Archive for the 'technology in general' Category

Testing Samsung GX 10

Last weekend I was in Poznan (big city in the Western Poland) with one of my bands. On Saturday night I played a little with night test shoots to check the noise produced by CCD in the high ISO modes. My new Samsung GX 10 is at least twice better than my old Konica Minolta A1 DiMage (hybrid). Photo taken during the night without tripod with ISO 1600 and 1/2 sec. exposure time, Focal lenght 18 mm, and F-number: F4. There is some noise on the photo, but It is still not bad for web purposes, however I presume it would be much better to take pictures with tripod, lower IS (800 or 400) and with longer exposure time.

Poznan by Night, camera: Samsung GX10, photo: Krystian Kozerawski

JPG original file - 3,5 MB.

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Samsung GX 10 - my impressions, pictures of Lodz

Today I took a walk through the centre of my home city - Lodz, to take as many pictures as possible and make myself familiar with my new camera. So there are my impressions:

1. The Samsung GX 10 camera is very fast (compared to my old ones). Memory buffer is very big, so there is no problem in 3 or 5 shots sequences, especially while using bracketing - to merge photos taken with different shutter time or aperture to one file. Bracketing with fast 5 shots sequence is also an excellent with Tv or Av programs. You can roughly adjust aperture or shutter time, and with one klic you can have 5 pictures taken in different adjustments.

2. Fast autofocus. It is my first digital SLR camera. Before that I had been using only analog SLRs (Zenit ET and Praktica BX20) without AF. My last camera - hybrid Konica Minolta A1 DiMage has very slow autofocus. Sometimes it took ages to make it work. My ne Samsung GX 10 is pretty fast compared to Minolta.

3. Big and heavy body. Basically it is very good. Holding camera in the hands gives an impression of something solid and massive. The only problem I have is the placement of the adjust knobs. They are placed in a little bit different positions compared to my old Minolta. I needed some time to find them to change the aperture or shutter time.

4. Locks of the battery slot and memory card slot. It is not good idea to make kind of fancy thing. It is to small for me, and it don’t provide fast access to those slots.

5. Automatic CCD cleaning - very good thing, but if you have a dirty fat spot you will have to touch the CCD. I found CCD in my Samsung quite dirty in some places. It affected my photos - there was a quite big blurry black spot. After about 20 attempts to clean it with auto cleaning the dust has gone, but a dirty place remained (so I will need to clean it with some special tools).

6. Very good quality of the photos - so far I have been taking only JPGs, but I am going to take both JPGs and Raw files.

Here you have some examples and one high resolution picture:

Lodz, Poland, camera: Samsung GX 10, photo: Krystian Kozerawski

Very old advertisement (probably from nineteen eighties) of Polish communist era “Dollar Shops” - Pewex.
Here is the High Res version of that photo - warning - very heavy (4,5 MB)

Lodz, Poland, camera: Samsung GX 10, photo: Krystian Kozerawski

Lodz, Poland, camera: Samsung GX 10, photo: Krystian Kozerawski

One of two Orthodox churches in Lodz. Orthodox Church of St Alexey Newsky. Church was built in 19th century while Lodz and eastern Poland was a part of Russia. Novadays the Orthodox community in Lodz is very small, so only one church is open for public. High Res (very heavy!)

The last photo, kind of abstraction I created in Photoshop using photos of Lodz two towers is available on my Photoblog:

http://www.kozerawski.com/2007/08/31/welcome-to-black-mesa-complex-east/

www.fotoblogi.eu

New camera - Samsung GX 10

I had been without a camera for last 3 weeks, I missed so many excellent occasions to take a good photos. Finally bad time has gone. Today I have bought a new camera, a digital SLR - Samsung GX 10. It is 10,2 megapixel mid-level digital SLR camera equipped with Schneider - Kreuznach lens. My first impressions: it is big, it is heavy and it takes good photos, and what is also very important it is pretty fast (focusing, recording to the memory card). It will take time to get used to the placement of some control buttons, but it is not a problem at all.

Samsung-GX10

Here you have some specifications of my new Samsung GX 10 (taken from the site: www.whatdigitalcamera.com):

CCD: 23.5 x 15.7mm CCD SENSOR: with 10.75mp total/10.2mp effective
REC FORMAT: RAW (.DNG), JPEG, RAW + JPEG
MAX IMAGE SIZE 3872 x 2592 pixels
MAX PRINT SIZE 13 x 8.6in @ 300dpi
LENS MOUNT Pentax KAF2
MAGNIFICATION 1.5x
SHUTTER SPEEDS 30-1/4000sec + Bulb
ISO Auto / Manual 100-1600
EXP MODES Auto, Program AE, Shutter priority, Aperture priority, Shutter & aperture priority, Sensitivity priority, Manual
METERING 16-segment Multi, Centreweighted, Spot
WHITE BALANCE Auto, 8 presets, Manual, 3 x colour temperature
COLOUR MODES AdobeRGB / sRGB
FLASH Built in, GN11m @ISO: 100, Hotshoe
FLASH SYNC 1/180sec
SYNC SOCKET No
DRIVE MODES Single, Continuous (3fps for 9 frames RAW / card capacity with JPEG) FOCUS 11 AF points, selectable automatically or individually
VIEWFINDER 95% coverage
MONITOR 2.5in LCD with 210,000 pixels
CONNECTION USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
FILE SYSTEM EXIF 2.21, DPOF 1.1
VIDEO OUTPUT Still only
POWER Li-Ion, Optional AC Adaptor
STORAGE SD / SDHC
OTHER In-camera dust reduction CCD-based Optical Picture Stabilisation (OPS) Weatherproof seals

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Polish absurdity - We are all editors in chief

As one of the Polish leading newspapers - Rzeczpospolita - reported today, Polish Supreme Court judged that all websites including big professional web portals and small blogs conducted even by teenagers are the professional magazines or newspapers in the eye of Polish press law, and all of them have to be registered as a newspapers (if updated more than once a week) or magazine (if updated once a week or at least once a year), thus every Polish blogger who has his site on one of the Polish servers is automatically editor-in-chief of his or her own newspaper or magazine. If we don’t register we will face penalties (including imprisonment) or we will be fined. The decision of Polish Supreme Court can shock Polish Internet community, Polish blogosphere, forums, or owners and authors of every service. It can affect Polish community services. People for sure move to the services hosted abroad. Try imagine every Polish blogger going to the registry office to register its blog, forum, or website as a newspaper or magazine… it is possible only in Poland…

It is good opportunity for foreign hosting companies to prepare offer for Polish customers.

btw… call me editor-in-chief :)

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Dell - Lodz

About 9 months ago there was a lot of news about new Dell factory in Lodz, and shifting part of production and staff from Limerick to Lodz. It seems that Dell factory is being build quite fast, since for last 2 months on some Polish in Ireland forums I have noticed some questions from Irish technicians who were going to work in Lodz in new Dell branch. Meanwhile, at present in Lodz there is plenty of advertisements of Dell. The factory is looking for workers. Some of newly employed people were sent to Ireland for some training and to learn how to put together laptops or desktops. Here is one of the adverts: we are looking for employees in the production department (…) experience is not required.

Dell advertisement in Lodz, Poland, Photo: Krystian Kozerawski, Ireland from a Polish Perspective

I wish them good luck, both Dell and new employees in the new factory in my home city.

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