what photography related item did you buy this week?

[Erich_H]

Nope... My girlfriend is the boss of me and never say I didn't say it because i can't take any more brown eyes

I will do a test tomorrow, I can't baby sit the program do write a 256Gb storage twice at 76 MB/s top speed.

Leave it over night on your backup PC!

Babysitting H2testw when testing my fake 1 TB USB sticks would have given me even more hairloss than I have already...

And you know that watching the computer do something makes it take a lot longer!

 

[alex66]

Ordered a new Motherboard, CPU and RAM, 10th gen bottom of the range i5 which will be plenty good enough and a decent jump on the Haswell in thee machine now. The board has 20gig USB 2x2 so should hopefully be future proof for a good time. The current has lasted me 6 years, so hoping for 5 out of this, The GTX 750 will carry on being used till cards come down to a reasonable price. I did think of going with a Ryzen chip but it was going to be £60-80 more and not needed.

 

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

Leave it over night on your backup PC!

Babysitting H2testw when testing my fake 1 TB USB sticks would have given me even more hairloss than I have already...

And you know that watching the computer do something makes it take a lot longer!

Yes, that's why famously Einstein proved space time applies only to PCs.... That's why he was a Mac user
My only PC is my laptop, I'm going to do edits tomorrow so I have plenty of time to baby sit it. I don't trust doing tests overnight, I learned that lessons the hard way with no control and good log of events in case of issues do show up.

 

[Erich_H]

Yes, that's why famously Einstein proved space time applies only to PCs.... That's why he was a Mac user
My only PC is my laptop, I'm going to do edits tomorrow so I have plenty of time to baby sit it. I don't trust doing tests overnight, I learned that lessons the hard way with no control and good log of events in case of issues do show up.

H2testw will give you a test log as a text file.

My relative theory is that Einstein's hair looked like it did just because he was a Mac user. Like he was trying to pull it all out.

 

[alex66]

H2testw will give you a test log as a text file.

I use that its very good even if tests take a good while.

 

[Erich_H]

I use that its very good even if tests take a good while.

It just works. There's no shortcut in testing these things...

 

[agentlossing]

Bought a 28mm manual prime for Pentax K.

 

[John M Flores]

I've been itching to get a Ricoh GR but I'm traveling so little during the pandemic that I really can't justify it. Last year, I bought stuff that isn't getting used much. But I just bought Apurture LED lights. Plan on shooting more video this year and I can use them to up my Zoom game.

 

[MiguelATF]

This is my 2nd Lumix 20mm pancake. The first was v.1 and lived more or less full time first on my old GM5, and then on the GM1 which replaced it. Then both the camera and the lens were gifted to a fellow photographer... and I found myself missing the lens. This new version is the v.2 iteration - and I suspect it may wind up 'living' on my Pen F for the foreseeable future ---

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[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

Leave it over night on your backup PC!

Babysitting H2testw when testing my fake 1 TB USB sticks would have given me even more hairloss than I have already...

And you know that watching the computer do something makes it take a lot longer!

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

 

[jhawk1000]

I've been itching to get a Ricoh GR but I'm traveling so little during the pandemic that I really can't justify it. Last year, I bought stuff that isn't getting used much. But I just bought Apurture LED lights. Plan on shooting more video this year and I can use them to up my Zoom game.

My wife loves the Aputure LED lights for the light painting of cars.

 

[Erich_H]

View attachment 870809

View attachment 870816

This test I would rely upon. Good buy. At least these two.

 

[Angus Gibbins]

Does this count?

I've had a Nokia 9 PureView for the past 18 months. I've liked it but haven't loved it. Battery life's getting worse and the charging port's becoming flakey. I called around to get quotes on a repair, one place said 8 weeks IF they could get parts (but won't know until they've ordered them after I've paid a deposit) and two other places laughed at me, so decided I was due for an upgrade.

Personally I don't care about phones or consumer tech (outside cameras) but camera reviewers love smart phone cameras, so it counts.

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[John King]

When my phone kept running out of memory due to Google updates of apps I never use, and cannot remove, I bought a new one last year. Old phone was 5.5 y.o., a ZTE T83. Still works excellently as a phone.

My new phone is a ZTE T86 (Telstra Tough Max 3). Battery lasts 6-7 days. It's IP68 rated, has fabulous reception, and is all but indestructible. Even the camera is quite good.

Pretty fast WiFi at around ~500 Mbps.

Fortunately, ZTE learned their lesson, and it comes with the bare minimum of Google bloatware apps.

It just upgraded from Android 9.x to 10.x with no particular issues.

 

[Angus Gibbins]

Fortunately, ZTE learned their lesson, and it comes with the bare minimum of Google bloatware apps.

Got I hate Android bloatware. That's why I went with a Pixel.

Nokias are part of the Android One program, which is good in theory, it's basically pure Android, no bloat, but they're still slow with OS updates. There's still no Nokia phones on the market that are running Android 11, and the Nokia 9 replacement has been delayed until later this year (if it comes at all, Light were making the camera before they exited the smart phone market).

The Android One website also shows really old phones, so I'm guessing in typical Google fashion it's been abandonned, like the Nexus and Google Play Edition programs they came before it.

 

[John King]

@Angus Gibbins The ZTE T86 comes with a 256GB micro-SD slot + 64GB internal. Something to spend several years worth of accumulated gift cards on!

Does Google still not provide an external memory slot, Angus? Or have they finally decided to allow users to choose how to use their own phones ...

Most third party s/w will happily run from the card these days.

 

[Angus Gibbins]

Does Google still not provide an external memory slot, Angus?

Don't know, don't care. I'm using >50GB so the 128GB internal memory is more than enough for me.

 

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

Got I hate Android bloatware. That's why I went with a Pixel.

Nokias are part of the Android One program, which is good in theory, it's basically pure Android, no bloat, but they're still slow with OS updates. There's still no Nokia phones on the market that are running Android 11, and the Nokia 9 replacement has been delayed until later this year (if it comes at all, Light were making the camera before they exited the smart phone market).

The Android One website also shows really old phones, so I'm guessing in typical Google fashion it's been abandonned, like the Nexus and Google Play Edition programs they came before it.

It's pretty much the same with hardware as well ... it's like Google got hit by amnesia after they said: Don't be evil

 

[Angus Gibbins]

It's pretty much the same with hardware as well ... it's like Google got hit by amnesia after they said: Don't be evil

What gives me the shits is when they replace a perfectly good product with an inferior product.

I was happily using Google Play Music for years, which they replaced with YouTube Music last year.

This is fine, however YouTube Music has a few problems. Uploaded music and music added from the YouTube Music library are completely segregated with no way of combining them in a single view.

I can live with that though, but what is far and away more annoying than anything else, is when you're casting to ChromeCast or Google Home speakers (I have a few Google Home Maxes setup in my house which I bought before the migration to YouTube Music, they were great for cranking music through during the first COVID lockdown), YouTube Music puts a 2-3 second gap between songs which is extremely jarring. I listen to music in albums, and the albums I listen to are written to be listened to as a full, complete album and not a selection of tracks. Google Play Music didn't do this, so it's a perfectly feasible problem to solve.

It's also 2021 FFS. There's no excuse for having a music player that puts a gap between songs.

Also, don't get me started on Google Home/Nest. Home/Nest feels like a product that Google so they can say they're in the same market as Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit. There's so many problems with it it's not funny.

Also don't get me started about how limited Google Gsuite (now Workspace) Google Accounts compared to free Google Account. I ended up ditching G Suite for my email last year, got a $20 a year mailbox from my domain provider and connected it to a free Gmail account using their POP/SMTP connectors. It's a bit messy, but it works and it's not arbitrarily limited.

 

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

What gives me the shits is when they replace a perfectly good product with an inferior product.

I was happily using Google Play Music for years, which they replaced with YouTube Music last year.

This is fine, however YouTube Music has a few problems. Uploaded music and music added from the YouTube Music library are completely segregated with no way of combining them in a single view.

I can live with that though, but what is far and away more annoying than anything else, is when you're casting to ChromeCast or Google Home speakers (I have a few Google Home Maxes setup in my house which I bought before the migration to YouTube Music, they were great for cranking music through during the first COVID lockdown), YouTube Music puts a 2-3 second gap between songs which is extremely jarring. I listen to music in albums, and the albums I listen to are written to be listened to as a full, complete album and not a selection of tracks. Google Play Music didn't do this, so it's a perfectly feasible problem to solve.

It's also 2021 FFS. There's no excuse for having a music player that puts a gap between songs.

Also, don't get me started on Google Home/Nest. Home/Nest feels like a product that Google so they can say they're in the same market as Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit. There's so many problems with it it's not funny.

Also don't get me started about how limited Google Gsuite (now Workspace) Google Accounts compared to free Google Account. I ended up ditching G Suite for my email last year, got a $20 a year mailbox from my domain provider and connected it to a free Gmail account using their POP/SMTP connectors. It's a bit messy, but it works and it's not arbitrarily limited.

I feel your pain, I had/still have plenty of problems with Google myself ... not as many as Microsoft but I will keep that bunny slaughter for when I'm about to go nu-chi-lar on the next Windows update

Funny enough right now I am in the market for a new phone because my old Samsung Note 8 got smashed last September (my the client I used to work for) and I lived with a gaping hole in the screen but yesterday got another shard jumping out of the phone and now it's sharp as hell. I would love to get another Samsung Note but Samsung decided to kill that line permanently and slap the new S21 series with a pen in an external case that you need to buy both together ... and I still hate the geniuses who came up with slapping a black hole in the middle of your screen and call it a technological improvement, I hate all the notched phones that have come so far ... but alas I have no choice but to get one because I dislike rapid aging phones and medium performance that lasts 6-12 months after a few updates. And blessed be Google for the genius move to put a mid-range chip in their new Pixel 5 that performers at best with the cheaper Pixel 4a and has features that are basically downgrade compared to Pixel 4 and 4 XL or that even the cheaper 4a has ... all your for the mindboggling price of 600 £ ... no thanks.

And it came to this, for as much as I dislike Apple and their arrogant attitude and shady lockdown practices ... to end up think of buying an iPhone 12.