SANDISK ULTRA II SDHC PLUS CARD 8GB

SANDISK MICRO CARD 8GB WITH MOBILEMATE READER

Price: Plus Card $117 Micro and reader $107

What’ll they think of next!

The low-down: These are two clever variations on SD and Micro SD memory cards. The Micro card is a conventional memory medium for mobile phones and Sandisk’s MP3 players, but in this package it comes with a tiny card reader that plugs straight into a USB socket, obviating the need for the usual Micro SD adapter. With 8GB of space on the card this provides good memory expansion for mobile phones and players. The SDHC Plus card is even smarter – take it from the camera and it plugs directly into a USB port. The memory card is hinged, and it is opened out flat for insertion into the camera. Then, for file transfer to the PC, it is folded closed and the USB pins are exposed. In this configuration it plugs into the socket.

Like: There is evidence of brilliant lateral thinking in these memory cards. Most PCs and laptops these days have readily accessible USB ports, and now the camera or MP3 files can be transferred without cables of any sort.

Dislike: The hinge on the Plus card is small. This looks like the weak point in the design – but that is something that can only be tested with extended use. The price is high, compared, for example with the Ultra II SDHC card bundled with the Sandisk USB card reader. The conventional card with reader is about $20 less than the Plus.

Verdict: These two new forms of memory cards are clever adaptations of the standard SD and Micro SD media. We have been using the SD Plus card in a compact camera we are testing and we found it a boon to be able to whip the card from the camera and push it straight into the USB port on the front of the PC. The MobileMate Micro reader is a better way of transferring files than the standard SD card form adapater because it also plugs the Micro SD straight into the USB port. Very smart and highly recommended.

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Apple iPod rules, OK! Everyone knows that. Only a dag buys an alternative, untrendy mp3 player, right?

Well, perhaps. But remember the old advertisement for the also-ran car hire company: “We’re number 2 – so we try harder”. There could be some truth in that. We have been testing the proposition with a couple of little players to see how they stack up as photo storage and viewing devices.

The Sony Walkman NWZ-A728 (RRP $269) is an 8gb flash memory player that has the face area of a credit card. The Sandisk Sansa View (RRP$277), also with 8gb of flash memory, is the same width as the Sony and about 24mm longer. They are both thin and light. The Sansa has a Micro SD memory card slot, for adding to the installed memory.

Both players have the same size and resolution LCD screens – 6cm and 320 by 240 pixel resolution. And both display photos and videos, but they are also both fussy about the image format and size.

We tried throwing large jpegs, straight from a Sony compact, at both players and they refused to display them. It was obvious that we had to go through a conversion process to prepare photos for display. In the Sandisk case this means going to their website and downloading the image converter, which is a weird way of doing business. Since the converter is essential to prepare the images for storage and viewing it ought to be included on an installation disc. In fact the mini CD (there is no concession to Mac pixies) only contains the instruction manual.

Both players rely on Windows Media Player 11 to prepare music and video files, so Mac owners had best stick with their beloved iPods. This is Gates territory.

We installed the Sandisk image converter and dragged and dropped the same jpegs that didn’t work in their native form. The conversion process was quick and, in the case of the Sansa player, the converter changed the files and then automatically saved them to the player, not to the computer. From that point they displayed perfectly, fitted nicely to the full screen.

We then copied the image files from the Sansa to the Walkman (being too lazy to crank up another converter) and they played perfectly there.

The screens on these devices are small – smaller than some of the LCDs on compact cameras. No one is going to be bowled over by either display.

Each company takes a different approach to the setting of brightness and contrast. The Sansa is very high contrast which makes for subjectively sharp and punchy pictures. The Sony opts for low contrast and more realistic light and shade contours. Some people will call this natural and others will call it dull. We prefer the Sony approach. And you can’t adjust the contrast and sharpness on either unit.

It’s hard to pick a winner. The Sansa is better value for money because it has more features than the Sony – voice recording and an FM radio, for starters. The Sony is smaller with display characteristics we liked. The Sansa is better looking but its shiny black surface will give CSI fingerprint experts a field day. Both cost about the same as a comparable iPod Nano, so perhaps the also-rans should try harder.

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Price: $600

Astonishing

The low-down: This is an 13.6 megapixel camera with a zoom range of 30mm to 105mm, film equivalent. Body construction is superb – titanium coated stainless steel, according to the specifications. Operation can be either fully automatic or with full user control. Some functions – exposure compensation, for instance – are accessible only through the menu, which seems to be common with the Sonys. The Menu system is clear and elegant and provides good supplementary information about settings. There is optical image stabilisation built into the lens. There is face detection. The inclusion of an optical viewfinder is a boon because the LCD review screen, which is large (6.7cm) with excellent clarity and resolution, is impossible to use in bright light. Sony’s Memory Stick is the storage medium.

Like: The picture quality is very good, with fine resolution and colour rendition. The absence of noise and noise reduction artefacts comes as a shock. Even in open shadows, where noise is at its most obvious, the W300 images are clean. Exposures are accurate and focus is fast and pin sharp.

Dislike: There is no printed instruction manual, only a pamphlet that doesn’t even tell the user how to change the ISO setting or exposure compensation. And Sony’s Memory Sticks are expensive and fiddly to read in a PC card reader.

Verdict: It is a truth universally acknowledged that as the pixel density increases on a sensor so the noise goes up, ruining images with ugly grain-like spots. So why doesn’t a camera with an absurdly high pixel density produce awful pictures? We have taken photos of plain skies and there is no mottling. We have taken portraits and there is no noise in the shadows alongside noses and under eyes. We have photographed old cars with shiny, brightly coloured bodies and there is no fudging of detail. At 100 per cent enlargement there is some evidence of noise reduction blurring of fine detail, but it is so well done that it is comparable with the best after-camera noise reduction software. OK, let’s go out on a limb here – this is the best compact that we have tested. The Sony W series has always been good, but this one is amazing.

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TODAY WE TACKLE A SERIOUS DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY ISSUE – why do the entire family look as though they are suffering from terrible jaundice in the Christmas photos? Here they are, sitting around the groaning festive board, funny hats askew and the pudding on fire and their faces are beyond ruddy. They are yellow, tending to orange.

But then, in the photos taken later in the afternoon of Uncle Cyril snoozing on the back veranda, he looks like a hypothermia victim. What is going on?

Well, it’s called white balance. Or colour temperature. And digital cameras, left to their own devices, are not as good at detecting and correcting colour temperature shifts as our eyes are. We don’t notice the orange cast from tungsten light and we automatically correct for the blue cast in shadows.

All digital cameras, straight from the box, are set to automatically correct white balance, but it doesn’t always work well. For this reason cameras have manually selected white balance settings from which the user can choose. Choosing the tungsten or shade setting will usually give a better colour accuracy in those situations. But better yet is to set the white balance manually.

This is impractical for spontaneous photography, but what we are considering here is the situation where time and the immobility of the subject are on your side. We ran some tests using different techniques and gadgets for setting the colour temperature, using a still life setup lit with sunlight through a window and two halogen flood lights with a decidedly yellow bias.

First we let the camera decide, using the Auto white balance. The result was awful. The yellow cast was dark and dirty and very difficult to correct in Photoshop.

Next we used white balance bracketing in the camera. This method involves taking one shot and letting the camera generate three saved images – one corrected to magenta on the magenta/amber axis, one corrected towards amber and the third at what the camera reckons is correct. The results were poor. There were not enough variations along the m/a axis.

Then we tried a nine set bracket, which can only be done in a few cameras, and the Nikon D300 is one of them. From nine variations we found one that was acceptable.

Then we turned to manually setting the white balance. First we used a White Balance Lens cap, which is a disc of translucent white plastic. On the camera white balance selection scale you select Preset or Manual and, following the instructions in the camera manual, you point the camera at the lit subject and take a non-photo which is used for calibration. We bought our lens caps for three different lenses from Hong Kong for a few dollars each.

Results with the lens cap method were good, with a slight tendency to blue. It was the best result so far, but not perfect.

Then we used a Lastolite flexible “card”, printed 18 per cent grey on one side and white on the other (about $28) to preset white balance. Using the grey side as the target we got the best results. The image using the grey card (simple ones can be bought for as little as $3) needed no post camera colour correction.

We recommend the lens cap for convenience and the grey card for accuracy.

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Price: $1100 with 14-42 and 40-150mm lenses

Impressive

The low-down: This 10 megapixel digital SLR is built around the four-thirds sensor used by Olympus and Panasonic/Leica. It is the smallest and probably the lightest DSLR on the market, but it is not flimsy. It has one of the best implementations of so-called live view, in which the LCD is used as a viewfinder. Auto focus works reasonably well in live view, which is unusual. The 6.7cm LCD screen has excellent resolution, It also serves as the camera function display and proved fast and intuitive in accessing settings. The viewfinder is cramped and not that bright. The in-built flash has good power and diffusion. And there is face recognition, a dubious first for an SLR. Burst mode is up to 3.5 frames per second.

Like: The picture quality is very good and the full feature list is truly impressive. Other makers tend to leave functions out in order to distance the entry level cameras from their posher units – Olympus doesn’t do that. The live view arrangement is almost refined. At least the auto focus works reasonably quickly, but it is not something we would use often.

Dislike: The aspect ratio of a Four Thirds sensor is 4:3. The aspect ratio of a standard or A4 photo print is 3:2. So composing in the viewfinder will be a hit and miss affair and pixels are thrown away.

Verdict: This camera has been created to make the transition from compact to DSLR as easy as possible. If you really like holding a camera at arm’s length (a ridiculous posture) to take photos rather than sensibly bracing it against your face then the E-420 lets you do it. Response in live view is not instantaneous and there are two clunks when the shutter is released, rather than one. Compact users in transition get face detection to make them feel at home. However, the fact is that we enjoyed using this camera. It doesn’t feel like an entry level unit. It does everything a $2000 camera does and it comes with excellent kit lenses. Very impressive.

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REMEMBER THE GOOD OLD DAYS (cue violins) when you bought your first single lens reflex 35mm camera? Remember how it came from the box with one lens already attached – a fixed focal length 50mm affair, with a maximum aperture of somewhere between f2.8 and f1.4?

In those days zooming was done by foot, move in for a close-up, go wide by stepping back. And focussing was done with a smoothly damped ring around the lens with a good grip for the fingers.

We were reminded of the olden days when we went snapping with the Olympus E-420 (see today’s review) fitted with a 25mm f2.8 lens (RRP $350). This little tacker is really small – a mere 23mm protruding from the camera body. It is pin sharp and free of distortion. It reminded us of how good a simple prime lens can be.

The thing is that a 25mm lens on a camera with a Four Thirds sensor has the same field of view (FOV) as a 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera, so it is truly analogous to the kit lens of the past. F2.8 is a modest aperture for such a lens, so it can be kept small.

According to Wikipedia (tinyurl.com/yd4h7m) the “normal” lens is that which produces images that look natural to the human eye. Oscar Barnack, the Leica creator, settled on 50mm as the focal length that produced the best compromise between sharpness and the natural perspective when used with 35mm film.

Canon ($150) and Nikon ($235) have 50mm f1.8 lenses in their catalogues which are the least expensive lenses they make. Even though these do not have the same FOV as a 50mm lens on a film camera they seemed worth a try. Because the DSLR sensors are smaller than a 35mm film frame there is a multiplier factor that must be applied to calculate their FOV in film terms. The Nikkor 50mm behaves like a 75mm on a digital camera and the Canon looks like an 80mm. To get the equivalent FOV of a 50mm lens we would need to use a 35mm optic, but they are not cheap for either camera.

It turns out that using a 50mm lens on a DSLR is still a joy. The FOV of a slightly longer lens is better for portraits. And the advantages of the simple prime can still be enjoyed.

Anyone who has only used zoom lenses will be surprised at the sharpness of the prime. Generally speaking a cheap prime will have better contrast and colour than a zoom. And it is faster, which means that the viewfinder image is brighter. Very few people have zoom lenses with maximum apertures of f1.8, but such speed is par for a simple prime.

Prime lenses, unlike zooms, have virtually no distortion. Straight lines near the edge of the image will be straight, not bowed in or out. And they are compact and light because they are mechanically simple. Manual focussing is generally easier, although in this respect the Nikkor is the standout lens, better than the other two. Minimum focus distance is 45cm on both the Canon and Nikkor and a little closer on the Olympus, making them decent macro lenses.

Some change is not for the better. Zooms are convenient but primes are sweeter.

*

Price: $380

Outstanding

The low-down: This is an 8 megapixel camera with a zoom range of 30mm to 150mm, film equivalent. Body construction is rugged, with beautiful fit and finish. Operation can be either fully automatic or in program mode, which gives the user a degree of control. Some functions that ought to be on the camera body – exposure compensation and ISO speed, for instance – are accessible only through the menu. The Menu system is clear and elegant and provides good supplementary information about settings. The optical viewfinder is a little hard for spectacle wearers to use. The LCD review screen is large (6.7cm) with excellent clarity and resolution. The W150 can take photos in the native resolution for high definition TV sets. Unfortunately the HDMI connector, necessary for HD transfer, is an optional extra.

Like: The picture quality is good, with fine resolution and colour rendition. At ISO200 noise reduction is well judged, although there is some blurring of fine detail. The pictures are as clean as any we have seen from an 8 megapixel camera.

Dislike: There is no proper printed instruction manual, only a pamphlet that doesn’t even tell the user how to change the ISO setting or exposure compensation. If Ricoh, for example, can provide a 210 page printed manual then Sony should do no less. And we do not care for Sony’s Memory Sticks – they are too expensive and fiddly to read in a PC card reader.

Verdict: We are impressed. The black model that we had for testing is handsome. It has a high quality feel and appearance. The inclusion of an optical viewfinder is a plus, even if it is small and restricted in the coverage of image area. It has the usual gimmicks of face detection and the so-called “smile shutter” which serve no real purpose. We have yet to try the connection from camera to high definition television, but we expect to do that before the camera is returned. This display method promises to be spectacular, giving a whole new life to the family slide night. The Sony goes to the top of the list of recommendable compacts.

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