Maha MH800s Review

My previous post was about how AA batteries have taken over my life.  The 800s charges NiMH & NiCd batteries (not that anyone used NiCd anymore).  It reconditions and deep charges the batteries.  In addition each battery is charged on an independent channel, so you can charge multiple sets of batteries at varying levels of charge, and they will all be optimally charged.  I use this in conjunction with my MB-D10 and well, it just works.  I use 8 eneloops with 8 backup eneloops, I have never had to dip into the backups, and I shoot a lot.  There is also a small LCD screen on the front of charging unit that shows the status of the charge.  No more guessing whether red is good or blinking green means charging.

A(A) Rechargeable Existence

When I bought my MB-D10 battery grip for my D300 I opted to go for the AA option, which uses 8 rechargeable NiMH batteries.  Then I got to thinking about the Wii. Each remote utilizes 2 AA batteries.  The wireless sensor bar uses 4 AAs as too.  As a photographer I also use two speedlight flashes. there is 8 more AA without a change, up it to 16 for total functionality.  There are also the two pocket wizards that use 2 AA a piece, there is 4 more.  That is something like 36 AA batteries total.  The next review that I will write will be about the Maha MH-800s that I just purchased to accommodate this AA powered life.

Time Machine/Capsule (The Sort of Cheap Way)

Exciting news for stingy mac nerds.  Well, realistically kinda mac nerds, because a true mac nerd would either know about this already, or would not care because they don’t need time machine.  I have a headless Macintosh running in my home, with an array of external hard drives connected to it and served using AFP.  I originally had an old Windows XP machine running as a Samba share to my mac to host my movies.  That said, AFP and OS X are far nicer to work with.  Anyhow with one simple copy/paste command line cue one can use a shared volume to automatically backup their computer every time said computer connects to said network, and all without a single wire.  That command that needs to be entered is:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

(to undo the command one would enter the same command with zero in place of 1)

From there you simply use the Time Machine interface to setup your backup.

Fantastico!

FujiFilm S5: First Thoughts

I borrowed a Fuji S5 for the weekend.  I must say, this thing is impressive.  The first test was portraiture in available light at ISO 3200.  This would make my me cringe on anything else, however, they looked good acceptable.  I am also becoming a fan of the dynamic range improvements that have been made with the S5.  My largest initial gripe with Fuji is the deceptive advertising surrounding the Megapixelage of the the camera.  They claim it is 12 megapixels while the actual resolution comes out to about 6.2 megapixels.  I honestly couldn’t care less about megapixels and all, I seem to rarely print these days, and when I do it is rarely ever larger than 11×14 which I can easily do with 6 megapixels.  More to come.