A good flashlight ought to be mandatory for everybody's keychain. In the past, I used those cheapo mini flashlights that you can get at any toy store for € 2,- but the problem with those is that they fall apart as soon as you look at them, and the batteries are empty by the time you've left the store. It was time to cough up some coin and get a decent one.
After some research I found the Fenix E05 R4, which was € 24,95 and throws a good amount of light with just one AAA battery.
Fenix has a reputation for making excellent flashlights and this one is no exception. The E05 throws a decent 30 lumens of light with a duration of about 2.5 to 3 hours with a normal AAA battery that you can buy pretty much anywhere. I know there are AAA flashlights that are much fancier and throw even more light, but they are at least double the price and don't have the specific feature that this E05 has, and even this 30 lumens is already super bright!
Most flashlights have a real bright center "hotspot" with lower light around it. The E05 has a special diffuser lens in front of the LED bulb that spreads the light out evenly over a large area, which makes this light much more useful than most other flashlights in my opinion.
A good knife is probably the most useful tool any person could carry on them; and I usually have a few on me. Aside from my main knife, a Buck 450RD Protégé, and the Victorinox SwissCard Lite in my wallet, I wanted a nice backup knife to put on my keychain. You never know when it might come in handy.
The character "Soap" said in the world's greatest movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: "I think knives are a good idea. Big, Fuck-off shiny ones; Ones that look like they could skin a crocodile." While I totally agree with Mr. Soap there, the weight might be an issue if I put one of those on my keychain.
My new Victorinox Classic SD has everything but a weight issue. At 22 grams it's hardly noticeable, yet this little baby is packed with functionality. It has a nice sharp blade, a little nail file which doubles as a screwdriver, a pair of scissors, a toothpick and a pair of tweezers. All this goodness, stuffed in a tiny pocket knife which is about the size of a AA battery.
The Victorinox Classic SD is a perfect companion for the little Fenix E05 flashlight that also resides on my keychain. They're both black, they weigh about the same, and they are more or less the same size...
But above all else... they just look absolutely adorable together I think anyone should have them on their keychain.
As I mentioned in the previous post, last Sunday was my 32nd birthday; but I don't celebrate it. This obviously also means I don't get many presents for my birthday. My parents gave me some clothing stuff and Daniel gave me a very cool light stand and shoot-through umbrella for my flashgun; but that's about it. But the best gift came from someone that I deeply admire and respect: myself!
About a year ago I bought the Kodak Zx1 pocket camera that records 720p video's on SD cards. While the camera works fine and is water resistant; it has some limitations that really got on my nerve, and so I decided to look for a replacement. The thing that mostly annoyed me was the fixed focus. While fixed focus is fine for most outdoor situations, it does get annoying if you want to get a slightly closer look at something and it just ends up as one big blurry blob on your photo or video.
My criteria were clear to me, and I started to look for a compact camera with autofocus and 720p video recording ability. My eye finally fell on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W350. It's a tiny and very cute little point and shoot camera with a ton of features. It's about the size of a credit card, and it's only 16.7mm thick.
It has a 14.1 megapixel sensor and with the 35mm equivalent of a 26-105mm f/2.7-5.7 lens it gives quite decent image quality. Aside from decent pictures, it can also record 720p video with autofocus and even zoom ability. Especially the zoom is quite nice, because that is a feature that most compact point and shoot camera's don't have. The last feature I'd like to mention is that you can make panorama photos on this camera by just sweeping it from one side to the other. While the quality of the panorama photo is not the best, it's good enough for some funny pictures for websites.
I'm really happy with this little camera. Because it's so light and small, I can bring it with me at all times. So from now on my videos and "on the road" photo's will be much, much higher quality. Stay tuned for more of those
Put your brand new HTC "Snap" messenger phone in your pocket... Then when stepping out of the car brush your leg against the doorpost. What do you get?
HTC, the manufacturer of the phone, will send a courier to pick it up for repair next Friday, I hope they can get my poor baby fixed soon.
After talking to Kodak about the SanDisk memory card that wasn't working with my Zx1, I returned it to SanDisk and ordered two Transcend 16GB SDHC cards instead.
Why two? I want 32GB of storage for my Zx1, one way or the other. In 720p at 30 fps it consumes about 1GB per 20 minutes of film, and as we all know... 20 minutes of raw footage results in maybe 5 minutes of usable video material. Since I will be going to a the Amphi Festival in Cologne this summer, I want to be able to shoot some decent video without having to whip out my mini note all the time to offload the raw footage.
With 32GB I can shoot about 10 hours of video before I run out of space (I would still have to swap batteries now and then, of course...). Another cool feature about the Transcend cards is that you get a free USB card reader with them, which is always nice.
I like multimedia. I love taking pictures of places I go to, and share them with the world. Unfortunately, a picture only tells so much. Video is even cooler! My cell phone makes nice photos, but crappy movies. So I decided to look for something better, and ended up with the Kodak Zx1 portable video camera.
The camera can record video in 3 settings: VGA 640x480 pixels at 30 fps, HD 1280x720 pixels at 30 fps and "HD60" 1280x720 at 60 fps. Yes, this puppy can record HD video at 60 fps! It encodes the videos in Quicktime MP4 format with h.264 video and AAC audio. Aside from the video's it can also make some semi-decent photos at a native resolution of 2048x1536 pixels.
So from now on, all "moblog" videos will be shot using the Kodak Zx1.
I'm an audiophile, I admit... and specifically I like a deep, warm and lush bass. Unfortunately, most consumer headphones (won't drop names, but you know which brands I speak of ) either have no bass at all, or have deep lows but absolutely no midrange bass. I found a solution for that in the Beyer DT 770 PRO, but walking on the street with a full-sized studio headphone looks kind of wonky, so I decided to look for something more compact for outdoor use.
The search led me to the V-Moda "vibe", a pair of aluminum ear buds. I've been using them for about two months now, and think they deserve to be mentioned.
The sound is just amazing. The highs are crystal clear, the mids are lush and alive and the bass is just all there. So far I've only discovered one negative aspect about them: if your MP3 file is poorly encoded, you will notice it. The ear buds are unforgiving and relentless when it comes to poorly encoded MP3's, but that is a good thing as well. It means the ear buds don't add any bullshit to your signal, but just give you exactly what you're supposed to hear.
They're pricy (85,- Euro), but they are worth every cent of that. They deliver what they promise and look stylish while doing it. In short: 100% kickass.