablet as compared to a phone form-factor).
if you already have a phone that operates as a bluetooth modem with an inexpensive data plan (europe?) and hate carrying around a laptop to fully use the internet, then definitely look into nokia's internet tablets.
i would not have paid more than $150 for what light use (compared to the 8+ hours/day of my desktop or 24-7 of my server) i get out of my 770.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]