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Just back from 18 days in Italy and here are
some experiences and responses to earlier columns.
Last week's column featured three portable
storage drives and it was my intent to pack the little Image
Bank for the Italian trip. Until the World Trade Center attack.
Then came stories of tightened security at
airports and seizures of potential weapons such as tweezers and
Palm Pilot styli. I looked at the Image Bank and imagined this
scenario.
The security guard asks me to open my gadget bag
and extracts the Image Bank. "What's this?" "A hard disk," I
reply. "Please turn it on, sir."
I plug in the battery pack wire and the Image Bank begins to
flash its lights and whir. The inspector ducks and covers.
Turned on, all the Image Bank does is whir and
flash and looks every bit like Hollywood's version of a bomb,
complete to attached battery pack.
I bought a 256mb Compact Flash card instead.
Robert Railey of Santa Fe Digital Image
responded in defense of his Minolta Dimage 7 and its optical
viewfinder. He makes a number of good points regarding using
equipment and becoming used to it with experience. Robert
concludes, "I wish that reviewers got to keep a camera for a
couple of months - the only way to really tell if something
works is to use it daily for a stretch of time."
I heartily concur on this but the reality is
that review cameras are loaned by the manufacturers who expect
their return in a short period of time. If only KW could shell
out the bucks to buy us each review camera.
And I agree with Railey about time and
experience. Due to visual problems, I was a left-eyed
photographer for years and "hated" Canon SLRs because I couldn't
focus through their viewfinders. Switching to my right eye made
me a Canon fan for years.
Familiarity breeds comfort in using a complex
machine such as a camera. Digital cameras are even more complex.
I particularly like the Panic button and the custom setting
modes of the Dimage cameras for this reason.
But even after two and a half weeks of use, I
couldn't get comfortable with the Dimage 7's viewfinder to the
point I could say I wanted to own the camera. As a digital
photographer, I'm still partial to the optical viewfinder/LCD
systems, a combination between view camera and the classic
Leica. |