Absurd Singularity

No, not the 5D Mark II. Just the bastard stepchild that no one seems to care about. ;-p I figured I'd check out the 50D until the 5D Mark II is released at the end of November. Also thought I'd check out the new EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens for future vacation use. This just arrived today so haven't had time to actually test it out much yet. I was pretty surprised already just looking at the box though. This is the first time I remember seeing a camera/lens kit come with things other than just the lens. The kit price is basically the same as if you purchased the body and lens separately. BUT, this time, the kit also comes with an extra battery, the HOOD for the lens, and a 72mm UV filter. Shocking. Canon's been known to nickle and dime their customers on the hood front with their non-L lenses so this was unexpected. And the UV filter is Canon brand which probably isn't B+W or Hoya great but sufficient I guess if you really want some protection for the 18-200. And the 50D uses the same battery as the 5D so that's a plus.

As for the 18-200 lens, well, it's pretty much just like any other EF-S lens in build quality. I never really had an issue with the build quality of the non-18-55mm EF-S lenses so I won't blast it like the hardcore L snobs will but the Nikon version is nicer-looking though. ;-p Plus it has the Nikon equivalent of the USM AF motor AND is a little bit cheaper to boot. Lack of a USM motor is a bummer so AF noise is a bit louder than I'm used to. The IS seems to work pretty well even out at 200mm. Although I'm a little suspicious of the actual length at 200mm. It seems to me that the lens doesn't actually move much from 170mm to 200mm. I know these superzooms don't actually give you a true 200mm length but this lack of difference is a bit too noticeable.

So I'll be putting this baby through its paces starting tomorrow hopefully (weather's supposed to be kinda crappy here the rest of the week). Most interested in the high ISO and AI Servo performance. As well as the sharpness of the 18-200 lens. At first glance, physically it's not much different from the 5D. Feels and weighs about the same. Going back down to the smaller viewfinder was a rude awakening though. Although the info bar at the bottom is much easier to read on the 50D. The new LCD is obviously very nice and the menu layout and control is much better than the 5D although I believe nothing new from the 40D. Anyways, more later. =)

So Devon got a care package from Erin's brother and cousin yesterday. A bunch of little Tomica cars that Devon proceeded to baby for the rest of the day. Even when he went to bed he wanted all the cars with him. And Erin got a few books and CDs she had requested. Me? Well, I didn't ask for anything. But when I got home, Erin handed 4 little boxes to me and said, "Here, these are for you." WTF??? I mentioned to her ONCE that a cosplay café had opened in Kaohsiung before we went back for Devon's one-year birthday last year. Didn't even mention it when we were actually back in Taiwan. And I'm not even a figurine collector. Well, except for the Gundam Fix Figuration stuff but that's not even remotely close to this. *sigh* I guess I'll eventually get around to opening them. ;-p

So earlier this year I tried out a Pentax K20D and 16-50mm f/2.8 lens for a short while and was pretty impressed by the combination. Back then I had taken a couple of center sharpness comparison shots against my bookshelf between the Pentax and my regular Canon 5D and 24-70mm f/2.8 combo and they basically just sat in my "Processed" folder for the past 5 months waiting to be written up. So yeah, this is long overdue. As usual, these shots were taken during the evening so only light source is a 6' tall fluorescent lamp that illuminates upwards towards the ceiling. Bodies were tripod mounted, 3 shots taken at each aperture and length and the best one taken from each set of 3. ISO set at 200, 100% crops of the middle of each photo. Center focus point which would be the white book with thin grey stripes and purple lettering in the middle. Books to the left are an inch behind the center book and the one on the right. So first up, wide open at 16/24mm.

As far as I can tell, very little difference. The Pentax may have just a smidgen better white balance but the Canon looks a bit smoother in general. But that's because of the body and not the lens. So on the wide end, both lenses are pretty comparable. No point in putting up the sample shots at f/4 and f/8 since they're exactly the same. Both of these lenses are quite sharp at the wide end.

So we'll move on to the telephoto end. 50/70mm at f/2.8.

Since the Pentax is a 1.5x crop camera, the 50mm is actually 75mm at the long end but I moved the tripod back a few so that the framing of the shot would be as similar as possible. Anyway, looking at these wide open results, it's odd to see that the Pentax suddenly has worse white balancing but it's superior in sharpness and resolution. Upon close inspection, the grey vertical and horizontal lines can be seen as consisting of tiny zig-zags instead of being just a straight line.

Even at f/8, the grey lines on the Canon side still look blurred while the Pentax is showing them exceptionally clear. No contest on the long end.

So what can be gleaned from this? Well obviously Canon and Nikon don't have a lock down on the ability to make exceptional and sharp lenses. Because the 16-50mm lens was designed for Pentax's crop digital cameras, it's physically smaller and lighter than Canon's relatively older 24-70mm. And in this case, its sharpness is better overall than the 24-70. However, you can really only see the difference when viewing the full-sized photos at 100% so for practical, everyday printing/web use, they'll both give great results. If I was a Pentax shooter and wanted a mid-range zoom that can rival anything out there, then the 16-50mm f/2.8 will definitely not disappoint.

Lot of people like the new car smell, I prefer the new gadget smell. Well, ok, I wouldn't mind a new car smell but that ain't happening for a while so new gadget smell is all I can get these days. ;-p

Anyway, this just arrived via FedEx this morning (one day early I might add) while I was getting ready to leave for work so all I had time to do were these 2 blurry shots. Full unboxing photos later this evening. ;-)

So, finally got the chance to open up my new MBP late last night. First off, I think the box is getting smaller with every release. As can be seen, the top lid of the box has a piece of thick black padding glued to it to protect the MBP which sits underneath like a big silver slab. Note the black "Designed by Apple in California" tag. You're going to see them in many places. Here, you pull on it to lift the MBP out of the tray that it sits in.

'k, so I'm pretty much done moving my data and stuff from my old MBP to the new one. This time around I used Apple's Migration Assistant to copy over all the apps and Library data. Worked without a hitch for the most part. One thing to keep in mind is that if you want to keep the same login name on the new machine, don't create it yourself on the new machine before you run Migration Assistant. It'll say that the user already exists on the new machine and ask you to enter a new one. But if it's too late, you can always change the name later. MacWorld has a nice article detailing ways to do it.

Running into some minor issues here and there but nothing that's not fixable. Big issue where Firefox wigged out and couldn't download anything, add-ons included. None of the usual debug actions worked (create a new profile, trash the pref file, etc.) until I just downloaded the app again and replaced it in my app folder.

Copying my Bootcamp WinXP partition over was a first. Used WinClone and surprisingly, it actually worked! Although had to try it twice because the first time the BootCamp partition was larger than the partition I wanted to copy it too (by like a meg or something ridiculous like that) so I had to shrink the BootCamp partition first before imaging it. Then after successfully replicating onto the Brick MBP, MacOS X could no longer mount it. I suspected it had something to do with MacFuse+NTFS-3G that I had just installed last week so reinstalling the two packages solved that problem. Parallels actually ran off the cloned partition without a hitch which was a surprise.

Booting into WinXP raised a few issues though. Keyboard and trackpad was completely unresponsive so couldn't even log in. After poking around, I discovered this handy post on Winclone's forum which worked fine. Not completely out of the woods yet though as WinXP doesn't seem to be able to see the wireless card on the new MBP. Will have to delve into that tonight. Also the trackpad driver isn't as intelligent as it is on MacOS X. What am I talking about? Ok, even though the new trackpad is "buttonless," my standard behavior when operating it hasn't changed. Meaning I track with my index finger while keeping my thumb on the bottom of the pad (where the physical button used to be). In MacOS X, it's smart enough to ignore the presence of your thumb. In WinXP, not so much. I have to make sure that only my index finger is touching the pad while I'm moving the cursor around, otherwise it doesn't work right. Hm, maybe there's a setting that I can play with in WinXP...

[UPDATE]: Using the Apple MacOS X Install DVD to uninstall all the BootCamp drivers first and then reinstalling them again fixed the issues I was having in WinXP. Although the trackpad is still a bit wonky when compared to using it in MacOS X.

There is one issue that I'm very annoyed about though and it has to do with the new Mini DisplayPort. Namely, it doesn't want to work with my DVI Switching box. As I mentioned in my unboxing post, I share an LCD and USB hub between the MBP and my desktop PC via KVM switch that supports DVI connections. The Mini DisplayPort doesn't seem to be able to detect the existence of the LCD through the switch. If I connect the LCD directly to the port though, it works fine. Really a pain in the ass if it no longer works and won't work in the future. Luckily I rarely turn on my desktop PC anymore but still it'd be nice if it worked as usual.

Oh, and one physical issue. The edges on the new MBP are a sharp 90 degrees now instead of having the slight rounded plastic lip on the older models. So if your forearm tends to rest on the edge, it's gonna start hurting real quick.

That's all for now.

[UPDATE]: Oh right, forgot to mention that I do like how the controller on my Etymotic hf2 works with iTunes to stop/start playing and skip songs. Very nice.

So LensBaby announced their new lineup a few months ago and I pre-ordered the Composer and promptly forgot about it until it showed up at work the other day. I had previously owned their 3G version (now known as the "Control Freak") which I played around with a little before craigslisting.