HeadphoneAddict

Thanks, I'm thinking that if I get the S95 I'll get the Richard Franiec hand grip recommended earlier in this thread to make it easier to hold one handed. I know you had the S90 and not S95, but I have a few questions if you will indulge me: 1) Did you feel the S90 worked fast enough for you, or did it make you wait too long for taking shots, focusing, or zooming? 2) How was the image quality with ambient indoor light and no flash? 3) Was the 200 shot battery life a problem for you? 4) If I don't want to use RAW and process the shots later, will the jpeg quality be good enough? 5) Were videos saved in .mov format? I've been reading more and saw some complaints about lower jpeg quality in the LX5, and that the S95 jpeg IQ is a little better with in camera processing but still worse than RAW. The complaints were about yellow splotches in the images saved in jpeg mode of the LX5. What I like about the LX5 is that you can use zoom in the video mode, and you can adjust shutter speed or aperture as well. But I import all the photos and videos from SD card to iPhoto, and I would have to convert all the Panasonic .mts videos into .mp4 and can't double click to watch them from within iPhoto (so I'm told). But a .mov file could be double clicked within iPhoto after an import, and Quicktime will open and play it right away without conversion. Maybe the stereo sound in S95 videos will make up for lack of zoom? We stopped using our panasonic digital video tape recorder a while back, and although importing videos via firewire wasn't too bad we liked using a digital camera for videos more. Thanks!

Thanks, the only thing I'm going to buy from him is a used 50mm 2.0 lens for my Mamiya 35mm SLR camera, which will be in next week, since all I have is a 28-70 zoom with 3.5 aperture at the lowest zoom. Lenses for this old camera are hard to find, and the 50mm lens on our broken Canon AL-1 doesn't fit. The other Camera shop I know of only carries Canon and Nikon, and they didn't have the S95 in stock (sold out). And Leicas are special order, so I skipped that shop today. I stopped at Best Buy to see the S95 and the battery was dead so I couldn't play with it. It was significantly smaller than the G12 for sure. I'm stuck between the LX5 and S95 based on reviews I've read, and price. So, I'll stop bugging you all and keep reading up on these and try to find one to play with somewhere.

I went to a local camera shop to look at some of these cameras. It's a local small dealer and he had a new Leica D Lux 5 but not the Panasonic LX5, but it was $799 new. That's well above my budget, which started out at $300 then got pushed to $400. They had a used Leica D Lux 4 in excellent condition, which is basically the same as the 5 but with less zoom, but that was still $499 and more than a new Panasonic. I did like it and it's bright lens, as well as all the manual adjustments one can make. I spent the most time playing with the D Lux 4. They also offer a standard 6 month warranty on the used cameras, or an optional Square Trade Warranty. He suggested that if I really want the LX5 that "they sell 300 a day at Best Buy", but he felt the Leica is a little better build quality although performance is probably the same. So, if my budget was pushed to $500 he felt the used Leica D Lux 4 was a little better camera if I must have a PnS. But the LX5 is about $399 at Amazon last I checked. So for $100 less than the used Leica D Lux 4 I think a new LX5 makes more sense. He wouldn't budge on the Leica price. (and Best Buy doesn't sell the LX5 as far as i can tell). He did have a Panasonic TZ5 which is a lesser model than LX5, and it was new open-box for $300, but I didn't have time to look at it more closely because I had somewhere else to go. I didn't ask for the price on their Canon G12 because I thought it was too large. They didn't have the S95 either (but I can get a new one for $370 on eBay). Nor did they have the Olympus XZ1. Like some of you suggested, instead of a PnS the shop owner noted that he could find me a used Canon 20D DSLR with a 50mm 1.8 lens for $400-450, and he thought I should get that in addition to keeping my Nikon S6 or Canon A460 to use as my pocket camera. He says the 20D image sensor is pretty big, and the Canon is a generation ahead of a similar used Nikon DSLR, and will work better indoors without a flash than the PnS. He felt a used EOS Rebel would not be as good of a camera. The other camera store I've been to before is usually more expensive, but I might go by there to see the S95 and Olympus.

Home Comcast cable internet, via 802.11n WiFi Airport Extreme wireless to my Macbook Pro.

Thanks for the advice guys. I will try to stop by a local camera shop and look at some in person. I was at a store recently looking at some DLSR cameras, but had decided to go for a PnS instead for that very reason that if you don't have it with you you can't take the photos. Plus a PnS could save me several hundred dollars. I don't want to put this on the credit cards that I finally paid off in full.

Well, that's still a lot of choices to me - and I'm in the process of deciding what the most important features should be. I'm leaning toward the S95 for the picture and size/portability, but don't like what I've read about the battery life or the aperture when using zoom. However, I can deal with carrying a spare battery. One review I read comparing the Olympus to the Canons and Panasonic found it's not as sharp. I like the idea of the better "brighter" lenses on the Olympus and Panasonic, and figured I might go for the LX5 over the XZ-1. Having to deal with a removable lens cap seems like a pain in the butt, but if the camera is good enough I could deal with it. I just want to be sure of what I'm getting this time, so I'm trying to do more research. I think picture quality and speed of obtaining the shot will be my number one, especially indoors, then ease of use, size, and battery life. I'm mostly tired of missing shots because my camera is too slow to get ready or focus, or blurring the shots indoors. I also want one that saves movies as a .MOV and not an AVI, because my Macs all seem to choke on AVI videos - if they are imported into iPhoto and I double click on them from within iPhoto they wont open. I have to open them in the finder, after setting VLC to open all AVI files. I can't seem to find enough information about the video formats these cameras save files as. I appreciate all the advice, thanks!

Yeah, happy birthday!

Man, there are just too many options to choose from for a good PnS camera. That shouldn't be a bad thing, but it can be overwhelming.

I'd rather they sell things in 16/44.1 ALAC without compression than worry about 24 bit.

Thanks, I'll investigate that one too. I've stayed away from Olympus in the past because I didn't want to deal with XD memory cards. I want to be able to fit it inside a front pants pocket if needed, so I'm not sure about the NEX5. I'd really like one that does well with indoors light without needing a flash all the time. My S6's indoor photos without flash are almost always blurred or grainy, and washed out with the flash.

Still planning to raid the kid's college fund after the Bay Area meet, eh? Spritzer posted here a mod for the SRM-727 to add negative feedback and says it sounds much better. If you can DIY it might still be an option.

That's a pretty hefty price. (and not very pocketable either) This is the one, right? Sony NEX5 Review

I've done a lot of looking lately myself, and I'm leaning towards the S95 myself. I was going by these reviews that I found a while back (among a few others): Canon S95 Review Panasonic LX-5 It seems either of these should noticeably outperform my old Nikon S6 and Canon A460 or newer budget Sony DSC-S2100. So, I'd also love to hear some feedback about these two cameras too. Thanks!

Elusive Disc sells Stax too. That's where my Mk2 and my 404LE came from.

Top Gear season 12 episode 3

I also like my A5 more than my A2, and bought the A5 demo pair at RMAF. But I find that with the A2 on the desktop wedge-stands don't sound too bad out of a nice source. The difference is fairly noticeable, but the A2 on a set of stands don't suck at all to me. So, I still use the A2 on my small computer desk, while the A5 are connected to an airport express in the pool table room. I'd bet someone willing to fix the A2 will be happy with them.

It means my opinion doesn't seem to hold much weight here, being in the minority a lot of the time. When I saw the guy make his first post on the day he joined I knew he was done for, but I feel that all I can do is sit back and watch the fireworks. Sometimes it's entertaining to see it unfold and sometimes it makes me sad, but I can't stop reading out of morbid curiosity. He did seem to know what he was talking about and stuck to his guns. I guess I'm too sympathetic, and if it were up to me there would be too much riff-raff staying on board. That might not be a good thing, but maybe jumping the gun on the ban-stick could be detrimental too. I do wish that the "welcome PM" was back, to save the new guys a world of hurt. And no, I don't have a full vote anywhere - even my kids walk all over me (teenagers).

Kate and Leopold

I recently bought a LaCie Network Space MAX with two 1Tb drives in it. It can act as a 1Tb NAS with mirror, or a 2Tb drive; but I left it as a 2Tb since it only contains backups of music and video, and not my primary copy. I keep it plugged into my Airport Extreme most of the time, only connecting directly to the computer if I need to load a few hundred Gb of data at one time because my whole network is wireless. It serves the music to iTunes as a shared library, and to my PS Audio Perfectwave DAC Bridge as a uPNP/DLNA server. My main complaint is that it sometimes reports the wrong play duration or bit rate on most of my lossless music or some VBR music, until I load the song and listen and then it gets updated properly in the list. LaCie is aware of this and they did an update that fixed it for some, but not for me. I planned to pick up a pair of 2Tb drives to install, so I can mirror them and lower my MTBF. But my second complaint is that even connected to my ethernet port it takes forever to re-load it with the music and video that I have stored on an external USB drive. My Seagate FreeAgent 2Tb USB drive seems limited to about 55-60Gb per hour, even with both drives connected to the same iMac. So, putting 1400Gb of data back on it after the upgrade will take forever.

I didn't think the guy did anything deserving a ban, but I don't get a full vote here anyway. So, carry on.

This is one of the things I love about my Polk SDA CRS speakers (Stereo Dimensional Array) which has the extra set of drivers to eliminate crosstalk by canceling out the left speaker signal reaching the right ear, and visa versa. It works beautifully. I also once owned a Carver unit with a "Sonic Hologram" circuit that tried to do the same thing electronically with conventional speakers, and it also worked quite well.

Hope you feel better soon, but it seems like a chiropractor might be a better choice for this kind of thing. As a side note, doesn't "Voltaren" sound a bit like that fortune telling machine from the movie "Big"?

I wanted to say that you owe me a keyboard after making me spit soda all over mine, ...but in reality you made milk come out of my nose!

$9.99 Aliph Jawbone 2 BT earpiece for the next 10 hours. At 1saleaday Jawbone 2 Condition: Factory Refurbished 90 Day Warranty Manufacturer: Aliph Model: Jawbone II Features Include: Military-grade NoiseAssassin Patented Voice Activity Sensor that feels your speech Invisible touch controls Ultra-smooth medical-grade plastic exterior Built-in rechargeable battery Magnetic USB cable and wall charger Over 4 hours of talk time and 8 days of standby time Factory Refurbished Package Includes: Bluetooth Headset, USB Cable, A/C Charger, Quick Start Guide [edit fix link add photo]

Ohmygodhedidnt