The IBM-PC had something that came to be known as the OEM character set which provided some accented characters for European languages and a bunch of line drawing characters… horizontal bars, vertical bars, horizontal bars with little dingle-dangles dangling off the right side, etc., and you could use these line drawing characters to make spiffy boxes and lines on the screen, which you can still see running on the 8088 computer at your dry cleaners’.

via The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) — Joel on Software.

Probably best watched on YouTube itself in the original 480p (you may need to use the video quality pop-out menu), so you stand a chance of reading the screen.

Note I’m using the Audacity 1.3.12, in the beta series, not the 1.2 stable. If you want to follow along with the video, I’d recommend grabbing the beta. It’s not crashed on me yet, and it’s got lots of new features and bug-fixes over 1.2.

If you want your blog to look at least a bit different from everyone else’s, adding a custom header picture is probably the best first step. Changing themes entirely would do a more radical job, but there won’t be many themes yet that take advantage of all the WordPress 3 features like Twenty Ten — which is built to showcase them — does.

So, here’s a couple of shiny header graphics I created from this snap of mine taken on last year’s Worldwide Photo Walk, and this one taken just this afternoon. These links take you through to the full-size versions; they’re pretty small files, weighing in 40KB max: Full size daisy. Full size Cosmos (the purple one!)

Once you’ve made your header, or grabbed mine, the page you want in the WordPress 3 Admin interface is under “Header”, under the “Appearance” sub-menu. It’ll be there by default in a fresh install of WordPress 3, as part of the Twenty Twenty theme.

Just upload the file using the top option there. There won’t be any prompt to crop the photo if you’ve used one that’s exactly 940x198 pixels. Both of the files above are exactly that size, so once you’ve uploaded the file, that should be the job done!

Wait for WordPress to tell you the new graphic is in place, then go view your site and you should see your new, non-default header, and have a WordPress site that doesn’t look exactly like all the other new WordPress 3 installs!

I bought a shiny new ZyXEL P-660HN. It’s a lovely little ADSL wireless router, it got a string of 5-star reviews on eBuyer, and everything worked well out of the box. I only had one problem — well, apart from not being able to spell “ZyXEL” — which I’m documenting here just in case anyone else is having it and desperately looking for help on the internet.

I couldn’t get the Apple Remote App for iPhone to work with it. Not reliably, anyway. It would occasionally work, after rebooting everything, but it wouldn’t stay working. Crucially, I also couldn’t get the AirTunes Remote Speakers (hanging off my Airport Express) to work, either.

After I shuffled around the internet for a bit, I thought it might be something to do with Bonjour, but the ZyXEL didn’t seem to be clamping down with its firewall on the Bonjour ports internally. In fact, I eliminated the firewall completely: turning it off didn’t fix the problem.

Plunging further into the net, I found a couple of places that tangentially mentioned a couple of other apps in the same breath as the Apple Remote, including the 1Password app, which syncs with 1Password over WiFi. I tried that app for the first time with the new router, and what do you know? That didn’t work either.

My big clue came from this blog entry at packetevents.com, which goes into some really geeky detail about what happens when you fire up the Remote App:

When the iPhone remote starts, it began to send  a Multicast-DNS packet to 224.0.0.251. This is a multicast which means the devices and computers in the same group will hear this packet.

Multicast. That’s the secret. I remembered seeing a setting for that on the ZyXEL, which I didn’t think was on by default. Sure enough, on the Network > LAN > IP page of the router’s configuration screens, there’s an Advanced Setup button. Click that, and there’s an RIP & Multicast Setup section. Multicast was set to “None” on my system.

I had no idea which of the options to choose — IGMP-v1, 2 or 3 — so I just chose the biggest number, on the grounds that version 3 of things is generally better than version 1 or 2. As soon as I’d chosen that and hit “Apply”, everything started working just fine. 1Password started syncing, my Remote app started working, and I’m listening to music over the AirTunes speakers right now.

So — got a problem with a ZyXEL router and your iPhone apps? Try enabling multicast!

‘This is just like when you post what you think is a really fucking original photo to Flickr and the first fucking comment you get is “Hi! I’m an admin for the ‘Upside-down photos of penguins wearing bobblehats (shot on Velvia)’ group, and we’d love to have your photo added to the 2,947,341 photos that are already in our group pool.”…’

I have created a new web site. Purely for a rant. It’s called domainillneverfuckinguse.com.

On the Parcelforce website, I found that I could re-arrange delivery to a local Post Office, and pick it up from there. So, I did that, arranging to pick the parcel up from the local Cotham Hill Post Office this morning.

And it was at the Post Office that things started to go downhill. First off, I gave them the card, and they disclaimed all knowledge of me. Then I showed them the printed bit of the website confirmation, and they had an actual look for my parcel. They didn’t find it. Then they looked on the computer, and the computer told them it was there. Then they looked again, and dragged out a big box, which was apparently my parcel.

Okay. It looked big for a wireless router, but eBuyer sometimes send the smallest of things in larger boxes. It looked a bit heavy, too, though. “Are you sure that’s the one?” I asked through the glass.

“Yes,” said the lady, and read me out a postcode that wasn’t mine.

“No,” I said, “That’s not my postcode.”

“Royal York Crescent?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, it’s got your name on the label here.” And she read out my postcode from a different label.

“How heavy is that?” I asked.

She hefted the parcel. “Three or four kilos?” Hmm. A bit heavy for a router, even a good quality one. Even a good quality one which came with a free computer. “Look,” she said, “Do you want it, or not? It’s got your name on it?”

“But I don’t think it’s mine.”

“Well, you’ll have to ask Parcelforce.”

Oh, the joys of the separation of the Post Office into little bits that never bloody take responsibility for each other.

So, I take delivery of this parcel, which, when I get it home, appears to be addressed to a Frenchman, living around the corner, and seems to have come from France. I open it up. Inside is… Something which is definitely not a wireless router.

I suppose the “Genuine Porche Parts” tape that it was sealed with should have been a bit of a clue. It certainly looked like a bit of a car. I found a part number on one of this matched pair of hefty steel pipes, and looked it up on the internet.

The first hit was a Polish eBay auction, which was selling a pair of things that looked exactly the same.

Yes, definitely not a wireless router. In fact, a matched pair of Porche Cayenne tailpipes. The auction had reached €360, more than £300. So, Parcelforce and the Post Office had given me someone else’s goods, and they were worth six times the value of the little thing I was expecting.

If I was a bad person, this might have ended right there. Auction them on eBay, order another router, and I’d have a router and £550 change. Nice work if you can get it.

I phoned Parcelforce. They told me my parcel had been delivered to Cotham Hill Post Office. I told them what had happened. They looked up the French parcel’s tracking number. “That’s still at Bristol depot.” I doubted it. I reckon that’s was where my parcel was. “Yes, you’re probably right. I’ll put you through to them.”

I got through to the Bristol depot. The person at head office hadn’t bothered explaining why he’d put me through, so I had to go through the story again, which took about five minutes. “Right,” said the woman on the phone. “I’ll go and look for that parcel, and I’ll call you back.” I read out my phone number to her, she read it back to make sure she’d definitely got it right. “I’ll call you right back,” she reassured me.

That was at about 11am this morning. This afternoon, I headed out to lunch with my friend Tara, and on the way back, I called in at Royal York Cresent. There was nobody at the house on the parcel’s label. I went and had a coffee in Boston Tea Party around the corner, and as I was drinking it, a Porche Cayenne drove past. “There can’t be too many of those around here,” I thought to myself.

Still nobody there, though, when I went back. So I headed back to my car, got in, and was just about to drive off when that Porche Cayenne pulled up outside the garage belonging to the house I’d just been to.

“Excuse me!” I called from down the street. Not much response, but then it turned out “Excusez-moi!” might have been a better approach, because yes, it was indeed a French family, and the older man of the party immediately recognised the Porche Cayenne exhaust pipes I had in the box I was carrying. “Aaaaah!”

Communication was slightly problematic; even with two people with matching native languages it’s not an easy explanation. Still, it transpired that Monsieur Boulais did not have my wireless router, sadly. But those were definitely his tailpipes.

I got home, and called the Bristol Depot back at about half past three. They were shut. They’d been shut since half past twelve.

I phoned up Parcelforce’s main number again, navigating through the irritating menu system until I found a button to push if you wanted to make a complaint. Apparently they were experiencing a high volume of calls, which doesn’t exactly surprise me.

Finally I got through. A northern woman with no interest in anybody else’s problems took my call. “No, they’re closed now,” she said.

“I know that, I’ve just phoned them. Well, what can you do?”

“I can give you their number, so you can phone them first thing on Monday morning.”

Sigh. “Well, how do I make a complaint?”

“I can give you the address to write to.”

Yes, that figures. You wouldn’t want to make it easy for your customers to complain, would you, Parcelforce, or presumably you’d have to employ even more people who were shit at phoning customers back or listening to anything they’re told… No, instead you have a complaints option on the phone system that puts you through to someone who tells you to write to a certain PO Box number. That’s far more effective customer service.

So, here I am, using my old wireless router still, because my shiny new router is in Parcelforce’s Bristol depot. Maybe. And possibly now addressed to a Frenchman. Even though I’ve paid money to have it delivered to a local Post Office and gone out of my way to collect it. Personally, I seem to be a far more effective courier than Parcelforce, what with being able to read labels, and doing Saturday deliveries directly to the hands of the intended recipient. I’ll even handle complaints by email, or on the phone.

So, with “my” parcel delivered to a slightly bemused, but very happy Monsieur Boulais, I wonder how much confusion it’s going to cause when I phone up the Bristol depot on Monday morning and see if I can get them to find my parcel. I wonder if I’ll ever get my delivery.

In summary, Parcelforce, you suck. You suck at everything, from delivery to security to communication to complaint handling. You fail to care on every level, you fail to call people back, and you are intensely indifferent to your customers and their problems. I will be avoiding you wherever possible in future. I’m so annoyed right now that I’m tempted to try starting a multi-million pound mail-order delivery firm simply so I can avoid giving you my delivery contract.

And that is, so far, my story of trying to get something delivered to me by Parcelforce. If you’ve tripped over this blog entry trying to find out what Parcelforce’s customer service is like, I hope very much that you read it in time not to touch them with a barge-pole.

You may have noticed one or two extra posts overnight. This is because I’m in the process of changing from my homemade, terrifyingly ugly, “let’s learn about WordPress themes” theme to a vastly prettier theme made by Curt Ziegler.

I’ll probably be done juggling the site around by the end of next week. This shouldn’t lead to much, if any, more spurious wibbling on the site’s RSS feed, and will be worth it in terms of look and feel if you ever feel the need to visit the site.

Hmm. You know, “Spurious Wibbling” could be an geek indie band…

Basically, I wanted to grab some screen shots for a tutorial piece on how to capture screen shots on a Mac. So I wanted to shoot some screen shots which would actually capture pictures of the different cursor shapes you get — the cross-hairs, the little camera, and so on — while you’re capturing.

As is often the case on the Mac, this seemingly difficult task turned out to be dead easy. There’s a full command line interface for capturing screenshots that comes with OS X — I guess it may be what the GUI uses “under the hood” — and not only is it easy to use, but you can also capture cursors with it.

The command is “screencapture”, and it comes with many fine options, as you can tell if you run it with screencapture -h. There’s a full manpage available too, i.e. man screencapture.

Here’s the example I used to grab this shot:

screencapture -T5 -C test.png

The -T5 delays for five seconds — giving me time to trigger the GUI’s built-in screen shot facility and get the little camera cursor up on the screen — the -C tells it to capture the cursor as well as the screen, and the file name tells it where to save. If you have two screens and want to capture them both, just provide both file names.

There’s a ton of other options for kicking off different capture methods, changing the output file format, and so on. And this is all delightfully scriptable, of course. I’m sure this’ll come in handy for me at some point in the future, so I figured it was worth blogging in case it gives anyone else some ideas…

If you know me, or are simple feeling particularly charitable, I’d love it if you could nip over to my Just Giving page and sponsor me

Thanks!

Introduction

My old Konica-Minolta DiMAGE X60 served me well for years. Recently, though, its soft-edged lens, fading battery life, low pixel count (not that higher is always better, of course) and poor video performance had me looking for a replacement.

When I saw the new DMC-FP8 appear in Panasonic’s Lumix range, it jumped to the top of my list. Despite Panasonic’s claims of a “futuristic design”, it looks very similar to my much-loved DiMAGE. They’re both small, flat-fronted cameras — more on how they manage that later — and the FP8 is even available in the same smart red as my old DiMAGE.

My FP8 arrived on Wednesday, so I thought I’d post an initial review, as FP8 reviews seem few and far between at the moment.

What I Wanted

My main camera is a digital SLR, the Canon EOS 400D (or Digital Rebel XTi if you’re in the US.) SLR owners looking for a compact often buy at the top end of the market. They choose mini-marvels like the Canon G10 or Panasonic’s own LX3, compact cameras that shoot RAW, have full manual control, and big lenses.

But that’s not what I was looking for. Too big, too complicated, and, at around £400, too expensive. As my secondary camera I want a simple, cheap-ish camera that I can slip into a shirt pocket. A camera for when I don’t think I’ll be doing much photography, but where it’d be nice to have something with me if I turn out to be wrong.

First Impressions

As far as look and feel goes, the FP8 seems to fit the bill. The camera looks stunning — although less so from the back than the front. The all-metal, two-texture front looks classy and feels sturdy, but turn the camera over and the black plastic rear lets it down a little. It doesn’t feel quite as strong as my old DiMAGE.

On the other hand, the all-metal DiMAGE had a reputation for strength and build quality, and I don’t think the FP8 is any less well built than most modern compacts. The plastic seems to be of good quality, the battery/card compartment door has a sliding lock with a positive “click”, and the buttons feel okay in operation.

Taking up most of the back is a large, clear LCD screen and a set of well-laid-out controls. The buttons glow in a nice blue colour when active — not useful, really, but it looks cool.

Folding Optics

The striking difference between the FP8 and most compacts is on the front of the camera, though. Sitting quietly in the top right-hand corner of the camera, the Leica-branded lens is small, and virtually flush with the case. Although the camera has 4.6X optical zoom, you won’t see the lens move while you’re zooming.

This is because the FP8 uses “folding optics”. The lens is mounted at 90° to the usual position, entirely inside the camera, along the length or width rather than facing forwards. A prism reflects the light from the external front element of the lens down into the main optics.
So, the FP8 has no protruding “nose”, and it slips into a pocket with supreme ease.

Lens Cover

On the other hand, to me there seems to be one key element missing. My old DiMAGE had a built-in lens cover. A nice, chunky metal sliding cover that protected the lens and acted as the on/off switch for the camera.

On the FP8, though, there’s no lens cover at all. The camera doesn’t come with so much as one of those little cloth bags — so if you’re worried about scratching the lens, or getting fingerprints on it, you’re going to have to invest in a case.

It seems strange to go to the trouble of designing a slimline camera with folding optics, and not add a lens cover. What’s the point of a skinny camera if you have to stuff it in a fattening case to protect its lens?

In Use

But, enough of the bad, and onto the good.

Startup time is excellent. Panasonic quotes a 0.95-second start speed. Slide the “on” switch into position and you’re ready to start shooting by the time you’ve got the FP8 held out in front of you.

Focusing

Focusing is fast and accurate. With the camera off, if I point it at something, hold the shutter button down and turn the camera on, the FP8 starts up, focuses and shoots in less than two seconds. The speed is great for those moments when you see something that you’ve just got to shoot — that always seem to happen when your camera’s in your pocket.

In normal operation, shutter lag is minimal — from pressing the shutter to the shot being taken isn’t DSLR fast, but it is respectably quick for a compact.

I’ve also been impressed with the AF Tracking mode — you can “lock on” to a subject, and the camera will intelligently track it all the time it’s visible, trying to keep it in focus. I first tested it from a moving ferry, focusing on a BMX biker on the harbourside. Locking on to his bike, the focus tracking square followed him along the shoreline, and even moved up to track his head when he was partially obscured by a moored boat, dropping back down to the bike when he emerged from the other side. Spooky.

The FP8 has both face-detection and face-recognition technology. Apparently it doesn’t just find faces in photos to choose focus points — which it does just fine — but it will also “learn” your friend’s faces over time, and give them priority in group shots. I’ve not taken enough photos for this to start kicking in yet, though. Sounds like a bit of a gimmick, if I’m honest.

Picture Quality

This being my first few days with the camera, I spent most of my time in its “Intelligent Auto” mode. And this does what it says on the tin, being quite smart about the choices it makes.

Outdoors

Outdoors, in good light, the FP8 is undeniably a good camera. Taking it for a walk along Bristol’s harbour on an overcast morning, it did well, shooting quickly, exposing correctly, and producing faithful colour. No big over-saturation problems, unlike some compacts, as you can see from the red, green and blue in these shots (click through to view/download the full-size originals.)

Zoom

The FP8’s 4.6x zoom will take you from the 28mm wide up to 128mm (35mm equivalent focal lengths.) In good light, images are clear and crisp across the entire lens, including into the corners. This is pretty impressive for a folding optics system. Folding optics have a reputation for soft edges.

Here are two shots of Bristol’s Colston Tower, one at widest angle, and one fully zoomed, to give you an idea of the range.

Here’s a crop from that last, zoomed image, showing the sharpness of detail at full optical zoom. Not bad.

If you want to check out the detail across the whole lens, here’s a full-zoom shot of a brick building filling most of the frame. You can click through to the full size and check out the detail for yourself.

Personally, I’m very impressed with the cross-frame clarity Panasonic have dragged out of their folding optics, and I can see why Leica were happy enough to stamp their name on this lens.

Macro

At the other extreme, there’s macro mode. Macro results, especially handheld, are pretty creditable. This is a crop of the very first macro shot I took with the FP8. Nice fine detail, pleasant colours, sensible depth of field.

Low light

In lower light, though, results are more mixed. With the FP8 cramming 12 million pixels onto a tiny sensor, there’s a lot of noise visible.
Here’s detail of the Colston Tower at full zoom again, this time at ISO 400, a little later on in the evening. The Leica lens and image stabilisation still give the sensor a nice sharp image, but the sensor noise/JPEG artefacting are quite nasty, making the overall picture look blurred and lacking in contrast. Click through to see what I mean.

Moving indoors and forcing the flash off, I give the FP8 a really tough test — a subject in a dark restaurant in front of a bright bar. Ramping up to 400 ISO again, the FP8 doesn’t do a terrible job, although it could have done better in exposing for Amanda’s face, bearing in mind that the face detection found it without a problem.

If you look at the full-size version, though, you’ll see the noise that’s a direct result of the megapixel war — too many pixels, too few photons, and a low signal-to-noise ratio from the sensor.

Focusing performance, at least, remains excellent in low light. A focus-assist lamp kicks in if the FP8 is having trouble seeing what you’re aiming at.

I’ve not had a chance yet to try out the High Sensitivity mode, which reduces resolution while allowing the ISO to bump up all the way to 6400.

Flash

Happily, though, the FP8’s flash works better than I expected. With the flash sitting right next to the lens, I’d expected a lot of redeye with every shot. However, the FP8 has both a pre-flash for iris contraction, and a digital red-eye reduction system, presumably helped out by the face recognition.

Turning the flash on and re-taking the shot, the results improve. It’s by no means perfect — there’s the “whited out” look of most onboard flash shots — but Amanda’s face is well-exposed, and while you can detect a hint of red-eye, it’s not one of the awful demon stares foisted on us by some cameras.

Fundamentally, if you want to take fantastic photos in a dark restaurant, then go spend a lot of money on a DSLR with a nice fast lens, or a good external flash. No cheap, tiny compact will be great in light this low.

Shooting Modes

It’s not all bad news in low light, though, as I found when I moved out of Intelligent Auto mode and started start playing with some of the FP8’s scene shooting modes.

The FP8 has rather more shooting modes than you could shake a stick at — in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a specific mode for taking photos of someone shaking a stick.

Night scenery

Lacking a party, two babies, snow, or a pet, I started out with what I had available — “Night Scenery”. The Night Scenery mode assumes you’re using a tripod, or at least resting the camera on something, and keeps the ISO down to minimise noise, while extending the shutter speed. This photo is of the A4 Portway in Bristol, looking out toward the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It’s come pretty much straight out of the camera.

I was impressed at the combination of sharpness and lack of noise. Again, click through for the full-res image.

The camera’s two-second timer mode comes in handy for night shots — just enough time to get your hands off and leave the camera to settle down before it shoots. The two-second mode is in addition to the standard ten-second mode for self-portraits.

Panorama Assist

Next I tried Panorama Assist. The FP8 can’t create panoramas in camera, but Panorama Assist gives you the best chance of taking photos that will stitch together in the camera’s supplied software when you get back home.

Panorama Assist gives you a choice of how you want to shoot your scene — left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom, or bottom-to-top. It then locks the white balance and exposure settings for the duration of your shooting, and gives you a handy reference for each shot. One edge of your last shot is overlayed on the viewfinder for your next shot, so you can accurately line up and overlap each photo of the panorama.

Using Panorama Assist to take three shots of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, I used the Mac software that came with the camera (PC version also supplied) to stitch them together. It did a one-click job of auto-stitching the shots together into this panorama of the bridge, with no obvious artefacts.

Film Grain

There are a few “artistic” modes, too. While I’d rather capture a standard shot with the camera and post-process to get my effects, I did at least have some fun playing with the Film Grain mode. It won’t instantly turn you into a Cartier-Bresson, but it could be good for someone who wants to do a bit of playing without dragging out image editing software.

Features and Interface

In use, the camera is friendly, with its limited number of buttons intelligently laid out and fairly intuitive in use.

There’s a single button, near the shutter button, to invoke Intelligent Auto mode, meaning that you can be playing with the settings to your heart’s content, and still quickly drop back into full auto.

You can also pre-select a particular scene mode to make “your” scene mode, giving quick access without digging through the menus.

In “Normal Picture” mode, you get quite a lot of control of the camera features, shooting mode, focus mode, white balance, ISO, etc. In this mode the four “joystick” buttons give you quick access to flash control, exposure compensation (up to +/-2EV), exposure bracketing (nice to see on a compact), self-timer settings and macro mode.

Putting the exposure compensation and flash override on such easy access buttons is a smart move; these are the settings you end up using most often.

In “Intelligent auto” mode, the joystick buttons give you quick access to the AF tracking facility, allowing you to lock onto moving objects quickly and easily.

I like the “quick menu” button, too — it sits in the bottom right-hand corner of the button cluster, and accesses a host of settings, depending on the mode you’re in. It does just what it claims; it’s quick to use, and the menu it brings up is well laid out, with the features in a sensible order.

The way the FP8 remembers its settings seems thoughtfully designed, too. If you force the flash off in Normal Picture mode, it associates that choice with that setting — you can drop back into Intelligent Auto mode at the touch of the iA button, to take a picture in full auto with the flash on, then drop back into Normal exactly as you were before, with the flash off.

The other control settings are mode-sensitive too, and this works well, allowing you to build up a couple of different sets of settings and switch between them with ease.

Video

Increasingly common on compacts is the ability to shoot HD video, and the FP8 is no exception. It’ll shoot 720p at 30fps. I’ve not explored this much, but I’ve shot a couple of quick videos and the quality is good.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FP8 Test from Matt Gibson on Vimeo.

Image stabilisation works in video mode, too, which is almost an essential feature on a handheld HD camera — they tend to pick up every little tremor.

Zooming while shooting works fine, although you don’t get to choose the speed of zoom. I haven’t noticed any focusing problems, either.

Conclusion

This is a camera capable of taking excellent photos. Within four days of owning the camera, this shot of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, taking during my morning jog, had ended up on the front page of Flickr’s Explore, which is a rare accolade for a photo. While Explore isn’t based on technical image quality, a picture has to get through some tough pictorial competition, often from high-end DSLR shots, to make the grade.

The point here, though, is that I would never take my SLR out with me for a jog. The FP8 is small and light enough to shove in a pocket and forget about until I see a nice view. In the words of Chase Jarvis, the best camera is the one you have with you.

All in all, the Lumix DMC-FP8 is a good camera in a small, elegant package, available for below £200 in the UK. I have few reservations in recommending it. If you’re looking for an exceptionally portable compact that can produce great photos with little fuss, especially if you shoot more outdoors than in, then put this camera on your shortlist.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Crisp Leica-branded lens
• Small size with folding optics
• Very fast startup and focusing
• Fine results in good light
• Exposure bracketing (+/-1EV)
• Good image stabilisation
• Excellent colour reproduction
• Easy to use, with well-thought out modes and menus
• HD video

Cons

• No lens cover makes it less pocketable
• Mediocre, noisy low-light performance
• No RAW shooting mode