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Review: Canon T2i DSLR camera

Posted: 14 May 2010 06:05 PM PDT


Short version: An outstanding consumer DSLR and liberating video recorder, the T2i is a powerhouse media device in a small and relatively affordable package. What I think of as killer features, however, may not be viewed as such by the buying population at large.

Features:

  • 18-megapixel images/up to 1080p video
  • ISO 100-6400
  • 3″ high-resolution LCD (1040K dots/720×480px)
  • Mic in and HDMI out ports
  • MSRP: $800 (body only)

Pros:

  • Great image and video quality
  • A better camcorder than “real” camcorders at similar prices
  • Beautiful LCD

Cons:

  • Compact body isn’t for everyone
  • Built-in flash is limited; AF strobe is a pain
  • Could really use a thumb wheel

Full review:

Let me just, right of the bat, say that for serious image quality comparisons, you should head over to DP Review. I don’t have the kind of setup necessary to test chroma levels between seven different cameras at once. This review, like all our reviews, is more anecdotal than analytical. From what I’ve seen (and read), the T2i’s image quality is comparable and sometimes better than the other cameras at its price level, depending of course on the lens. I put a pair of unmodified sample shots (RAW –> JPEG) here, but the image quality of DSLRs at this level is pretty solid across the board.

But to continue: the T2i is a camera I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, I freely admit. I bought the Rebel XT, skipped the XTi, bought the XSi, and skipped the T1i. They were clearly onto something with DSLR video, I thought, but it needed more time to mature. I think the T2i is the fulfillment of the promise made with the T1i. While it’s clearly a consumer camera, it’s extremely versatile piece of electronics, almost as much so, I feel, as the Casio Exlilim FC-100 (my favorite compact camera).

Its main selling features are a highly improved LCD, a more complete video mode than its predecessor, and of course an increase in megapixels. Other than these features, the T2i is pretty much still the Digital Rebel we know and love. At $800, it’s not exactly an entry-level camera, but for enthusiasts and casual moviemakers, it’s a huge value.

The body is almost identical to earlier rebels, and slightly thicker than my XSi. the other changes I noticed are largely shared with the T1i: molded buttons instead of circular, a more aggressive cut to the hand grip, and a dedicated live view button. I found the dials to be a little bit stiffer than on my XSi, but they’ll probably loosen up with use. And is it just me, or is the movie mode at the wrong end of the dial? Maybe they should have it on both ends.

The new LCD is a smart move on Canon’s part: the T1i had a similarly high-resolution screen (this one is 720×480), but the new 3:2 aspect ratio means your photos will no longer be cropped or letterboxed when they’re displayed. If you haven’t experienced the new resolution, get ready for a treat; I’ve spent a lot less time zooming into my pictures to check focus than I did on my XSi or other DSLRs. Other than that, the interface seems unchanged, and as before the D-pad is only just sufficient for navigating your photos. I know it’s considered a high-end feature, but a thumbwheel would go a long way towards making this camera more fun to use.


The pop-up flash is still really only useful for snapshots, and focusing in low light produces the strobe effect familiar to Canon shooters, dazzling your subjects and giving them a confused look in the actual exposure. But if you’re really serious about flash photography, you probably already own a Speedlite or some such.

As I mentioned before, image quality is best tested systematically, and DP Review has that covered. The new 18 megapixel sensor certainly creates larger images, and low light performance is improved somewhat over the T1i. I still recommend setting the ISO manually to avoid unnecessary noise. Other general photography tips can be found in forums and other reviews.

Video is really the fun part of the T2i. Within seconds of trying shooting 1080p at 24 FPS, I knew the T2i was a winner. If you put a reasonably fast lens on the camera, with a decent focus ring, you’ll feel like a serious filmmaker in no time. The fidelity, sensitivity, and ease-of-use are off the chart; there are plenty of perfectly nice little camcorders out there right now, but the fact is that their image quality is pretty rotten, and low light performance is just plain terrible across the board. I’ve said some things about DSLR video, and I stand by them, but for anything less than a professional production, a T2i or 7D (or K-x or other brand of video-shooting DSLR) is a great option.

It is important that you actually want to do more than the average Flip camera. If all you want is a single button and automatic YouTube uploads, of course a $100 pocket cam will be sufficient. But for those of us frustrated by the annoying interfaces and limited customizability of current camcorders, something like the T2i is a dream come true. A few minutes of experimentation had me changing settings like a champ, playing with depth of field, manual follow focus, and so on. I won’t bore you details of the cinematic experiments I attempted, but in almost every case I’ve found that the T2i acquitted itself wonderfully. You can watch the video below, but to see it in high definition please click here!

I shot mostly at 1080/24p, but you can also shoot at 720p or 640×480, though both are inexplicably limited to 60FPS. I have no idea why that is, but it’s annoying. If people ask for it, Canon might consider putting alternate frame rates into a firmware update, but at the moment it is worth consideration if you care about that sort of thing. There’s still plenty of skew when you move the camera around quickly, which is something that’s hard to explain but you’ll notice it during playback. It’s a flaw shared by most non-pro digital video cameras, and Canon’s is better than Nikon’s right now, but it’s something to be aware of. Other than that, I found video quality to be quite good and not too affected by encoding artifacts. You’ll get some smearing, of course, but that’s the same for any device recording live to H.264. Check out this frame grab from a video that was taken in the middle of the night (late ferry) — there’s very little noise to speak of and yet the darks are dark and the brights are bright.

Keep your workflow in mind (and final product too) when shooting — I found that my computer would crash when trying to re-encode a bunch of 1080p/24 under certain circumstances, and of course most web video has 720p/30 as a reasonable maximum.

I stuck with manual focus throughout the review, despite the wimpy focus ring on my 35mm F/2, because the contrast-based autofocus is too slow for any kind of action. It was accurate, sure, but you don’t always have the luxury of a spare five seconds in which for it to work itself out, when it could be as simple as a twist of your hand. I’m sure they’ll be improving that sometime, but probably not any time soon, so if you’re uncomfortable using manual focus for video, I’d stick with the fixed focus pocket cams. They’re still great for a ton of stuff, and they’re a lot cheaper.

The downside of shooting video is pretty obvious: it drains your battery and fills up your card extremely fast. SD cards are cheap these days, but in my newfound love for high-definition video, I’ve already started filling up the hard drive on my laptop. It’ll be a while before I get that under control. One minute of 1080/30p took up about 340MB, and the lower-end VGA/60p video was a little less than half that, by my estimation.

The combination of a cropped sensor and no image stabilization means that your video will probably be pretty shaky. I’d recommend picking up a cheap or portable tripod, or looking into DIY stabilization solutions. If you don’t have a 1080p-capable monitor either, you might want to pick one of those up too. You see? It’s kind of a gateway drug.

You’ll also want to think about getting an external microphone. The on-camera mic is tiny and records in mono; sound quality varies widely and the best thing to do is to just get a small one that perhaps clips onto the hot shoe.

Conclusion

The T2i is a great success and a great value. I know I’m biased as a Canon shooter, but I think it really is the best value on the market right now for an all-purpose imaging device. Stills are excellent, video is fun. As long as you are aware of the shortcomings of digital video in general and DSLR video specifically, this is a great buy for a home video connoisseur. Beyond the improved video and body, it’s the same winning Rebel formula, backed by the same great Canon lens selection. Seriously though, if you want to shoot great video, get a fast prime with a big focus ring. It’ll hurt at first but you’ll thank yourself later.

Product page: Canon T2i DSLR (also known as the 550d or Kiss X4)

“Balancing Cube” robot balances well enough – but is not a cube

Posted: 14 May 2010 05:20 PM PDT


What qualifies as a robot, exactly? This thing appears to be a sort of polyhedron that stands on its tiptoes. Sure, it’s impressive — but “robot?” But that’s neither here nor there. This project, called the “Balancing Cube,” is an experiment in distributed computing, as each of the counterbalancing “modules” is self-contained in its movements, though it has access to the others’ data. The sum of all of the modules’ movements keeps the cube balanced, even with a gentle push. Sure, it’s no BigDog, but it doesn’t buzz like a hornet out of hell, either. (Aw, LittleDog…)

[via IEEE Spectrum and Technabob]

YouTube takes down video taken of Transformers 3 set on public street

Posted: 14 May 2010 04:41 PM PDT


So imagine you head into your office one day, and find that an alley outside your window has been turned into a set for Transformers 3 — there are cameras and booms and you can hear Michael Bay yelling. They’re about to pneumatically fire a car down the street (it’s been Transformer-punched, you presume) so you whip out your iPhone and start recording. Up it goes on YouTube and… down it comes off YouTube after Viacom instructs it to be removed under pretense of “matching third party content.”

I imagine you’d be surprised, especially if the video your friend shot (the friend standing next to you, shooting the exact same video which you see above) didn’t get taken down. I know YouTube has to be on the lookout for copyright violations, but really now.

Here’s a screenshot, in case that one up top goes down too. Does this look like official footage from Transformers 3 — a movie which is still in production, by the way, thus making duplication impossible?

More details and analysis at TechDirt.

In Communist Russia, vending machine dispenses caviar

Posted: 14 May 2010 03:59 PM PDT

If you’re a bigwig in Moscow you may have a caviar machine in your office. New machines in the Moscow’s mayor’s office has one of the machines that doles out sweet, sweet caviar for about 3.50 Euro.

Shown here is a caviar burger, which just sounds gross.

Sadly, according to the Telegraph, the machine is so popular that it is currently broken.

Unsealed iPhone 4G Affidavit: Phone’s Sellers Allegedly Tried To Hide Evidence

Posted: 14 May 2010 03:39 PM PDT

Earlier today, at the insistence of a coalition of media organizations including Wired and Cnet, a judge unsealed an affidavit the iPhone 4G leak case that has uncovered many more details about the case. The documents, which contain the affidavit of Detective Matthew Broad of the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, affirm that it was Apple that sparked the police investigation, and offers a timeline of events leading up to the police raid of Gizmodo editor's Jason Chen's house. We've embedded the full document below, via Cnet. In the documents, it's revealed that Steve Jobs personally contacted Gizmodo about getting the phone back (Gizmodo responded that it wanted Apple to officially state that the phone was theirs). It also reveals that Apple has claimed that Gizmodo damaged the prototype iPhone during the course of taking it apart:


Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (and more!) free for ATI, Nvidia gamers

Posted: 14 May 2010 03:00 PM PDT

Here’s one for the road: if you have an ATI or Nvidia graphics card you can download Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast from Steam for free. Woo~!

Also, bonus for Nvidia gamers: you also get free copies of Peggle Extreme and an 11-level demo of Portal: First Slice.

As an ATI gamer, I am outraged. Unless, of course, there’s some ATI deal that I can’t find, in which case I retract my outrage. Can you retract outrage? Oh, whatever.


The New Browser Wars: Will Ubuntu drop Firefox for Google Chrome?

Posted: 14 May 2010 02:30 PM PDT

Potentially big news in the world of open source software, friends. Apparently Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution, is considering dropping Firefox for Chrome. Well, maybe for Chrome, or maybe for Chromium, the open source project that Chrome is based upon. Therein lies the rub, I do believe.

What’s going on is that Ubergizmo, a fine site, hears that Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) is considering adding Chrome (or Chromium—more on that in a second) to Ubuntu Linux Netbook Remix, the next big release of which is due this autumn. What a terribly constructed sentence. Exactly why they’d replace Firefox with Chrome or Chromium isn’t known, but presumably they feel that the new browser on the block performs better on the average netbook than Firefox. No one would be inaccurate in calling Firefox a bit of a memory hog at times. I wouldn’t touch a netbook with a 10-foot pole—netbooks may also be dying, so this may all be moot sooner rather than later—so I have no idea if that’s true or not, that Chrome or Chromium out-performs Firefox on netbooks. I have no horse in that race, as it were.

Yet there’s confusion as to whether Ubuntu would use Chrome or Chromium. You normally want your free and open-source (FOSS) operating systems to come with FOSS software, something that Chrome is not.

Wikipedia explains the difference between Chrome and Chromium:

Chromium is the name given to the open source project and the browser source code released and maintained by the Chromium Project. It is possible to install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the source code and build it in Windows, Linux or Mac. Google takes this source code and adds on the Google name and logo, an auto-updater system called GoogleUpdate, an opt-in option for users to send Google their usage statistics and crash reports as well as RLZ-tracking which transmits information in encoded form to Google, for example, when and where Chrome has been downloaded.

Sounds to me like you’d want to install Chromium and not Chrome—who wants all that extra Google junk?—but that’s just me. But considering that Ubuntu already ships with proprietary software (Flash, certain drivers, etc.) I don’t know if the Chrome/Chromium split will be any sort of issue for Canonical.

Where this leaves Firefox is anyone’s guess. I mean, it could be that this was just a juicy rumor for a lazy Friday afternoon and nothing more, in which case I would have just wasted several minutes of your time.

Or, it could be a sign that people are starting to feel less, um, “loyalty” to Firefox. Who knows?

Old Man Laser: Officially over the hill

Posted: 14 May 2010 01:34 PM PDT

Amazingly, the laser is 50 years old today. When it was originally discovered, many scientists felt that the shiny red light didn’t have any practical use. Of course now days, lasers are almost everywhere.

From our music, to our telephones and movies, lasers are an integral part of modern technology. While we’re still a ways off from weapons grade laser equipment, we are getting closer and closer every day. So from the DVD player, to the telephone, to the medical laser used to remove the mole, the laser is here to stay. And considering that researchers had no idea what to do with the laser in the first place, we can only imagine what the future holds.

[via CNNTech]

Hands-on with the WiFiSync app

Posted: 14 May 2010 12:37 PM PDT

WiFiSync should have existed a long time ago. Created by Greg Hughes, it uses two programs – desktop app and an iPhone app – to sync your iPhone wirelessly. I was able to sync music, movies, and info quickly and easy, just by pressing “Sync” in iTunes.

The app costs $9.99 on the Cydia store. The Cydia Store appears when you jailbreak your phone and it’s sort of a Bizarro App Store unsanctioned by Apple.

One problem: it does not seem to connect to your photo application so you can’t import photos without connecting the cable. Otherwise, everything iTunes does is mimicked wirelessly.

You can get more info right here but pirates take note:

A warning about pirated copies of Wi-Fi Sync: the app contains a variety of time delayed anti-piracy measures. Steal at your own risk; make sure your iTunes library is backed up. Legit paying customers are not affected by these measures.

Kindle DX failing out of Darden Business School

Posted: 14 May 2010 12:00 PM PDT

According to Ars Technica, Darden Business School students are unhappy with the Amazon Kindle DX in terms of academic usefulness. That’s not to say that they’re down on the DX in general: there’s pretty high support amongst Darden students for the DX as a personal e-reader. It’s just not quite the classroom supplement that Darden administration had hoped it would be.

I don’t think this is entirely surprising: the e-reader is still a pretty novel invention. Heck, desktop computers have been in schools for decades and they’re still poorly utilized! To think that a second-generation device in a brand new market is going to revolutionize higher learning is a bit wishful.

I think we can all agree that the promise of e-readers is exciting: replace a stack of heavy books with a single svelte device. But even the most sophisticated device is still going to have major limitations in comparison to the basic utility of your standard textbook.


PC Gamer’s ‘best PC games of all time’ list is the worst thing you’ll read, possibly ever

Posted: 14 May 2010 11:30 AM PDT


Sorry, apparently Modern Warfare 2 is better than you!

Oh, it’s on. PC Gamer, one of the last gaming magazines out there, has put together what it considers to be the best PC games of all time with the help of its readers. Of all time—let that sink in. OK? Then can you explain to me how in the hell Modern Warfare 2 is the sixth best PC game of all time? This could be the worst list I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the top 10, followed by our thoughts.

1. Half-Life 2
2. Fallout 3
3. EVE Online
4. Deus Ex
5. Team Fortress 2
6. Modern Warfare 2
7. Oblivion
8. Dragon Age
9. Half-Life
10. World of Warcraft

In my opinion, the following games belong nowhere near the top 10: Fallout 3, Modern Warfare 2, Oblivion and Dragon Age. I would have reservations of putting but Half-Life games in the top 10: pick one and that’s it. Dragon Age should be swapped out with either Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights and then I might be OK with a top-10 placement.

Believe me, in our chatroom we discussed this list at length. Games missing from the top 10 that absolutely should be there include: Ultima, Civilization, Lemmings, System Shock 2, Prince of Persia (the original, of course), and maybe X-Wing or one of the related games.

How Civilization didn’t make the top 10 PC games list of all time is simply beyond me. Like, it literally does not make any sense whatsoever.

Civilization doesn’t make the top 10, but Modern Warfare 2 does? Says it all, really.

via No Mutants Allowed

Call of Duty: Black Ops says hi to dedicated servers

Posted: 14 May 2010 11:00 AM PDT


Demonstrating that I can, in fact, apply a simple filter to a photograph

One thing you may have noticed: when it’s a slow news day, even the tiniest stories receive an inordinate amount of attention, particular gaming news. “Mario confirmed to be wearing red cap in Super Mario Galaxy 2!” That sort of thing. Here’s another: there will, in fact, be dedicated servers in the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops. That’s good news for the dozen or so PC gamers who were still considering getting the game after the way Activision treated them last go-round. Us PC gamers have good memories!

Here’s a chilling statement from Treyarch’s Mark Lamia, told to Computer and Video Games:

We do work very hard to reconcile the desire to manipulate and modify those dedicated servers with offering them the persistent experience and benefits that the console system provides.

Yes, the benefits of playing a first-person shooter on a console are numerous: depending on auto-aim (who needs precision in a shooter?) and having to deal with bigoted idiots running their mouths. Lots of fun there.

In all of my hours of Team Fortress 2 on the PC, I have never run into such classless jerks. Knock on wood, I suppose.

Google’s Nexus One Store Is Going Out Of Business

Posted: 14 May 2010 10:38 AM PDT

When Google launched its Nexus One Android phone, it also launched alongside it an online phone store where the Nexus One and future Android phones would be for sale. It was a slightly disruptive play to de-link the purchase of a phone from an actual carrier. The idea was, you could pick your phone, pick your plan, and mix and match. Well, it didn't turn out that way. Carriers don't like to give up control. In fact, Verizon decided not to sell the Nexus One at all, and instead opt for its own more Incredible Android phone. The phone store turned out to be a flop, and Google just announced that it will be closing up shop online:


It’s official: Android 2.1 now available for the Sprint Samsung Moment

Posted: 14 May 2010 10:29 AM PDT

Well, that was one wild journey. After a dozen or so false starts and a seemingly endless gaggle of leaked memos making promises that couldn’t be kept, Android 2.1 is now officially (really!) available for the Sprint Samsung Moment. Still no word on the update for the Sprint Hero. You hear that sound? Thats the sound of a million Hero owners collectively grinding their teeth.

The good news for Moment owners doesn’t come without caveats, though.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Asus claims 100 percent recyclable laptops (that are made of bamboo)

Posted: 14 May 2010 10:10 AM PDT

What do you do with a laptop when you’re done with it? That’s an actual question being that the only laptop I owned before my current old man MacBook is sitting in the closet, broken beyond repair. Now, if I had one of these new Asus laptops, I could, somehow, recycle them. Helping the Earth, one laptop at a time.

Right, so the laptops are made of bamboo. No, that’s not a new gimmick—I could have sworn I remember reading about bamboo laptops a few years ago—but that’s what that was, nothing more than a gimmick. This time, the entire chassis is made of the exotic wood.

The laptops are of the Ux3 series—basically a bambo-ified version of the Ux5. You’re looking at an Intel Core i5 450M, Nvidia 310M, a couple of USB 3.0 ports, 2GB of RAM (eh…), and a 500GB hard drive.

And, when you’re all done with it, you can recycle it. Now, exactly where you’d have to take this thing to recycle it, no idea. Recycling to me is simply a bag filled with bottles that you have to separate from the other doodads. Then the nice man takes it away.

You’re looking at around $1,300, which is more or less what I spent putting together a desktop. Wild!

TiVo Responds To Court’s Decision To Revisit Patent Case As Stock Plummets

Posted: 14 May 2010 09:46 AM PDT

TiVo is having a very rough morning. A federal appeals court stated today that it will revisit a digital-video recorder patent dispute between TiVo and both Dish Network and EchoStar. TiVo has sued the companies back in 2004 over its patented DVR technology back when the two were still a single company. They won the suit, but the court has now decided to reconsider its verdict, which is a bit of a cold shower for the company. Today's decision pushed TiVo shares down as much as 36 percent.


Use Linux to water your lawn

Posted: 14 May 2010 09:00 AM PDT


So you bought the EasyBloom to take precise soil moisture readings. You have a spreadsheet plotting plant growth over time. But you’re still schelpping out to water the lawn like all your Luddite neighbors. Where’s your sense of pride? You’re a geek! You should be using technology to make your life better. Here, we’ll help get you started with this Instructable on using Linux to water your lawn!

What more do you want? It’s the weekend. If you want to horse around with manually watering your lawn, by all means do so. I’m not going to stop you.

Modern Warfare 2’s Resurgence Pack: $15 for 3 new maps

Posted: 14 May 2010 08:30 AM PDT

Still playing Modern Warfare 2 online? Better you than me! In any event, it has now been confirmed that the next pack, named the Resurgence Pack, will be released on June 3. It will contain five maps…

But only three of those maps are new—”Vacant” and “Strike,” maps from the old game, are included in the pack.

You’re looking at $15 (well, 1,200 Microsoft points!) for the pack. So if you’ve bought the two packs, that means you’ve shelled out $30 for a couple of maps. Is that insane to anyone else? Remember the good old days when you could download mods and custom maps for free, created by some guy in his free time?

Where has the romanticism in gaming gone?


Does your MacBook need a colorful keyboard?

Posted: 14 May 2010 08:00 AM PDT

“Oh, neat.” Thus spoke Nicholas Deleon when he saw these MacBook keyboard decals, and it was Good.

So yeah, it’s a vinyl decal that you affix to your MacBook keyboard to give it a little bit of personality. At some point it became fashionable to put stickers all over the back of your laptop, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be just as fashionable to have fancy keyboards.

There’s several designs, so maybe you’ll find something that matches your good humor? Humor in the Ancient Greek sense, of course.

via technabob

Buy Pepper’s swinging desk sculpture from ThinkGeek

Posted: 14 May 2010 07:30 AM PDT

ThinkGeek is just awesome. Apparently the staff screened Iron Man 2 with the goal of seeking out cool gadgets they can offer geeks like us. Well they managed to find Pepper Potts’ swinging desk thing. I’m sure it will probably end up annoying you as much as it did Tony Stark but it’s still awesome. $239 and available now.
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