Ho! Ho! Ho!

Since this Christmas has already been spoken for (meaning that our trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong was basically it), I can pretty much let my imagination run wild since there is no requirement that we (OK, me, I suppose) needs to afford any of this! So last night I sat around thinking about what products out there that this Frugal Propellerhead think are just cool and I’d put on my Christmas list if Santa had deep pockets.

We’ll start with computer stuff since that’s what I know the best. We’ll start off with something small, but never-the-less, very cool; the Corsair Survivor flash drive. These things are made of aircraft grade aluminum and sealed to pretty much survive any kind of abuse you want to give it. As often as I tend to lose them, I kind of think that the size and weight might be a bit of an advantage.

Then there’s the darling of the media and probably THE hot tech item this Christmas…. “Tablets”. I like the concept a lot, since the vast majority of what people do on their computers at home would be things that work well in that format. Really, I don’t have a HUGE favorite, since there isn’t much to give between the top contenders. With that being said, I do like the Motorola Xoom though. It just has a nice look and feel, like the iPad without the ridiculous price. The Android 3 OS works well, and build quality is very nice. Bet you thought that I’d say ThinkPad Tablet, didn’t you. Too much money for what it does….right now anyway!

On to the obscure (relatively); the Wacom Cintiq. Most people are at least marginally familiar with digitizer pads, but this is another order above that with a digitizer overlaid on top of a special display so that you can work on your images directly. Unfortunately, very expensive…..like more than a thousand expensive, but very cool though!

While at least peripherally on the topic of photography, I’d love to have a quasi-pocketable camera. The parameters would be that it has a sensor bigger than the typical compact, full manual controls, the ability to take a “real” flash and preferably the ability to change lenses. ……And the winner is??? The Panasonic DMC-GF-1. OK, you are probably saying: what the heck is that? I know, I know; Panasonic struggles with naming products, but trust me, this thing is VERY NICE! If it didn’t cost $800 new and $500 used, I’d already own it! Here’s what it is. It’s a Micro 4/3^rd camera with an interchangeable mount, that’ll not only take the growing list of m4/3^rd lenses, but virtually any other mount lens via adapters courtesy of its phenomenally short “back-spacing”. However, it’s not the ability to mount lots of lens that attracts me since I really only want it to mount one; the 20mm/f 1.7 “pancake lens. It’s fast at f1.7, it’s 23mm depth so extremely slim, making it very pocketable, and very sharp. The build-quality is phenomenal and it’s festooned with traditional dial and button controls that translate well to old fogies like me. This thing is a perfect counterpoint to my beastly D300 DSLR. It’s not hard to figure out why this type of cameras has become so popular in such a short amount of time.

On to audio equipment: if I had my druthers, I’d happily replace everything I own with Rotel. I know it’s expensive, but it’s amazingly underpriced for the performance, plus, the stuff is just so nice looking! Probably my favorite is the RSP-1098 (black-face of course, but the black and silver is nice too) Pre-amp/Processor.

Of course, that means I’d have to have a stack of separate amps as well…..woe is me; I guess somebody has to suffer the fate. This thing is so cool it has a front-panel LCD monitor that you can use for menu items or check on whatever video you are queuing up.

While we’re on the topic of hitting up the big guy in the red suit; I’d want to have a separate system for audio only that had speakers driven by rebuilt Dynaco Mk IV tube monoblock amps for the mains.

The front-end would be fed by a Rega Planar 3 turntable and there’d be a pair of Sennheiser HD600/650 headphones when I don’t feel like running speakers.

Then, the last but not least category, is of course automobiles. In my case, that would be the Audi S4 from the late-90s/early 2000s chassis. This was that short period of time after Audi got their quality control issues resolved, but before they got so impressed with themselves that they lost their minds and started building those A**-UGLY models with the huge grills! Those might be better cars, but I just can’t bring myself to drive an ugly car….even in my imagination.

If you ever wondered what make a run-of-the-mill techno-geek a Frugal Propellerhead, you can see the difference above. Yes, many of these things are pricey, and some could even be considered class-leading, but none of them are the most expensive or even considered excessively price in their class. What they all have in common though is that they are all well-designed, well-built and return great “bang-for-the-buck” for the money…..at least IMHO anyway. Now if we were REALLY dreamin'/wishin'.....there's always the $118,000, R8......

I’d love to hear from any readers on what you guys are thinking is cool and would love for Santa to bring you this year.

Tablets

No; I did not run out on Black Friday and buy a cheap tablet! Will I probably buy one in the next year of so? I'd say that the chances of that are pretty good. I think that they are conceptually interesting, and I think that what my wife does here at home can mostly be accomplished on a tablet vs. her big laptop. However, my budget and the frugal part of me say that, now if not the time. So, why are we talking about it?

I do need to throw this caviat out there, that this is NOT A REVIEW and that if this has sparked interested in one or more of these tablets, you should find full-blown reviews written by professional who are getting paid to do it and are supported by full test labs. That's what I do. So this is just a synopsis of what I've found so far.

First of all, as any long standing reader probably knows; I tend to research extensively. That might be an understatement, but be-that-as-it-may: the research has begun in earnest. Secondly, my buddy Steve asked me to weigh in with my opinion on his possibility of purchasing one or more for himself and mostly importantly for his wife, for Christmas. He and his wife are both educators with 2 children as well, so it goes without saying that they have similar budgetary constraints as our household. His original question to me was are there any "refurbished" deals out there that aren't into the iPad price-range?

It pretty much goes without saying that in this market-space that the original iPad established, that all conversations start with the current version of it as the baseline. Because, as much as I decry the whole "look how cool I am using an Apple product" mentality, the fact is that as a mature/general use tablet, and in terms of feature as well as build quality, there is no equal. However, you pay the price. The current iPad2s start at around $500 new with the price going down as far as $450 at some places during Black Friday. That price goes up from there and keeps going up to somewhere in the $700+ range for the full-boat, 3G and 64Gb version. And that's before throwing another $100-200 worth of folio/cases, and other nebulous accessories at it!

So, let's look at options: there are of course the Android based tablets that run the gamut from less than $150 to very high end versions that are every bit as expensive as the iPads, then there are a few out there that run their own software like the Blackberry. We'll start by throwing out all the uber-cheap, resistive-touch/no-name Chinese knock-offs. They all tend to be somewhat glitchy and generally don't function well due to the poor responsiveness of the screens AND the old hacked up versions of Pre-2.2 Android OS that most of them use. I will give them one thing though: they are cheap! I saw a Big Lots (!!!) Black Friday ad for a Pandigital tablet for $59.99. Big Lots....really?!? My prediction is that there's going to be a bunch of these things at pawn shops after Christmas priced at $75 because Uncle Jim Bob couldn't figure out how to make it work and tech support was non-existent. Enough about these things.

Let's move on to the players in this market space who don't wear a prominent Apple logo. To me, you have to differentiate between the use of them before we go on. There is of course, general home use, which is generally the 10" (give or take) models that take over many of the function that people use laptops for, such as web surfing, social networking, accessing electronic media and light messaging. Then there are the 7" models that folks will tend to carry with them more and use as big smartphones. Most manufactures have both versions in their lines and many have optional sub-models with both 3G/4G and Wi-Fi only. Now, really "Wi-Fi" only isn't as "only" as you might think, since many (if not most) have tethering applets, allowing them to connect to your data-plan equipped smartphone and not have to pay for another plan. But obviously, the ones with wireless data onboard are going to be more expensive than the other.

I'm just going to throw this out there that the most impressive package, in terms of performance to me is the Blackberry Playbook (7"). It's fast, and handles streaming very fast, and relatively inexpensive at around the $350 pricepoint. However, it doesn't run Android; it runs Blackberry's own OS which obviously limits you in software available. But you really should read some of the reviews and look at some of the YouTube videos: It's really quite impressive for more than $100 less than the iPad2. Blackberry does know how to move data!


Then comes the two Taiwanese heavy-weights: Acer and Asus. The Acer Iconia line comes in a variety of flavors ranging all the way from a small inexpensive (again in the $350 range) all the way up to the 10" versions designed to attach to a notebook type dock which are more in the iPad range. The Asus is generally very similar product with almost identical feature sets. Both of these pads run the newest Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" OS and function very nicely.

Which brings us to the Motorola Xoom, which might very well be the most iPad-eque of all the Andoids with it's VERY nice build quality, smooth function and similar $500+ price-point. The Samsung Galaxy is a very much like it at a similar price, but in a 7" form-factor. It seems like many of the reviewers who do a lot of traveling have used this tablets personally for the last 6-8 months, but it's pricey.

I understand there WAY more tablets out there, but I'm going to end on this one. The Lenovo IdealPad A1. Yup; I get that this make it look like a biased opinion by a ThinkPad lover, but the fact is that this tablet is a well-functioning Android OS (albiet 2.3 "Gingerbread", but fully flash capable), 7" model selling at $200! Yup, I put my hands on one at Fry's the other day, that was not on special marked at that price, which was in stock! Yup, it has a capacitance type screen (same as an iPad). Yup, it has a MicroSD slot AND MicroUSB connectivity as well. It's not a surprise that PC World called it a "....$199 Bargain"! It's a bit chunky and heavy for a 7" tablet, but goodness gracious....it's a $199 tablet!

Black Friday 2011

I'm normally not a participant in the festivities of Black Friday (this where you gasp....what!?!), yes, I know I know: it seems to run contrary to what a "frugal" person would do right? Wouldn't you want to stand in line for hours and freeze to death to save a few dollars in the interest of frugality? Well....really....no; and here's why. Firstly, almost all of my needs are fulfilled on the used market, not the new. Secondly, I advocate buying nice, well built products at a low price, not cheap products at the same price! Cheap is cheap, is when it's bought, will continue to be as the product ages WAY faster than a superior product and end up costing more in the long run when it breaks before the other. Enough about that; lets get on with what I did on Black Friday 2011.

Let me start by saying that I left the house at about 10am, not pm! I had seen a couple of ads from the large outfits that had some peripherals that I wanted. But, being peripherals, I sure wasn't going to stand in line hours before they opened just to get them! Besides, they are so low-priced and common-place that I figured (rightly) that there'd be plenty left.

First of all, I went up to Micro Center (did I ever say that it's my favorite "brick and mortar" retailer?) and found the Cooler Master NotePal U2, Notebook Computer Cooler. It's basically a perforated piece of aluminum with a "hook" on one end that served as the mechanism of elevation (right-side-up), and as a wrap-around device to hold your computer when turned the other way around, thus allowing it to be completely compact and able to travel with your computer without taking up very much space at all.

There are seemingly dozens of devices just like this; what's the big deal about this one? The U2 version (there are U1 and U3 as well), has the exact size of our Z61m workstation's footprint.

I had looked at and coveted them before (but it was a non-starter at $25 MSRP), with their nice heat dissipation due to the aluminum construction and moveable/detachable fans which run on a USB pass-through.These not only allow you to remove them for transport, but to move them around so that they are position where the heat is the worse on your particular notebook.

Then it turns out that the curled over part designed to hold the notebook is the exact depth needed to accommodate the "Zs" as well (ready to do the happy dance now).

....and of course the most important part.....Black Friday priced at $10. Plus I also picked up one of those generic laptop hard drive housings that lets you put in any random drive you have laying around (and I have many) and use it as a USB connected storage for $6. So, after a little bit of a wait at checkout, I'm out the door at around $17 after taxes.

I was so please with how well that went, that I decided to brave the Fry's Black Friday sale, since I had seen another Cooler Master, the X-Lite notebook cooling pad advertised at $10 with a $10 rebate......and Fry's is on the way home. This particular pad wasn't like the other in that it's not really made to be transportation friendly. It's made of molded ABS plastic shaped like a wedge.


Instead of the 2 removeable fans underneath like the other one, this pad has one BIG fan in the middle of the wedge which is definitely not designed to be accessible. Of course, it size allows it to turn at a low rpm making it virtually silent. Very nice for use in the bedroom while the wife is asleep!

Here's a collage of pictures showing all the relevant features.

I haven't even gotten to the best part yet. It's virtually (within mm) of the footprint of my X300 that I commonly use in the bedroom!

So, my Black Friday consisted of $27 spent, of which $10 is coming back and 3 non-essential, but never-the-less, nice to have peripherals bought.

Next post: my other reason for the Black Friday trip. Tablet research....

Grateful Propellerhead

On this Thanksgiving of 2011, I have a few propellerheaded thoughts. Let's start by saying that it's been a very good year and there's a lot to be thankful for!

• The network became something more useful than allowing internet access for all the computers. The actual use of it in a modern sense of backing up or computers and distribution of media has been a revelation.
• The file server running Windows Home Server, allowing all our machines to not only be backed up and access to files, but the goals of centralized media distribution has changed everything.
• Of course, the thing that makes the home server a really useful was the media PC installed into the main AV system.
  
• Combination of an across the board migration to Windows 7, along with the built in Windows Media Center. This turned into a virtually perfect interface with the my media as well as what's out there on cable and the internet.
• Upgraded my wife from her R52 to a Z61m, my son from a T42 to a Z60t, my daughter from an X30 to an X31, plus added a Z61m to my arsenal.
  
• Upgraded my desktop in several important specs, but most importantly a new 22" 1920 x 1200 S-PVA monitor.
• And of course, last, but not least, is the camera upgrade to the D300. Although it didn't go without incident, it eventually got done and I couldn't be happier!

Of course, I'm certain that I've left off a few things, but WOW! It's been a good year for a frugal propellerhead and I certainly have a lot to be thankful for!

"Street Shooter" Part 3: Send in the Clones

This third part of my series on a camera for "Street Shooting" is really less a commentary on that particular camera than it is about how things are in the photographic industry as well as electronics in general.

Most enthusiast are well aware that "cloning" or "badge-engineering" is common in many industries as well as electronics. It's been around for many years in the automotive industry: as in small Ford are pretty much Mazdas, and Escalades are rebadged Suburbans with uglier sheet-metal. In consumer electronics, the practice is often much more blatant, with HP simply putting on a different logo onto the iPods they were selling, although it can be much more sophisticated such as the different electronics and mechanicals used on the Canon laser engines at the heart of most HP LaserJets.

In this case, the device of interest is the Olympus E-330 that I started talking about several weeks ago which I'm interest in acquiring at some point. In the process of researching it, I came across several interesting things. The first tidbit that caught my attention was the fact that the resolution at 7.5 was half a megapixel lower than the 8mp of the E-300 that it replaced. This is something that almost never happens in the digital camera marketplace so I looked into that a little and as it turns out; Olympus changed from using the original supplier (Kodak) to Panasonic for the sensors. This opened a completely separate can of worms onto itself! Besides the obvious that the Panasonic sensor although lower in resolution, had the killer feature that Olympus was after in "LiveView", Panasonic, or more correctly their parent company, Matsushita, is one of the "big dogs" in the electronics world and it's always advantageous to be connect with them. This has a number of ramifications including the fact the there's a far greater number of cameras/sensors involved beside just the Olympus ones, and therefore lowering costs, but another peripheral connection as well. In this case, we are talking one of the truly "Prestige" names in the photographic world which was the venerated Leica!

In the highly complex world of Japanese corporations, these agreements are even more key than most people know. Without getting into an extended history of Japan and explanation of keiretsus, these alliances tend to be archane where often agreements are done without money changing hands and tends to be quasi-secretive in their operations. So, although they are part of the 4/3rds consortium, Kodak isn't part of the the "inner-circle" and ultimately became a casualty. Leica got in on this show, by not only becoming part of the 4/3rds consortium, but as per their licensing and technology sharing agreement vis-a-vis Panasonic. This started out with the optical glass end of things of course, since Matsushita had great electronic expertise, but none in high-end optics. It was a natural fit since Sony of the Mitui keiretsu, had already locked up an agreement with the other prestige German glass maker/designer, Zeiss.

After that little aside, lets get back to the camera. In any case, I've gotten neck deep into research on the E-330 and as it turns out, the info on these "agreements" led me to the fact that within the space of 10 months, 3 companies introduced cameras with the same sensor, lens mount as well as shape and size........hmmm.......suspicious. Hint: look at the number, location, and size of the controls as well as access doors on the different cameras. They can change a lot of things visually, but can't change those without spending LOTS of money.

Olympus E-330 (Jan. 2006), $1100 new MSRP, <$200 used

Panasonic DMC-L1 (Feb. 2006), $2000 new MSRP, $400-500 used

and Leica Digilux III (Sept. 2006), $2500 new MSRP, $1000-1400 used

......verrrry inttteresting!!!

As you can see, the prices on them vary greatly; on the current used market as well as the original "list" (which bear no resemblance to "street") price. As you can see from the "used" prices above, a quick scan of recently completed auctions on eBay indicate that there's quite a disparity on pricing. Granted, both the Panasonic and Leica were originally sold with the highly thought-of Leica D 14-50mm/f2.8-3.5 Vario-Elmarit Aspherical lens, and the Olympus sold with the Zuiko D 14-45mm/f3.5-5.6 lens, but GOOD GRIEF, that $1200 differential is one heck of a lot of money!

One last thought before I go feed the kids (and me) lunch. Lens aside (most people, including me, aren't as good as their lenses are anyway), the basic of the bodies are essentially the same with the exception of the fact that the Olympus has an articulated screen (no small thing with LiveView), but it's a long standing camera company with a history of innovation with electronics as applied to photography. And with digital photography, that end of things is at least half the equation. Soooo, which one of these three would you put your money (pun intended) on to deliver in that area? Yes, I understand that "build quality" is important and I'm a disciple of that, but double, or $1200 worth of it?

Besides; since they all use the same lens mount, you can even run out and spend $500 or so to buy the Leica lens for your Olympus. Personally, I love the looks of the Panasonic (I'm a sucker for flat black and squared-off look), and if I could find one at a great price, I'd have to look long and hard at it, but at the sub-$150 that the E-330 sell for......it's the right camera for a frugal propellerhead.

The "Ark"

As you guys know, the “Grail” has already been attained (in the form of the Nikon D300), so in the grand tradition of that esteemed (and mythical) archeologist Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, my current “Frugal Propellerhead” project has been anointed; the “Ark of the Covenant”. Other than the relatively blasphemous/irreverent connotation, it’s appropriate in that the Ark was the box constructed to hold the “tablets of the law” as handed down from God to Moses. Besides, my friend and fellow ThinkPad fanatic has already claimed the use of the “Holy Grail” term for his amazing Z61m.

Anyway; on to my project…… You might ask yourself, why someone who owns a fairly nice desktop workstation, AND a super-cool ThinkPad X300 would need (or even want) another computer! Here it is: now understand that this may or may not bear any actual “good logic”, but just what I think of as a half-decent rationale for me having this really cool thing.

I’m thinking about starting yet another “side-business”. You know that I already have a computer business that supports my technology addictions and sometimes the occasional family outings to Chick-Fil-A. Now, I’m thinking of leveraging my meager photographic skills and growing collection of equipment into a business as well. Yep, I know, there are more, “I own a DSLR camera and know a little bit about taking pictures than you” photographers than you can shake a stick at, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m better than most of them, plus I have a better plan!

Most photographers really make the bulk of their money charging you for those pictures in print form and if you want the files, they charge you more, since they, not you, own those. My plan is to charge straight up for my time and expertise (well…OK, mostly time and the use of my expensive camera), and you own the files. “Flash Drive Photography” You bring me a flash drive; I take your pictures, we’ll take a look and see if they’re any good right then on a computer, I put them on the flash drive. You pay me, take them away, print them, email them, use them in whatever manner brings joy to your life. Simple huh?

Yes, the concept is pretty simple. Take something that is already a pretty serious hobby and that I’ve got money sunk into anyway and try to make something out of it. We maintain a yearly family membership to the Dallas Arboretum since that is way less than the cost of paying for professional portraits for the kids anyway. Now for the last piece (not really since there’s always more equipment to be bought, but humor me); I need a computer that’ll allow me to dump the files and review them “on site”….which is where this whole post was going anyway.

I do have that James Bondish/”Q” Branch-cool ThinkPad X300, but it’s not really something that you’d want to use to review photo files on a regular basis. Yes, it whips out from your svelte aluminum briefcase on the London to Paris, EuroStar train dodging bad guys, while you look dashing in your tux, but some random old house, field, railroad tracks that you are shooting at!?! Not so much. Besides, of its weaknesses, probably the most glaring is the screen that isn’t very large at 13.3”, and has particularly poor viewing angles as well. Not something that you’d want your clients to look at while deciding whether or not that you made them look good….or not in their pictures. Plus, it’s primary storage and boot drive is a 64Gb SSD. Fast yes, but obviously, not a lot of storage AND SSDs are not something that you want to constantly execute a bunch of writes and erases on either.

Therefore, my answer is the ThinkPad (what else?), Z61m, that I picked up as a partially completed project from my friend Ed ($75). It came with a bad screen (lower third shows jibberish), small HDD (40Gb), little RAM (1Gb), slow processor (Celeron version of the Core Solo), and bad battery. However, it had the really cool looking titanium cover, webcam, 15.4” screen which can be replaced with up to a UWXGA (1920 x 1200) screen, UltraBay Enhanced modular bay which can take a variety of devices, and the ability to take the “Merom” version of the Core 2 Duo line of processors. Therefore, I could turn it into a VERY powerful computer, the trick would be to be able to do that without breaking the bank! Here’s what I did:

• Picked up an Intel T7200 (2ghz Merom) CPU from a recycler for $24. That’s the most bang for the buck since it’s the slowest (therefore the cheapest) of the 4Mb cache “Merom” line, but has double the on-die cache of the previous Core Duo “Yonah” line.

• Bought a Samsung 128Gb SSD in the 1.8” micro-SATA format complete with 1.8” to 2.5” adapter for $125. Eventually, Two reasons for the 1.8” drive: they are cheap right now (way cheaper than the 2.5” drives of the same capacity), AND I’ll be able to use it to eventually upgrade my X300. By then the bigger SSDs like the 256Gb should be a lot cheaper.

• Bought two compatible Atheros A/B/G/N WiFi adapter from Hong Kong for $26 each (one goes into my wife’s Z61m) so the machine can connect to the new/faster “N” home access point at the faster speed.

• $40 for a replacement WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) screen, from an eBay recycler.

• $15 for a UltraBay Enhanced, SATA HDD adapter so I can use a 500Gb Samsung SpinPoint drive as storage. The drive was given to me by a friend who needed files copied from it since the USB connector from the external case malfunctioned.

• $35 for a 85% 9-cell battery from another ThinkPad Forum member.

• Accumulated 4Gb of RAM and A/C adapter from dead machines, no costs.

• $340 total spent on a machine worth easily twice that.
  

• Fun of the project and scoring the parts cheap: PRICELESS!

The idea is that this machine not only has a bigger screen, but it’s larger, has far wider view angles as well as higher resolution, so better able to handle the large photo files. Of course, the ability to have a big 500Gb mechanical drive will be advantageous for storage. Now, if I can figure out a way to anodize the titanium lid a really cool satin black, I’ll be one happy camper!

The "Golden Age"

Maybe it's because I've just experienced the almost perfect sports weekend.. First; all my schools/teams won: Friday night, both North Forney and Forney High, then Saturday, the Ags win at Tech, followed by the Sooners (my brother-in-law's team) beating those jackasses from down in Austin (who are really responsible for the demise of the Big 12), then the Rangers beat the Justin Verlander led Tigers despite a 2+ hour rain delay! .....Oh, and it RAINED, here in drought-strickened North Texas, dropping the temperatures into the 80's in the process!!! Or maybe it's because I just came home from a "once-in-a-lifetime" trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong during which virtually all my acquired technology came into play.....and worked flawlessly. So it feels like that Heineken commercial from last year, "Golden Age" is playing repeatedly in my head.

Anyway, what's my point today? It's that in today's world, the previously unobtainable can be had by us mere mortals with regular jobs and families. Basically, I have 3 main hobbies, and although, they are all different, they can all function together. There's photography/cameras, computers, and audio/video. The ultimate concept would be that the convergence that all of us "of a certain age" (around 50+or-) has been seeking since we first watched The Jetsons not only has occurred, but can be had if planned out and acquired properly.

Let me start by examining how NOT to do it. If you make the fatal mistake of buying at retail and becoming Best Buy's best customer (like many people), here's what would have happened to you to get to where I am today:

• "Nice" notebook computer that's light enough to carry around and powerful enough to do some minor photo editing on the move: $1500 or so. Yes, I know you can buy a decent machine around the $1000 price-point, but remember you are trying to replicate my $3000-3500 ThinkPad X300. I ended up paying around $200 for this after selling my previous machines that it replaced. Not to mention getting onto the internet in random places like Hotels in Taiwan and airports in Japan.
  
• High-end desktop computer with 2 large (1 22", and 1 20" hi-res LCD monitors) for around $1200. I built mine for about $800 total, over about a year, to handle the heavy duty photo-editing after the pictures are all dumped.
  
• Nikon D300, $1800, and 18-200 VR lens, $950, MB-D10 vertical battery grip, $250, for obvious reasons. I picked all this up for right around $1200 total.
  
• A/V computer connected to my main system; I'd guess-imate to run around $800 for a machine of similar capabilities. I built mine for around $200 of accumulated parts. Although my main TV at a less then HD resolution is a lot more fun to view the pictures on at 41" in the living room than crowding around my the monitors in the office.
  
• Home server, which replicates my 4Tb+ WHS should run around $600 and it cost me about $300 to build. Of course, this serves up the files and protects them by duplicating the folders.
  

I'm not even going to get into replicating my main A/V system. So roughly, "Super-Best Buy-man" would have spent $7100+ to purchase all of my various hobby pieces. And I'd say that someone could easily spend at least the $3000 or so to get an A/V system together pushing everything up over $10,000! Holy Smoke, that's a lot of money! I'm not saying that the roughly $2700 that I've spent using "Frugal Propellerhead" methods aren't inconsequential, but a $4400 differential is HUGE. I am confident in saying that it's enough of a difference that in all probability that I wouldn't be able to have/do some of the things I have/do now, or if I did, it would be with far inferior equipment!

It's kind of hard to remember when I'm out on vacation somewhere shooting pictures with the D300 with 18-200mm attached, reviewing and dumping the pictures onto the X300, backed up on to an 80Gb iPod, then bringing them home to edit on my big desktop workstation and storing them on the WHS file server, then pulling them up and displaying them on the big TV in the living room. When I think about all this in retrospect, I'm both grateful for what I have and a little overwhelmed by what can be accomplished today for the costs.

Street Shooter: Part 2

The last post was all about how I came to the conclusion that I needed another camera (go figure), and what that camera should be..... This time, I'm actually going to talk about that camera, in-depth (more or less). Of course the camera is the E-330, the fourth of Olympus' digital offerings after they decided to get into the interchangeable lens DSLR game. Of course they had already been involved in DSLRs for some time with the very well thought of, E-10 & E-20; however, the marketplace was passing them by in terms of features, convenience and price. High-end/professional DSLRs had been around for some time pioneered by the Nikon D1, but it was when Canon dropped the Digital Rebel XT (350D) bomb in 2003 that the lower end of the market exploded. Then, Nikon answered with the D70 in January of 2004, the full-on interchangeable lens DSLR wars were on....and has raged unabated ever since.
These cameras defined the "entry level" of the digital imaging market. They didn't have the high megapixels, plethora of features or the outrageous magnification capabilities of the "Super-zoom" cameras, but what they did have was outstanding images, combined with an ease of use that had every other soccer mom/dad out there (who in the old days would have never bought an SLR) using them. Sure, corners were cut: porropisms (vs. glass pentaprisms), no anti-shake control, plastic bodies/lens mounts and lower resolution. However, this last difference turn out to be one of the major reasons why they were so successful. When you take the much smaller sensors used in the "point & shoot", as well as "superzoom" cameras, crank up (crowd lots of photosites) megapixel on them, they actually performed worse than the often less expensive DSLRs with a lower resolution! So you had Nikon D40s and Canon Rebel XTs selling for $5-600 at Walmart (with kit lens) out performing $1000 "superzooms"!
Now, everybody wanted to get in on that market segment. Although the profit margin was nowhere near the high end multi-thousand dollar professional and prosumer cameras, they sold a whole bunch more of them! This drove and has continued to drive the market ever since, with Pentax, Minolta/Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and everybody else jumping in. After all, there's only so much money that can be made by selling "point and shoot" cameras in the $50-150 market space!
So Olympus stood at a crossroads in the early part of the 2000s. As nice as the E-20N was at the time of it's introduction in 2001, it was pretty evident that they needed to respond to what was happening in the market. The first order of business was a professional/prosumer model in the E-1 of 2003, but that certainly didn't address the high volume and increasingly lucrative segment of advanced amateur camera that was gaining steam seemingly on a daily basis. Olympus introduced their answer in November of 2004 in the form of the E-300.These two were the first efforts in the use of the "Four-Thirds" standard that Olympus pioneered along with a consortium of other manufacturers such as Kodak (maker of the original 4/3 sensors), lens maker Sigma and eventually Panasonic partnered with Leica. A year after the introduction of the E-300, came the E-330 AND the much more conventional looking E-500 so that Olympus could tap the entry segment of the DSLR market. Ultimately, it was this design direction that ended up killing the E-3xx line making the E-330 the last of it's breed.

OK, now that you've had a quick rundown the Olympus history in the DSLR market, we can talk more about the E-300/330 model. The fact of the matter is that, although they were highly acclaimed by reviewers, they just didn't sell very well. This can be confirmed by a virtual trip to eBay or Craig's List to do a quick search. You'll find WAY fewer E-3xx camera for sale at any given time than their market contemporaries such as Canon Digital Rebels/XT, or the Nikon, D40/50/70. I would suspect that a lot of it has to do with the psychology of the consumer in that market space. These were often first time SLR buyers; film or digital. So, if they were going to spend the extra money it took to upgrade over a point & shoot, they wanted everyone to know what they were using. That certainly wasn't a DSLR that didn't look like one, no matter how it performed!

However, on the flip-side, look at what the E-330 was offering in 2006 in terms of features compared to its market dominating rivals (Canon Digital Rebel XT/350D or Nikon D70S) at the time of it's introduction. The E-330 had a 7.5Mp sensor which was marginally lower than the class-leading Canon's 8Mp, but we all know that in the reality of the DSLR world, small resolution differences aren't really relevant. However, the Olympus offered not only an ultrasonic sensor cleaning function that didn't become an industry standard for several more years, plus it offered their second generation of sensor-shift/anti-shake compensation that virtually no one else had. Then throw in the two features (Live View & Articulated LCD) that nobody else had at all(and wouldn't for several years); you end up with a DSLR that was well ahead of its time. Of course this is not new for Olympus which is a company of engineers, led by engineers. Back in the early 70's, they introduced the OM-1 which was the first of the "compact" SLRs on the market and started that trend. This was followed by the OM-2 which introduced full-blown electronics to that segment of the market as well as through-the-lens flash metering.

From the standpoint of just purely a camera,the E-330 has plenty enough pixels to be effective. Remember, I've been using a Nikon D70S at 6Mp for some time and it's done a creditable job any time that I have. This camera at 7.5Mp is more than enough for a second camera.Although it's size really isn't much smaller than the mid-sized Nikon; the E-330 5.5" x 3.4" x 2.8"/1.4lbs, vs. D70 at 5.5" x 4.4" x 3.1"/1.3lbs, that middle dimension of 1" less by eliminating the pentaprism hump is significant. It's my opinion that this is true both in terms of actual, and perceived bulk, but also what a live subject senses when the camera is aimed at them. When combined with the use of the articulated screen (although it's only on a vertical plane) and Live View, the ability to photograph candidly is greatly enhanced. I don't have anything to prove this hypothesis at this point, but I'm as sure of this as I can be....at least until I get my hands on one and try it.

To complete the concept, you throw on the very small 25mm/f2.8 (Angle of view same as 50mm on 35mm camera) that Olympus introduced in early 2008; you have a light, relatively compact camera with full DSLR capabilities configured to be almost ideal for "street shooting". Sure; I get that I could go out and buy the Olympus EP-L1 in the mirrorless "Micro-Four/Thirds mount for a similar price-point. Although we are talking a significantly smaller (probably pocketable) camera built on the same sized, but higher resolution sensor, That camera is designed as a step-up for folks moving from the P&S and thus has way too much automation for the way I like to shoot. And yes; there are others of the M3/4 cameras that offer what I want in terms of control set, but at this point, we are still talking in the north of $500 range that I can't justify.
So, for now, the E-330 will be the next "target of opportunity" for me. So stay tuned and I'll update when I've actually gotten my mitts on one of these curious beasts!