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Public Zone 公開區 => General Topics 綜合題目 => Topic started by: chin on 29 April 2009, 02:41:17

Title: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 29 April 2009, 02:41:17
[Updated 6-Aug-09]

This thread was "New Toy - High Speed Photography with Casio EX-FC100".

Instead of making new topics each time showing new toys, I may as well combine the camera, computer, hifi related topics into one thread for showing new gadgets.

這是相機，音響，電腦等有關新玩具的相片。

---

In our last trip to Kun Ming, I have taken more than 600 golf pictures trying to capture the magic moment, like when the club head impacts the ball. But there was no luck - the closest was right after impact. See pictures at Spring City Resort in Yunnan (http://chinman.com/index.php?topic=122.0).

My normal camera is a Sony A900 digital SLR. The most used lens is the 24-70mm/2.8 zoom, which was used in perhaps 90% of the Spring City pictures. This camera + lens combo weights perhaps 2kg! My other lenses are all top quality Sony (or formerly Minolta) G series or Zeiss lenses, thus all glass and heavy, and I already have more lenses than I can carry. I also have a light 265g point-and-shot Panasonic LX3 which supposedly has good optics for the small size.

In Spring City, I was using high speed continuous shots with the A900 at 5 frames per second. For golf, this is simply not fast enough. After examining the pictures closely, I realized that the "action" part of a normal golf swing takes perhaps less than 1/2 second, so for each series of high speed shots, only 2 or 3 frames captured the swing in action.

After seeing the advertisement promoting the high speed photography feature, and hearing some comment from my friend, I went to Man Shing and bought the Casio EX-FC100 on Monday, and brought the new toy to golf on Tuesday.

I am too lazy to take picture of the FC100 itself, so thes following are product pictures from dcfever
http://www.dcfever.com/news/readnews.php?id=2723

(http://www.dcfever.com/articles/news/2009/02/090209_casiofc100_01.jpg)

(http://www.dcfever.com/articles/news/2009/02/090209_casiofc100_02.jpg)

(http://www.dcfever.com/articles/news/2009/02/090209_casiofc100_03.jpg)

Title: Re: New Toy - High Speed Photography with Casio EX-FC100
Post by: chin on 29 April 2009, 02:44:54
First some "normal" pictures.

This picture is taken in the Auto Mode, using normal speed. The quality is unremarkable. This picture is shrank 25% on each dimension, thus only 1/16 the size of the "original size".

The 2nd picture is a "blow up" at 100%, or original size, shows high noise level even at the supposedly best quality ISO100. The resolution is also poor, the flag on the green is almost invisible.
Title: Re: New Toy - High Speed Photography with Casio EX-FC100
Post by: chin on 29 April 2009, 03:11:54
Picture taken with High Speed Anti-Shake mode.

Casio is capitalizing on the high speed hardware/software built into this camera. One of the fancy, pre-defined shooting modes is the High Speed Anti-Shake which take 30 pictures in one-go, then combine the pictures to form a new image with more details.

This is an old technique used by astrophotography. We call it stacking. Astrophotographers would take hundreds of pictures of the same celestial body then use specialized software to stack the pictures, hoping the resulting image would contain more details.

The following picture again may looked OK on screen. But if used for print, the effect would probably like the 100% crop that follows.
Title: Re: New Toy - High Speed Photography with Casio EX-FC100
Post by: chin on 29 April 2009, 03:44:13
Now the High Speed part.

The main advertised feature of this camera, and my main motivation for shelling out HK$3000, is the 30-frame per second shot. To do that, you first hit the high speed button on the top, when ready, press and hold the shutter.

The camera's memory buffer can only hold 30 pictures, so you can take high speed pictures for only 1 second. It took us a few tries to capture the actions in this 1-second window.

At this high speed photo mode, the picture quality is not good, in my opinion. In this sample picture, which is a bit more difficult for most cameras due to the back light, the high noise and lack of resolution are very visible. The pant should be green without any white dots, the shirt should be all white with only some shade of shadow, the arms should have normal skin tone, the edges should be more definite, etc...

The advertisement of this camera trouts the high speed feature in taking pictures of small kids in action. If anyone buying the camera to take pictures of running kids, the result may be very disappointing. The skin tone and facial details may distorted badly except in the most ideal lighting condition. I suspect the picture quality from the high speed shooting is unacceptable for evening/night/in-door use.

So was it a waste of money buying this camera?
Title: Re: New Toy - High Speed Photography with Casio EX-FC100
Post by: chin on 29 April 2009, 04:05:41
Now, finally the fun stuff...

turned out to be the high speed video shooting. We were shooting video at 210-frame per second mode. This is about 7 times the normal speed. In other words, each 1 second of actual action will be replayed in 7 second, creating a very nice smooth slow motion video.

This high speed video is very ideal to analyse one's golf swing. A complete swing takes about 2 seconds but involves lots of coordination and movement of many body parts. When I see my friend swing, sometime I can see that something is not right, but couldn't point out how and where. With the slow motion video, I can see my problems in over swing on the top, not turning enough, left arm not straight enough upswing and after impact, wrong timing on weight shift, etc...

Sample video from Tuesday's golf (large video file, may take some time to download. More videos in the private section.)
http://chinman.com/uploads/video/20090428_Golf_CIMG0382.AVI

For me, the FC100 is quite useless for the purpose of taking nice good looking pictures. However the high speed shooting can be used for technical analysis and the high speed video could be very useful and fun. I will post more pictures or video if I found good use of it. The biggest problem for using the high speed video is that it requires very bright light. Otherwise the subject will be very dim.
Title: Re: New Toy - High Speed Photography with Casio EX-FC100
Post by: chin on 29 April 2009, 05:16:05
The following is a picture taken with the heavy Sony A900 + 24-70/2.8. Compare the quality to the pictures taken with the Casio FC100.

2nd picture is part of the 1st picture blow up to 100%.

(http://chinman.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=122.0;attach=3461)

(http://chinman.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=99.0;attach=3510)
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 06 August 2009, 05:11:27
I just spent a few hours reorganizing the work space at home. And decided to take some pictures for record.

Up until about 1 month ago I had 2 PCs hooked up to 3 x 19" screens. The first picture shows the main components of the current setup:

1. the new bigger desk, from Ikea.

2. big screen is 30" cinema display from Apple, hooked up to an 8-core (2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon) Mac Pro /w 16GB DDR3 RAM.

3. smaller 24" screen hooked up to a 2 yr old Core 2 Dual PC.

4. the Mac is optical out (digital signal) to a Ibasso D10 DAC, then to Altec Lansing FX3022 speakers. The PC is line-out (analog signal) to the aux port of the Altec speakers. One major feature of this pair of speakers is the ability to hear BOTH input at the same time. So there is no need to have a set of speakers for Mac and another set for PC.
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 06 August 2009, 05:30:46
The Ibasso D10 DAC/AMP is the new toy in this setup. It's the small shiny box sitting to the right of the speaker in the following picture.

This is sort of my first adventure into the head-fi & computer hi-fi world. The little box decodes the digital signals into analog signals (DAC= Digital to Analog Converter) to feed into an amplifier. The regular PC has DAC on board but the quality is not as good. And a regular computer does not provide enough power to power a good headphone.

I have tried connecting the headphone to the PC via D10 vs connect directly to the PC. The sound quality difference is very apparent to my ears. When I tried to do the same on the Mac Pro, the difference is smaller.

I chose the Ibasso D10 because it allows diversified input (coaxial digital, optical digital, USB digital, line-in analog) & output (line-out or headphone). It has received very good reviews in the head-fi communities. And it's a quality Made in China product. I ordered from the ibasso.com web site and it was delivered within 24-hour!

The D10 can be used as a portable headphone amplifier for iPod & other portable music device. I tried it on the iPod Touch but to my ears the difference is not too big. It's main purpose is still a good DAC.

My headphone is Philips SHP9000. A nice comfortable headphone I have for about 1 year already. Supposedly it's not as good as some head-fi grade headphones, but those headphones are easily HK$2000+.

The powered Altec speakers are not quite hi-fi grade, especially with the way I put the left speaker behind the 24" screen, but very practical for my current 2-computer setup. Perhaps in the future I will change to a setup with separate amplifer & monitor type speakers.
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 06 August 2009, 05:34:47
One of the major reasons to go with the Ikea desk is the hanging rack for computers. In my setup the Mac is on the right, and the PC on the left.
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 07 August 2009, 02:48:16
After hearing the much higher resolution music at home with the new gadgets, the music output quality at office became simply unacceptable.

So today I bought this tube amp with USB input and headphone output for use in the office. Right now I would use only the headphone output in the office. I hope in the next few months, when we move to the new office, I will be setting up a nice pair of monitor speakers hookup to this amp.
Title: HP Z800
Post by: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:42:30
New toy in the office. I have spreadsheets that contains millions of formulas, and my current computer would need almost 1 min for each computation. With this new rig, the computation time is down to about 3 seconds.

Two pics with the side panel closed and opened.
Title: HP Z800
Post by: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:46:11
The inside all compartmentalized to optimize airflow.

- The top 20% space is the power supply with air intake in front, outflow at the back, and the hot air not mixed with other parts of the computer.

- the large compartment in the middle covers ventilation for the CPUs & memory.

- The bottom compartment separates the airflow for cards & disks.
Title: HP Z800
Post by: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:48:22
A clear view of the sub-compartment that provides airflow to the two CPUs.

- the curved plastic duct in the middle is to prevent hot air from the right CPU goes to the left CPU.

- the two fans are right on top of the RAM.
Title: HP Z800
Post by: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:49:43
First pic the mechanism to slot in 4 regular hard disks.

Second pic the sliding out power supply.
Title: HP Z800
Post by: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:51:53
More details of the 840W power supply from Delta, the mechanism for the slide-in connections, and the front air intake.
Title: HP Z800
Post by: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:54:51
View of the mother board:

- on top 12 triple channel memory slots, only used 6 with 12G RAM.
- in the middle 2 Xeon quad-core CPUs, running at 2.66GHz each core.
- the Radeon 4890 turned out does not work well with Win 7, will change to a Nvidia GTX295.
Title: HP Z800
Post by: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:55:35
Back panel & front panel.

I am a bit surprised to find a old style serial port. And there is no separate power on/off toggle on the power supply.
Title: Re: HP Z800
Post by: kido on 12 December 2009, 22:34:22
Quote from: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:42:30
New toy in the office. I have spreadsheets that contains millions of formulas, and my current computer would need almost 1 min for each computation. With this new rig, the computation time is down to about 3 seconds.

Two pics with the side panel closed and opened.

Cool! (Technically speaking it shouldn't be cool, it's hot! 840W power supply! )
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 12 December 2009, 23:30:39
Hehe... all for running games & spreadsheets in the office.  ;D
Title: Re: HP Z800
Post by: kido on 15 December 2009, 00:02:05
Quote from: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:55:35
Back panel & front panel.

I am a bit surprised to find a old style serial port. And there is no separate power on/off toggle on the power supply.

I think the machine is a server grade and is for running server, i.e. the serial port should be a connection to a dumb term.
Title: Re: HP Z800
Post by: chin on 15 December 2009, 01:21:02
Quote from: kido on 15 December 2009, 00:02:05
I think the machine is a server grade and is for running server, i.e. the serial port should be a connection to a dumb term.

Maybe you are right.

Anyway I bought a powerful graphic card (Nvidia GTX295) that needs a 6-pin PCIe & 8-pin PCIe2 power supply. Then we found out that for all its 840W power supply, the HP only provide the 6-pin type connections. So I ended up swapping the lower grade GTX275 from my home to use with the HP.  ???
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 03 October 2011, 21:57:53
No picture...

But I just got a Dell U3011 30" display. The main reason to buy is the 2560x1600 resolution. I have been using an Apple monitor of the same size and resolution with my Mac Pro. Now one of the PCs is hooked up to this new Delll monitor.

When I install the monitor, it couldn't display at the native 2560x1600 properly, with some missing or messed up pixels, etc... But once I switched to the DVI cable that came with the monitor, then everything worked beautifully. So the DVI cable I had before was too shitty!!!
Title: Re: HP Z800
Post by: kido on 27 October 2011, 11:19:33
Quote from: chin on 11 December 2009, 23:54:51
View of the mother board:

- on top 12 triple channel memory slots, only used 6 with 12G RAM.
- in the middle 2 Xeon quad-core CPUs, running at 2.66GHz each core.
- the Radeon 4890 turned out does not work well with Win 7, will change to a Nvidia GTX295.

Recently I needed to buy a new desktop, so I do some little research of CPU performance. And found that the performance of CPU is much much better than I thought.   And not until now I check out the speed of your little 2 years old bastard : assuming it's CPU is  2 X Intel® Xeon® processor E5640 2.66 GHz, 12MB cache 1066 MHz memory, 4-Core.

I want to compare to i7-2600K CPU which is the top gaming computer in Golden Center and is readily available now.

CPUCPU benchmark
2 X Intel® Xeon® processor E5640 2.66 GHz5204  (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5640+%40+2.67GHz)x 2 =10408
Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.40GHz10019 (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2600K+%40+3.40GHz)

And it looks like the 2 x Xeon is still leaving the majority of CPUs in dust.  :o

Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 27 October 2011, 11:56:35
Well, at the time of the purchase, I can see the performance of some of my very large spreadsheet improved very substantially. Some of the computations from ~1 min to a few seconds. I don't know it's the number of cores or Xeon.
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 18 March 2012, 00:17:29
After living right next to a seaside bike trail for so many years, I finally buy myself a bicycle.

It was eye opening for me in the bike shop. Many bikes there cost >HK$10,000 with the highest I saw was about $40k. The expensive ones look nice and are very light. I can lift one up easily with 2 or 3 fingers.

Before today, I did not even know bicycles have suspensions, or brake disc like a car. My new $3000 bike has both.

I took it out for a good 1-hour cardiovascular exercise. Now I can invite Grease Chan for a ride along.  ;D
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: hangchoi on 18 March 2012, 00:39:28
Good.

Sooner or later, there will have ABS, twin cam, etc for a bike.....  :D
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: oo8 on 18 March 2012, 10:32:45
Quote from: hangchoi on 18 March 2012, 00:39:28
Good.

Sooner or later, there will have ABS, twin cam, etc for a bike.....  :D

I'm not sure about the twin cams, but there are ABS for bicycles . . . . .   ;D

http://www.budbrake.com/index.html
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 10 November 2012, 16:49:09
Quote from: chin on 18 March 2012, 00:17:29
After living right next to a seaside bike trail for so many years, I finally buy myself a bicycle.

It was eye opening for me in the bike shop. Many bikes there cost >HK$10,000 with the highest I saw was about $40k. The expensive ones look nice and are very light. I can lift one up easily with 2 or 3 fingers.

Before today, I did not even know bicycles have suspensions, or brake disc like a car. My new $3000 bike has both.

I took it out for a good 1-hour cardiovascular exercise. Now I can invite Grease Chan for a ride along.  ;D

Just to report back that after 6 months of biking, about 3 times a week, 45 min to 90 min each time, I lost ~15lb and 10cm in the middle section.  ;D
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 10 November 2012, 16:50:07
New toys. For the F3 racing in Macau next week.

Sony a99 body
Sony 70-200mm/F2.8
1.4x Teleconverter (not shown)
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: hangchoi on 10 November 2012, 17:03:31
 :o :o :o Nice
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 10 November 2012, 17:07:24
Quote from: hangchoi on 10 November 2012, 17:03:31
:o :o :o Nice

If you are referring to the camera.... it's

HEAVY!!!
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: marlonchoi on 15 November 2012, 22:38:39
Quote from: chin on 10 November 2012, 16:49:09
Just to report back that after 6 months of biking, about 3 times a week, 45 min to 90 min each time, I lost ~15lb and 10cm in the middle section.  ;D

Congratulation!
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: wongyan on 16 November 2012, 14:38:08
Just to report back that after 6 months of biking, about 3 times a week, 45 min to 90 min each time, I lost ~15lb and 10cm in the middle section. 

Chin, What is your original weight then?
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 16 November 2012, 17:06:56
Quote from: wongyan on 16 November 2012, 14:38:08
Just to report back that after 6 months of biking, about 3 times a week, 45 min to 90 min each time, I lost ~15lb and 10cm in the middle section. 

Chin, What is your original weight then?

[hide]

203 at the peak, about 187 the last 2 years or so.
[/hide]
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: wongyan on 16 November 2012, 20:30:32
Quote from: chin on 16 November 2012, 17:06:56
 
wow, so record low now since.....
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: hangchoi on 16 November 2012, 20:42:02
Quote from: chin on 16 November 2012, 17:06:56
 

[hide] That means you are now about 172 lbs?? I have almost the same weight with you then [/hide]
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 16 November 2012, 21:46:05
Quote from: hangchoi on 16 November 2012, 20:42:02
 

[hide]
171 for about 1 month now. The last few days has been a bit higher.
[/hide]
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: wongyan on 18 November 2012, 14:57:57
Quote from: chin on 16 November 2012, 21:46:05

I wish I can reach that level in 6 months. But cycling in Tsing Yi would be too dangerous.
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: chin on 31 January 2014, 01:36:58
I had lunch with my good friend who is an avid photographer. He told me that I should check out the Olympus E-M1. After lunch I went with him to a camera store and purchase the camera with a 12-40/2.8 zoom lens.

The followings are some sample photos taken yesterday and today. Sofar the camera seems quite capable and fast. Perhaps it will replace the Sony A99 I am using now for "serious" photography. The Sony with the nice lenses (24-70/2.8 & 70-200/2.8 are the two main lenses) and batteries, etc... weight 4kg or so. I am getting old and would like to have lighter camera with good performance. Is this too much to hope for?  ;D
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: hangchoi on 01 May 2016, 15:01:50
During my trip to Netherlands, I stayed in a hotel near the airport and there was a hotel shuttle for taking me to-and-from the airport. One day, before I was back to hotel, I found this shop showing a blue-tooth speaker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz3k53BAhG4

I was attracted by the sound quality of the speaker. I got in and had a chat with a youngster, who is the designer of this speaker (not the one shown on the video above). He told me that they just got a short term lease of this shop and the shop would open for only a few months. He showed me the technology of the speaker, which uses the surface where the speaker lands as the reflector of the noise. You can stick the speaker on floor, desk, or even wall. The sound quality somehow depends on the material of the surface. A harder, firmer surface gives different quality than softer surface. When you hold the speaker on hand, the loudness of the speaker is very small.

We tried the speaker using different surfaces of the shop, its wooden table, partition glass, steel bench, etc. I connected his speaker with my smartphone and played some Korean music, which was quite nice in terms of its sound quality. At last, I bought a silver one, as below picture.

The speaker is a bit heavy, as the designer said that the most heaviest part is the battery. This speaker can play 2 hour continuously when fuller charged.

When I was back to HK, I played it for a while and took a video showing its performance. Here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7bXIVGK-5Q

The speaker costs EURO 60. You may order it on web, world wide delivery and 2 year warranty.

The designer also told me that he is designing another version.
Title: Re: New Toys & Gadgets 新玩具
Post by: oo8 on 02 May 2016, 23:11:23
The wireless version of 15 years old Soundbug ?  ;D