Airlines

I have been absent for a while, for a multitude of reasons, but business is the main one. I shall now also be posting first and reviews of airlines and seats etc. now.

Please do check out my (somewhat empty) gallery of photos that I have taken in Libya the tab is at the top of the page.

Study Assist

Please feel free to check out these links, they have been set up by myself and a couple of friends to provide assistance with studies:
http://www.youtube.com/user/StudyAssist
http://studyassist.blogspot.com/


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iOS 5 Review

Last week there was a big stir-up about the release of the imminent iOS 5 software for apple products. Apple had advertised the software for some months on its website saying that it was "Coming This Fall" and finally the software was released on the 12th of October at around 6:00pm UK time along with the iPhone 4S. However, since the software had been anticipated for such a long time, there was huge demand for it and the apple servers seemingly could not cope with the demand, and some people were known to have had to try 30 times before they could update their software. I managed to download it pretty quickly and my iPad 2 was completely updated in under 30 mins.
The software it self is quite an improvement to the older iOS 4 and there are many new features, however I personally am not sure if it really has made that much of a difference...

Notification Centre
The notification centre is a big improvement from the previous way of iOS displaying notifications. It used to be that whilst you were watching an action film or in the middle of the last level of an app, a blue box would appear in the middle of the screen and everything would be paused. However now, a very discreet white bar appears in the top of the screen, and disappears after a couple of seconds. In addition, all of your notifications, be they email, calendar, reminders, messages etc. are all stored in the "notification centre" at the top of the screen. To access this, you swipe down from the top of your device, much like on android systems.

iMessage

To rival Blackberry's "BBM", Apple has introduced "iMessage". It is an instant messaging system across all iOS 5 devices which can be accessed from WiFi or 3G. An advantage is that it is free, and as long as your connected to a WiFi network, you don't have to pay internet charges. Across iMessage, you can send messages, photos and videos. Whats more is that you can set up group chats so that you can have a group conversation with all your friends who have iOS 5 devices. Another feature similair to BBM is that it tells you when someone is composing a message, and when your message has been sent. I frequently use iMessage now that I'm on iOS 5 and personally find it very useful.

Newsstand

Newsstand is one of the great improvements wih iOS 5, primarily for iPad users. iBooks already was a great reading app, where you could download many different book and read them at your leisure. However Newsstand is even greater, it has now brought newspapers and magazines to you in a whole different, interactive way. Since updating to iOS 5, I have downloaded a couple of newspapers and magazines, and I have been pleasantly surprised. When you want to download a newspaper or magazine, you go to a special branch of the app store where you can see all of the different publications for newsstand. Recently I have downloaded The Guardian and National Geographic Magazine. I have been most surprised by the fact that when downloading The Guardian it notified me that I have 78 free full issues remaining! This was a real bonus, as I expected to have to pay monumental amounts for it. The National Geographic Magazine is different however, all you get for free is the sampler issue which highlights the quality of the new way of reading the National Geographic Magazine. Reading magazines and newspapers is a lot more interactive, and intuitive with lots more things to tap, rotate, enlarge etc. 

Safari

The final "major" improvement that has caught my attention is the "reading list" in safari. This is a way of viewing webpages, that is much easier than before. When you want to read a webpage or save it for later, you can add it to your "reading list". This means that you can read it without it being full of advertisements and other clutter... very useful.

In conclusion, I think that although there are many aspects of iOS that have improved, and features have been added, I am not fully convinced that it has really affected me that much. I think its main reason was to compete with other OS's such as android, since these already had many of the features that apple has just added.

Grado sr60/80i

After reading a lot about the famous Grado headphones. I went out last week to try out a pair of Grado sr60i's at our local hifi shop in The Hague. I had heard a lot about these headphones leaking immense amounts of sound and needing a portable amplifier to power them. However, I plugged the pair that we were allowed to try into my personal mp3 player and compared the sound to that of a cd player with amplifier (Naim uniti) and there was no massive difference in sound quality. I do have to admit that there was a fair amount of sound leakage from the open headphones, but this was nothing compared to some reviews on the Internet. The sound quality on the other hand, was absolutely amazing. Better than many headphones that I had tried out before.  I am now seriously considering buying a pair of Grado sr80i's hoping for even more quality than the bottom-of-the-range sr60i's, unless anyone has any better suggestions for casual indoor listening. And amazing quality does not mean amazingly high price, at around £100 they are an absolute steal!

Cycled Circumnavigation

Me and a friend have taken inspiration fro Mark Beaumont, and will be attempting to cycle around the world in the break between school and university. We hope to actually be able to do it, and therefore we would be grateful if you guys would support us as much as you can. The website is still in the early stages, however we hope to periodically update it, and provide information about the trip and it's planning... The website is www.cycledcircumnavigation.blogspot.com

Etymotic mc5 Review

I'm sure many of you travel on the train quite often, or are also frequent flyers like I am. If you are, I am sure you will have come across many expensive, heavy and impractical noise isolating/canceling headphones. However, there are also lightweight, cost-effective earphones, such as the Etymotic mc5's which I picked up for £59 at Heathrow a couple of weeks ago.
At first I was rather dubious, wondering what such an exceptional brand could offer for such a low price (since most good noise isolating headphones are well over £100) . The box itself seems very high-quality at first-glance, and really stands up to the high-quality, refined Etymotic reputation. 

Inside the box lie the earphones, the carrier-pouch, the filter-removal tool, and the extra earpieces. The earphones feel very high-quality, since they are made of polished aluminium, as oppose to rubber or plastic, and are available in black, blue, red and green. The earphones are accompanied by four different earpieces, two three-flange earpieces, one pair of foam earpieces and a set of standard earpieces. All of these are part of the ACCU-fit assortment of earpieces. There is also a filter removal tool, and two extra filters, the filters act as a barrier to stop ear-wax or other dirt getting in to the speaker. 

When first put in the ear, many people will find them extremely uncomfortable, as I did, however after one or two days, you will get used to the way to insert them, and will really appreciate the amazing sound quality that these headphones boast. The reason for the uncomfortable feeling when inserting them for the first time is partly due to the fact that these earphones are products of years of research, and the best way to isolate noise is to have the speaker inserted relatively far into the ear. As a result of this research, Etymotic have managed to achieve up to 36dB-42dB of noise isolation, equivalent to 98% ! This is the highest amount of noise-cancelling of any in-ear-monitor on the market! You may think that in order to achieve such high isolation figures, the sound quality must have been sacrificed, however, the earphones are extremely accurate, and have a frequency response of  20Hz-15kHz. The earphones have a 4ft long kevlar-reinforced cable. The earphones can also be paired with the custom-fit ear-tips which you can have custom-produced for you, and will be more comfortable, and extremely noise-isolating, these come at the price of £89. 

All in all, the Etymotic mc5's are a pair of very good value, high-fidelity, noise isolating earphone. They are ideal for someone who flies frequently, takes the train often, or just for someone who likes to listen to their music, in high-quality, without all the background noise. They are great earphones that you can now pick up from around £55 on-line form somewhere like Amazon.

More Reviews To Come

As you may have realised, I have not posted something in quite a while. This is solely because important external exams crept in the way, however, now that I am finished with all of my exams, you can expect to see many more reviews and tutorials being posted.

Sony Alpha a230 review

The Sony A230 is an entry level DSLR from Sony. All in all, it is a very good camera, considering its relatively low price. The camera shoots 10.2 megapixel images which can be displayed on its 2.7 inch LCD screen. It has an ISO range of 100-3200, a built in anti-shake system, eye-start auto-focus and Dynamic Range Optimizer. The camera is slightly cheaper than the A330 model, which features Live View and a tilting LCD screen, and is much cheaper than the 14 megapixel A380. If you buy it with a decent lens, the camera will probably set you back about $450.

The Sony A230 really excels is in its ease of use. Most of the controls and features are fairly self-explanatory and easy to use. The intelligent auto mode seems to produce good looking results, and the manual settings are easy to change. Unfortunately there aren’t enough external buttons, which means you can expect to do a fair amount of navigating through menus with the camera’s D-pad. The A230 is fairly chunky, and is quite heavy. It feels well built and robust, although some of the panels are a bit plasticy. It uses a special rechargeable Sony battery, which can be annoying. The camera has an unusual grip which many people do not like. I have no problems with the grip, however, and find it to be rather well designed in fact. The view finder is very small, meaning it can be quite hard to use the manual focus properly. The LCD is good enough; having reasonable outside visibility but still reflecting a fair amount of light. The Steady Shot feature on the Sony A230 seems to work fairly well when shooting at lower exposures. The camera also comes with numerous scene shooting modes, like landscape and portrait, which are helpful for novices no doubt. The camera has no internal memory, but instead an SD card slot. Overall, while it does have some annoying features, the Sony A230 is fairly easy to use.

The Sony also has very competitive image quality. The images are sharp and vibrant, and the colors tend to come out very well. Noise isn’t a big problem, although you can expect to see some when shooting with the highest ISO settings. The camera shoots in standard or fine JPEG or in RAW. It handles night photography well, allowing you to set shutter speed up to 30 seconds, or even longer with bulb mode. The anti-shake feature works really well, allowing you to shoot sharp images at relatively long shutter speeds.

The Sony A230 is a very good camera. While the lack of external buttons can get annoying from time to time, it is generally very easy to use, and will deliver very high quality images without you having to mess around with the settings too much. As an entry level DSLR, the Sony A230 is one of the best options out there, especially because you can pick one up for a very reasonable price from Amazon or another online retailer nowadays.

Review courtesy of Charlie Nourse on http://hubpages.com/hub/Sony-Alpha-230-A230-camera-review

Nikon D40 Review

Nikon D40

The Nikon D40 is essentially a very good and comprehensive entry-level digital SLR to use. The D40 has many of the functions you need and although it is not used any more, it is widely available for a low price (£180-£200) on the second-hand market.The images are captured on its 3008x2000 (6.0 megapixel) CCD sensor. It has a sensitivity range of 200-1600, and you can boost it up to 3200 in the on screen menu. Considering the lower resolution I find the images of very high quality. The D40 does not support "sensor cleaning" which is a shame, because it is quite common to get small specs of dust on the sensor when changing lenses, which results in black smudges on the final images which then have to be photoshopped. It shoots in 5 different qualities, NEF(RAW), JPEG BASIC, JPEG NORMAL, JPEG FINE and NEF(RAW)+JPEG BASIC, shooting in RAW allows the photographer alot more freedom with editing when one gets back to the computer. The maximum shutter speed is 1/4000s which   is great for capturing action, and high light-intensity shots. You can put the shutter speed right down to 30s which is good for capturing light trails and the likes. There is also the bulb mode, in which you can leave the shutter open for as long as you choose to, but for this you really need a remote, and there are none (yet) compatible with the D40. The continuous drive mode allows you to take pictures at 2.5fps which is also great for action shots. The metering can be set to spot, center-weighted and 3D matrix metering II; which is great for capturing macro shots.

Stunning low-light image I captured with the D40

What the Nikon D40 really stands out in is its ease of use. The D40 has an extremely well developed user interface, and you dont really need any prior knowledge to take pictures with it. The aperture and shutter priority modes are also very easy to use by using the wheel located at the top right of the camera. There are many different scene options as well such as night portrait and macro which are really helpful for specific shoots.

Image courtesy of Ken Rockwell

Image courtesy of PhotoReview

The D40 is also extremely light compared to its competitors, this makes it an easy camera to take with you on short day trips or even long holidays. It weighs 522g (including the lithium ion battery).

Another area in which it excels is its super bright and clear lcd screen. The screen measures 2.5" and is extremely bright and clear, perfect for examining your images right after taking them. You may think that this bright screen would sacrifice battery life, but no! On one charge you can take an excess of 1000 images ! this makes it easier to travel around, not having to hassle with spare batteries.

The Nikon D40 is compatible with all nikon AF-S and AF-I lenses which makes it great for using with a wide range of focal lengths.

In conclusion, I find the D40 an excellent camera, even if it hasnt got high resolution or "live-view", it still takes breathtaking images, and it is definitely a good option to look into when investing in the amateur SLR market.
If are considering buying a D40, the best place to look would be Amazon

Starter Kit

Many of you will want to get in to amateur photography, although you do not know what kit to start off with. This guide should get you on the right lines to become a great amateur photographer.

• Cameras: This is the item you will need first: a digital SLR. The best ones to start off with are the low-mid range SLRs which are easy to use, but still have most of the functions an amateur photographer would need. A couple of cameras I find very good to start off with are these: Nikon D40, Nikon D3100, Nikon D3000, Canon 500D, Canon 1000D, Canon 450D, Pentax K100D, Pentax K200D, Sony alpha a330 and  the Sony alpha a230. These cameras are all very good, easy to use, have a fair amount of megapixels and are not at all expensive. Ease of use and megapixels is what most people look at when they are buying a camera, but there is more to it, the camera needs many adjustable settings to provide the optimum image quality. High sensitivity is also a great function for shooting in low-light, you will want something as high as 6400 or even 12800. Overall these cameras excel in most of these areas and are a great starting point for an amateur photographer. Below there are some pictures of some of he cameras I have listed.

• Lenses and filters: Good lenses are a must have for amateur photography, and so are filters. The first lens you'll want is the standard 18-55mm kit lens, this lens comes with almost all digital SLR's in a kit and is a definite must have. The 18-55mm can be used almost anywhere and it has a great range; 18mm is a wide angle focal length which makes it a universal lens for most conditions. The aperture on these lenses is usually 3.5-5.6, this is quite a wide aperture, and is useful for shooting in low light. The second lens you will want to have is a telephoto zoom lens such as a 55-200mm or a 70-300mm. The latter is a great zoom lens but you also sacrifice wide aperture for such a long focal length making it almost useless in low light. The 55-200mm is a great addition to the 18-55mm, and it is manufactured by most big brands. It is usually quite small and versatile unlike the 70-300mm so it is good to take with you in trips as your second lens. Generally a 55-200mm will set you back around £120 for a Nikon or Canon, and around £80 for a Tamron. The last lens you would want as an amateur could possibly be a wide-angle or a macro lens, depending on which area you specialize most in, if you like taking pictures of the family, or on holiday, a wide angle is the way to go. I would recommend a 10-24mm or a 12-24mm. The one problem with wide-angles is that they are quite pricey, a Nikon 10-24mm will set you back at least £600, which for an amateur like me, is above my budget. Macro lenses come in many different focal lengths and usually aren't cheap either, all though one I can recommend is the Tamron 90mm macro lens, which will typically set you back around £290. Most lenses now also come with the option of VR or Image stabilizer, which is an internal mechanism which significantly reduces shake and vibrations. Filters are also a must-have, and there are 3 which I find most useful, these are : UV filter (This will prevent you from getting those annoying sun spots/glares on your images) Polarizing filter (This usually reduces reflections, and darkens very bright areas on your images) Neutral Density filter (This is absorbs colours and makes the image rather flat , which may sound bad but is great for taking long exposure waterfalls or waves). Filters are generally quite cheap with brands like Massa coming in at the bottom of the price range (£2-£3) and brands like B+W and Hoya topping the spectrum (£20-£100).

• Tripod: A tripod is an absolute essential if you will be shooting in low light quite often, as a flash will simply not do. A good tripod should be light-weight, compact and be very stable. Upmarket tripods are generally sold without the head, but reasonably priced ones come with an included removable head. A good brand of tripod is Manfrotto, they sell high end tripods for amateurs and professionals. The standard model (The "Modo") starts at around £40. You may also consider investing into a Gorillapod which is a tripod with many different ways of positioning it, because of the bendable legs, allowing you to coil it around pipes and ledges. The Gorillapod SLR starts at around £25.
• Camera Bag: If you will be embarking on photography trips, or if you are just going on holiday, you wont want to be carrying your lenses, camera, tripod etc. just like that; you will want to have them stowed away in a rucksack or a case. Typically you will be carrying 2 lenses, a camera, maybe a tripod and some SD cards and filters, A small rucksack will do just fine for this. I would recommend something like the Lowepro Slingshot which has space for all of your needs. If you are looking for something smaller, which can carry just your camera, I would recommend a CaseLogic slrc200.
• Memory cards: As oppose to a compact camera, an SLR takes much higher quality pictures, and therefore needs alot more space to store them. To begin with, something like 2 or 4GB should do fine, but as you start to develop your skills and maybe start to experiment with RAW shooting, you will want to be looking at 8,16 or even 32GB cards. 2-4GB cards usually cost around £5 or £6, and the larger ones can get up to prices of £60 or £70.
• Of course, the best place to buy any of the kit that I have mentioned would obviously be Amazon.

Welcome

Hello, My name is David Milne, and welcome to the David Milne Reviews Blog,
I have set up this Blog to provide general information to others about amateur photography, and also reviews about other electronic products.
This Blog will provide reviews, tutorials and examples of some of my photos. 
Make sure you tell as many of your friends as you can about this blog.