Snapfish vs Selphy Printer Printout Quality

My first impression of Snapfish Photo Printing service from HP is that of price. 9 per 4R print.
That is a pretty cheap deal if you ask me! Any hidden costs? If you order less than certain quantity, they will charge delivery, else it is free. No pick up location, everything via post. If you can wait for at least a week, it is fine for you. Else do head down to your local photo shop for immediate printout. The local store charges like 40c per 4R, with that I can print like 6×4R from Snapfish! So price wise, Snapfish is a good deal. Surely the price sounds too good to be true! How about the quality of the print out? First impression? Terrible. I mean it’s difficult to reproduce the “sucky” portion on screen, but if you see it with your own eyes, the degraded quality of print is terrible. It looks like a terrible dither effect. It is not like the photo is not viewable, but when you start to have a little closer look, and it does not take too hard to look, you can see the dithering effect is of poor quality. It’s quite shocking if you ask me, as I have never seen such an effect before from a computer print out other than my 1996 HP 500 Grey Scale Photo Printout. Not as bad as that, but it’s close.

I decided to take a printout from my Laser Selphy Printer and compare them side by side to compare the differences.

#1 The original Photo.

#2 Scanned Photo of Snapfish.
It actually looks good on screen if you ask me. Looks like there is some auto adjustments done from Snapfish.

Looks like the contrast has been rammed up, brightness level increased, color more saturated.

#3 Compare the Snapfish and the Selphy photo printout
The coarser look is of the snapfish, while the finer print is of Selphy.

#4 Almost full photo comparison.
The brighter photo is of the Snapfish. Note the hair color top is blue in color.

#5 Selphy Printout, very dark.

#6 Snapfish Printout

Final Verdict, will I use Snapfish services? I’d probably would. As mentioned earlier, the photo printout is not exactly not useable. The quality is bearable. Not the best definitely, but good enough if you do not take a close look. I have not ordered larger prints, but with such quality, I’d stick to smaller prints until they prove to be better.

Preview: Lumix LX3 vs D80 Low Light Shoot Out

Preview: Lumix LX3 vs D80 Low Light Shoot Out

Below 2 shots are from the Panasonic Lumix LX3 camera. I was pretty impressed by its sharpness and brightness. It was taken in a dark room, only illumination is the little sunlight coming from the window, and it’s pathetic trust me. However, the shot from the Lumix LX3 shows otherwise! The other light that is illuminating the keyboard is from the LCD screen itself. I was pretty curious as to how it will perform up with my existing Nikon D80 DSLR and the speed lens of 50mm 1.8f. However, the results turns out pretty disappointing as compared to my compact Lumix LX3 for the following reasons.

1. Brightness
2. Sharpness
3. Ease of use

I mean, I only pick up the Lumix LX3, set to manual, looked at the on screen metering and adjusted the shutter speed till it shows OK! ISO was set to 200, F-Stop at 2, maximum.

Then I went on to shoot using my Nikon D80 with 50mm F1.8 mounted. That was the fastest lens that I have.
Attempting to use the same settings as my Lumix LX3. I was quite sorely disappointed. It appears that the shots are darker and less sharp.
So I thought could be due to the ISO. I rammed up the ISO. Still not sharp, perhaps my hand was shaking, I reduced the shutter speed perhaps that will freeze the movements from my hand shaking.

#1

#2

Still not as sharp nor as bright as Lumix LX3.

#3

#4

Rammed up the shutter speed and the ISO. Image is sharper, but not as bright.

#5

#6

Kept the shutter speed constant, but rammed up the ISO from 400 to 800. Looks brighter now, but still far from what Lumix LX3 produced easily.

#7

#8

Further reduced the shutter speed 1/10 to 1/20 and up the ISO from 800 to 1250. Picture looks more noisy now. Not much improvement if you asked me.

#9

#10

 

At the end, I just could not figure out why my LX3 performance is better than the D80 with the 50mm F1.8. I could only guess the following is possible.

LX3 has image stabilizer built into the body itself, thus allows a more stable shot as compared to the D80.
But being brighter than the D80 50mm 1.8 setup at almost all the settings tested is way beyond my comparison.
So does this means the LX3 is the king of dark room shooter?

Switcheasy Color case for iPhone

http://www.switcheasy.com/products/Colors/Colors.php#

I’m using this case for my iPhone. So far so good. Other than the thickness of it, it’s pretty ok. The buttons are easily accessible from this silicon case. You do not have to press too hard just to get a button response. Below each of the silicon case button position, it is engineered with an addition recess so that the silicon case can depress the iPhone button easily.

Sent from Ben iPhone

Iphone and Blackberry Email

My first impression with iPhone email was small fonts. Extremely small fonts especially if it is a HTML email. Text mail are slightly better as I can adjust the text size. Unfortunately there are no options for me to set all mails to be in text format. This text mail format feature us available in blackberry devices. I love text formatted emails.
It seems that I can type faster with iPhone though. Despite the fact that there is no tactile feedback, iPhone text entry us extremely responsive. In fact, it is close to effortless as I do not sve to depress any keys. All I have to do is tap tap tap away. Not too bad a thing If u ask me.

HTML emails are glorious on the iPhone. Glorious in the sense the pictures and everything a display pretty nicely. Again, text entries are a pain to read as the fonts are extremely small in HTML emails. At least now email allows landscape view, so that kindof allow a slightly larger font view. So I’d be tilting the iPhone all the time to read emails. Weird huh.

CPL Filter

http://photocamel.com/forum/photography-talk/72489-cpl-filter.html

So I read about the CPL filter today on some forums. Curious as I am, I went to google more about it. So CPL is basically a Polarizing Filter. C stands for Circular. That means it is suppose to allow better focus for cameras it seems. I have not tried these filters before. Many claim it is good for sunny outdoor shots.

Oh well. I think this is my first post on the wordpress via my iPhone. Let’s see how it goes.

Sent from Ben iPhone

Sent from Ben iPhone

Griffin iClear case for iPhone

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/icleariphone

Urrrg. Got an iPhone at a real low price from Singtel, and now need to spend more to accessorise (if there is such a word).

However, I still like my BB over iPhone as of now. May need to use my iPhone more often to get a feel of it. I know I’m slow. But I can do so much on my BB.

Especially the clear fonts. I’d say is way superior over iPhone. Text entry. Omg. It’s heavenly for BB.

GMAIL or YAHOO mail for Blackberry?

Personally after several months of usage, or rather as at today, I prefer GMAIL. Why? I’ll share with you. GMAIL is not perfect with blackberry, but close to perfect.

+++++++++++++++++++++
What’s wrong with Gmail?
+++++++++++++++++++++
The only imperfect spot appears to be when a GMAIL user send a mail back to the exact same GMAIL acct. This is a known issue which will probably never be resolved. In GMAIL, the sent folder is essentially the same folder as IN. Or rather, there are NO FOLDERS in Gmail.
So if u send to urself, there is no sent action basically. It just seats in the same folder. That’s why the Blackberry will not be able to detect it as a incoming mail, since there is no incoming to start with. This issue does not happens for Yahoo mail.

With that little kink of Gmail and push system flaw, there are several way to overcome that.
1. Get the Gmail app client.
It connects direct to your Gmail acct via IMAP. So u have all your mails available to you. Problem is I have a half screwed Blackberry Plan from Singtel. It comes with only messaging without BIS. So my browser is a hotspot browser. The links in the client (or any other clients) will not work since I do not have the full Blackberry browser.

But if it is just plain reading, it’s fine. No URL support without BIS.

2. Use the browser to access Gmail online. But if coz!! U get to access all ur mails too. Not as fast as the native client on the BB though.

+++++++++++++++++++++
What’s Right with Gmail?
+++++++++++++++++++++
1. Google Sync
I love this app. It syncs my Contacts and Calendars to my google account.

2. The Gmail on mobile web, the URLs in the emails can be opened. Unlike Yahoo Mail, they appear as plain text.

3. MS Office docs related? Ie PPT, DOC, XLS if it is simple enough, it can be opened within the mobile web mail itself.

+++++++++++++++++++++
What’s Wrong with Yahoo?
+++++++++++++++++++++
1. The links in mobile web email appears as text.

2. No OTA sync like Google Sync for contacs and calendars

+++++++++++++++++++++
What’s Right with Yahoo?
+++++++++++++++++++++
1. Where push mail do not work for Gmail if sent to self? Yahoo works flawlessly here.

2. Yahoo mail icon on BB looks colorful too! Gmail icon is boring. Not that it matters, I hide them anyway.

So tonight!! I’m gonna switch back to Gmail to use with my blackberry.

*My blackberry is the weird Singtel $10.70 per mth plan. Does not come with BIS. IMHO, it cripples many thing. Especially the native BB Browser, Facebook, app world.

Bye Bye Yahoo.

Posted from a Blackberry Curve 8900 device.

 

#1. URL available for Gmail on Mobile mail

#2 URL not available for Yahoo Mail on Yahoo Mobile mail.

Camera MP and Printout Size

Got these specs from here.
http://www.fotofun.net/camera_tips.html

Should be useful for future reference.

Increase Font Size in Iphone Safari Browser

Make below script as a bookmark in your safari browser. How it works is when a page has been loaded, go to your bookmarks and invoked this script. The font will become bigger one time for that loaded page. However it will revert back to smaller font when the page is loaded again. One time temp only. But I’m not complaining since it works. Somebody came up with this script, not me. I’m putting here in case I ever need it again. Do a google! You’ll find the good guy who wrote this.

javascript:for(i=0;i%3Cdocument.getElementsByTagName%20(‘*’) %20.length;i++)void(document.getElementsByTagName(‘*’%20)%20%5Bi %5D.style.fontSize=’24pt’);

Blackberry Facebook 1.7 does not work without BIS

As I have always mentioned, and firmly believed, new does not mean better. But the silly me always falls into this trap. Recently, I have upgraded my Blackberry Facebook from 1.6 to the latest 1.7. Now it does not work without BIS, just like the BB MSN Messenger. wtf. Do I miss my BB? Matter of fact yes. It was working perfectly fine when I was with M1, except the price was very steep for my high volume of phone calls. So I changed to Singtel Corp. That was where the nightmare begins. I lost my priviledge and flexibility of an individual consumer client. Sintel BB cheapest $10.70 plan does not include BIS. Without BIS, many functionalities in the BB is crippled namely 1. BB MSN Messenger 2. BB Browser 3. BB Facebook (just joined) Now everything, I need to go through the Corporate Rep for my requests. I takes very long to get anything actioned in fact. To put it bluntly, it felt like we are the lowest priority for anything.