Which Digital SLR?

Recently I have attended a workshop from 'Better Photography' to satisfy my inner photography desires. Got tempted to buy a DSLR camera. Went to a shop at Bangalore and compared prices at both official & grey market. Zeroed down on two brands Canon & Nikon. On the lower side 550D from Canon & D3100 from Nikon. On the higher side 7D from Canon & D90 from Nikon. The lower range was from Rs. 35k to Rs. 50k & higher was from 80k to 90k.

When I took the camera (7D) in hand the temptation was such I went to ATM to draw money. Just before entering ATM I called up my friend (Anand Joshi) a great guy with a lot of pro knowledge on photography (http://www.flickr.com/photos/anandjoshi/). He said in another one month there are new models being launched and it is worth waiting for them.

Now Nikon has launched 7000D. A wonderful camera with almost all features for a person who is serious about photography. Costs Rs. 85k with kit lens, a bag & 4 GB memory. Canon has launched 60D with swivel LCD monitor & a lot of movie options & costing around 65k. My friend (Kiran Raj) wanted to buy a DSLR. Looking at the features & his budget I suggested him to go for 7000D. Surprisingly he readily invested on that marvelous piece.

Now I am planning to buy 60D.

Things I like in DSLRs:
1. The clarity in the picture even with low light
2. The number of customizable options right from PSAM to white balancing, metering etc.
3. With new gen Cameras we can also take FullHD movies ( may not have many options to tweak)
4. The option to change lenses to suit the requirement.

The things I wish in DSLRs:
1. Lighter cost ( USA is cheaper than India)
2. Built-in GPS location tagging (Geo tagging). Most smart phones have.
3. Bluetooth transfer facility.
4. WiFi capabilities
5. Multiple memory cards ( 7000D has)
6. Allow a bit more customization options in terms of memory management such as frame buffeting etc.

After all the research I learnt that the photography mainly depends on the person who is taking that wonderful snap and not on the camera. A simple DSLR with a very good lens will produce great pictures than a great camera with average lens. One must have the lighting sense & picture composition sense. First thing we have to remember is what our eye can see (with our amazing brains behind them) the camera cannot see. For example I have seen many people taking snaps during sunset (low light) thinking that what they see through their eyes is what they will get through the camera. So we have to train our brains to see through eyes of the camera which is the biggest secret behind the best snaps. Also one has to remember to tell a story through the snaps. I have seen some photographs that are very impressive by the story that they convey than the technicality of the photo.

www.dpreview.com, www.kenrockwell.com, www.the-digital-picture.com, www.cameralabs.com are few of the good websites that give a complete review of latest cameras & lenses.

Enjoy Photography.

iPhone 4

IPhone 4 through online ordering via Singapore (factory unlocked). Thanks to my close friends who brought this to India. However was shocked to see apple's Q/A fumbling. The earpiece was not functioning properly and had to spend Rs. 1000 to get it repaired.

Now coming to the func

tionality it is very great as usual. But if you are trying to get one from USA please think twice as there is no unlock available yet. Tried my best googling for it in vain.

The great things I was hearing about the AppStore proved right as it is really amazing.

Also got hands on iPad really a piece of excitement. Part from no camera, swf etc.

Finally got the taste of Airtel 3G. Superb speeds. More on this soon.

Internet Connection

Bangalore the highly appreciated (envied) by the world over, has trouble to get a broadband connection for me since 40 days.

Airtel Broadband. Could not believe that Airtel employee can take customers like me for a ride by taking the booking knowing that there is no port available. Got the cheque back with a sorry note from Airtel.

Reliance broadband (wired) has abnormal prices for their speeds.

BSNL, as expected post to pole running & still waiting.

High speed data cards from Reliance & Tata Indicom are low speed in my area (Sanjay Nagar). MTS is little better. However lacks interest in serving customers. I had to almost call them every 6 hours for a week to get the data card but yet to get. The only attractive option they have is pre-paid. Yet to try BSNL 3G card.

This is really painful for a person like me who works from home.

Still waiting to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Blackberry 9700

Finally bought Blackberry 9700 (knowing that it may not upgrade to OS6). This is one of the mobiles that has so much capability. The beauty is the keyboard. very easy to use. Once I got use to this key board it is very difficult to imagine the virtual keyboards.

I am still exploring things like cannot open PDF directly except from email attachment (Purchased DocOnGo, cannot mute the key sound while dialing the phone number, rebooting without battery pull & Not able to configure exchange emails unless you have BIS or BES connectivity (charges applicable).

There are very good apps from Blackberry app world as well as dataviz. However once you configure the things you cannot resist getting addicted to it.

Windows Phone 7 Series

Recently I had a glance at http://www.windowsphone7series.com/. This shows that unless iphone comes up with great innovation again it is going to take a beating from windows mobile.

Now google is also arming up with its Nexus One. iPad being so successful can we expect iPhone would be path breaking? Lets wait and see...

Blackberry Tour

After experimenting a lot with Symbian, Windows Mobile I have decided to switch gears to Blackberry. In my research found that Blackberry Tour is very good phone for both official & personal use. Good thing is it works in both CDMA and GSM in 3G. so we don't need to worry about the connectivity all over the world.

The complaints I heard about it are
1. The track ball does not work properly after sometime and gets stuck.
2. No wifi.

I also read lot a of rumors that the next version of BB Tours 2 (9650) will be launching during 1st quarter of 2010. This solves both the above issues with optical track pad and wifi.

Rcom.co.in is offering the current version (9630) at 27K INR. If I take this with 1063 INR (Month) plan I will have two things done
1. Blackberry with 3G connectivity
2. 3G tether modem for my laptop

So per month if would be around 1500 INR with my heavy voice usage will be reasonable. More about it after I buy this smart device.

HTC Touch Sense

Recently saw a demo from HTC site on their HERO handset (combination of Android and HTC's own Sense. I am really impressed the way they did it. I was wondering if I could port the sense part of it on my Xperia.

The guys at XDA-Developers are manzing. They ported HTC sense on Xpreia with combination of Windows mobile 6.5. Among all of them I liked itje's cooked ROM for Xperia (V11 Release).

I also liked the simplicity of Gtrab's Pure and barebone version from XDA-Developers for the people who wants their Xperia to run with Windows 6.5 OS. This ROM is very simple, stable and more efficient on battery.

Overall I would say windows mobile is coming up very well. However there are still some glitches and stability issues.

I am also eagerly waiting for HTC HD2 (LEO). The only thing is it does not have HW Keyboard. With the huge screen size it may not be a drawback. It is capacitive screen as Iphone. With HTC Sense on it with SnapDragon 1GHz chip it must be as smooth as butter. According to some reviews the Windows core (6.5) plays funny in few instances such as suddenly slowing down or freezing to death.