Breakfast Links: All Gear Edition
Aaaiiight! This morning finds me clicking through all sorts of gear that I want or almost want… Unusual!
Let’s kick this mutha off with a look at the new Sigma DP1 digital camera. This guy is nearly perfect - it’s main schtick is its DSLR sized sensor which will let it take mad awesome pictures - probably good low light performance, too. Sure it’s a 14 megapixel sensor (I prefer less, but I think I’m alone in that) but given that its film is like 7x the size of the largest compact sensors (say the 1/1.8″ found on my LX2) it’s not sacrificing anything. It obviously won’t take as sharp pictures as a real DSLR due to the size of it’s lens, but it should be pretty ridiculously good for a compact. The good news is that it’s a wide camera with a 28mm equivalent lens - me likes the 28mm. The bad news is that it doesn’t have no zoom - that’s kinda the killer for me - on a compact I want to have a little flexibility - even getting up to a 2x zoom would have been convincing for me. Sigh.
Then we come to the surprising (or at least to me) Garmin nüvifone. So, obviously this thing is the GPS device that Garmin’s famous for, but it ties in some iPhone like features - big screen, no keys, phone and web. The obvious goodness is that it ties Google Local search in with it’s GPSiness - something I really was jonesing for in my first GPS experience. So that’s pretty brilliant. The phone looks phone-ey. The web looks pretty good - looks like it’s got the old pan and zoom going, although it does not seem to be context aware zooming at fixed increments not maximizing a column like the iPhone does. Awesomely it geotags any photos you take with the phone. Looks like pretty good times, to me. I mean, I’m not trading in the iPhone, but I can see this being compelling for people who drive a lot. I’m curious to see how good it is! (via)
Then there was this concept clay moldable mouse. So it’s some clay covered in a nylon and polyurethane fabric - you can mold it to be whatever shape you want then there’s buttons that you stick onto it that are magical rfid things that just now. Dude, I so want that - especially if they can make it so that there are a plentitude of buttons in different sizes so I can have my 18 billion buttons on the mouse. Seriously, they should make this. Significantly less awesome is this inflateable mouse. Unfortunately both of these are just concepts right now.
You diggin’ this crap? Anything I miss this morning?
January 31st, 2008 at 10:20 am
I initially mis-read that as “concept clay moldable house.” And it didn’t seem at all odd to me that you wanted a house with 18 billion buttons.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:03 am
The Sigma sounds like the 10MP Ricoh GR Digital II but with one of them Foveon sensors. Unfortunately it seems like both will be pretty much useless indoors as shots taken with ISO over 400 are supposedly pretty bad. Although the Foveon sensor is supposed to give absolutely stunning results in bright light though.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:16 am
I totally want a moldable house. And, yes, I would like as many buttons as I can get. Man, that’d be sweet…
As for the Sigma - really? Bad lowlight performance. That’s a crying shame - you’d think they’d be able to squeeze some good ISO out of the big sensor. Sigh. Maybe Sigma figured it out. Too bad they couldn’t squeeze a little zoom in there.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Can you imagine what Ro would mold his mouse to be? I can and it’s dirty!