Experimenting with HDR photos on a $200 camera
I've been giddily experimenting with high-dynamic-range photography over the past few days. Unfortunately, I don't own any professional photography equipment, and my best camera is a Canon PowerShot A570 IS for which I paid the equivalent of $200 last year. But thanks to the custom CHDK firmware for Canon cameras, I've been able to produce HDR photos without too much trouble.
The firmware lets you hijack the burst shooting mode to quickly shoot the same scene at different exposure levels. A little software trickery in your favorite image editing software, and you can produce impressive and sometimes surreal shots that transcend traditional exposure limitations. The only downside is that you have to keep the camera steady for a second or two (longer if you're shooting at night), so you can generally rule out moving subjects.
Check out the image gallery below for some of my first attempts.
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Last post by sigher at 5:41 PM on July 26, 2008
If you haven't seen it yet, I strongly recommend checking out the latest trailer for Mirror's Edge. This game is being put together by Battlefield series developer DICE, and I think it looks awesome. Just watch:
Visually, this looks to me like a cross between Portal and Assassin's Creed, but with skyscrapers, gunfights, and much more visceral, first-person free running. The trailer also has nice cinematic music, although I don't know if it'll actually end up in the game.
Mirror's Edge is apparently coming out late this year the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, and I'm really looking forward to it—especially after having read Shacknews' first impressions, which tell me DICE has worked hard to come up with innovative gameplay mechanics.
Also, I saw on Joystiq yesterday that the game will be based on Epic's Unreal Engine 3.0, so the PC version should hopefully scale reasonably well on today's machines. I can't say as much for Assassin's Creed, which I had to play at 1440 x 900 on my own machine (which packs a Core 2 Duo, GeForce 8800 GT, and 4GB of RAM) to get smooth frame rates.
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Last post by Jigar2speed5095 at 11:55 AM on June 24, 2008
The story begins one lovely spring day, with me deciding to invest in a bigger display to freshen up my aging ViewSonic vx2025wm and LG L1730B dual-monitor setup. I could definitely use the extra screen real estate, I told myself, and a display with richer connectivity options would finally allow me to purchase and use a Nintendo Wii. (Yes, I'm one of those hippies who doesn't own a television.) What better display to purchase than one of Dell's latest and greatest high-end UltraSharp offerings, praised so highly by so many in the enthusiast community?
After some research and a look at several very positive reviews (as well as some less positive but still encouraging user reviews), I bit the bullet and ordered an UltraSharp 2408WFP—the crown jewel of Dell's 24" monitor series and one of the only newer Dell displays without a low-quality TN panel. The monitor was on sale for €641, down from its regular price of €801, and Dell's zero-bright-pixel guarantee made it doubly tantalizing. I was thrilled.
I received the monitor on Wednesday. After barely two days of use, I called Dell and asked for a full refund. The display is sitting in its cardboard box as I write this, and UPS is coming to pick it up on Monday.
What went wrong? Initially, I was pretty pleased with my purchase. No dead pixels, stunning brightness, a very solid and good-looking external design (I'm a fan of the V-shaped metallic stand), and an apparently splendid picture. I say "apparently" because little problems quickly started piling up in that area. First, there was the display's input lag. I had read about it in forum threads and thought people were exaggerating, but it turned out they weren't. Moving the mouse around the monitor felt a little laggy, like I was using a cheap wireless mouse. The same happened when I typed quickly—characters took longer than usual to appear on the screen, which was a little unsettling. Determined not to let that little quirk ruin the experience, I shrugged it off and tried to get used to it.
Then, I began to notice other problems. The image was excessively sharp, which made text look aliased and turned ClearType's normally subtle sub-pixel hinting into colored blotches around some characters. Attempting to set the sharpness in the OSD gave me two options: 50%—the default—and 25%—far too blurry. I also noticed that the left half of the display was somehow brighter and redder than the right half. Displaying a dark grey image, the entire left third of the picture looked completely washed out, and on a white image, the same area looked slightly pink. This wasn't typical backlight bleeding, because it didn't show up at all on a completely black image. That issue became bothersome in everything from web browsing to gaming, but like the excessive sharpness and lag, I thought I'd forget about it eventually. After all, no display is entirely perfect, right?
Unfortunately, the problems just kept on coming. A few hours later, I became frustrated with the display's color rendering. The default "Desktop" preset just looked awful, with bluish whites and hideously oversaturated colors. Moving to the "sRGB" preset turned the saturation too far down, so browns and blues looked grey-ish. My next step was to customize the red, green, and blue settings myself, and I actually came up with something half-way decent. However, colors were still oversaturated, no matter how much I played with the contrast and color settings. I thought the over-saturation might be a subjective side-effect of using older monitors for so long, but skin tones in photos looked overly flushed, greens in pictures of vegetation looked almost fluorescent, and reds felt like they were searing off my retinas.
While fighting with the OSD to fix the saturation problems, I came across yet another problem (no, really). At certain brightness levels, the display hums. Loudly. The hum gets loudest around the 40% setting, and you have to turn up the brightness to around 60% to completely get rid of it. I make a point to keep my PC as quiet as possible, so having a display actually generate more noise is frustrating, to say the least.
Putting all the annoying issues together, I eventually had to admit that this monitor was no good and return it. Before calling Dell, I hit a few Internet forums, including Dell's own support message board, to see if other users were as unlucky as I. With dismay, I learned that they indeed were—the input lag, pink tinge, washout, and over-saturated colors seemed standard fare, and I saw multiple reports of users returning one monitor and getting another one with the exact same problems. Clearly, either this display has some serious design flaws, or it has very widespread quality control issues.
Those issues are so widespread that one Dell forum moderator actually advised a user to wait for the A01 revision of the 2408WFP to come out before returning his monitor. I contemplated doing the same, but €641 is a lot to pay for the privilege of effectively beta-testing an immature product. I could also invest in calibration equipment to fix the color issues, but come on—I shouldn't have to purchase yet another piece of equipment to make an expensive display usable. My 20.1" Viewsonic vx2025wm looked just right out of the box, and it cost around €400 two years ago. In fact, aside from the notably darker picture, it still seems to have better overall image quality than the Dell.
All in all, this experience has left me quite disillusioned. Dell monitors are supposed to be the among the best in the consumer market, and everything about this particular model was excellent—reviews on major sites, the warranty, the build quality, the connectivity, and the little extras like the USB hub and SD/CF card reader. Yet the panel looked so obviously sub-par to me that I'm left to wonder just what happened in Dell's quality control labs and what product those professional reviewers actually got.
Even more disappointing is the fact that I now don't know where to look for a good 24" display. BenQ's FP241W seems to have solid street cred, but it's expensive, and BenQ seems to be discontinuing it. Samsung's SyncMaster 245T also gets rave reviews, but it costs well over €800 here, and I've seen reports that suggest it has the same panel as the 2408WFP. Besides, neither of those manufacturers offer the same warranty as Dell with respect to stuck pixels. I may simply end up waiting for the A01 and A02 revision of the 2408WFP and checking forums to see if Dell irons out the issues, but I'm wary of getting another substandard product.
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Last post by Usacomp2k3 at 5:25 PM on May 14, 2008
After the phenomenal response we've gotten from the new site design we put up last year, we decided to kick things up a notch. We've been working over the past few months to take TR to a new level that truly conforms to our vision, and I'm proud to bring you the result today. Rock on!
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Last post by derFunkenstein at 10:28 AM on April 3, 2008
When Apple first unveiled the iPhone last summer, my first reaction was, "Yes. This is what cell phones are supposed to be like." Looking at other cell phones had always made me think of old 1970s calculators, not 21st century wireless communication devices. Why were manufacturers sticking with the numeric keypad as a method of text input, despite it being so awkward? Sure, QWERTY keyboards are available on a few phones, but they're far from the norm, and they're often implemented somewhat awkwardly. In the back of my mind, getting rid of all those buttons and having the display double as an input device (and not with a stylus) always seemed like the right thing to do.
Upon seeing the iPhone's price tag at its launch, though, it became clear to me that this technology would take some time to democratize itself. I may be crazy enough to spend way too much money on a desk chair, but there's no way I'm spending 400 big boys on a gadget I carry in my pocket—no matter how tough it is (and yes, I know the iPhone is tough). So, I stuck with my trusty Nokia 6280 slider phone, which I got back in early 2006 for about €100. The 6280 was reliable and easy to use, and it did everything I wanted: doubling as a modem, running Opera Mini, letting me snap two-megapixel photos, and allowing me to text comfortably thanks to its comfy number keys. Its only downsides were its thickness, and the fact that it still had keys, of course.
A couple of weeks ago, my cell phone contract hit its two-year anniversary, and my operator gave me enough upgrade points to switch to a newer and shinier phone at an attractive price. I looked around the selection of available handsets, but nothing really tickled my fancy. I came close to grabbing a Nokia E65, but then I realized it was more or less the same as what I already had—not something I wanted to spend another two years with. No, I wanted something next-gen, something that pushed the envelope. I saw that Samsung soon planned to introduce its SGH-F480 phone (basically a cheaper, unbranded version of the touch-screen Armani), but I was disappointed to learn that the device didn't have an on-screen QWERTY keyboard. Also, the video demos I saw made its display seem a little too cramped for a touch-based UI.
I gave up on my search for a while, but then I came upon the LG KU990 (a.k.a. Viewty). My operator's point scheme allowed me to get that phone for just €49—about 1/8th of the price of the iPhone here—provided I renew my contract for another two years. The KU990 seemed to have everything I wanted. The only thing I was worried about was its size, but my fears quickly vanished when I got a chance to try one at a nearby phone store. After hesitating a little, I took the plunge. In the end, I was able to get the only KU990 left at the shop for just €39.
First impressions
After having torn the phone out of its surprisingly Apple-like packaging, my initial brush with the KU990 was a mixed experience. In some ways the handset was everything I wanted—touch-based, sleek, feature-rich, like something out of a sci-fi movie—but it also had some shortcomings. For instance, the on-screen QWERTY keyboard isn't available in some applications, and handwriting recognition with the stylus seems too awkward and inaccurate to be of any real use. The interface also didn't seem quite as responsive as I would've hoped, and it sometimes proved frustrating to use. Considering the price tag, I didn't really mind, but part of me was disappointed.
A few days passed, and my appraisal changed drastically. As it turns out, the touch UI just takes some getting used to, and now I feel genuinely hindered and cramped when I try to use a regular cell phone. With the Viewty, I don't need to unfold the device, slide the keyboard out, or enter an awkward combination of keys to be able to unlock it and do stuff. I just hit the little round "unlock" button on the side with my thumb, do whatever I need to do, and then hit it again and slip the phone back into my pocket. The fact that this handset doesn't have any keys also gave LG room for a large, colorful display, which is a joy to use when reading text messages, browsing the Internet, and watching videos. Despite the large screen, the KU990 isn't much bigger than a folded Motorola Razr, and it's actually thinner than my old Nokia.
Even features that initially struck me as useless or over-engineered turned out to be kinda cool once I got to know them. For instance, the handwriting recognition is a pain to use with the included stylus, but you can just leave that in the box and use your finger or fingernail to draw letters—and that actually works pretty well. The handset's camera features are also very powerful, but they don't make me feel like I'm using a digital camera strapped to a cell phone. LG gives you all the features you need to take decent pictures, like the ability to select the ISO level, white balance, and focus level, but the lens doesn't protrude ridiculously out of the back, and the picture quality certainly doesn't make me want to throw away my Canon A570 IS.
Delving deeper
After spending some time with the KU990, my mind drifted to the obvious comparison: how does it hold up against the iPhone. Overall, I would say LG's user interface isn't quite as polished as the iPhone's. For instance, scrolling behavior isn't entirely consistent in all applications, and like I said earlier, the QWERTY keyboard isn't always available (nor does it automatically correct errors). However, LG did include some things that the iPhone lacks, and the KU990 more than holds its own in other areas.
For instance, there's no Wi-Fi, but you get 3G and HSDPA support, which means comfortably speedy web browsing anywhere—not just at your local Starbucks. The KU990's browser uses the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari, and it actually has basic Flash support—another thing the iPhone lacks. Google Maps? The KU990 already has that pre-installed. Video support? Grab the free drag-n-drop transcoder from the DivX website and convert any of your existing videos so you can slap them on your phone. Java support? Yes, sir. And, of course, LG's camera and video capture features are more sophisticated than the iPhone's. Heck, the Viewty even lets you capture slow-motion video at 120 frames per second—even my camera doesn't do that.
For a device that cost me less than one tenth the price of the iPhone, offering that kind of functionality is impressive to say the least. Of course, the KU990 does have some limitations. It doesn't support microSD flash cards with capacities greater than 2GB, so you can't load it up with an entire season of The Office or as much music as an iPhone. The built-in e-mail client also doesn't seem to support SSL encryption, which is a problem if you want to use GMail or many other e-mail services (thankfully, you can just use the GMail Java application). LG's PC synchronization software kinda sucks, too. And, again, the QWERTY keyboard isn't available everywhere, which I think is a shame considering how handy it is.
Hopefully, LG will eventually sort out some of these problems in a firmware update. That said, none of those shortcomings are real impediments for me. Having to use a T9 keypad instead of a QWERTY keyboard to type URLs isn't a big deal, and since my handset spends most of its time doubling as an alarm clock, I have no need for huge storage capacity or fancy e-mail features. The KU990 is well-tailored to my needs, and I think it more than covers the bases: thin and light, nice big display, touch interface, 3G+ connectivity, good web browser, Google Maps, multitasking support, great camera features, and QWERTY input where LG offers it.
To conclude...
So what's the point of all this rambling? Aside from just bragging about my shiny new phone, I think the message here is clear: you don't need to pay $400+ to get a fancy touch handset with high-speed Internet access and powerful multimedia functionality. You don't even need to pay $200. If you're prepared to make a few slight compromises, you can grab a device like the KU990 for about the same as any other camera phone. At least, you can if it's available where you live. LG doesn't seem to offer the handset in the United States yet, although I know it's widely available in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the EU. You should also be able to find it in Australia and Asia.
Still, it probably doesn't matter whether you can get the KU990 or not, because I'm sure other companies are rushing to release similar phones with similar features around the same price range. Samsung recently unveiled the SGH-F490, and it has more phones in store just like it. Phone manufacturers may have taken a while to catch up, but they're finally going after the iPhone, and the result means cheaper next-gen phones for consumers.
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Last post by oto144 at 3:03 PM on March 22, 2008
Look, I'm sorry. I'm sure Microsoft's Internet Explorer team is full of smart, passionate, and talented people. But their latest effort, the Internet Explorer 8 beta, strongly suggests that they have some issues they need to work out—like maybe not having nearly enough competent programmers to write a modern browser, or living in an alternate reality where web standards are somehow completely different.
Let's back up a few months. We're in December, four days to Christmas, and the IE team triumphantly announces that early builds of Internet Explorer 8 successfully pass the Acid 2 test—a stringent test of browser standards compliance that even current Firefox releases have trouble with. Many web developers (including myself) subsequently cheer as Microsoft reveals that standards compliance will be a major new feature in the upcoming browser. Finally! After the complete abomination that is IE6 and the partial abomination that is IE7, Microsoft is taking a hint from Firefox, Opera, and Safari and working to make web developers' jobs easier instead of harder. Hallelujah!
In light of the IE team's promises, it was with great excitement that I installed the IE8 beta last night. Finally, an Internet Explorer browser that would flawlessly render everything on the Web without requiring ugly workarounds and lines upon lines of browser-specific code. It was with equally great disappointment that, after rebooting and loading up TR's front page, I noticed that IE8's "standards mode" rendering engine butchered TR, misinterpreting simple elements and apparently refusing to let me click anything on the navigation bar at the top of every page. Could it be that IE8's standards compliance was so great that it had highlighted problems with my code that other browsers didn't? After a quick look around other sites, I was quickly reassured: no, the "standards compliant" engine in the IE8 beta is just an abject failure.
You see, the IE8 beta has problems rendering a lot of pages. And I mean a lot. Rendering problems occur anywhere from Microsoft's own Internet Explorer subsite to the World Wide Web Consortium's validation page. Yes, IE8 fails to properly render code made by the W3C, the very body that defines web standards, on the very page web designers use to validate their code. Don't believe me? Check out the image gallery below for a quick peek at IE8's freak show of rendering inadequacies. The only thing the browser did seem to render properly was the Acid 2 test—I suppose Microsoft did at least deliver on one of its initial promises there.
Here's a protip, Microsoft: if your browser's new, purportedly standards-compliant rendering engine fails to properly render a large number of major sites, including the damn W3C validator page, you're doing something wrong. Now, I'm sure these rendering problems could just be the result of bugs inherent in a beta release. Maybe the final 8.0 release will render everything just fine. Maybe I'm just getting worked up over nothing. That would make sense, wouldn't it?
Then again, according to one of the latest reports we've seen about IE8, the full production release will come out before the middle of the year. That means Microsoft has about three months to iron out all those bugs and transition its browser from "more broken than early, alpha-quality Firefox 3 nightly releases" to "not broken and fully standards compliant." Yeah, that's gonna happen. Here's what I expect: some bugs will be fixed, compatibility will be improved somewhat, but IE8 will still introduce behavior inconsistent with every other browser on the planet and I'll have to change TR's code to make it compatible. Either that or I'll have to add a header to make it fall back to IE7 compatibility mode when it renders TR.
Have another protip, Microsoft, you deserve it: a web browser's job is to do its very best to render code in a way consistent with what the web designer expected, not to force said designer to rewrite his code to work with your browser. A small Norwegian company with what must be a staggeringly small fraction of your resources has been able to do this for years. Why can't you?
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Last post by kmansj at 1:15 AM on March 28, 2008
We transitioned our forums to phpBB 3.0 in late January, and I completely reworked the default forum template for the occasion. The new template was styled to match our default site design more closely, and (we think) made the forums look cleaner and more readable. I used a beige and blue color scheme, and I planned to add an all-blue color scheme shortly afterward to match our alternate style for the front page.
Unfortunately, a number of other projects got in the way—namley the new poll system, podcast, image gallery system, our latest system guide, and a few other things. Making the blue style was also more complicated than I expected, since in addition to changing color tags, I also had to redo around 70 icons to fix the antialiasing and remove ugly white borders around images.
I bit the bullet last weekend and finished changing the icons, making the blue look complete. I've already rolled it into production, and you can enable it in by hitting your user control panel and going into the board preferences section, like so:
Once you hit submit and go back to the front page, the forums should look like this:
Enjoy! As usual, we and a few volunteers have tested this already, but do let us know if you come across any bugs or problems that we didn't catch.
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Last post by farmpuma at 2:31 AM on March 17, 2008
