Review: Sony RX100 II (it's great, but has some significant faults)

Introduction

Just to state this up front.....This review is based on my real world shooting experiences with the Sony RX100 II.  I'm not a camera technician nor do I have a testing setup, so I can't write about the camera's detailed technical capabilities even if I wanted to.   There are websites that do that much better than I could, like this link to the RX100 II review on DPReview.com.

Instead, I do what I can...which is to write about my impressions of how this camera handles for its intended use, my perception of the picture quality, how easy/hard the features are to use, its general user interface, what I like about it, and what I dislike about it.

The last part of that sentence is key.  There are definitely things that I love about this camera, but there are also some things about it that are quite silly and hopefully they'll be corrected with firmware updates from Sony that will allow the user to turn certain key features (like high ISO noise reduction) on/off and set limits to others.

And therefore...I have a like/dislike relationship with the Sony RX100 II.  I love the compact size, photo quality, and configurability....but I dislike the way some of the features have been implemented and some of the decisions the camera makes while shooting.

To put this camera in perspective and understand where it fits into the camera market and how it came to life, you might be interested in this link to a great interview on the ImagingResource.com with the Sony executives responsible for their latest spree of outstanding and ground breaking cameras....of which the RX100 II is one.  The interview offers many interesting insights.

The main point of the article is that Sony is hell-bent on designing and producing cameras that fill the niches in the camera market that photographers want filled that other manufactures are not satisfying.  Paraphrased another way, the two camera kingpins (Nikon and Canon) have largely been producing the same cameras for many years with minor iterations each few years.  There has been (generally speaking) a lack of true innovation from Nikon and Canon.  In my opinion, they haven't kept up with what people want and are just following each other.  Others might feel differently....

Background

I'm a long time Canon shooter.  I own multiple Canon compacts, DSLR's, lenses, accessories, etc.....so I have a big investment in that brand.  So for me to take the leap and switch to a new camera brand and a whole new pile of accessories, batteries, etc....something had to change with not only my photography needs, but perhaps with Canon as well.

So what changed with Canon?  After many years in the early 2000's of releasing powerful innovative cameras with features that their users really wanted, Canon stagnated.  Since the mid 2000's, they've been putting out minor iterations of basically the same cameras over and over again.  When they did make advancements in things like the movie capabilities on their DSLR cameras, you needed to buy new lenses (with stepping motors) to truly take advantage of it.  Come on....give me a break....please.

My general opinion is that there was a major opportunity in the camera market for another manufacturer other than the big two to swoop in and capitalize on the stagnation.  That company is Sony.  Others like Panasonic and FujiFilm have also stepped in to share the glory...

Sony has released a long string of innovative camera devices in the last few years including (quoted from the above article) "...the RX1, RX1R, RX100 and RX100 II compacts, the smartphone-extending QX series (which are wildly successful, just not so much among the dedicated photo community), the full-frame A7 and A7R mirror less cameras".  So Sony has been hard at work!

That's enough about Canon and what I think their problems are...

So what changed with my photography needs?  First and foremost, I don't want to haul around DSLR cameras and lenses anymore for my general photography needs.  When I got back into photography ten years ago, DSLR's and their lenses offered the primary route to the highest quality photos, which is one of my main goals.  If I'm going to seriously pursue photography as a hobby then I want to take the highest quality photos on the best equipment that I can afford.  That's just the way I am.  The best quality photos, taken with fast and flexible cameras, with fast accurate auto focus, etc.  That's how I ended up firmly in the DSLR world.

But then things changed....After many years of going on every family event, weekend outing and vacation with a backpack full of camera gear, I suddenly just got tired of doing it.  I still wanted the best quality but I didn't want to carry it around anymore.  That led me to purchase the Canon S95, which is a really good compact camera and I used that for years.  I've taken tons of gorgeous high quality photos with it but I still wanted something more.  But the "something more" wasn't available yet.

My main criteria for this latest camera purchase: pocketable compact, excellent photo quality, reasonable zoom range for a compact, highly configurable, fast and accurate auto focus, manual modes when I want them, clean high ISO capabilities, good movie capability, and a few other smaller things...

The answer came recently in the Sony RX100 II.  I bought one.  No other pocketable compact on the market can match it.

Review

OK, you've got my Intro and Background.  Let's get to the review...

One thing that might help put my comments here into context for you is to review the full RX100 II manual.  It will help you to understand what this camera is capable of and the myriad of features it has on board.  You can find the full manual on the Sony website at this link.

The camera has a deep menu system, but fortunately there are enough external buttons and different ways to configure them so that once you get the camera set up the way you want it and configure the three available custom modes, two control rings, and four control buttons on the back....you might not find yourself needing to dive into the menu system very often (which is good!).  I strongly suggest spending some time with this camera and the manual to set it up accordingly for your most typical shooting needs.  Once done, it will get out of your way during shooting...

The camera operates quickly during shooting.  Auto focus is fast to lock, there is no noticeable amount of shutter lag, photos are quick to display and scroll in review mode, zoom is responsive, etc. The camera clearly has some nice processing power behind it.

I want to mention one side note about this camera that's neither good nor bad, it's just a fact....And that fact is that it's a 20 megapixel camera.  Inherent with high megapixel count cameras is the fact that you might notice more motion blur in your photos than you do in cameras with lower megapixel counts.  I explain the reason for this in another blog article that I wrote at this link.

If you read that article, the moral of the story is that under certain shooting situations with high megapixel count cameras (like the Sony RX100 II and many others), you might want to use significantly higher shutter speeds than you normally would to help eliminate motion blur in your photos.  Just something to be aware of...

Since I mentioned above that I like and dislike certain things about this camera, that's how I'm going to organize this review....into two sections with my comments next to each item.  Here we go...

What I like:

1. Photo quality:  The quality of the JPEG output from the RX100 II is fantastic.  Outdoors in bright light or indoors in dim light, the camera (when it's set up right) churns out great looking photos.  I have not experimented with its Raw output yet, but judging from the quality of the JPEG's I would assume the Raw quality is also quite high.
2. Lens quality:  From what I see in my photos, the lens is very high quality....which I would expect from Zeiss.  It's sharp and distortion at the edges and corners seems reasonable for a camera in this class.
3. LCD quality:  It's bright and super sharp.  No more to say here...
4. Auto focus:  It's fast and accurate, and the tracking function works quite well when needed.
5. Low light photo quality:  When set up and used properly, the camera produces excellent low light results with the standard shooting modes.  It also has some unique solutions (like Multi Shot Noise Reduction) that can push that quality level even higher if the shooting situation is appropriate for their use.
6. Configurability:  The camera is highly configurable by the user.  Both control rings and the Function button can all be configured with different commands so they do what you want them to do.  There are also three user programmable Custom modes for your unique shooting needs.  It's great to see this level of configurability in a compact camera.
7. Small size:  This is a pocketable camera, which makes what it can do even more astounding.
8. Build quality:  It's built tough.  The metal body feels significant in your hands.  The controls and dials all feel well designed and built.  The tilt screen is well implemented.
9. Tilting flash:  This is an incredibly useful feature.  Direct flash on your subject is the harshest kind of flash lighting that you can use and it's the main flash lighting source for all compact cameras.  It creates shadows, it looks harsh, etc.  On the RX100 II, you can tilt the pop-up flash back slightly with your finger so that it can bounce off a nearby ceiling or wall and provide nice bounce light on your subject.  It's certainly not going to have the distance or power of a dedicated external flash unit, but in a pinch it can really help with producing better flash photos. Excellent innovative feature.  (are you listening Canon and Nikon...this is the kind of thing you're missing the boat on)
10. DRO/Auto HDR:  This is Sony's Dynamic Range Optimization and Auto HDR function, and they both work well....expanding the dynamic range of an image through various techniques when you would otherwise not be able to capture it with one photo.  DRO processes a single photo to achieve its results (applying what I guess is something similar to Photoshop's Shadows/Highlights function in-camera) and Auto HDR processes multiple images taken at different exposures to achieve its results.  You would use one or the other depending on the specific shooting situation (i.e., you would not to use Auto HDR in a motion situation since it's taking multiple photos to achieve its results and any motion will ruin the photo).
11. Clear Image Zoom:  I can't really explain this one completely, but it works.  The RX100 II comes with two types of digital zoom technology in addition to its optical zoom.  One is a standard digital zoom that all compact cameras have and which I never use because it ruins the photo quality.  Then the RX100 II also has this Clear Image Zoom capability that crops into the photo you're taking and somehow enlarges it with very little noticeable (if any) quality loss.  It's amazing, actually.  Works nicely when the optical zoom just doesn't have the reach that you need...
12. Manual Focus Peaking:  When you're in a situation that warrants manual focusing, this is a handy feature that highlights the part of the image that's in focus on the LCD screen in a color of your choice (for those of us with so-so eyesight).  :)
13. Wifi and Smartphone integration:  This is not a game changer feature and many cameras have it nowadays, but it's nice to be able to shoot a photo and then send the image off to my smartphone to upload it (this works nicely), or download photos wirelessly to my computer over wifi (this does not...I've worked with Sony and haven't been able to get this to work on my computer running Apple Mac OSX 10.9.1 and Sony Wireless Auto Import 1.2).  You can also use Sony's app on your smartphone for remote control of the camera.
14. Video:  The video capabilities of the RX100 II are right on the mark.  Video is sharp, clear, you can zoom while shooting and maintain auto focus, there are multiple formats, frame rates and sizes.  The audio pickup from the top mounted internal stereo microphones is surprisingly good.  It's all here and works nicely.

What I dislike:

1. SteadyShot:  The Sony SteadyShot image stabilization system is sadly not very effective.  It's not reliably helpful when shooting stills and it's not effective at all when shooting longer than 1/30 second.  Sony Support confirmed this with me and told me not to expect much from the system when shooting longer than 1/30 second.  It's much less effective than the stabilization technologies in compact cameras from other manufacturers (for example the much older Canon S95, which has excellent image stabilization).  I've noticed that SteadyShot is more effective in Movie mode than it is for stills.  I don't know why...
2. No Auto-ISO in Manual mode:  Not having Auto-ISO in Manual mode in a camera of this caliber is just pure silliness and should be corrected with a firmware upgrade as soon as possible.  Because of the way that the RX100 II behaves in certain shooting situations (see #3 below), it would be a great solution to those idiosyncrasies for the photographer to be able to put it into Manual mode to set the desired shutter and aperture and let the ISO do what it will.  But Sony offers no Auto-ISO in Manual mode....and therefore from my perspective they've completely crippled the Manual mode for my purposes.
3. 1/30 and f/1.8 tendencies:  When shooting without flash indoors in the automatic modes, the RX100 II has a tendency to select 1/30 second and f/1.8 as its standard settings instead of boosting the ISO and giving me a more hand-holdable shutter speed and aperture with a little more depth of field.   There aren't a lot of photographers I know who want a camera making this type of shutter/aperture decision, especially when the camera has a weak image stabilization system.  Shooting at 1/30 second leaves no margin for handheld vibration error.  This should be corrected with a firmware upgrade that implements user-configurable min/max settings for all exposure-triangle parameters (shutter, aperture, ISO) so that the camera makes more reasonable and usable shutter/aperture decisions in low light without flash.  I worked around this by using one of the Custom modes to store the parameters that will force the camera to do more of what I want in low light. (i.e., I set up a Custom mode that makes the minimum Auto-ISO 1600 so that the camera is forced to choose higher shutter speeds and something other than f/1.8).
4. High ISO Noise Reduction:  There is no option to completely turn off High ISO Noise Reduction.  I hate this, especially given that you CAN shut off long exposure noise reduction!  Why give me the ability to turn off one of them but not the other.  I want to decide whether or not I use high ISO noise reduction in certain shooting situations, not Sony.  The reason is because the effects of Sony's heavy handed high ISO noise reduction are clear in the photos.  I would prefer to handle this setting myself...with the option of turning it completely off.  
5. Front Control Ring:  I like having the feature of a Front Control Ring around the lens, but the number of turns it takes to change settings with it is silly to the point of it being almost useless in some situations.  For example, rotating it to change shutter speed when in Shutter mode takes twist after twist after twist to get from one side of the shutter range to the other.  It needs to be more sensitive and get across the shutter range with one twist of the ring.
6. No GPS:  There's no on board GPS to tag photos with.  I'm sure this was a space and cost issue so this one I can understand and therefore I wouldn't necessarily classify it in the "Dislike" category.  The camera probably couldn't fit one more circuit into it given its compact size and the price is already quite high for a compact.  So I'll take what I can get and do without GPS...
7. Splitting of movies and photos in review mode:  Why, why, why?  That's what I have to say about this.  When you press the 'Play' button to enter photo review mode, you have to choose whether you want to review your photos or your videos.  You can't just see all of the photos and videos you've shot in sequence.  I don't know why Sony chose to differentiate between them in playback mode and put them into different folders requiring you to switch back and forth.  It's a bad design that's silly, cumbersome, and should be changed with a firmware update.  
8. No wifi transfer to Mac computers running latest Mavericks OS:  The current Apple Mac OSX Mavericks operating system has been released for quite a while (10.9.1).  The current version of Sony's Wireless Auto Import software (1.2) seemingly doesn't reliably work with Mavericks.  I've worked with Sony support on this for hours and that's what they finally told me.  I hate when electronics manufacturers do this.  It should be a priority to release cameras, with their related software, that work on the current major operating systems at the time the camera is released.  Don't give me a software update 6 months later....that's useless to me.
9. No battery wall charger:  For the price of this camera, give me a separate battery wall charger.  Having to charge the battery in the camera is completely ridiculous.

Conclusion

In the past three years Sony has taken the photo industry by storm with innovative, powerful, high quality, useful cameras.  From all directions they're producing unique cameras that fill a void in the camera industry.  Photographers clearly want them because they're selling quite well and generating a lot of positive news for Sony.

If you want a pocketable compact camera with excellent photo quality generated by the largest sensor available in a camera of this class, then the Sony RX100 II is the only game in town.  It should be at the top of your shopping list and it's as good as everyone says.

There's a lot to like about this camera, and many of the items that I don't like that I mentioned above can be fixed with firmware updates, if Sony chooses to do it.  The Sony designers have clearly listened to the needs of photographers in creating this camera, now they need to listen to the reviews and update the firmware in the RX100 II to correct its significant flaws and push it over the edge into the area of hallowed ground for a piece of photography equipment.  Sony, are you listening???

The price is quite high, but when you see the results this camera is capable of generating hopefully those concerns will melt away.  Overall, Sony should be applauded for their very nice work on the RX100 II.  They've got a new customer in me.  Hopefully they keep it up with their next products!

Review: ProCamera for iPhone

I'm big into the hobby of photography, and have been for years.  I own a lot of good DSLR equipment (bodies, lenses, flashes, remote timers, etc) and use it to obtain the best quality that I can when I'm out shooting.  You can see some of my photos here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/54191762@N02/

Some time recently though, I got tired of hauling around all of that heavy equipment in a separate backpack and migrated to using a high quality Canon compact camera on more and more occasions.  Stick it in my pocket and away I go.  And even more recently, I've been subscribing to the photography adage that "the best camera is the one that you have with you", which would be the camera on my iPhone 5 that I always carry with me.  Apple's new TV commercial captures the essence of this point nicely.  You can see it here:  http://www.apple.com/iphone/videos/#tv-ads-photos-every-day

My problem with the native iPhone camera app is the lack of control that I have over it.  It's designed for simplicity and ease of use, and it excels at that.  It has the HDR and Panorama functions that are quite handy, but beyond that there's nothing in terms of user control for creative photography.

Photographers know what photographers want, so enter the plethora of iPhone camera apps designed to provide more functions than the built-in Apple camera app provides.  I don't know how many camera apps are in the Apple App Store, but there are a lot.  Some top examples that I've used and like include Camera+, Camera Awesome, and Kit Cam.  All of them include some handy unique features and built-in editing capabilities that keep me using them periodically for special needs, but I was still on the hunt for the perfect all-around camera app.  And then I found it!

The name of my favorite advanced iPhone camera app is ProCamera, and their website is located at this link:  http://www.procamera-app.com

Here are some things that I really like about this app that make it stand out above the rest and help to satisfy my creative shooting needs when I feel like pushing my iPhone to its limits to make a special shot:

• Separate exposure and focus lock controls.  A must for creative image control.  These are also available when shooting video, which is huge!  This is the only app that I know of right now that offers this.
• Continuous focus during video
• Image stabilization
• Video stabilization
• Histogram display.  Handy to see when you're pushing the limits of the lighting...
• Shutter speed and ISO displays.  Handy to understand what you're dealing with so you can compensate if necessary (e.g., steady the camera for a shot with a very slow shutter speed).
• Separate shutter buttons for taking a stabilized shot or a regular shot.  Stabilization sensitivity is user-controlled.
• Quick-button switching between camera and video
• Auto ISO boost for getting better shots in dark situations.  Great feature!
• JPEG compression level control
• Rapid and HighSpeed shooting modes
• Pro Lab is a full suite of color and exposure correction editing tools that are very handy to have on-board within the app and are easy to use.  There are also Pro Cut (a cropping utility) and Pro FX (some color and lighting presets) but I don't use either of these too often.
• .....and more!

...and of course the app has all the standard photo app features like grid overlays, self-timer, level, sharing to social media sites, etc.

As you can see, there are a lot of features to expand your creative horizons, but the nice thing is that the interface is designed to keep most of it out of your way until you want/need it.  Nice job!

The app has performed flawlessly for me over time and has therefore earned a place on my home page for rapid access.  I still use the built in Apple camera app to shoot panoramas and HDR, but other than that.....this is my go-to photo app on the iPhone.  Well worth the few dollars that it costs, and highly recommended!

Review: Day One journal app for iOS and Mac

"People today are busier than ever and rarely take even a minute to stop and reflect on the day".

This is a statement from Paul Mayne, creator of the 'Day One' journaling app for iOS and Mac, and I agree with it 100%.  It speaks to the rush-rush world that we all live in these days when we barely have a minute to sit down and think to ourselves, let alone reflect on an entire day.  

I absolutely can't believe how time is flying by these days, especially when I get exceedingly busy at work and it causes me to lose track of things even more.  One minute it's April and I'm enjoying the warm days of spring, then in the blink of an eye it's the end of summer, and another blink later and it's snowing in the middle of winter.  The years are just blowing by....and sometimes it's a bit disillusioning to me.  Actually, it's a lot disillusioning!

For this reason, I've always wanted to keep a journal...to write down some quick thoughts from any given day that I might otherwise forget and then be able to reference them in years to come to see where I've been, where I am, where I'm going, etc.  A way to re-live memories.  It's also a way to track ideas, goals, etc.

The problem with keeping a journal in the past was making it easy to keep up with it.  I'm not one to sit down and write with a pen and paper for 30 minutes to catch my thoughts from the day...I just don't have the time and it's inconvenient.  Keeping books of journals around is also clunky.  Whatever journaling mechanism I use, it needs to be fast and easy.  I tried doing it on a computer once, but unless I was where the computer was when I had a thought (which was not typically the case), I wouldn't do it.  So all of my previous attempts to keep a journal didn't work out.

And then came along the Day One app for iOS and Mac.  This single app completely opened the door to an easy, quick, effective, and elegant way to keep a personal journal wherever you are, whenever a thought hits you.  It's got just the right features to let you get your thoughts down...it stays out of your way and lets you think.  It syncs across all of my iOS and Mac devices instantaneously and flawlessly....and....it works on all of my Apple devices (one of which I have with me at all times).  So therefore, this became the perfect journaling solution for me and if you're looking for something like this then Day One might be just right for you too.

People who have read any of my other reviews on this blog know that I don't spend time talking about each and every feature of something when I review it.  There are already some great and very thorough reviews of Day One out there and I prefer to link to them instead echo them.  Here are some links to just a few:

1. The New Day One - http://www.macstories.net/reviews/review-the-new-day-one/
2. Day One:  A Gorgeous, Synchronized Journaling App - http://iphone.appstorm.net/reviews/lifestyle/day-one-a-gorgeous-synchronized-journalling-app/

So all of this being said, which are my favorite features of Day One?  They include:

1. It works across all iOS and Mac devices, meaning I can always write when I want to on whatever device I'm using at the time.
2. One button click to start a new entry.
3. Automatic, instantaneous cross device synchronization.  
4. I like the way the Mac app combines multiple entries from one day into a single entry and timestamps each one of them for a clean view of a single day.
5. I like the auto adding of weather and location to entries.
6. Tagging and search functionality to easily categorize and find entries.

If you're in the market for an iOS/Mac journaling app, give Day One a try.  I think you'll find, as I did, that it's just the ticket to get your journaling activities started....and keep it going.  

Review: Apple TV, streaming your photos from your computer, and much more!

This is another one of my "real world" reviews where I provide feedback about what a product does for me in every day use, and what I like (and/or don't like) about it.

The latest great thing to enter my family's life is Apple TV.  Talk about a magic little black box!  This is the best $99 that I've spent on home entertainment in a long time.

You can search the internet for all kinds of exhaustive technical reviews of Apple TV that detail every feature and specification of the device, but that's not what you'll find here.

What you'll find here is a short article about why this product impressed me, and why I hope that Apple continues to build on this platform in the future for home entertainment.

Let's get some essential links out of the way right now:

1. Link to the Apple website for all the information about Apple TV
2. Link to the Remote app in the iTunes store for your iPhone and iPad

And now the background information on why I went out and bought Apple TV...

Problem:
As anyone who has tried to do it knows, streaming your media (photos, music, movies) from your computer onto your wireless network and around your house for watching and listening on your stereo and TV's is a giant pain in the neck.  I've been trying to find an easy way to do this for years, and every approach that I've tried ends up running into problems or limitations.  I've tried stand alone software to do it, Windows Media, Player, and other mechanisms, and every one of them had a problem that made the solution fall short.

The Digital Living Network Alliance was supposed to make this a lot easier, and it has in some respects....but it still falls short because its standards are not keeping up with the expanding technology that it was meant to work with.  I'll give you a perfect example of this....

My blu-ray player can stream photos from my PC to my TV using the DLNA standards.  Although the streaming was painfully slow, I did eventually get this to work and was thrilled to finally see my photos appearing from my computer on my widescreen high-def TV.  Or so I thought.

One night when looking at photos using this setup through my blu-ray player, I noticed that all of the photos from one of my cameras were not showing up.  The problem?  The DLNA standard only streams photos up to a certain size.  So, advanced cameras that produce large image files are out of luck with DLNA devices.  The photos will not get streamed.

Damn.  Back to the drawing board.  After doing more research on this, I was not able to find an easy and cost effective way around it, so I gave up.  To this day, I'm amazed that someone didn't come along and solve this problem before Apple.  Companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Netgear, Sony, etc, are all right in the middle of this dilemma, but none of them offered a holistic solution.  So, as has been the case in the past, Apple came along and kicked them in the butt and offered up a great solution.

Solution:
I went to the Apple website and read all that Apple TV can do.  It can stream photos, music, video, internet content, etc, through my internet connection to my TV.  Plug it in, and go.  I wondered if it could really be that simple, but knowing Apple I figured that it probably was, so I went to the Apple Store and bought one.

I bought it home, took it out of the box, spent ten minutes setting it up, and my photos appeared from my computer on my TV.  I was blown away at the ease of it!

I then tried to access my iTunes music library from my couch using Apple TV to play it through my stereo.  It worked.  Easily.

I also tried to access my Netflix account to stream some HD content through Apple TV.  It worked.  Easily.

After installing the Apple Remote app on my iPad and iPhone, I can now control Apple TV and my music streaming, etc, from anywhere in my house.  Fantastic!

There are other set top boxes that also handle these functions, namely those from Roku.  The issue there is that I'm not sure how tightly integrated they are with iTunes or the iPad/iPhone.  I doubt that Roku would be able to harmonize with the Apple iTunes entertainment paradigm as easily as Apple TV does.  This is why I purchased Apple TV.  I wanted an easy environment to handle all of these things seamlessly.

What doesn't Apple TV do?  For one, it doesn't stream content from services like Amazon Streaming and Hulu Plus....yet.....but Apple could probably add those services in the future if they want to.  Apple has to walk a fine line between working with their competitors to make their own Apple products more appealing, but they can't cross the line too far and let their competitors sneak too far into Apple's domain.

In summary, for $99, Apple TV is hard to beat for the specific purposes that I mentioned above.  I encourage you to visit the Apple TV website to see if it's a match for your needs.  If not, then check out Roku as a next option, but as I cautioned above......I don't think Roku will work as nicely with the Apple iTunes environment.

In any event, the main benefit of these boxes is to liberate your photos, music, and videos from your PC in an easy way, and I can say for sure that in that respect Apple TV highly succeeds!
 

Review: Disney Imagineering Field Guides

As I mentioned in the post at this link, I really like to learn about all of the details that went into designing the Disney parks, rides and attractions.  The level of detail is amazing once you start to find the little things that are hidden all over the place.  The tiniest little details were all put there for a reason.....to bring a smile to someones face who happened to notice them.

I read the great book by John Hench mentioned at the link above that discussed this topic in an overall fashion, but many people don't realize that there are a few other books that discuss the details and effort that went into designing the parks in deeper detail.  These books are called "The Imagineering Field Guides", and there's one of them for each park (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios).

The guides are filled with all kinds of interesting facts about how the rides and parks turned out the way they did, and most importantly why.

For example, in the Magic Kingdom edition they talk about the design and construction of Cinderella's Castle and why it ended up at the exact height that it did. It's 198 feet tall.  The reason Disney chose that height is because any building in Florida that's 200 feet or taller is required to have a blinking red aircraft warning light on top of it.  Obviously Disney didn't want a blinking red aircraft light on top of their centerpiece castle, so they made it as high as they could (with a little room to spare) so that they could keep their design and not have to spoil it with a red blinking light.  The same consideration went into Spaceship Earth, Tower of Terror, Space Mountain, and the other tall ride structures in the parks.

If you're a Disney fanatic and finding out those types of little facts is interesting to you, then these are the books for you!  I've had more than a few good laughs and "Aha!" moments while reading them.  Things that I always wondered about since I was a kid are explained here for the first time.

The books also show a lot of interesting photos and sketches about how the parks and rides were originally conceived versus how they turned out.  In some cases they're almost exactly the same, and in others there were key design changes made along the way.  Those design changes are explained as well.  Interesting stuff....

These guides are inexpensive and well worth the money to get some more insight into the terrific Disney design principles.  If you decide to purchase them, watch out!  They're going to make you want to go to The World to check the parks out all over again!  :-)
   

Review: The best apps for reading effectively on the iPad

I'll give you the punchline to this post up front...

All you need for great reading on the iPad are the following apps:
iBooks, Kindle, Zinio, Feeddler, Zite, and Flipboard.

Now read on to find out why...

This is another one of my "real world" reviews. You can talk about every feature of each app that I list here for a long time. But instead of doing a feature by feature review, I'm simply going to talk about why they work effectively to make reading on the iPad a great experience.  An experience that has, in fact, led me to go paperless for most of my reading.

In order to set yourself up for reading effectively on the iPad (and to make it more fun!), you first need to determine what it is that you want to read. Books? Magazines? RSS feeds? All of them? The reason I suggest this first step is because there's no one app that does all of these things, so if you have broad reading tastes then you'll want to get several of the apps on my list to get the job done right for you. I'll cover these content sources one by one below with my recommendations.

Books:

If reading books is your pleasure, use the iBooks and Kindle apps. There are other book readers out there (like Google Books), but they simply don't compare to iBooks and Kindle.

If the cost of a new book is one of your primary concerns, then always check the price of a new book between Kindle and iBooks. I've found that Kindle is almost always less expensive than iBooks in the US.  If you don't have a strong preference for which one of these readers that you use, buy your books from the least expensive choice.

Cost aside, both Kindle and iBooks offer a lot of similar features and some other unique ones as well that may help you to pick one or the other as your primary reader.  For sure, the format of the ebooks for both readers will be around for a long time, so you don't have to worry that your books will suddenly become obsolete.  eBooks are here to stay.

Some (but not all) of the key features of iBooks:

1. Seamless experience between the iBooks store, your library, and the reading experience.
2. Capability to store your books in 'Collections' to organize them by topic.
3. Capability to import and read PDF's like any other book.
4. Built in one-touch dictionary and/or search for a highlighted word or phrase.
5. Fully searchable content.
6. Capability to bookmark.
7. Capability to select fonts, font sizes, and sepia or white page color.
8. Capability to highlight text and add notes to highlighted text.
9. Many classic books from famous authors (e.g., Charles Dickens) are free!

Some (but not all) of the key features of Kindle:

1. Kindle eBooks are typically less expensive than iBooks.
2. Capability to select fonts, font sizes, and sepia, white, or black page color.
3. Built in one-touch dictionary and/or search for a highlighted word or phrase.
4. Capability to highlight text and add notes to highlighted text.
5. Fully searchable content.
6. Capability to share your highlighted items with the Kindle community for the book you're reading, and have their highlighted items appear in your book as well.  I guess you could call this "social reading".  I'm not entirely sure of the major benefit of this, but it is unique to Kindle.

Have eBooks totally replaced paper books in our house?  No.  I still buy print books when there's a likelihood that I'll be referencing a book frequently or it's an art-book like a large format photography coffee table book that needs to be seen in all of its large format splendor.  But other than those two exceptions, almost all books that we buy now are electronic because the benefits of eBooks far outweigh the paper versions....especially being able to take your whole library with you anywhere that you go!

Magazines:

If you're a big magazine reader, then use the Zinio app. Zinio has over 4,000 magazines available for online subscription and/or individual issue purchase, and the price is always the same or less than the print version of the same magazine.

The nice thing about reading electronic magazines is that the publishers often add extra interactive multimedia content to their electronic versions.  Even if it's just live web links that have been added within the text, just having that is better than the print version. But often, there's much more than that. National Geographic, for example, adds video, audio interviews, and slide shows to the electronic version of their magazines. Obviously that's something that you can't get in the print versions, and it makes for a much more interactive and enjoyable reading experience.

On top of that, here are two other great things.  First, there's no clutter. You don't have stacks of old magazines hanging around. Second, your entire library is searchable. So, for example,  if you remember an article about traveling in Australia that appeared in National Geographic but you can't remember when you saw it, simply search and you shall find!  I rarely use the back issues of my paper magazines for just this reason....it would take too long to find anything by flipping through the pages of so many paper issues.

All of my magazines are now electronic.

RSS feeds:

If you look in the Apple App Store, there are a lot of RSS readers out there.  Some of them are free and others can cost up to $5 for an ad-free version. If you subscribe to a lot of websites and/or blog feeds, a good RSS reader is essential for easy reading.

You could just use Google Reader to read your RSS feeds, but I'm going to give you a much better strategy here....

First, definitely use Google Reader to subscribe to your feeds to keep them all in a central location.  The reason I suggest this is because all of the most popular RSS reader apps will interface with your Google Reader account to pull in your feeds from Google, so if you centralize all of your feeds in Google Reader then you'll be impacted minimally if you change your RSS reader app down the road.

Second, don't use Google Reader for RSS reading.  It's downright clunky at best, and it can be confusing at worst when you're trying to find new feeds instead of ones that you've already read, etc.  As with all of the Google tools (Gmail, Calendar, etc), Reader is outdated and in serious need of a total overhaul.

Third, download the free version of Feeddler to actually read and process your feeds from your Google account.  Feeddler is a fully customizable RSS reader that you can set up to manage and read your feeds the exact way that you want to.  Want to see all new items from all of your feeds since the last time that you opened the app?  Want to go back through items you've already read to find something that you want to reference again?  Want to mark something as a favorite and have that mark synchronized with your Google Reader account for future reference or to share with someone?  All of these things are no problem for Feeddler to handle.  And there's so much more.  It really pays to spend some time exploring this app.

Feeddler makes managing my feeds and getting through new RSS items as easy as I think it can possibly be.  There are other apps that are similar to Feeddler (most notably Reeder), but for some of them you have to pay for the full version up front, while Feeddler is free if you're willing to have some banner ads on the bottom of your screen.  If you don't like the Feeddler banners then you can buy the full version for $5 and get rid of them.

Customized Magazines:

This is where the fun starts....

Zite and Flipboard have both revolutionized the concept of creating a personalized online magazine that gets updated daily with content of your choosing.

Both apps offer you the capability to have many sources of news content sent to your virtual magazine (including pulling in content from your social media accounts and RSS accounts if you want), but Zite takes it one step further with the fact that it begins to "understand" the articles that you like and mark as favorites, and it will load your magazine daily with more content of that same type.  Flipboard does not do this, and therefore it's more of a simple news-pushing type of app.

Both apps have curated content in which editors select the best and/or most popular news stories from a large variety  of topics and news sources.  All you have to do is include the sections you want in your magazine, and you're done.  It's updated daily with the latest news.

Both of the apps feature elegant but different interfaces, the capability to email links to articles, include social media in your magazine, mark items as favorites, and post to your social media tools.

The reason that I use both of them instead of just one is because they both offer slightly different content sources, so when I use them both I get a very good cross section of topics that I'm interested in, instead of using just one and missing some key news areas that I like to follow.

So, in a nutshell real-world sort of way, the information above explains why I believe these apps are just about all you need for reading on the iPad.  I'm sure the latest and greatest apps will come along to knock Zite and Flipboard off their popularity pedestal, but I think that iBooks, Kindle, and Zinio are here to stay for sure.  They are very solid at what they do, and they deserve their strong and loyal user-bases.

I hope you'll spend some time to fully explore these apps to learn all that they have to offer.  Enjoy your reading, and I hope you find this post useful!
 

Review: Incase Book Jacket for iPad 2

I occasionally put reviews up here on my blog about products that I think are well designed and that will probably be useful for a lot of people to read.  Since millions of people own iPads, and many of them probably want a good case for their shiny new purchase, I thought this would be a good topic for a review.

We recently got an iPad 2, and with the swapping from person to person and location to location that this great device is going to end up seeing because everyone wants to use it all the time, my thoughts turned to getting a good case for it right after I walked out of the Apple store.

You'll discover that the Apple Smart Cover is really quite silly after you spend some time checking it out.  First, it offers very little actual protection for the iPad.  If you drop your iPad with a Smart Cover on, the iPad is going to get damaged.  It's as simple as that.  Second, it's clumsy.  It flops around when it's open, it unfolds when you're trying to use it as a stand, etc.  Third, it scratches the back of the iPad in the spot where the magnets attach, if you care about such things.  Fourth, the price of $40 is a complete rip-off.

So...After eliminating the Apple Smart Cover, I went to the local giant electronics store (near me, that's Best Buy) to check out the myriad of iPad 2 cases they have.  I was in the market for:

1. A case made of high quality material
2. A case that's compact
3. A case that would protect the iPad well but also give access to all of the buttons
4. A case that's comfortable to hold.  I didn't want to have to take the iPad in and out of the case just to use it.

I quickly eliminated most of the cases at the store because after brief examination it was clear that they didn't meet the four essential criteria above.  Some of them were flimsy pieces of junk, others protected the back but not the front, others were far too bulky, etc.

Then I saw the Incase Book Jacket for iPad 2.  Perfect!  This case is priced around $50, but that seems to be about average for the better quality book-style cases for the iPad.  The Book Jacket completely protects the front, back, and edges of the iPad.  The iPad securely fits into the right side of the case and a velcro tab holds it very securely in place.  Perfect.

More than offering simple protection though, the case is also versatile.  It can be opened and held like a book, or the cover can be folded back to make it easier to hold.  Depending on how you fold the cover, you also get some other different functionality.  You can fold it and use the handy built-in strap to create a working angle to type on.  You can flip the cover over the other way and prop the iPad up at one of three different viewing angles for movies, TV shows, or reading.  Photos of all of these positions are available at this link on the Incase website.

This is all contained in a thin, well built, suede lined book jacket that adds (relatively speaking) very little additional thickness to the iPad for what this case is.

After owning this case for several months, it still looks as good as new and I still think it's great......and that's the sign of a good product.  If you're shopping for a case for your iPad and you want a nice book style design, definitely check out the Incase Book Jacket.  If you don't like this case, they also make lots of other cases for the full line of Apple products.  Good luck with your shopping!
 

Is "Camera+" the best camera app for the iPhone? Yes!

I finally got a shiny new iPhone 4.  I love it, but I'll write about how great it is in another post.  :-)

The subject here is photography related, not phone related...

I always try to have a camera with me when I'm out and about so that I can grab serendipitous photos whenever I can.  The native Camera app in iOS on the iPhone is OK for grabbing quick photos, but it has one huge flaw.  You can't control autofocus and exposure metering independently of each other.  Meaning, on the native Camera app, whatever you focus on will determine your exposure.  That's logical for casual photography, but it's bad for more serious/creative photography.....

Most people might think that this setup is OK for casual snapshots on a camera phone, and in good light for a casual shot maybe it is most of the time.  But I saw right away that the photos come out poorly if you're trying to shoot in any kind of questionable lighting situation.  I immediately started looking for a solution.

The answer is "Camera+". Here is a link to Camera+ in the iTunes Store.  You can also read much more information about it on the Tap Tap Tap web site at this link (the creators of Camera+).

This app costs $1, and for that cost you get the problem above corrected but you also get a lot of other handy features as well. Specifically, with Camera+ you get:

1. Separate control of autofocus and exposure metering.  This is a must for creative photography!!!
    
2. A handy and responsive zoom control that's always visible.  On a side note, I would suggest avoiding zooming on the iPhone in general unless you really have to because it uses a digital zoom (not optical) and it deteriorates the photo quality.
    
3. The capability to simultaneously save photos to the Camera+ "Lightbox" (for editing) as well as the iOS Photo app.  This is handy because you can edit your photos right in Camera+ without needing to open a separate application.  The capability to save in both locations is handy because then you don't need to move photos around on your iPhone.
    
4. A grid to use to level your photos.
    
5. Useful "Photo Info" panel with an integrated map of where you took your photo based on geotagging embedded within the image.
   
   
6. A shooting self-timer.
    
7. Quality settings.
   
   
8. Innovative "Photo Flashlight" utility.
    
9. Stabilizer function that senses when your camera is still before it snaps a photo.
    
10. Photo editing effects built into the app.  Each effect has an intensity slider to control how much it affects your photo.  It's handy to have these effects in Camera+ itself instead of having to go to a separate app for editing.  There are also borders and cropping available.
     
11. Built-in social network sharing capabilities (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter).

It's easy to see from the comments above that Camera+ is far superior to the built in Camera app.  For $1, it's a total bargain!  The one drawback is that it doesn't shoot video....yet....so if you want to do that then you need to jump into the native Camera app.  But I'm sure the creators of Camera+ will add this capability to their app quickly.  Even without video, it blows away the built in Camera.  Completely blows it away.

Get this app!  You'll love it.
 

Rogue Flashbender and Stofen Omnibounce

Photo by Neil van Niekerk

Accessory flashes are great devices.  They open up a whole new world of lighting beyond what the pop-up flash on your DSLR can do.

Once you get into bouncing your accessory flash off of walls, ceilings, and other objects to get better flash photography results, you'll never again go back to straight ahead fired flash...which can be very harsh looking in the final photo.

The photo above by Neil van Niekerk is a perfect example of using bounced flash to fill in the existing light in a photo to get fantastic and natural looking flash results.  This shot would have been impossible with straight ahead fired flash.  It had to be bounced to achieve this even lighting on the girl with a nice balance of the background light.  Neil is a genius on flash photography.  I highly recommend his book entitled "On-Camera Flash".

If you use an accessory/external flash and you're looking to improve your results even further beyond simple bouncing to achieve the kind of results in the direction of what Neil does, then get these two cheap accessories:

1. Rogue Flashbender (see video below)
2. Stofen Omnibounce

I've been using the Omnibounce for a while with very good results.  It produces a nice, diffuse, wrap-around light on your subject.  But there are also times when I'm not looking to get the diffuse light that it creates.  I want bounced flash all going straight ahead with a better sense of control, but I don't want it harsh like straight fired flash.

Back in the day, photographers used to achieve bounced straight ahead flash by aiming their flash up and rubber-banding an index card to the flash to bounce the light forward.  It worked great to bounce the flash forward, but it wasn't very flexible.

And then along came the Rogue Flashbender.  I got one of these for Christmas and it's great.  Well worth the $25.  It attaches to your flash with velcro and it bends and flexes into any shape that you want to bounce your flash forward (or any other direction).  The animation picture to left shows the various positions it can be bent into.  You can see photos of how it's used on their web site at this link. It can also be flipped over and used as a flash flag to prevent flash light from reaching a particular area of your subject.


It's not often that you can buy an accessory for your camera that's cheap but has dramatic results.   These two simple devices work terrific and should be in the bag of every photographer who's interested in getting better flash results.

Inspiration! "Within The Frame" by David duChemin

I have a lot of photography books.  I enjoy reading the thoughts and techniques of the photographers whose work I like.  Not only do I learn many things, but I also get a chance to live vicariously through them and see some of the places and sights that I probably won't have time (or money) to see in my lifetime.

Some of the books are great and I refer to them often to re-read key sections until they sink into my brain and I can make the concepts my own and put them to work for me in my own photography.  Others are not so good, and get placed on an upper shelf and are rarely touched again.

I'm reading an excellent book right now called "Within The Frame" by David duChemin.  If you're looking for a last minute holiday gift to tuck under the tree for your favorite photographer, then this is the book to get.

This is not a technical book about photography or technique, per se'.  It's about the journey to finding your own photographic vision and achieving the kind of photography that you most enjoy.

Surely, this is a lofty goal for any book.  Finding your photographic vision is an intensely personal journey that every enthusiastic photographer takes.  How can a book help with this?

Stay with me for a few minutes on this topic..... 

I'll tell you where many books of this nature fail.  They use too many words.  It's as simple as that.  I've read books that, although they're good, are written by an author that takes forty sentences to complete one key thought.  So what happens?  Your brain gets totally lost in all the written words on the page and the concept that you're reading about floats right by without sinking in.

This is not the case with "Within The Frame".  David duChemin writes with a down to earth style and states his key thoughts very succinctly.  This makes the book easy to digest.  He then uses supporting text and images to drive home his points. I use the word "supporting" intentionally.  There's plenty to read in the book, but the key thoughts in each section of the book can be lifted out quite easily.  Those points make you think about how you can apply the book to your photography, and that is precisely what a book of this type should achieve.  It should make you think, not try to ram ideas down your throat.

David speaks early on in this book about some key thoughts:

1. Passionate photography (duChemin says his goal for his image making is "Passionate stories told passionately").
2. Chasing your vision and telling your stories as clearly and passionately as possible with compelling photography.
3. Shooting what moves you.
4. Making the viewer of your photos care.

Having read this book, I totally understand where he's coming from.  My brain is flooding with ideas about how to implement David's key messages in my photography.  It's a completely successful book.  Well worth reading...

Color management - A marriage between your monitor and your printer

And 'huey PRO' is the priest!  :-)

If you do a lot of high quality photo printing at home, you're well aware that printer ink costs a small fortune.  Over the life of a printer, the cost of printer ink adds up to many times what you spent on the printer in the first place.  To replace all eight ink cartridges in my Canon Pro 9000 Mark II printer costs me $85 each time!  Yes, $85 each time!

So logic would follow that you want to get your photos out of your printer with the correct colors the first time so that you don't waste money re-printing photos that you've had to correct to get them to look right when printed.

Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it sounds.  I talk to people constantly who say to me, "My printer stinks....It never prints my pictures with the same colors as what I have on my screen".  Some of these people are using printers that cost $300 or more.  Trust me, the printers don't stink.

My answer to them is that 8 or 9 times out of 10, it's because the person is editing their photos on a computer monitor that isn't properly calibrated, or isn't calibrated at all.  They are then sending photos with dubious colors in them to a printer and expecting that their printed pictures come out "right".

The response I hear back is:  "I took my monitor out of the box from the factory, why isn't it calibrated properly from the factory"?  The answer is:  It just isn't.....and there are a variety of reasons why.

On top of not being calibrated properly from the factory, your perception of the colors on your monitor changes as the lighting changes is in your room throughout the day.  Sun pouring in the windows at one time, compact fluorescent or tungsten bulbs at night, etc.  Lighting is very dynamic.

So how does a person level the playing field when there's all this to consider to get proper colors?

Answer:  Calibrate your monitor so that you're displaying and editing colors based on a standard and accurate color calibration, and adjust the monitor throughout the day for changing light.

Sound hard?  It's not.  It's actually easy!  Simply purchase and install the huey PRO device from Pantone and away you go.  It really is that easy.  Go to the link above to see what Huey can do for you.

Once you install the software and plug in the device, it will step you through the process of calibrating your monitor.  It takes about five minutes.  Once done, the custom calibration is loaded automatically every time you boot up your computer.

What's even better is that you can set Huey to automatically monitor the light in your room and adjust the monitor settings based on what it's seeing throughout the day so that you're seeing accurate colors all the time.  Perfect!

After doing this with the initial version of Huey that came out years ago, my prints out of my printer are much closer to what I see on the screen because my monitor is displaying standardized colors and my printer is printing standardized colors.  No more was I saying, "Damn...it's still not right" and going back for another round of corrections and printing.  The prints I make after using Huey are very accurate.

Using Huey should get you much closer to your goals of accurate printing and I think you'll be pleased by using this device.  However, on top of using Huey to achieve proper monitor calibration there are other things that you can do to ensure even better color matching between your monitor and your printer.  You could inadvertently be doing some things wrong that you're not even aware of... 

Some of things to watch out for that could be causing color match problems from monitor to printer include the following:

1. Make sure you're specifying the proper kind of paper that you're printing to in the printer dialog box for your printer.
   
2. Make sure that you're having either Photoshop OR the printer managing color when you print, not both.  If you use them both to simultaneously manage color when printing then your colors will be far out of whack.  You have to explicitly turn one on and one off and then they should stay that way as your defaults.
   
3. Make sure you're editing and printing in the same color space.
   
4. Make sure that your printer head isn't clogged (it will be very obvious if it is).
   
5. If possible, get a printer profile for the paper that you're printing to, and use it.  These can often be found on the paper manufacturer's web site.

My hints above are just the tip of the iceberg.  Sophisticated color management is the topic of many books and web sites, and I don't intend to echo those writings here.  Simply Google "printer color management" and you'll see many of the issues that people face and their solutions.

My point with this post is that there's a simple way to get much more accurate prints the first time without struggling, and that's to use huey PRO to calibrate your monitor.  If you have further issues after that then a little digging within Photoshop help, Google, and/or your printer manufacturer's web site should get you the rest of the way there.

I should note that there are significantly more sophisticated monitor calibration devices out there other than huey PRO, but they also cost a lot more.  My thought is that huey PRO is probably all that most advanced amateur photographers really need to get their color management and printing on track.

Enjoy making better prints!

Canon S95 - It's a miracle!

UPDATE on 9/19/2011:  Since I originally wrote the post below, Canon has now announced the successor to the venerable S95, which is called the S100.  You can read about it at this link.  From what I've read so far about the S100, everything that I wrote about the S95 below is still accurate, except the S100 is better in many regards.

Original post:

OK, maybe not a miracle, but this is one darn good camera!  Read on below to see why...

There are many reviews of the S95 on the internet, so it's not my goal to provide detailed technical analysis of image quality at 100% viewing or an exhaustive feature breakdown of the camera.  All of that information about the S95 is already available at the great links/reviews that I've added at the bottom of this post so there's no need to repeat it here.  I'm all about efficiency!  :-)

My goal here is to present some real-world feedback on how this camera works, how the images look, and why it's such a great pocket camera.

Background 

I primarily shoot with a Canon 7D and a variety of lenses.  The 7D is a big camera, and there are certainly times when I can't (or don't want to) lug my SLR rig around with me and that's when a good pocket camera is an essential thing to have.

My problem is that not shooting with my 7D has always been a disappointment for me because my old pocket camera simply doesn't have anywhere near the image quality of the 7D.  So when I would go out shooting with my old pocket camera, I always regretted it.  Therefore...   

I've been in the market for a new pocket camera for a long time.  I've been shooting with a Canon SD850 for several years, but the photo quality just isn't 't good enough for me (especially in low light), so I've been on the hunt looking at all of the current options available in this very rapidly changing (and improving!) segment of the camera market.

What I Wanted

Camera manufacturers have taken many divergent paths trying to satisfy the different needs of the compact camera market.  Many people want many different things out of small cameras.  We have true pocket cameras, Micro 4/3 cameras, large compact cameras (Canon G12, Nikon P7000, etc), and so on.  

What was most important to me in my shopping for a new pocket camera were the following:

1. Very high image quality.  I wouldn't accept the poor low light and poor high ISO images from the old pocket cameras...
   
   
2. Small size.  I wanted a true pocket camera, meaning one that I can easily slide into a shirt or pants pocket without me having to rip the seams on my pants to do it!
   
   
3. Manual control and good user design.  I have to be able to take control of the camera when I want to and it has to be easy to do it.  This is something from the SLR-world that I wouldn't be willing to completely give up when using a pocket camera.

Everything else on top of these three main goals is icing on the cake, but these three were must-haves.

After doing exhaustive research about possible cameras, my decision seemed to be quickly coming down to the Canon S95 and the Panasonic LX5.  The older Canon S90 and Panasonic LX3 were direct competitors as well.

Both of these cameras are supposed to be fairly close in image quality, so I immediately kicked the LX5 off my list because of its slightly larger size.  It's just a little too big to slide into a pants or shirt pocket and as I mentioned above this is one of my key criteria, so the LX5 was out.  That satisfied the goal of small size.

I went to the store and shot some test images with the S95 at all ISO's and started to review them.  I was very pleasantly surprised.  The quality of the images looked great, and the noise levels at higher ISO's were low, especially in low light if properly exposed, and especially compared to my old Canon pocket camera from three years ago.  Seeing this, the goal of very high image quality was satisfied.

Then I started pressing buttons and finding my way around the most important and often used features of the camera.  This is where the S95 truly shines.  This camera is EXTREMELY well designed and easy to use.  Along with the standard "My Menu" option now available on most Canon cameras, the user has several ways to change the user interface to work more effectively and efficiently for them.  It's easy to get to and use the features that you need most often.

Most important and unique to the S95 is the control ring around the lens.  This ring can be set up to control a variety of functions within each shooting mode and this goes a long way toward making the control of the S95 a little bit more SLR-like.  You don't realize the true usability of this little ring until you try it.  Having it there keeps me out of the menu system for basic changes in any of the shooting modes because I can adjust key camera parameters with a spin of the ring.  Combining this with the control ring on the back of the S95 gives the camera a mini SLR-like feel.  Spin this, spin that, the adjustments are made.  No need to dive into menus for basic adjustments.  Fantastic!

The S95 has a mode dial on top that has all of the typical SLR shooting modes (Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Program, Auto, Manual, one Custom mode, etc).  This was key for me.  I need to have the capability to manually control the camera because in certain situations (e.g., tricky or difficult lighting) I want to make the decisions about what the camera is doing to have better control over the creative aspects of my photography....I don't want the camera to do it.  Having all of these controls at my fingertips (and relatively easy to use considering the small size of this camera) satisfied the goal of manual control and good user design.

Beyond me mentioning these key control aspects of the S95, if you want to get a true understanding of all the useful features that truly make it a pleasure to use, I recommend downloading the manual from this link and reading it.  It clearly outlines every feature of the S95 better than I can do (i.e., Hybrid Image Stabilization, Auto Exposure Bracketing, Focusing modes, High def movies, stereo sound, shooting in Raw, etc).  There is no reason for me to re-state it all here.  Read it from the source....Canon.

What's Not Right

Of course, no camera is perfect.  As much as I like the S95, there are three minor things that I want to mention here but they're ultimately not big issues.

1. Battery life seems short.  It's probably best to get a spare battery to carry with you if you're going to be out all day doing a lot of shooting.  This isn't a big deal since a spare NB-6L battery is only about $25.
   
   
2. I don't like where Canon put the hook loop for the neck/wrist strap on the S95.  They put one strap hook loop on each corner of the top of the camera.  The problem is that this puts the strap in your way a little bit if you're making certain adjustments while shooting.  This is not the biggest deal in the world because you quickly get the hang of keeping it out of your way, but I don't see why Canon didn't just leave the strap hook on the side of the camera body like they do with their SD line of compacts.  This would keep the strap out of your way completely.
   
   
3. The control ring on the back of the camera turns much too easily.  It should have a more definitive and resistant 'click' to it to avoid accidentally changing your exposure compensation setting when the camera is left turned on and hanging around your neck.  This is probably the most significant of these three flaws listed here because this has the potential to impact your photos if you don't happen to notice that you've changed your settings accidentally.
   
   UPDATE on 11/13/10:  After I posted this #3 comment the other day, I happened to be back in BestBuy shopping for something else today.  I tried the control rings on the back of some Nikon and Olympus pocket cameras and they all do this same thing.  They're all much too easy to change by accident, so it's not just the Canon S95 that has this issue.  All of the manufacturers need to make their back control rings a little more resistant to accidental turning...   

In Summary 

There's no doubt about the fact that the price of the S95 is high for a pocket camera, but high end compacts from all the manufacturers are pricey.  At the end of the day the reality of the situation is that if you want the highest quality images possible in a truly pocketable camera, then you have to pay to play and the manufacturers know it.  This being said, in my opinion the S95 is the camera to get for the purposes that I've outlined above. 

It's important to close this review echoing a comment that I made above.  I have never been a true fan of pocket cameras.  Using pocket cameras has traditionally involved too much sacrifice in the area of image quality for me to consider them as a serious option to my SLR.  This is not the case with the Canon S95.  This is a pocket camera that I'm comfortable recommending to anyone who wants a small camera with great image quality. 

Is the S95 a replacement for the high image quality and performance that you'll get with a Canon 7D or any other DSLR?  No, and it's not meant to be.  It's meant to be a great compact camera, and in the end that's what it is.  The S95 meets my three criteria of high image quality, it can easily fit into a pocket, and it offers the right amount of manual control and good user design.  What more could I ask for?!  It was time to buy!

Here are some links to some other great reviews and information on the Canon S95.  I'm posting them here because they quite frankly go into more detail than I do and they're all worthy of a read:

1. Canon USA S95 site
2. Canon Professional Network S95 information 
3. DPReview overview of the S95 
4. DPReview comparison review of S95, Panasonic LX5, and Nikon P7000
5. InfoSync World S95 review 
6. The Online Photographer S95 review
7. Imaging Resource S95 review
8. The Photography Blog S95 review
9. Ken Rockwell Canon S95 review