Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"At 7′6″, Yao Ming is one of the tallest Olympians, one of the most revered basketball players across the world, and we’re willing to bet, were there an Olympic competition for aerial photography, he’d score heads above the rest. Puns aside, getting a camera up into the air is no small (or short) feat. We’re not all tall like Yao Ming, and we don’t always have access to a kite or a plane… Plus, tripods and professional monopods are expensive and weigh about a gajillion pounds. So, we made our own Photojojo Sky-Cam, just for you and just in time for your own photography Olympics."

First thought after reading this (maybe even before reading this) - honestly, why would anyone need this? But even assuming there are opportunities that people want to photograph in this manner, why not just get a monopod? They can be cheap, are extendable and properly built so there is no chance you would drop your camera after a potentially poor DIY job. Finally, Step 6 was the real disappointment for me - I was expecting some clever way of engaging the camera trigger than just using the built in timer. Sorry guys, I am just not sold on this DIY guide.

"Harsh, unflattering flash got you down? Grab an old roll of film and make it all better. Follow Flickr user natuurplaat’s lead, and turn an old film canister into a flash diffuser! A few strategic cuts make it easy to slip the canister onto your pop-up flash, and voila! Soft, beautiful lighting. Keep reading and we’ll show you how to make your very own little piece of genius."

The steps to get this done are not that hard really, in fact it is downright easy. But of course, you are then being forced to leave the camera's built-in flash in the extended position. I personally still prefer my external flash which has a built in diffuser. But before putting in that much money, you may want to try this trick to see if you even like the effect that you'll get.

"Solid state disks (SSDs) are a flash-based memory storage device that carries an insane price premium in the current market. They will usually cost $600 to $1,000 as an upgrade from the manufacturer or computer parts store, making them outside the price range of many consumers. A new cheaper (slightly slower) option is available thanks to low-cost, high-capacity flash cards. This option is using a cheap compact flash to SATA adapter, and purchasing a moderately fast memory card that would fill your storage needs. For this review I aimed to keep the price less than $100 just to show how affordable this option could be."

This article is absolutely fascinating. I went in expecting to simply find out about how to make my own SSD but I found out so much more. I was clearly under the wrong impression that all SSDs would out-perform regular disc based hard drives. Furthermore, in your DIY SSD solution, the speed of your solution is only as fast as the slowest component; so even if you invest in a high speed CF card, the SATA interface adapter needs to be a high performance device as well. Finally, I found out that when buying a notebook with an SSD solution, paying the high premium doesn't necessarily buy you high performance. I still confident I would go for an SSD but I think I will be better prepared now.