My daughter's 2nd grade teacher asked me what I thought of the Canon PowerShot S400. She wanted to know if 4 megapixels was adequate for viewing on a high definition TV screen. I told her no problem, that's enough resolution for a quality 11 x14 inch print. Since I wasn't personally familiar with the camera I checked reviews on amazon.com and dpreview.com and they all looked very positive. Told her the camera should be fine for her purposes. Only thing to watch out for, I said, was the camera's small size which makes it easy to misplace or lose.
- posted by Mikkel @ 8:12 AM

 
My friend Paul S. owns a Nikon 35mm film camera and lots of fancy lenses. He emailed today and wondered if I'd heard anything about a successor to the Nikon D100. He was ready to jump in to digital but wanted to jump at the right moment. I poked around the internet and made a few calls to my contacts at Nikon and was assured that no new SLR would be announced, until at least the end of the year. Paul said he'd wait.
- posted by Mikkel @ 2:55 PM

 
Mary T. is visiting on her way to new dipolmatic posting in China. She wants my advice on a good all-around digital camera. Lucky for her Ed Schwartz just called and said he'd discovered a new Sony camera at CompuUSA that he really liked. When I told him what Mary was looking for he suggested I check out the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-V1, a 5 megapixel digital camera with a 3x (optical) Carl Zeiss lens. Mary and I went to CompUSA and tested the camera. I was very impressed. The quality was fantastic. Nice handling. She bought the camera along with an extra 128MB memory stick. The camera is a bit pricey ($699 average street price) but she's very happy with it. dpreview. com has a review of the camera and amazon.com sells it as well.
- posted by Mikkel @ 12:20 PM

 
Coffee this morning with photographer and friend John McDermott at Cafe Sappore in North Beach. He pulled out his new Canon EOS-1D . Finally! he's gone digital. Just for fun I pulled out my 89b infrared filter and stuck it on his 16-35mm 2.8 lens. I wondered if his camera had infrared capablity like my Nikon D100 (see photo below). No luck. Canon must be doing something to filter the infrared spectrum.

- posted by Mikkel @ 10:23 AM