I did a little experiment with my photography group. I think it makes things easier to understand.

The setup

I put my camera (Nikon D5000 DSLR) on a tripod.  I put a chair on the desk in front of a bullentin board. Hung a stapler from the chair.  I aimed the camera towards the hanging stapler.  We took 9 pictures of the swinging stapler: varying the aperture settings and the ISO sensitivity.  I set the camera to Aperture priority, so the Shutter speed was automatically adjusted.

• First set of 3 at ISO 200: f1.8 / f3.2 / f6.3
• Second set of 3 at ISO 400, same aperture opennings
• Third set at ISO 1600, same f-stops

Here are the nine pictures arranged in a matrix:

Click to see details

As you increase the f-stop value (stop down the aperture): [left to right]

• depth of field increases = less focus difference between the objects in the foreground and the background
• you get more motion blur on the moving object = shutter speed needs to be slowed down to get the same exposure (ex. 1/160 to 1/12 seconds)

You can see both of these effects in these extracts:

Click to see motion blur and focus differences

As you increase the ISO sensitivity: [top to bottom]

• get a decreased amount the motion blur = higher shutter speed can be used for the same exposure at the same aperture openning. Higher shutter speed causes less motion blur.
• but at the same time, we introduce more and more picture noise into the image (sensor noise gets amplified together with the useful signal)

The following extacts show this well:

Click to see picture noise at actual pixel level (100% magnification)

Hope these help in understanding the relationships.

Feel free to use these images in teaching, but please refer to techblog.viczian.hu

Place a file named “.nomedia” in the folders you want to exclude from media scanning. This will also prevent Album, Gallery, Videos to find media files in the folders with this file. Only the name of the file is important, it doesn’t have to contain anything.

You can create this file by renaming any short (or 0 length) file to “.nomedia” (dot-nomedia), or alternatively you can download it from here: .nomedia (it’s inside the zip archive. Would have been smaller uncompressed, but then it wouldn’t be possible to download

I soon found it on the web, but not so easily, so I decided it’s a good idea to increase the number of websites with that information. So here is a pretty complete list of GSM codes of the world:

UPDATE issues_mutations gb
 SET
 gb.promoart = (
   SELECT en.promoart FROM issues_mutations en
   WHERE en.lang='en' AND en.issue_id=gb.issue_id
 )
 WHERE gb.lang='gb'

This only yielded the following error message in PHP5:

#1093 – You can’t specify target table ‘gb’ for update in FROM clause

Bummer. The solution is based on the method I found at www.mysqlfaqs.net:

UPDATE issues_mutations gb
SET
gb.promoart = (
  SELECT promoart FROM
     (SELECT * FROM issues_mutations) AS en
  WHERE lang='en' AND en.issue_id=gb.issue_id
)
WHERE gb.lang='gb';

It only affected 11 rows, which I could have manually updated in much less time, but I’m sure this piece of SQL code will come handy later.

First attempt: It had windows XP Professional on it, I booted with the install CD, but there was no “R for Repair” option following the F8 (license agreement) page.

Second attempt: I disconnected the secondary hard drive, but still no “R for Repair”

Third attempt: Booted with Bart’s bootable Windows XP disc, drive C wasn’t even visible. Did a CHKDSK c: /F in command line (RUN / cmd) – some errors were found and fixed.  Rebooted computer and voilá!

My causin called me with a problem with the laptop (ASUS F5SL) I brought for him almost 2 years ago. The lid started to make strange cracking noises when it’s opened/closed. Another symptom is that the lid cannot hold itself, falls back.

Fortunatelly it was still under warranty… just barely though. I took it to service and they fixed it in 30 minutes!

I have sold, or helped buying probably 60 ASUS laptops but this is the first one this happened to.

I was trying to install this HD753LJ SATA2 (3.0 GB/sec) hard drive into an older motherboard (MSI K8T).  It couldn’t detect it. Of course. Being an older motherboard, it can only handle SATA 1.5 drives.

Some Samsung SATA hard drives have this jumper with which you can limit transfer rate. This one didn’t have that. The little booklet however mentioned http://www.samsunghdd.com to look for info on changing the the protocol.  I couldn’t find anything on this there.

I found a web page however (http://blog.techflaws.org/2008/07/22/samsung-hd753lj-sata-hdd-750-gb/#comment-235) where Bruce Schneier Marvin points to Samsung’s FAQ where a certain SSpeed.zip program can be downloaded, with which you can set the limit using a computer which has 3.0GB/s controlling ability.

There’s a catch however:  When running the program it’s gonna ask what would you like to do:

“1.5 -> 3.0″  or “3.0 ->1.5″ ?

Okay, which do you think should be chosen, if we want to set the limit to 1.5GB/s?

Wrong!

The correct answer according to Bruce Schneier Marvin is “1.5 -> 3.0″.  And he is right.

Update: Since then I also found ESTOOL.exe on http://www.samsunghdd.com and with this you can also set the limit (Set Max UDMA menu item).  Put this program on a bootable floppy disk, and boot from disk on a system which has a SATA controller capable of handling 3Gb/s drives.

HD700

I searched the web in vain for a review comparing these two Sanyo cameras. Of course, slim are the chances of finding someone owning these exact two and even going into the trouble of doing the tests and posting the results. Anyway, I ended up doing just these…

By comparision I don’t mean specifications side by side. You can find these easily, even on the Sanyo website (BTW: HD700 specs and CA9 specs).  The HD700 is from 2007, the CA9 is a newer, 2009 model. They are targeted at different user groups, the HD700 comes with docking capability, the CA9 is water resistant.  These imply 80% of the differences in ease of use and appearance.  I don’t mean these either.

Sanyo cameras are notorious for the low light problems, how did the switch from CCD (HD700) to CMOS (CA9) image sensor technology effect the image quality in low light, and otherwise?

What the reviews and technical articles don’t show you is how the image quality compares for the two. You might find sample snapshots and videoclips for each camera, but it’s a tipical apples and oranges kind of problem: we would need to see shots taken in simmilar circumstances to be able to compare.

Here are those comparision shots.

First a still image.  Moving the mouse pointer over them will switch to the image taken with the other camera. Click the images to view the originals.

above: HD700, below: CA9

Colors are more saturated, contrast is better on the CA9, but wait with your verdict until you see the closeups:

Details

For easier comparison, I extracted the same smaller areas from both photos.

above: HD700, below: CA9

On these closeups the CA9 visibly lacks much of the detail.  As if a blur filter was applied to the image.  This difference is even more striking on the following areas:

above: HD700, below: CA9

Interestingly, on the backlit area contrast is better, one can see more details on the image taken with the CA9:

above: HD700, below: CA9

Finally, embeded below is the split screen video. Sections of it were recorded at the same time with the two cameras, one in each hand.  Since I almost always run the deshaker filter on the videos I use, I thought it necessary to show you the results before and after the deshaker filtering.

The first few minutes are shot inside the house, the rest outside.  I turned on the built in stabilizer (VR) on both cameras for one section.

Contrast and color seem much better on the CA9.  HD videos on the HD700 are recorded with a tele angle, having a wider angle on the CA9 is also a welcome change.

Deshaker is also said to be capable of removing the visible rolling shutter jelly effect of CA9 videos. I haven’t tweaked the best settings for the CA9 yet, maybe I’ll discuss deshaking on the CA9 videos in a later post.  For now, you should watch the other aspects of the test video.

Note: the dogs on the video are Ribizli (smaller, lighter color female) and Bruno.

Overall

In my opinion the CA9 makes better videos, pictures come out nicer on the HD700. Both pictures and videos need some post processing to be really usable on both of these cameras.

Please comment.

Enjoy.

And please comment.