EOS 550D with RÖDE Stereo Videomic, originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Continuing blogging about my experiments with the new Canon EOS 550D: my first tests with the video audio point out that there is actually no sense in attaching an external mic to the camera right now. The AGC (automatic gain control) issue is much worse than what I thought. Here are two tests, the first with the internal mic, the second shot using the Röde Stereo Videomic, and in this latter one the “hiss” is almost intolerably loud:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMEeTO-22eY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=940cEEOen6U

Apparently the sensitivity of Röde is different from the internal mic, and the automatic gain control keeps on boosting the sensitivity up, until the audio becomes saturated with the background hiss.

There are a couple of potential work-arounds to this, but neither makes me very happy. The first one is to wait for a patched firmware to Canon EOS 550D; it is unlikely that Canon will provide a way to turn off AGC through the official firmware, but there are unofficial projects working on this kind of things. The most famous of these is the Magic Lantern project, but it is highly uncertain whether they will ever produce a hacked firmware for EOS 550D (the main focus is on 5D). More:

http://magiclantern.wikia.com

The second way that I know about is the “bypass trick”, where you fool the AGC to keep down by pushing synthetic tone to the other audio channel, and record your movie to the other channel. In the post-production you can then remove the extra channel. There is this video that explains the technique:

Neither way is that kind of quick fix that I would be hoping for (and I am not interested in plugging in extra sound sources every time I will be recording a short video clip), so any further ideas or advice on how to work around the AGC issue in EOS 550D are highly appreciated.

EOS 550D, originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Ok, my new SLR arrived today (sans VideoMic & Eye-Fi card, those will arrive a day or two later), and it is time for the first impressions. Firstly, it is a real pleasure to shoot using this thing. It is much faster than my 350D used to be, and the large, sharp LCD display makes a real difference. The photos immediately jump to life, and it is possible to get right kind of feedback while trying to get the right tones, field of depth, or exposure. Also, since the camera is so light, it is easy to handle and I can picture myself carrying it around in our regular family travels. I have not got time to test the Full HD video properly, but it seems to be sharp, and camera easy to control while recording. There are some settings I still need to check out from the manual, though. AF point control, for example, was still evading me. It is good to notice that all the controls automatically feel like they are on the right places. Probably that is because they are mostly on their old, EOS-style places, on the other hand, the few changes feel natural and motivated. A good camera. Here are some test shots uploaded into Flickr.

It was five years ago (time really flies!) when I got my previous Canon SLR, EOS 350D. The photos from the very first session should still be here. The body is still working fine, there are only a couple of dust particles inside, but the feature standard and user experience of today’s top cameras is completely different from 350D. I have now placed an order for Canon EOS 550D (with the kit IS zoom lens), and the key features are worlds away from the 2005 situation:

• 18 million pixels
• Full HD video (1080p)
• DIGIC 4 processor
• sensitivity range ISO100-12800 (extended, 6400 native)
• 3 inch LCD display, 1040k pixels (live view — the quality of in-camera image display has grown more and more important during the years)
• etc.

The manual for this thing is 260 pages (there is some reading and learning waiting for me) and can be downloaded from here. There are also a few extras that my setup will include:

• Eye-Fi Pro X2 8 GB Class 6 SDHC Wireless Flash Memory Card (provides automatic uploads when within Wi-Fi range, plus automatic geo-tagging, but only with Wi-Fi triangulation)
• RØDE VideoMic (useful for the HD video shooting, even while the automatic gain control, AGC, is an issue in the audio side)
• Battery grip BG-E8 (the old BG-E3 from EOS 350D is of course incompatible), plus an extra LP-E8 lithium-ion battery

For those who are interested in dealers, I ordered the camera plus lens kit from Stockmann through a “regular clients’ deal”; Eye-Fi card from Amazon.com; Röde mic, battery and grip from Maitolaituri.tv. Lets see how the deliveries will finally work out.

One of the interesting developments is this trend towards shooting hi-def videos using SLR cameras — taking the artistic potentials, lens quality etc. of course something that holds great potential, yet these cameras are built for still photography originally, and e.g. focusing and handling are not similar to pro-level digital video cameras. But then again, neither is the price. There are few nice movies to look at for samples:

• ‘Venice’s People’ by Philip Bloom, shot using Canon 7D and the Röde videomic: http://vimeo.com/7412515 (edited with Magic Bullet Looks)
• House season finale, shot all with Canon 5D Mk II, Youtube teaser here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAaZZQhuyMo

It will be particularly interesting to see how the Eye-Fi card handles the huge Full HD video files. On still shots, I could see myself even using software hotspot from my Nokia N900, shared to camera with JoikuSpot software, but that data bandwidth is way too narrow for any video clips.

More: Canon EOS 550D brochure (3 MB PDF file) — originally intended for the Asian market, as you can see from the visual style.

Sauna enjoys a semi-religious status in Finland — there are over 2 million saunas in a country with a population of 5,3 million. Choosing details of your own sauna is therefore not a joking matter. There are several schools of ‘proper’ or ‘right’ Way of Sauna in Finland, and a passionate (or even heated) discussion can ensue when competing views collide.

I have a pretty typical sauna in the cellar floor of our house (rintamamiestalo house type in Finnish). It had been recently renovated and I had no intention of changing ventilation or lauteet (the seats or platforms). But our kiuas (the stove, or heater) was an old Narvi electric kiuas, which was small and apparently also partly broken: it would only heat the room into c. 60°C in an hour. Probably there was problems in the heating resistors. I could have tried to get the old kiuas fixed, but it made more sense to try and get a better model.

I ended up with Harvia Figaro FG90 model. It suits our particular demands which actually fuse two sauna cultures or styles: the slow and mellow, and the hot and aggressive style. Since Iki Kiuas introduced their massive stoves, the mellow school of löyly (steam or ’spirit of sauna’ that you evoke by throwing water to the hot stones) has been gaining in popularity. I personally like a bit hotter löyly though, which has also some ‘kick and punch’. So we tried to find a kiuas that would scale from massive-and-mellow löyly up to the hot ones.

Our sauna room is 2,30 m x 2,10 m x 2,05 m in size, which means c. 9,9 cubic meters of space to heat. But you need to take into calculation also the cold stone or concrete walls and glass walls or doors (we have both) that leak the heat, rather than work as insulators. FG90 is a 9,0 kW model, so it specs say it fits 8–14 m³ saunas.

My first test run today was principally positive. At the start of the evening Figaro behaved like a slow, massive kiuas (we loaded it with c. 80 kg of stones). After another hour with the settings in the maximum, FG90 put the room into 122°C temperature, which was as far as I wanted to push it this time. That was more than what I needed anyways; 90-100°C is mostly hot enough for me, and for a slow and mellow family bath, 65-75°C is probably the optimum range.

I like the design, too. It is not as fancy as a ‘full tower model’ like Iki Kiuas or some of its clones would be, but you get a rather compact stove that is flexible in its use range, and while installed in a small to medium sauna, it shows towards you a long flank of dark Finnish stone, packed behind bars of stainless steel.

More of Harvia Figaro (in Finnish) from here: http://www.harvia.fi/products?lang=fi&gid=991.

Nokia BTH-905, originally uploaded by FransBadger.

There are moments when noise cancellation headphones come in handy. I tested my new Nokia BTH-905 today as I mowed our lawn. Klippo is not the most silent of lawnmowers, but having these on my ears made the motor sound become like quiet hum. And I could enjoy my favourite music, so the damned exercise was much more tolerable.

I tested the compatibility with two mobile phones, Nokia N900 and Apple iPhone 3GS. Ironically, N900 did not fare so well. The sound started cutting and breaking up immediately, and closing the bluetooth connection actually froze the headphones so that a reset to the initial configuration was needed before I was able to continue using them. I guess the bluetooth stack in N900 is still “under construction” — there are many other people also warning against this particular phone–headphone combination in the net. Nothing like that with iPhone. After enabling the bluetooth linking, you can use the headphones for making calls and listening to music perfectly normally. The sound is pretty good, even if I think my Sony DR-BT50 actually deliver more clear and articulate soundscape. (Now, if I could only find the lost power adapter for that Sony from somewhere here…) The main attraction for Nokia BTH-905 is nevertheless the decent noise cancellation technology. The sales package of BHT-905 actually claims 99 % reduction of noise, which is probably a bit too much to promise (or something that will only be reached with precisely right kind of noise), but it is nice in any case. I haven’t tried out the popular Bose QuietComfort models, so cannot really make comparisons, though.

More about Nokia BTH-905: http://www.nokia.com/microsites/bh-905

Note that this event also accepts papers on fantastic/SF games (English below):

CFP: Teorian käytäntö – FANTASTISTA TUTKIMASSA

XI SCIFI- JA FANTASIATUTKIJATAPAAMINEN

Jyväskylässä torstaina 15.7. & perjantaina 16.7. 2010

Finnconin yhteydessä järjestettävän yhdennentoista scifi- ja fantasiatutkijoiden tapaamisen teemana on teorian käytäntö. Fantastinen asettaa jo peruslähtökohdissaan tutkijalle joukon teoreettisia kysymyksiä. Mikä on ”fantasian” suhde ”fantastisen” usein kuvaamaan “luonnollisen” ja “yliluonnollisen” suhteen ratkaisemattomuuteen? Miten tämä liittyy lajikysymykseen ja fantastisen kerronnan muotojen todellisuutta kyseenalaistavaan ja sitä uudeksi määrittelevään kerrontaan?”

Tutkimuksen kohteena voivat olla kirjat, elokuvat, tv-sarjat tai muut scifiksi tai fantasiaksi laskettavat kulttuurituotteet. Toivomme saavamme tutkijatapaamiseen papereita teemoihin sopivista tutkimuksista, olipa tavoitteena essee, seminaarityö tai väitöskirja. Paperit voivat olla joko suomeksi tai englanniksi.

Tutkijatapaamisen tavoitteena on edistää monitieteistä suomalaisen tieteiskirjallisuuden ja fantasian tutkimusta sekä suomalaisen tutkijaverkoston kansainvälistymistä. Työskentelyä ohjaavat tutkija Irma Hirsjärvi (JY), tutkija Merja Polvinen (HY), prof. Liisa Rantalaiho (TaY), prof. Frans Mäyrä (TaY), tutkija Matti Savolainen (TaY) sekä tutkija Markku Soikkeli (TaY). Lähetä 500 sanan abstrakti aiheestasi 16.5.2010 mennessä Word- tai RTF-tiedostona osoitteeseen  csmaso [at] uta.fi. Väitöskirjaan tai sitä seuraavaan tutkimukseen liittyvien papereiden toivomme olevan englanniksi. Lähetämme tiedon hyväksymisestä ja jatko-ohjeet 7.6. mennessä. Itse seminaariin toivomme 4-8 sivun paperia kultakin. Mikäli osanottajien määrä antaa myöten, käsitellään papereita  myös teeman ulkopuolelta. Huom! PORTTIlehti on tarjonnut joillekin papereille mahdollisuuden tulla julkaistuiksi artikkeliksi muokattuina (http://www.sci.fi/~portti/).

Järjestäjät:

FINFAR – Finnish Network of Fantasy Research ja Finncon – 2010 (www.finncon.org).

Koordinaattori Markku Soikkeli (csmaso[at] uta.fi)

CFP: Theory in practice – RESARCHING THE FANTASTIC

The 11th Seminar of the Finnish Fantastic Researchers, Jyväskylä & Finncon 2010, Finland

Thursday 15th and Friday 16th July, 2010

The 11th Seminar of the Finnish Fantastic Researchers will take place in Jyväskylä, Finland, in connection with the FINNCON 2010. We wish to invite papers with following themes in general: how to implement the theory of fantastic in practice or how to apply the concepts of the theory in practice.

The basic premises of “the fantastic” themselves pose theoretical questions for researchers. How does “fantasy” relate to the problematic issue of “natural” vs. “supernatural”? How does that relate to the questions of genre and to the way the forms of fantastic narratives question and redefine reality? The research may be based on literature, movies, TV-series and any other cultural product in the wide field of science fiction and fantasy. Various kinds of papers are welcome: essays, academic seminar papers, parts of dissertations etc. The papers may be in either Finnish or English.

The aim of the seminar is to promote Finnish multidisciplinary research on science fiction and fantasy and to enhance the internationalization of the Finnish research network. Teachers of the seminar are researcher Irma Hirsjärvi (University of Jyväskylä), prof. Frans Mäyrä (University of Tampere), researcher Merja Polvinen (University of Helsinki), prof. Liisa Rantalaiho (University of Tampere), researcher Matti Savolainen (University of Tampere), and researcher Markku Soikkeli (University of Tampere).

The deadline for an abstract of 500 words is 16.5. 2010. It should be sent by email, preferably in Word- or RTF-format to the address csmaso [at] uta.fi You will receive a message about the acceptance of your paper and further info by 7.6. For the seminar we wish to receive a presentation of 4-8 pages of your research. Dissertation articles or postgraduate research papers should be in English if possible.

When the number of participants allows, papers will also be accepted outside the theme.

Organizers: FINFAR – Finnish Network of Fantasy Research and Finncon 2010 (www.finncon.org).

Coordinator: Markku Soikkeli (csmaso@uta.fi)

The official specs for N8, the first Symbian 3 device are now out. They have also produced a series of YouTube videos that you can access for this ‘media wall’ by clicking (let the video first load until the menu):

It is still a bit early to say what the actual use experience will be, but I hope they have managed to get the UI and user experience into more simplified and streamlined mode in this version — the tech itself is pretty impressive as that is the traditional forte (mobile media codecs & engineering) of Nokia, not so much the UX, unfortunately.

iPad Wi-Fi going Joikuspot/N900, originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Another nice thing to try out: since the iPad version we got was a Wi-Fi only model, it was interesting to see whether it would be possible to share the mobile data connection from my 3G mobile phone with it, in order to go online outside a WLAN network area.

Turns out this is actually quite easy. I bought a JoikuSpot Premium software for my Nokia N900, put in few details, and after launching it up, joined iPad into the newly established local Wi-Fi network. Surfing just fine (with up to c. 500 kbs download speeds in 3G network area). Nice! The only downside is that the battery of N900 runs out really fast if you are all the time running JoikuSpot in it.

iPad unpacking, originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Here are the very first impressions: yes, Apple has created a very cool and smart device in iPad. I want one for myself (typing this with our gamelab iPad), even while I am not sure what I would be really using it for. Yet. The real power of this thing is in the user experience; it it so futuristic it feels like entering into sci-fi — and for me that is not a bad thing.

The UI logic is pretty much that of iPhone, the size makes huge difference though. The bright window into media, combined with the intuitiveness of touch, plus the fact that iPad is very fast, makes common tasks feel a bit magical.

There are the obvious downsides, too. Not having flash makes no sense to me at all. This thing would be the killer Facebook gaming device. Now, apparently Apple is trying to kill flash and make eveyone develop native iPhone OS apps. Shame on them. Also, the virtual keyboard is pretty ok, but it is not something that is intended for serious typing tasks. This is mostly a rich media plaything.

Together with rest of the UTA Gamelab folks we will continue to test iPad, but currently there is the technical limitation that there appears to be no way to get paid iPad apps (games, nor books, or movies) for testing. iPad apps are not yet available in the Finnish iTunes, and you need a US credit card or bank account to be able to buy from the US iTunes/App Store. Damn. Need to continue testing the free sample apps then.

Today was the first day of the Games Research Methods Seminar — loads of stimulating papers, and critical and inspiring discussions. There will also be publication project (or two) coming up based on this event, so: watch this space. More: http://gamesmethods.wordpress.com/