Thursday, April 29, 2010

DSLR's Factory DEFECTS To Watch Out For

We're in the digital world but not everyone knows 100 percent about DSLRs. Thank goodness for the internet, the numerous blogs and product reviews, we are somehow guided on what brand we ought to get.

Whether it's Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, or whatever brand is out there in the market, we want to have a camera that will work according to our preferences. Choosing which brand to get can be confusing but eventually you'll be able to rest your mind on a particular DSLR.

And once you do, you head out to the store. You have the box opened to make sure nothing inside is broken. You check the body and the lens for scratches. You switch the camera on. Even though there's a lot of buttons you don't understand yet, you easily figure out how to auto-focus. You start clicking and taking photos of this and that. You view your shots on the monitor, and you see how good the photo quality is. To a first timer, the product testing ends there.

Unfortunately, some factory defects are not about scratches or button malfunction. Some defects are almost unnoticeable. An example would be what is called a defective pixel. In layman's term, these are tiny red, green, blue, white or black dots or "+" that appear on the photos. You'll know it's them because they'll be in the same position of all photos you've taken. Sometimes the greater the ISO, the bigger they get and the more of them appear.

The photo was purposely cropped to show the defective pixels. Please click the photos to see a larger view.
To know more about defective pixels, please go to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_pixel (Wikipedia explains it all.)

Another factory defect you have to watch out for is blur or double image. When you check the photos on the camera's monitor, you'll see the pictures are okay. But when you view it on your computer or when you have the photos printed, the photos suddenly appear blurred. You then start to think that maybe you're hands were just shaky the time you took the shots. So you place the camera on a tripod or a table and time a 2 second shot. You check the images and you find the blur is still there.

The example is exaggerated but just to show. :-)

Some people can ignore the defective pixels since they're very tiny and there's always Photoshop to fix it. The blur problem on the other hand is something one can not ignore. If this happens to you, send the camera back asap and get a replacement.

To easily see the mentioned defects, you can check the images you've taken on your computer or just have one photo printed- whichever works for you. Please make sure you do this within the 7 days replacement period. Getting a good brand new camera that really works is still better than free repair.

That's all we can share right now. Thank you and hope we've helped you a bit. Good luck and have fun with your new DSLR!


Sunday, April 4, 2010

Happy Easter Everyone!

Instead of the usual egg hunting...
What we had was egg racing.
Happy Easter! Happy Spring!
May this video keep you smiling!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

How To Train Your Dragon


HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON by Dreamworks is a must-see movie! It's about a young Viking wanting to hunt dragons but ends up befriending them instead. Yeah--- very simple plot! But it's really funny. The dialogue is so real. The voice cast did a great job. The animation is rockin' awesome! We loved it! It's a bit early to say this but it might become our favorite movie this year.

We think you'll appreciate this movie more if you play Monster Hunter. By the way, we're NOT comparing or saying someone copied what or whatever negative thing there is for you to say. A few of the dragons in the movie reminded us of the monsters in Monster Hunter. Another reason why we enjoyed it a lot. That's just it period. Check this out:

Night Fury from the movie(top) and Naruga Kuruga/Nargacuga from Monster Hunter(bottom)



Deadly Nadder from the movie(top) and blue Yian kut ku from Monster Hunter(bottom)



Monstrous Nightmare from the movie (top) and Crimson Fatalis from Monster Hunter (bottom)


There's one more but it's a spoiler. So that's it for tonight. Please do watch the movie and have fun!

For details, the movie's cool website is http://www.howtotrainyourdragon.com/