New LCD monitor, PC, and baby! :)

Its been a while since my last post now, and much has happened. The Canon 20D is a really great camera and I recommend it to anyone needing a semi-pro camera. Canon has also released the new 350D camera which seems like a nice starter camera. Good thing it also comes in black since I felt the grey plastic was a bit cheesy.

I guess the greatest news is becoming a father to a little baby girl! But since this is a blog about photography and related issues I wont go into the specs. :) Its everything a baby can be, except the special little thing that I'm the father. Couldnt be more happy, she is truly beautiful!

Well, I borrowed a Canon 380EX flash from my brother to try it out for some indoor baby shots, and must say I have changed my view on flash photography. When using a white ceiling as a reflector, its simple to take hand held ISO 100 shots at shutter 1/60. Got some very nice shots of mother and child with this simple setup and I guess a flash is whats in store next for my photography gear. Except that I spent all my savings on a new computer instead. :)

Yeah, first a new excellent screen, a Dell 2001FP 20" LCD! Its a very good IPS panel, the same one NEC use in its excellent 2080UX screen. But at almost half the price you cant beat the the Dell deal. It has gotten some critique for the backpanel light coming through a bit, and they are right, blacks arent completely black. But still its pretty close to perfect in color reproduction according to colorimeter tests that has been done. Be warned that a lot of LCDs today dont have true 24 bit color resolution, but actually 18 bit and emulate the colors inbetween with an algorithm that shifts colors on each pixel. A good sign is to look for a screen that has 16,7 million colors and not 16,2 (which is the 18 bit panels). The Dell screen is very nice and big, with a 1600x1200 resolution which is brilliant for working with photography. When I reviewed my photos on it for the first time I felt I was looking on slides again. This high resolution and brightness surely makes the pictures come alive compared to my 3-year old LG CRT. LCD has come a long way over the last years and you cant go wrong with the 20" Dell 2001FP! If you do have more money to burn, go for the NEC 2080UX which is even better.

The Dell 20" has both VGA and DVI inputs, but from reviews and experience, the VGA input is not very good. I'm sure its ok, but once you experience this screen with a DVI signal you'll know what I mean. Since my old graphics board, a GeForce3 Ti500, only had a VGA output I had to look for another card. I had wanted to upgrade it anyway since I like playing games now and then. So the decision fell for the new 6600GT which is good value for money. Since i also wanted to leave the old AGP world for the new PCI-Express systems I also got a new motherboard and a new CPU. The motherboard, an Asus P5GD1, is a very nice package at a decent price, and the CPU, an Intel 530J 3.0 GHz is good enough performance. Why pay almost triple the money for something that is 0.6 GHz faster? I already had a 1GB matched pair of 512MB PC3200 memory sticks in my old system so they went over in the new system, doing what they were made for, dual rate running at 800 MHz!

The new computer system is very nice to work with, and more responsive than my old, absolutely excellent for photography editing in Photoshop. I have some more ideas for the system which I will comment here in a later blog. But for now, please come with questions or comments if you have em, I'm always happy for some feedback.