TechTalkUK 77 - The Quest Ends, The Quest Begins

These are the notes we used for TTUK 77

Cameras:

Had a wobble on the 70D, but am getting more and more into editing RAW, so really have to have a decent camera body to get most out of that. Really want the new Panasonic FZ1000 which is due out in next couple of weeks. Had a lot of the FZ series, and really like them, but most came out at £450-500 (FZ200 I have now was £525 at launch, now you can get it for under £300 (with a £50 cashback promo)

Panny always see to come up with something new. On the FZ200 it was the fantastic F2.8 constant aperture lens, 25mm-600mm, and this time its a much larger 1” sensor

In terms of surface area, a 1-inch chip is approximately four times the size of the 1/2.3-inch sensors used in most compact cameras, and about 7-10 times the size of a typical sensors used in camera phones. At the same time, though, it's only half the size of the sensors used in Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras, and 31-35% of the APS-C sensors used in many interchangeable-lens cameras.

But this time the lens is not as long, nor as fast as before, this time it goes from 25mm-400mm and from F2.8 to F4.0. That is also a bit misleading, as it goes to F2.9 when zoomed in just 1mm to 26mm, and is F3.5 when it hits 58mm. From 180mm it is F4.0 all the way up to 400mm, please note all lens ranges quoted are 35mmm film equivalents.

It does have another feature I would really like to play with, and that is 4K video. This is the first non DLSR to feature this, and for me its more about grabbing 8mp still images from it. This was fun to do on the Note 3, and would be even more so with a 400mm 5 axis image stabilised lens to play with! Just think of it as an infinite continuous motor drive. You can take the video, and then grab good quality (we hope) stills at exactly the right moment.  

So, this is £749 and I think I have got to have one, wonder if I can find out if my Amazon account is back in balance yet :-)

MyCloud 3TB connected storage.

Got this last week as well, and although it is currently on PSC Forum, I think I may well keep it now. It is £135 from PCW, and you plug it into the mains with the supplied PSU, then plug it into your Router with the supplied Ethernet cable. Then you go to a specified website, and it just seems to appear. On the MBA it shows up in the finder, and you use it just like any other drive. It does take a few seconds to be available, but not too bad. I have noticed a couple of times it has gotten lost and I have to restart the Finder app to get it back. Transfer speed is not as bad as I thought it would be, and a 310mb video file went over in well under 1 min. I had to transfer all my music, video, and iPhoto library over using this wireless method, as the stupid buggars don’t put a USB cable in the box to direct connect it. OK, a lot of people do have leads lying around, but this is standard USB on both ends, i.e not a printer one, so how many of those have you got?

Even so I just copied all the music folders from the MBA, and pasted them over to the WD, and just let the Air do its stuff, it was about 18gb, and I can’t say exactly how long it took, but just set it going and grab the iPad for a while (although you can carry on working of course)

Sometimes simple is best

Some of you will recall my constant need for an iPhone (or iPad) so I can use the Autotrader dealer upload app, as it was so much faster than using the clunky website. And some will recall me moaning that one site I upload to needed 3:2 images, and the other needs 4:3. Well, it turns out if I just use 3:2 on my Canon 70D to take the car pics, and put the SD card in a £8 card reader, I can just select the photos from the (clunky) website and the one that needs 3:2 is happy, and the other one (Autotrader) simply crops them for me. Its quite funny really, at the very time I don’t need an iPhone anymore, there is no other phone I want to use :-)

PSC Forum update

Links mentioned in show:

Fantastic video lessons/reviews (and Chelsea :-)

Their book.

FZ200 Camera if you buy before 31st July 2014 MAKE SURE YOU CHOOSE THE AMAZON.CO.UK ONE SO YOU CAN claim another £50 back here (3rd party ones don’t qualify, even if fullfilled by Amazon)

Canon 70D (make sure you do same as above AMAZON.CO.UK only) and claim £100 cashback here.