mtwhite

There are two kinds of hard drives. Those that have failed, and those that will fail. I'll second the suggestions regarding a RAID NAS (preferably two in RAID5 mode with mirrored data). It's the only way to get any kind of reliability out of fragile spinning magnetic platters.

 

Drobos are worth looking into if you can afford them. They're dead simple to use and very reliable. If you can tell red from green, you can use one.

Looking at your previous post, the motherboard you've chosen likely needs a

driver running in Vista to activate the on-board RAID. It should be easy to

install, assuming the driver is Vista SP1 compatible. It would be on the

motherboard's driver CD.

 

It's easy to spend other peoples' money :) , but harddrives are relatively cheap

these days, and only getting cheaper. It's easy to find fast and reliable 500GB

drives for under $100. RAID1 is a serious step up in terms of safety.

 

A full-scale hardware RAID controller is probably overkill, unless you're doing

HD movie production for a living, or building a server to host a really big

website. I'm as much of a computer geek as anyone, and even I don't bother with one.

<p>I never said I wanted a low price DSLR. I said I wanted one that's

<i>compact</i>. I would happily pay 40D prices for 40D processors, RAM and

firmware in in a Rebel-class body. I'm annoyed with being expected to put up

with large, conspicuous and heavy bodies for decent features. The XTi is just

about perfect for me, and now that it's discontinued I have to think carefully

about what's next if mine dies, whether or not I'll be able to buy an equivalent

replacement. And I didn't forget the XSi. It's raw buffer is 6 shots. They

actually made it worse than its predecessor.

<p>I'd switch to another system, but the other compact DSLRs are no better. Sony

and Olympus buffers are as bad, Pentax buffers are worse, and Nikon isn't even

on the table until they stop crippling their lens mounts and light meters to

drive up Dx00 sales. And yes, I know I'm picky and whiny and that I'm not most

people.

<p>Regarding the RAID0 setup; if you haven't already, it's worth reading <A

href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_0#RAID_0">this</a> thoroughly before

committing to it. If you really, really want to go that route, it would be wise

to have a backup strategy.

<p><A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_1#RAID_1">RAID1</a> is better in

almost every way. Write speeds would be the same as a

single disk, but read speeds are almost twice as fast because the same data can

be read from two drives at once, and you'd have redundancy when one of them fails.

5 raw shots at 1.5fps? That's utterly pathetic. "Compact" has become synonymous

with "crippled" in the minds of DSLR makers.

 

All I want is a compact SLR with a 10-shot raw buffer at 3fps or better, and

that autofocuses with prime lenses. That's it. Those are my only requirements.

Canon just discontinued the only one I know of, the XTi. Does anyone else make

something as small and capable anymore?

It might be worth getting in contact with the folks at <A href="http://www.grc.com">GRC</a> (home of the Security Now podcast), and finding out if their program Spinrite (or possibly another recommended program) can recover from this type of deletion. I personally doubt it, but I'm not an expert on the subject. They are.

I'm thinking of selling off my Canon gear and switching to a K200D/DA limited

kit, mostly for portability reasons. My one concern is the limited buffer of the

K200D. My XT officially has a jpg buffer of 14 shots at 3 fps, but in practice

with a 4GB sandisk ultra 2 I get closer to 30. Can a fast SD card improve the

K200D's buffer in the same way? How many shots at the rated 2.8 fps do you folks

get in the real world with fast cards?

I'm another happy 28/2.8 owner. Small, lightweight, sharp, reasonably fast, resistant to flare, good build quality. AF speed is fast (if a little noisy). 52mm thread means quality filters are cheaper than for most lenses, and can be shared with your 50/1.8II. It's a useful wide on film and a useful normal on digital. The 28/2.8 and the 135/2.8 are all I carry with me anymore. I vote to go for it.

I'll add a vote for the 28/2.8. Tiny, lightweight, very sharp. I don't have the 35/2, but I have no doubt that it lives up to its reputation as well.

One thing that needs to be pointed out is that the XSi liveview autofocus is far, far slower than normal autofocus. It's unusable for moving objects.

You are correct in that you would need a separate raid array if you wanted a speed boost regarding scratch files, but I would strongly advise against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_0#RAID_0">RAID0</a> on your main OS drive. The 0 stands for the amount of data you can expect to recover from any of the drives if a single one of them fails. It's a disaster waiting to happen. <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_1#RAID_1">RAID1</a> is good, <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_5#RAID_5">RAID5</a> is better.

I like <a href="http://areca.sf.net">Areca</a>. Written in java so it's platform-independant, and is free and open source.

I can only speak for myself and my smallish hands, but until someone builds a fullframe DSLR that's as compact as a rebel, I'll stick with my XT-and-1st-gen-EF-primes setup. A 5D is too big and conspicuous for my tastes, to say nothing of the Godzillian bulk of a 1Ds-class body.

Speaking of Olan Mills, I'm sure that a lot of you folks have seen <a href="http://listoftheday.blogspot.com/2007/09/great-olan-mills-photos.html">this little gallery</a> already, but perhaps a few haven't.

My normal kit is a Rebel XT, 28/2.8 normal and 135/2.8 tele. Until someone develops a 28-135/2.8 that's as small, as sharp and as lightweight as this setup I'll stick to the primes.

 

And no, the 28-135 IS isn't a viable option. I'm more concerned about subject movement than hand movement.

I have and love the lens, but I don't often use the softfocus feature. I think of it as more of a "poor man's 135L". As far as I know, it's the only 2.8 Canon tele for under $300, and a very sharp one to boot.

Bruce, you forgot about spoilers and drop-down mods for tripod collars. A <s>Honda Civic</s> 70-200 2.8L IS just isn't worthy of street cred without them.

Lately, the control buttons on my XT's vertical grip have been failing. First it

was the * button, then all the controls stopped working. The grip is behaving

exactly as if the grip's on/off switch was off, despite it being on. It's still

powering the camera properly, and all the camera's controls work fine with the

grip attached.

 

Aside from the obvious cleaning of the pin contacts, does anyone have any

suggestions before I mail it off to Canon for repair?

Tamron's 17-50/2.8 gets good reviews from reputable folks. Caveat: I've never used or owned one. My kit lens replacement for my XT was a 28/2.8 that I already had.

 

It might be worth reconsidering the 18-55 if you hadn't hit the limits of what it could do for you. They're pretty decent for the price if one understands its' limitations, and you can get like-new ones pretty cheap.

It reminds me of an old saying in the computer industry. "Standards are wonderful! There's so many to choose from!"

One fascinating abandoned town is <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania">Centralia, PA</a>. It's probably too dangerous to actually visit, but its history makes for interesting reading.

Seconding the EF28/2.8. Lightweight, compact, inexpensive, reasonably fast and very sharp. A great wide on film and a great normal on digital. You can't go wrong with it.

<p>Is it just me, or do the details about the image processor not seem quite right?<br>

<center><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/6337403-md.jpg">

</center>

The only thing I can think is for newspapers, where ultra-high resolution isn't required, but the layout folks need to be able to tweak the photo more than jpeg might allow, and the reporter wants to not max out the camera's buffer. Of course, the only paper I've ever worked at was a small-town weekly (and I wasn't even a reporter) so I could be completely wrong about the needs of a big daily.

 

Maybe it's part of Digic 3, intended for digicams with raw capability and small buffers. The problem with this theory that I've just pulled out of my posterior is that as far as I know, the G9 is the only raw-capable digicam with Digic 3, and I can't find any info that says the G9 even supports sraw.

 

Aside from that, I can't imagine what it would be used for. It still sounds like a bizarre feature to throw in to me.

<p>This may be a little offtopic, but the Nikon D3/D300 rumors on dpreview that Mark linked to seem a little odd to me. I'm mostly wondering about the D300's boost from 6FPS to 8FPS with a grip attached.

<p>Don't boosters on film bodies only give more power to the film transport motor? Isn't this nonsensical for a digital body, or am I completely wrong and it's also improving the speed of the mirror and shutter? If it's just a matter of supplying more power to the mirror and shutter, why not just provide a user-selectable function in the body to switch between low-drain and high-drain on the battery? The more I think about it, the less sense it all makes unless I'm missing something.

<p>Back on topic, if the 40D's specs are accurate, Canon will have my cash the day it's available. They've improved on the 30D in exactly the ways I had hoped. A nice big buffer, better viewfinder (maybe not bigger, but that Ef-S screen is <i>very</i> interesting to me), better framerate, better noise reduction. The 9 cross-type AF sensors are a pleasant surprise as well.