Journal of a Sysadmin

iPhones and Upgrades

Had Friday and today off work as we were going dog camping on the weekend. That went well(ish) and today we had to go and do something about phones…

See, we wouldn’t have had to today really except that I had to wash Jaime’s with the HE washer. I guess it washes phones as well as it washes cloths, as it washed the good out of it. The phone is now only usable as a wedge type door stop (the razor is too small to use as a coaster).

Of course, as soon as her phone went missing my phone decided too completely croak so a good part of the day was spent digging around finding papers and deciding what phone and plan to get Jaime. We then proceeded to go to the Fido store and pickup a new Z310 for me (to replace the dead one) and an iPhone for Jaime…

All the hype I think is worth it. The phone seems solid and she’s posted to flickr, facebook, and now her journal. Mail works, we works and most importantly the phone actually works. Visual Voicemail btw is kind of cool, integrating the iPhone with voicemail so that you can navigate your voicemail from the phone menu instead of having to call it. Nice feature.

Data plans still suck here. Currently we are on the limited time offer $30 6G plan. Hopefully it goes down from that.

Tonight I upgraded all 4 installs of WP here. I’m happy to report that my diff and patch method still works!

Yay, it means 3 minutes instead of 15 per journal!.

Toy yes, but a very useful toy it is!

jhb’s dad (hereby known as papa) has a funky Nikon D80 DSLR. Really nice camera, I mean, really really nice. Auto Focus and exposure but it can be over ridden using various controls in the camera. Takes any of the AF/D/G Nikkor lenses and has a decent battery life.

Therefore I knew well in advance that jhb would be returning home with an idea that she really wanted one. This started us down the path of looking for cameras, but not just any camera, we wanted a decent camera because we’re likely not buying another one for a while.

jhb did a lot of research on this and came up with some candidates:

• Nikon D40
• Nikon D80 DSLR
• Nikon D200 DSLR

A lot of her information came from www.kenrockwell.com, as he has a very complete website which seems to have a lot of really good and useful information.

We went to the store (Vistek) and spoke with Jeff who is new there but seems to be a professional photographer, almost didn’t look at the D40 (it’s not at all what we wanted), then proceeded to compare the D80 and D200. Here is the outcome.

The D80 is a great camera for less price than the D200. There are definitely some functional differences (shutter speed on the D80 goes to 1/4000 vs 1/8000 on the D200, D200 has a slightly better CCD, D200 takes a wider range of lenses as well as some other differences) and there’s also the tactile difference.

The D200 feels like a solid camera. It has a metal case instead of plastic, and a rubberized coating as well. It’s moisture sealed which should prevent it from needed more frequent cleanings. The D80 feels nice but is slightly physically smaller and there is a substantial weight difference (about 250g) in the camera bodies. The D200 is an entry level pro model and it looks and feels like it.

Now for function. Obviously we bought the D200, I wanted a camera that would get us through a few years (the cybershot only lived about 3 years before it started having some issues). So, for function. OMG does it function!

I’ve already found with the 50mm f1.4 lens we bought with it I’ve had to use the manual override for aperture as it tends to kill off the depth of field first, instead of kicking up the ISO rating. I’d rather have a depth of field and a bit of a grainy shot than everything fuzzy and soft. Of course, this won’t be our main lens, that one is on order and should be in at the shop in about 2 weeks.

So with the current lens manual override is key. Either on the aperture if there is borderline light, or on the shutter speed if you have enough light and you are taking some action shots. I think the auto-everything will be just find with the flash, moderate light, and not a lot of movement. Anything past a walk though it seems to have trouble with (therefore needing an override). Keep in mind, I haven’t had a really sunny day to do any playing with.

Now we’ll wait for the new lens and our SB600 flash.

Jeff, if you ever read this thanks! I’m convinced!

[Nikon D200|Nikkor 50mm 1:1.4 D|1/2 sec|f9.0|iso 800|available light]
[Cropped using The Gimp]