Let me start off by finishing up with where I left off on "netbooks" vs. "ultra-portables" and I'll get to the rest of the misc. items. The reason that there is a "Part 2" is that I just had a bit of an epiphany the other day in regard to my "Super-Netbook" concept (AKA IBM X41). The one I have came with an "extended" battery meaning that not only did I get extended run time (around 3-5 hrs), but also, I had a little 1" shelf sticking out the back of this sleek machine, plus a fextra half-a-pound of weight to carry around. As a matter of fact, IBM was so certain that people wanted the extra run-time that they shipped the X4x and later ultra-portable series with these "extended" (8 Cells) batteries as opposed to the 4 Cells battery. In the interest of trying to get as small and light as possible, I really wanted to see what having the "regular", non-extended battery would do to the machine. I found an aquaintence on the ThinkPad Forum that wanted an extended, but had an extra regular battery, we were a perfect match and agreed to swap.... just as soon as he got back from vacationing on Cape Cod at the end of the month. Me being a little antsy about this got on eBay and found a seller with a cheap (less than $10) regular battery. I knew the battery would be either dead or mostly dead, since that seller deals in computers, but in their description swears that it's "untested". On eBay, this means DEADER than DEAD! It turned out to be the case, but it does what I want it to do which is tell me what this machine would "feel" like with a 4-cell and to fill the battery hole when I'm home and have the machine plugged up to the A/C all the time. I'll get into why I do that in another post.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that the X41 (despite being a full-blown computer) is as light (somewhere between 2.5-3lbs), deeper (due to the 4:3 screen format vs. 16:9), but thinner. I was really surprised by the weight thing though! Oh yeah; I was able to use the dock to watch movies on, this week when I was at the hospital with my wife. So it's exactly like I said last time: this thing is more capable, better built, cheaper and nearly as small as what you can find out there in a new netbook!
Now; on to other useful devices. First of all is the ubiquitous iPod. That's so obvious you say! And you all know that I'm SO NOT ABOUT OBVIOUS! So, what gives? Let me start by saying that I simply didn't even consider the stylishly small, Nano, or Mini or whatever they're calling it that year. I'm all about the big honkin' regular hard drive based iPod. And for a non-professional photographer who's carrying around a laptop anyway, it makes the perfect backup device. An unfortunate side-effect of the digital age is that we are all pretty dependent on our HDDs and with virtually all our family (and other) images on one drive, we're pretty much a heartbeat away from data-disaster! So, when professional photographers are out in the field, they dump their pictures every night off of the memory cards, onto not one, not two, but sometimes onto 3 different devices and many times will burn a copy on DVD as well! So where does that leave us, who can only assume that our non-photographer spouses can tolerate only so many devices. Which is why I started this discussion with the iPod! In my case, I bought an 80Gb iPod Classic model in a nice flat black that matches my ThinPads and Nikon! With 80Gb, it can not only hold virtually all the music I'd want to tote, but serves as a small backup drive to my travel laptop as well. On top of that, since it'll charge via the computer (my RAZR charges via the computer as well), that eliminates an A/C adapter and it does a superb job of fullfilling it's original mission...play music!
Here's the other half of it: I bought mine (and a 2nd for my wife) locally on Craig's List for $100 less than retail (is there any other price for an Apple product?) which was less than a year old. Admittedly, it's not as simple as all that (there are market forces at play here). I started looking when the 2nd (less expensive, and larger memory) iPhone came out! What? What does the iPhone have to do with a used iPod. Hang with me on this: given that the iPhone is an attractive product (practically irresistable to Yuppies- and we have lots of those around Dallas), granted that it was an extremely expensive at first, but this was mitigated somewhat by the arrival of the 2nd version. So what you had was a situation where a bunch of people would want an excuse to get the iPhone, and the concept of convergence is an AWESOME excuse! "Hey; I can sell my almost new iPod for most of what it will cost to buy an iPhone!" So, it was a great time to get on CL and pick up a current model iPod that could serve as a multi-use device for a great price.
As an aside from these reasons, here are some other thoughts on iPods in general. They are OH SO CONVENIENT! After I buying my wife her first iPod (30Gb) for Christmas 3 years ago, I spent the rest of the holidays ripping virtually all of our over 400 CDs into it. It really is nice to just be able grab that thing when we are headed out of town instead of looking through all of the CDs to find 24 or so to go with us (not to mention the little 24 cd album that I lost in Madison, WI a few years ago). In fact, we use it on a regular basis at home through a "dock" that's connected to our home theater system. We also have a portable speaker system by Logitech for it that has a built-in battery which allows it be taken almost anywhere. It was "refurbished" via eBay for a third of the retail price. These things are so ubiquitous that we found that our hotel in Vancouver on our latest trip had a clock/radio with a iPod dock in it.
So, if you haven't taken the plunge yet, get out there and pick up a "previously loved" iPod (full sized) that some 20-something has cast aside for a sparkling new iPhone.
Now, back to photography. One of my latest projects (my wife says obsession), has been to try and gain control of light. Does that mean I'm going to buy studio lights and take over our office or living room? No; I've become a devotee of the concepts of David Hobby, otherwise known as "The Strobist". I won't get into it too much today, but what he espouses is the concept that photographers can do their own controlled lighting by using regular "shoe-flashes" mounted "off-camera" wherever you need them. To give a brief synopsis; what you do is to get several old flashes, some light stands with various ways to "modify" that light, and a way to trigger those flashes. Of course, you gotta know that I need to do this, as "frugally" as possible.
This started by me finding a shoe-flash that would work with my Nikon camera's flash system (iTTL). Of course, buying the appropriate Nikon flash would be too easy, not to mention too expensive! Nikon has 3 compatible flashes ranging from $150 to $600! There seemed to be a number of "3rd Party" manufacturers with compatible models, however they seemed to run anywhere from $100 to $300 themselves. ....So off to do more research (meaning a lot of watching eBay). What I found was that a well-known 3rd-Party company (Sunpak) had apparently "OEM'd" their PZ-40X-II to Ritz Camera under that company's "Quantaray" brand. And apparently, that model has been replaced/upgraded, so they were all over eBay, new, in prices ranging from $50 to $150! So I did what any good frugal propellerhead would do.... wait until I could buy a $50 one!
Then, from Craig's List came a set of wireless flash triggers. The cheap ones from China. eBay again for an old Sunpak Auto 411 (from the 1970s), for around $20, and a garage sale tripod that looked like it had never been used for $7! Now I just have to find a filter/defuser set for the 411 and I'll be ready to go for this fall when we do our family pictures at the Dallas Arboretum! Actually, I added another Sunpak (Auto 422D) flash from eBay for another $25 that comes with a filter set.
I also bought my photographic filters from eBay since the price on a quality one such as Hoya tends to run about half of retail. It's also a great place to find older Nikon autofocus lenses that people have forgotten about as well. At less than $200 total outlay, I now have a Nikkor 28-80mm/f3.5-4.5, that's small and light which easily functions as an vari-focal normal for around the house. It was $40 after shipping, It's a good match for the old Nikkor 70-300mm/f4-5.6 which was the nice ED version with the special glass to control chromatic aberrations which came in at $150. Don't forget that these lenses translate to 42-120mm, and 105-450mm on a DX sensor'd Nikon DSLR.
The last really important important item? Rechargeable AAs of course. Today's quality nickel-metal hydrides (NiMh), are usually around 2500mah and last hundreds of recharges. The EveryReady or Duracell 8 cell sets can be had from Sam's Club complete with charger for around $25. Not only do flashes use (and last longer with faster recycle times) them, but the vertical "grip" for my camera has a battery carrier that will take those.
Yeah, I know; it's not easy to be frugal. It takes lots of planning, research and patience as well as a little luck, but it's worthwhile. The practice has allowed me to not only make myself a very respectable camera system, but then to remake and upgrade it as well. Not only is is very satifying in and of itself, but it allows me to be able to keep a running record of my kids' breakneck growth, but to do things that would otherwise be very expensive. We shoot virtually all of our own family pictures (as well as my wife's sister's family), eachy year. This allows us to print exactly what we need and do more interesting things like the annual family calendar that has personal pictures for each month.
To me; my hobbies aren't studies in isolation, but needs to be integrated as parts of our lives and hopefully enrich them. And it helps when those hobbies don't take a bite out of your monthly budgets too!
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