Conveniently Misplaced

So last time I was in Ohio, I was driving along the interstate when one of these guys caught up with me.

They sit in between the direction breaks on the freeway, so you can’t see them, they’re all white and all blend in. I didn’t see him till I was long passed him, and by then, he was already on my tail. I tried to get off the freeway and lose him, but that’s a little difficult with a red Jetta that doesn’t blend in with anything other than the world’s shiniest tomatoes.

Anyways, as the story goes, I was given a speeding citation for going 82 in a 65, $100 fine with no points that I could pay right on the spot, so I did.

Now for those of you not from the great state of Michigan, here’s a little background. Our highways are laregely unregulated, we don’t even have a highway patrol. The interstates are patroled by the Michigan State Police and those are in largely rural areas. In Michigan driving 82 in a 65 is no big deal, especially in the fast lane. It’s not uncommon to see people doing 90 in a 70, that’s just the way it is here. Yet the rest of the world operates differently. This time however, I’m not gunna be a victim of thses assholes.

I can understand why I’m an easy target to get pulled over. Hell, I would probably pull me over too. Let’s have a look at how I might typically look on any given day before I get into my large and suspicious 88 Caprice.

First and foremost, the long hair is shadowed by the fact that the hat probably makes me look like a pimp, a drug dealer, or any other random array of things. Among my pins and patches resides a Soviet Union Air Force service pin, a Tijuana Border Patrol pin, a New Hampshire Gun Owners Pin, a I <3 Girl Scouts pin, a KGB patch, and numerous other random things that will make the police want to ticket me just on principle. So, time to change up the look a little bit.

It is knowledge among the pesent folk that the constable is less likely to write you a ticket if you are a member of the medican profession. If you are wearing scrubs or a lab coat, you are substantially less likely to be pulled over and or ticketed. So, I decided it was time to play doctor.

Note the radical change in appearance (ignore the bottle of Captain Morgan’s Parrot Bay Mango Rum in the paper bag on the left there, it was a prop in a movie. I swear) from top to bottom. Doctors always seem to be wearing glasses, so I ditched the contacts, put on a smile and tried to look as clean cut as I can for someone with long hair and a beard.

Now, I’m not a doctor. So what’s up with this?

The cool part of this all is that the badge is legit. It was issued to me by Beaumont Macomb Hospital. The picture was taken in 2006, so I don’t have the long hair, but neither does my drivers license so it shouldn’t be a problem. The only problem was that I got it because I was working for a cleaning company who needed access to the building. So I covered up where it said”Execu-Clean” and put a bar code over it. If you take my badge to Barns and Noble and scan the bar code, you will get a book on Penguins.

There are also 2 pins on there, the first is a St. John Hospital service excellence pin that I got a few years back assisting in a St. John service excellence multimedia presentation. The 2nd is a star I got my senior year in High School for some kind of Band thing, it’s supposed to go on a Varsity Letter Jacket. But it looks like some kind of generic award or status for the hospital, so it works.

To top off the ensemble, I grabbed one of my stethoscopes and one of the most expensive neck ties I own (damn $35 Jerry Garcia from the Ralph Marlin outlet). Throw a briefcase on the passenger seat and I should be good to go.

Now, of course I’m going to watch my speed as well, obey traffic laws, etc especially since I’ll be traveling from around 9 to 11pm. But with this added security, I should be poised to not be out another $100 to the state of Ohio. Not this time, douche bags.

So after years of always borrowing somebody’s camera when I wanted to go on trips, etc I finally bought my own. Going into it all, I created a list of criteria that I was looking for that is has to have:

• Be small enough to carry around with me (compact or subcompact). No more missing Kodak moments all the time.
• Use SD cards, not XD, compact Flash, or Sony Memory Stick. I already have a 2 gig SD card, don’t want to buy another.
• Li-Ion Battery if replacements are cheap enough, otherwise I’ll deal with getting some rechargeable ones.
• Good image quality, final product more important than pixels.
• Priced around $200ish.

After spending hours of looking at product reviews online. I had to find cameras that I could find reviews on, matched my specs, and were available in store. I have to be able to at least hold the camera in my hand to make sure it will feel good (not awkward, I have big hands). If I order online, I have a rather great risk of ending up with a camera that will be virtually unusable to me. Circuit City had the best prices and selection online of cameras in store, so that’s where I decided to go. I had 3 cameras in mind leaving the house. Thanks to NewEgg, Circuit City, and MyProductAdvisor.com for being big helps in deciding what direction I should go in.

The Fujifilm FinePix f50fd was my top choice, but I couldn’t find anyone anywhere that carried it. Its 12mpxl , has a nice lens on it, a wide ISO range and got solid reviews. I like FujiFilm cameras, my 35mm is a FujiFilm and the pictures it takes are amazing (yes I still have my 35mm. And yes I even know where it is).

Next was the Canon PowerShot A720 IS. I’ve been hearing great stiff about Canon’s products lately, and this sucker has a  6x optical zoom, nice shutter speed, and all the features I’d want.

Of course Circuit City didn’t have the Canon on display because it’s being discontinued, just 1 for sale in a box that I couldn’t open. Which probably means the price will be dropping soon. The Samsung however, they do have. I was almost tempted to get the open box / display NV10 because it was only $50 without cables or anything, but I decided against it. You never know what you’re getting, especially with a camera I didn’t want in the first place. So that was tempting, but ultimately out of the question. After picking up the NV15 I loved the look and feel of it all. I couldn’t play with it as the battery was dead but after playing with the other sub compacts at the store and hating them all I decided to go for it.

Here’s the front view of the camera

3.8 inches wide, 2.4 inches high, and .7 inches deep. Super tiny, almost the size of my sidekick LX, although the camera is a bit heavier. But it fits in my pocket nicely.

Something that I had to take a gamble on was the Samsung Smart-Touch interface. Which is either a big selling point if you like it, or a major turn off if you hate it.

Here’s the back of the camera:

The buttons along the bottom and side are what make up the smart touch interface. Instead of using a touch screen that will smudge, the buttons take on new roles depending on what screen you’re looking at. And you don’t have to keep hitting all these buttons, you slide your finger across them to change menus and stuff. It’s really cool, and a very elegant solution to the problem.

In addition, it hits every other point on my list. It uses a Li-Ion battery with cheap replacements. Uses SD and the High Def SD. And it was marked at $200 but the website had it for $152, so I got that price instead. Looks like a winner, but what about picture quality?

Since it was dark out, I figured it would be good to try and snap some night shots, see what the camera really can do. The biggest things I’ve had problems with as far as digial cameras go are the night shots and the shots coming out unclear because of my hand shaking. So off to Detroit I want.

These pics of Detroit and Mount Clemens were all taken from within my car, sometimes stopped, sometimes not so much.

Here’s a shot of downtown. It’s nicely lighted so I didn’t have it in night mode (it has night mode, day mode, kids playing mode, mountains off in the distance mode, and lots of other things).

All things considered, they come out pretty good, but the 1 thing I noticed is that it’s really hit or miss with this camera. A lot of pictures turned out amazing, a lot of others really sucked. You take off the feature that stops the shaking and all of a sudden pictures don’t turn out very clear.

But I highly doubt that’s the camera’s fault. It has auto settings, programmed settings, and a manual setting where you can change everything to your liking. So once I play with it a bit more I’m sure I’ll be able to tweak it to the way I want it.  This is something I’ve noticed that I really like about it, it can be as simple or as complex as you would like it to be. So for people that just want to point and shoot, it works. For people that want to fine tune their pictures, it works.

Pictures with subjects off in the distance I found harder to focus on, so they didn’t come out as well.

But when it knew what the focus was, the pictures came out great. I had a few shots where it was fighting between buildings and traffic to get the correct subject and the best focus, and in turn neither one became the focus and the picture was a wash. But sometimes, it worked perfectly.

Once I learn to tune it the way I want and really learn to use it, I’m sure I can get all my night pictures to rock.

But how to the night pictures turn out during the day time? I went to Mount Clemens to do a comparison.

For the most part, they don’t look too bad. I’m still very leery about  how motion shots will come out if the camera has a problem finding the subject to focus on.  But for small dogs winking at you, it seems to work great.

I also put the NV15 on my tripod and took some shots out my window at the neighborhood. With the tripod holding it down the camera didn’t need the anti-shake stuff at all and the pictures in daytime came out very clear, despite the fact that there was a dirty window between me and the subjects

Not too bad altogether.

The camera has a lot of features that are geared at novices that I’m sure will be good selling points for them, but it’s something I’ll never use. The color correction is nice, and being able to add sepia, change to warm and cool colors is nice, but it’s all stuff I’d rather do in Photoshop (the red eye flash however, does not fall under this category. Nice addition there). And the weird picture framing things it does I will never use, it’s a feature that takes the picture and puts it in some weird frame or a turned page or some other stuff. I’m sure the teen girls will eat it up, but I don’t much care for it.

I’m not going to get into the techy stuff like the ISO specifications, detailed lens info, etc. You can read about that elsewhere. The bottom line is that this is a very good camera at the price. If you’re looking for a small something to carry around with you that will give you pretty good image quality at a good price, this will do the trick nicely.

Good:

• Size is perfect, design is awesome.
• Lots of cool features
• Lots of ways to tweak your images, settings, etc.
• 10.1mpx is nothing to sneeze at
• Smart-Touch interface
• Price ($151.99 at Circuit City)

Bad:

• Picture quality could be better in most cases
• Some features are disappointing
• Battery life sucks. But you can get 2 replacements and a charger on eBay for $20, so I’m doing that.
• Not for seasoned pros who want professional quality. Definitely geared towards consumers.

It nicely fit all of my checklist points, so check it out if you’re in the market.

Check out more of the pics from driving around last night and this morning in the pictures section.

I also found an Attack of the Show! interview where they talk about the camera, check it out:

Every once in a while, I get a video sent to me that isn’t complete crap. This one is called “Pete is Pissed 2″, you can check out all of his stuff on YouTube.