Well, I did it. I bought myself an early Christmas present: the Panasonic DMC-LX3 I’d been drooling over.

It is an interesting camera; when it comes to the specs everyone knows and loves, it doesn’t stand out. Its megapixel count is “only” 10.0, and the zoom is just 2.5x. Novices will shrug their shoulders and move on. In order to appreciate the camera, you have to know what an aperture number means (f/2.0 to f/2.8 anyone?) and have a feel for what a 24mm lens will do for you.

First impressions are very good. It feels nice in the hand, with a smooth metal case and a hefty piece of glass up front. The camera body is only about 1 inch thick, but the retracted lens adds close to another inch. The screen is very large and bright, and the controls seem decent, although the Menu button seems to function different from my brain, as I keep pressing it at the wrong times.

I bought this camera to fill a gap between my DSLR (Olympus E-500) and my little waterproof point-and-shoot (Olympus 770SW). Both cameras are are good in their respective elements, but neither excels at social occasions. The DSLR is too large to cart around to many events and can make people uncomfortable when you point it at them. The 770SW takes nice photos outside during the day, but is quite poor at night or indoors, when many gatherings take place.

So enter the DMC-LX3. With its fast, stabilized lens and small size, it seems to fill the gap nicely.

I played around in the house last night snapping pictures of every little thing I spotted and was quite impressed with the initial images. In macro mode at wide angle it can focus on things that are practically touching the lens, which is fun but dangerous! Below are some samples. Click here for a couple more.

f/2.0, 1/15 second, ISO 400, 16:9, standard color mode, hand-held

f/2.0, 1/30 second, ISO 160, 4:3, dynamic b&w, hand-held

I’ve been in a bit of a creative rut the last few months, but I feel that I’m finally starting to come back around with a renewed interest in my favorite creative hobby, photography. To get my mind back on track (and to help convince myself I’m not such a miserable failure), I thought it would be fun to look back on my first 90 days of being serious about taking pictures. On December 26th, 2001 I received a Canon PowerShot G2 for Christmas. This was my first good camera, and I had wanted it for quite a while. I really enjoyed using it and took some really fun pictures those first 90 days.

(Note: The photos have been “remastered” for your viewing pleasure.)

My first good creative picture.

One of my all-time favorites.

Statues can make good models.

+7 more in the the gallery.

A while back I asked the question, “Can a camcorder beat a camera at its own game?” Apparently Nikon and Canon feel that I should have asked the opposite question, as they have just bust open a collective can of whoop-ass on the camcorder world with two new Digital SLR cameras.

Nikon landed the first punch with the new D90 DSLR, which can shoot 720P (1280×720) HD video at 24 frames per second. The camera can also take 12.3 megapixel stills and has fun features such as Live View and ultrasonic sensor cleaning. The D90 is available now and costs around $1,050 for the body only.

Canon hopes to land the knockout blow with its soon to be released Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which will bring a jaw-dropping 21.1 megapixel full-frame sensor to the game. The camera will be the first DSLR capable of recording “full HD” 1080P (1920×1080) video. The EOS 5D Mark II will be considerably more expensive than the D90 with a body-only MSRP of $2,699. It hits the markets in November.

So how do these showoff DSLRs compare to their camcorder cousins? Amazingly well, if the clips I’ve found on Vimeo are any indication. Take a look at pizza through the lens of the D90. (As usual, click through to Vimeo to view the clip in HD.)

And here we have some various footage from the heavyweight 5D Mark II:

These two cameras are game-changers. Their still image performance is exceptional as always, but now they allow photographers to shoot professional-quality video. The cameras may seem expensive, but camcorders with interchangeable lenses cost megabucks. The ability to shoot video through the wonderful glass from Canon, Nikon, and others is dream come true for many videographers. The cameras will open up the world of video to the hugely popular prosumer photography market, making cinematography more appealing for photographers with thousands already invested in lenses and other camera gear.

Obviously these cameras are still a bit too pricey for anyone but professionals and loaded amateurs, but the features from flagship models always trickle down to more affordable underlings over time. With the kind of flexibility offered by these cameras, you’d have to make a pretty good case for investing in a top of the line camcorder right now. Sure, the cameras do have downsides. The D90 uses the less than optimal Motion JPEG format for video. (The 5D Mark II records H.264 MOV files.) Also, HD camcorders feature built-in optical image stabilization, whereas the cameras will have to do stabilization on a lens-by-lens basis. Stabilization is very important when shooting HD video, as minor shakes are very obvious in the final product. It’s unclear how well lenses designed for photography will perform for video, and how the cameras will deal with video accessories like microphones and video lights.

Let me assure you, generous reader, that I am more than willing to conduct a full test of both cameras for you. Just send me your donation and/or evaluation units and I’ll get right on it!

I see a lot of cars during my daily commute, and lately I’ve been noticing a trend: “smart” cars are popping up everywhere. At first it was kind of cute in a “reminds me of Germany” sort of way, but the little buggers are multiplying. Now I’m starting to wonder why the heck all these tiny European city cars are suddenly sharing San Diego’s freeways with lifted F-150s and 18-wheelers.

Are they cheap? Well, the base smart starts at $13,590. The cabriolet, a popular choice here in San Diego, costs $16,590. That’s kinda cheap, but the way more practical Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris start at $13,950 and $11,550 respectively. So for the same price as a real car, you get a tiny two-seater with a thimble for a trunk. What a way to save!

Fuel economy is just okay… fueleconomy.gov says the smart coupe gets 33/41/36 city/highway/combined MPG. The Fit gets 28/34/31 and the Yaris gets 29/36/32. Sure, the smart is marginally more efficient, until you want to take two friends with you to the bar and the third guy has to drive his Silverado.

After the novelty wears off it can’t be fun to drive. With a 0-to-60 time of 12.8 seconds, a top speed of 90 MPH, and a jerky, laggy automated manual transmission, how fun can it be? Not to mention the dread experienced by the driver when the grill of a Peterbilt is looming in the rear view mirror.

So why do I see so many? After checking out all the facts, I can only come to one conclusion: The smart car is a fashion accessory. In image-conscious San Diego where it’s cool to look “green” and drive something that instantly grabs people’s attention, the smart is a perfect fit. It’s for the same freaks who paid $5000 over MSRP for the New Beetle back in 1998 and waited in line for 12 hours to get the first iPhone in 2007. Some people just love the attention they can’t get without spending money on something that says, “Look at me!” It’s the equivalent of wearing a steak neck-tie so the dog will like you. Or getting fake boobs so men will like you. But hey, if you’re hoping to catch somebody’s eye at a stoplight, gas station, or parking lot, have at it! Just remember, it may be cool now, but in a couple of years you’re not going to feel so smart.

My cable company recently raised their rates. Suddenly the variety of services they’d managed to sell us was costing almost $150/month! Sure, that got us a lot (digital high-definition (HD) cable with HD digital video recorder (DVR), high-speed internet, and telephone) but $1800/year is an outrageous amount of money to be forking over. In the name of frugality, we decided to take a good hard look at what services we actually use and cut out what we didn’t. Here’s our requirements:

• DVR - We really enjoy being able to watch TV on our schedule, not the networks’.
• “Basic Cable” - All those extra channels occasionally had interesting programs, but we seldom watched them.
• Netflix Watch Instantly - This is a great way to catch up on older shows and movies without waiting for DVDs in the mail. We actually purchased the $99 Roku Netflix Player and loved it, but it would be nice not to have the extra box in the TV stand.
• Internet TV - There are a bunch of ways to watch stuff online, including Hulu (which is great if you don’t mind short commercials), Youtube, podcasts, etc. (I’m sure astute readers can think of some other good ways that I won’t mention here.)

So here we have $150/mo. and $99 invested to watch TV with no quick way to watch the last category. So what to do? There are a variety of “Media Extender” solutions out there (IE Apple TV), but they don’t meet all of our requirements. In order to do all this stuff, we need an all-out Media Center PC with TV tuner card. While I do like Apple products, part of the goal here is “cheap”. A decent refurbished Mac Mini costs $500, which is too much for this project. Plus in order to watch Netflix Instant programming you need Windows. This means Windows Media Center.

So here’s the goal: Build a Windows Media Center PC that will pay for itself in less than a year. By canceling unnecessary cable services and returning the Roku Netflix player, we’ll have saved $579 in that time. If we come in under this goal, that’s money in our pockets. So did we do it? Hells yes! Here’s how:

• Computer - Dell Inspiron 530s. This is Dell’s “economy” model in a slim case that’s perfect for our TV stand. By going to the Dell Outlet and using a 15% off coupon, we managed to snag a refurbished model for $289 (+$44 for tax/shipping) that included Windows Vista Home Premium SP1, an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 (2.2 GHz) processor, 2GB RAM, 500GB hard-drive, and a DVD burner. This same system would have cost $579 new.
• TV Tuner - AverMedia AverTV Combo PCI-E. This is a low-profile PCI-Express 1x TV tuner that fits in the Inspiron 530s’ slim case. It it capable of receiving analog cable/TV as well as ATSC (over-the-air) and QAM (cable) HDTV. It includes a nice IR receiver and remote that has buttons for all of Windows Media Center’s primary functions. I paid $94.99 with free shipping on Amazon. (Note that the card has TWO cable inputs, and if you want to receive both analog and QAM cable you’ll need a splitter to hook up both.)
• Wireless Keyboard/Mouse - Adesso 2.4 GHz RF Wireless Mini Keyboard with Optical Trackball. Finding a keyboard and mouse that works well from the sofa isn’t easy, but this Adesso model is awesome. The ergonomics are perfect for holding it in your lap, and I love the layout of the trackball, scroll wheel, and buttons. Once you grab hold it makes perfect sense. Also nice is that wireless reception is excellent even with the receiver plugged into the back of the computer. I paid $64.24 with free shipping on Amazon.

So there you have it! $333 + $94.99 + $64.24 = $492.23, well under the $579 budget. We also used some Amazon gift cards on the keyboard and TV tuner, which brought our out-of-pocket cost down quite a bit. Of course there were some extras, like an DVI to VGA cable, 3.5mm audio cable, and Cable TV splitter, but I had this stuff already.

So what does all of this allow us to do? Everything we’d hoped for! Windows Vista Media Center with the TV Pack works like a champ. For a Microsoft product, the software is intuitive, full-featured, and easy to use. It has a built-in cable guide with search, great DVR functionality, and the network HD channels look great. I also installed MyNetflix, which is a really nice plugin for Windows Media Center that does everything the Roku box did and more. We can also surf the web and play PC games from the comfort of our sofa. I’m quite pleased with the setup; it’s better than what we previously had and our monthly expenditures have dropped. What more can you ask for?

So maybe all this isn’t ultra-frugal. It’s a bit like saving money by buying caviar in bulk. But it’s a heck of a lot of fun, and we are saving some money, especially if this setup works well for a few years. So grab yer popcorn and head on over to my place for some “frugal” TV bliss!

You may notice a new “Gallery” tab at the top of the Seansense main page. I’ve installed Gallery on the Seansense website, which is an open-source web-based photo album. It integrates nicely with Wordpress and will be used in the future for all of my photos. You can access the gallery using the aforementioned tab or by navigating to gallery.seansense.net.

I’ve finished migrating all of the albums referenced in posts on this site to the new gallery. I still have more older galleries to migrate over from the MobileMe (formerly .Mac) Web Gallery and other places.

In the interest of saving $99/year I decided not to renew my MobileMe account. The main thing I used it for was the gallery; I never used the e-mail, syncing, or web-based stuff. The 20GB online storage is nice as it’s well integrated with OS X, but my web host gives me 600GB disk space. I’d like to make my domains, web hosting, and ISP the only things I spend money on for internet, because with these things I can do just about anything I want to. All the extra paid internet services are just money down the drain.

I’m also looking at various other ways to save and consolidate. Mel is starting an unpaid internship this fall so we’re going to be on one income for a while. More on that later.

Have I mentioned that Les Stroud, host of the Discovery Channel’s Survivorman, is my hero? If you’ve never seen the show, the premise is that Les spends seven days in the wilderness with only the clothes on his back, his cameras, a pocket knife, and a few very basic supplies. He has no film crew with him; he films and narrates the whole thing himself.

It’s a pretty amazing thing to survive for seven days in the extreme places he goes, but it’s even more extraordinary to do a wonderful job of filming the whole thing. He always manages to capture the beauty of his surroundings, as well as the difficulty presented by trying to survive them.

His program is about as real of a survival show as you can get. Sure, he has a safety team not too far behind him and a radio to contact them if things go wrong, but he (and the network) would have to be nuts not to. He gives the viewer real survival advice, not the typical eating gross things and secretly spending nights in a hotel like those other survival shows.

In fact, his show is so good that it has recently helped save some people’s lives. Here are a couple examples:

• Tips from TV show helped Manitoba snowmobiler survive for five days in wilderness
• Found: Couple Stranded In Snow For 12 Days

To a tip of the hat to you, Mr. Stroud, for a job well done! Here’s looking forward to Season 3 of Survivorman.

Reader Mike e-mailed me asking for help deciding which HD camcorder to buy. Currently he’s trying to decide between the Canon HF10, HF100, HV30, or HG10, or the Sony SR11 or SR12. The truth is that any of these cameras will record stunning HD footage. The real differences lie in practical matters; which camera will fit best into Mike’s life? Here’s the questions he (or anybody else thinking about such a purchase) needs to ask:

1. Do you have an HDTV that supports the resolution of the camcorder? You’re likely to be disappointed if your HDTV can’t support the native resolution of your snazzy new camcorder. If you have a 720p or lower resolution TV, you may want to consider upgrading your TV or starting off with a lower-end HD camcorder like the $400 Sanyo Xacti HD700 or even the super-cheap $130 Aiptek A-HD.

2. Do you plan on storing/editing the footage on a computer? If not, you’ll probably want an HDV camcorder like the Canon HV30, as you’ll be creating an instant archive on tape that can be stored in a safe place and easily played back. AVCHD camcorders record to hard drives or memory cards, meaning that archiving footage requires either a computer or an external DVD burner specially made for the camera, like the Canon DW-100

3. If you plan on editing, is your computer up to snuff? On the Mac side, you’ll need an Intel machine with at least 1GB of RAM (2GB or more recommended) to edit AVCHD, and you’ll need to set aside about 40 GB of hard-drive space for each hour of footage you want to store in the editable Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) format. You’ll also need iLife ‘08 or Final Cut Express 4.0 to edit AVCHD. (HDV can be edited with the previous version of each on a PowerPC machine.) On the PC side, you should have an 2.0+ GHz processor with 2GB of RAM, a good graphics card, and plenty of hard-drive space. For editing AVCHD in Windows XP or Vista you’ll need Sony Vegas 8.0 or Ulead VideoStudio 11.

4. How will you play back edited footage on your HDTV? AVCHD camcorders are a one-way street. Once you edit the footage, you can’t put it back on the camcorder. You will need to play it back on a computer connected to your HDTV or on a media device that supports HD, such as the Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, or Apple TV. Some Blu-Ray players can also play back properly exported movies. With HDV camcorders and the right software, you can export edited footage back to a tape and then play the tape back from the camcorder on your HDTV.

5. How important is portability? Are you the type of person who loathes the thought of carting around a camera bag everywhere you go? A small, flash-memory based camcorder may be your best bet. The “World’s Smallest Full HD Camcorder” champ is the Sony HDR-TG1, which promises to be a very good little camera when it is released in May. If it’s features you want in addition to small size, the Canon VIXIA HF10 or HF100 would be a great choice. Be warned though: These cameras sacrifice some features and usability for their small size. Neither has a viewfinder, which makes filming in bright light difficult, and only the Canon duo has prosumer features like an accessory shoe and microphone input.

6. How important are still photos? As shown in my article Can a camcorder beat a camera at its own game?, the Sony Sony HDR-SR11 and HDR-SR12 can take some darned good still photos. If you want one device that takes great video and good stills, these camcorders are for you! (The best still a Canon camcorder can produce is only 3.1 megapixels, compared to the interpolated 10.2 megapixels of the HDR-SR11 and HDR-SR12.)

Conclusion
AVCHD camcorders are new technology, and this is a double-edged sword. AVCHD is the way of the future and will eventually replace HDV, but you need a good computer and media hub to make AVCHD a practical choice. HDV is tried and true and is the best choice if you don’t mind the hassle of tapes and have older equipment to work with. Keeping all this in mind, here are my picks:

• Flash-Memory AVCHD Camcorder: Canon HF100 (Pros: Amazing video quality and prosumer features in a pint-sized package. Cons: No viewfinder, low-resolution still images. Conclusion: Best choice if portability is more important that features. Buy this and some cheap SDHC memory cards and forget the HF10.)
• Hard-Drive AVCHD Camcorder: Sony HDR-SR11 (Pros: Amazing video quality, great stills, built like a tank, viewfinder. Cons: Larger and heavier than the HF100. Conclusion: The best all around HD camcorder. Forget the more expensive HDR-SR12 unless you truly need all that extra HDD space.)
• HDV Camcorder: Canon HV30 (Pros: The benchmark in picture quality, viewfinder, manual controls. Cons: Smaller zoom, tapes, low-resolution stills, tapes.)

A couple weeks ago my MacBook Pro developed a brand-new feature: Automatic Poweroff! When I would be doing something fairly processor intensive on battery power with around 30-40% charge remaining, it would suddenly and completely shut off. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to lose all your work. This happened about three times, none of which resulted in me losing anything important. Still, it was very annoying, especially for a computer that is just 10 months old.

Opening System Profiler and taking a look at the battery showed that it had around 160 cycles on it with a Health Indication of “Fair”. The dashboard widget iStat Pro showed that the health was “50%”.

After some research I found out that MacBook Pro batteries manufactured between February 2006 and May 2006 were being flat-out recalled. My battery didn’t fall into this group, but it did fall into the MacBook and MacBook Pro Battery Update 1.2 category. Apple had issued a battery firmware update a while back to fix “issues”, and I had installed this update. Unfortunately certain craptastic batteries would still exhibit the following signs after the update:

Battery is not recognized causing an “X” to appear in the battery icon in the Finder menu bar.

Battery will not charge when computer is plugged into AC power.

Battery exhibits low charge capacity/runtime when using a fully charged battery with a battery cycle count (as shown in System Profiler) of less than 300.

Battery pack is visibly deformed.

I definitely fell under problem #3. Instead of having to call into tech-support hell as I did with my Dell (”and now we press the power button…”), I just made an appointment at the closest Apple Store and took it right in. Despite the fact that the store was jam-packed with an odd combination of geeks and ultra-trendy SoCalites, I only had to wait about 10 minutes. The guy at the “Genius Bar” was nice without being overly friendly. He proceeded to run a whole bunch of programs at once to try to drain the battery quickly, and was able to reproduce the problem after another 15-20 minutes. Once that was done he printed up some paperwork, put in a brand new battery, and sent me on my way. Easy. No stupid questions, no waiting on hold, no pulling out hair trying to explain that I don’t need to defrag the hard-drive.

When I first had this problem my confidence in Apple’s quality took a big hit. Finding that the problem was acknowledged by Apple on their website was a good first step. The totally painless battery replacement experience was a great second step. Dealing with a real, intelligent human face-to-face sure beats the alternatives provided by other computer manufacturers. I’m still disappointed that this happened at all, but I’m glad it was easily resolved. Here’s hoping that the new battery works better than the old one.

I do know one thing for sure: I’m glad I sprung for the 3-year AppleCare plan when I bought this computer.

The new AVCHD support in Apple’s Final Cut Express (FCE) 4.0 makes the program seem like a good choice for use with today’s AVCHD camcorders. All the newest AVCHD models (including the Sony HDR-SR11) record true 1920×1080 HD video. But despite Final Cut Express (FCE) 4.0 advertising support for AVCHD, there is an important limitation: FCE 4.0 only supports a maximum resolution of 1440×1080.

“Wait,” you say. “I thought HD was filmed in wide screen, with an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1.7777). 1440/1080 has an aspect ratio of 4:3 (1.3333)!” Yes, that is correct, but 1440×1080 video is still widescreen HD! It’s just anamorphic widescreen.

Anamorphic technology was developed to squeeze widescreen video into a traditional 4:3 frame without letter-boxing. When anamorphic widescreen video is recorded, the widescreen picture gets squished so it fits in the 4:3 frame. When the video gets played back, the player takes each pixel and stretches it laterally by 133%, resulting in rectangular pixels that fill up a 16:9 aspect ratio screen.

Regular Widescreen Image

Anamorphic Widescreen Image with Square Pixels

So yes, this is disappointing, but it’s also understandable. AVCHD is new technology and FCE 4.0 is built upon very solid anamorphic foundations. HDV (High-Definition Mini-DV, the predecessor to AVCHD) and older professional HD formats including XDCAM HD, DVCPRO HD and HDCAM are all anamorphic by nature. Rebuilding FCE with native support for 1920×1080 was probably too substantial an undertaking for the 4.0 release; let’s hope it’s coming in the next version! The good news here is that when 1920×1080 support is added you won’t have to transcode all of your video again; FCE 4.0 transcodes 1920×1080 AVCHD video at its native resolution.

You can always export a true 1920×1080 video from FCE 4.0 using Quicktime Conversion, but this video will have been interpolated from the FCE 1440×1080 rendered video. And interestingly enough iMovie ‘08 doesn’t seem to have this limitation; there’s no rendering required when working with 1920×1080 video. I can’t confirm that the output from iMovie would be any better than what you get out of FCE.

The thing to take away from all of this is that anamorphic vs. non-anamorphic HD video editing isn’t going to make a huge difference in the quality of the final product. Some people still prefer HDV to AVCHD in terms of video quality, despite the fact that HDV is anamorphic. A bigger concern is encoding the output, as a poorly encoded movie will dramatically decrease the quality compared to the source footage. In fact, to share our edited HD movies we often chose relatively low bit rates to decrease file size, and this choice instantly negates any discussion of anamorphic vs. non-anamorphic due to the amount of quality lost to compression.

Thanks Michael for bringing this to my attention!