Storage-How about a portable and functional netbook?

I've been looking for a device to store my pictures when traveling. For many years, I've used a PSD (portable storage device)...an Epson P-2000 Multimedia Photo Viewer (40GB). It's a perfect gadget to pack in a camera bag and use as a secondary storage device. For a small gadget, it's actually quite heavy. After a day of shooting pictures, I would take my SD or CF card and pop it into the Epson device and watch the photos get copied. I could review the pictures one by one or run the slide show feature. One could use this device to watch movies, but we're talking about looking at a 3.8" screen. Which is quite small. This device has a 40GB hard drive which I've come close to filling several times. Over the years, I've kept up with the download notices and upgraded the firmware. Currently, my Epson can only read up to a 2GB SD card. Kind of crippling in today's technology including the size of the hard drive and how heavy the device is. Now, I've been looking for a replacement.

I thought about getting a replacement for my P-2000. I've been extremely happy with this product and its reliability. The price for its replacement, the P-3000 is quite high and still only comes with 40GB of storage.

I've done a lot of research and finally came up with another portable device that is also very functional. A netbook.

This netbook idea brought me to another research path that was just mind boggling. There are a lot of netbook manufacturers out there as well as a lot of different models to choose from. I immediately searched for the "top 10 netbooks" and looked at the list from 2009 and from 2010 from various resources. I wanted to see which manufacturer consistently placed in both lists. I came up with four manufacturers that peaked my interest: Asus, Acer, HP, and Toshiba. (I'm familiar with the Asus brand as I used to build computers (many, many years ago) and had a lot of experience using their Asus motherboards). I made a list of the top important features I wanted in a netbook: hard drive size, battery life, and keyboard. Price was also a deciding factor.

I started reading the users' reviews. There were a lot of them. Some good, some bad. After a few hours of reading, I uncovered a few Mac users out on the Internet who bought a netbook. They were buying Toshibas. As a Mac convert, I knew I should take a bit more interest in their reviews which was mainly about the keyboard. I was able to narrow down the Toshiba model rather quickly and I came up with the NB305-N440BL.

Here's my new toy! This model comes in three colors and as you can see I selected the blue. The cover is nice and textured. There is little chance of this slipping out of my hands or getting fingerprints. Many of the other manufacturers are using slick and shiny covers.




The keyboard is nice and being a touch typist, it just feels good to type on. It feels like a full size keyboard.




There's a lot of status lights available to figure out what's going on with netbook.




Here's the left side of the netbook. There's an SVGA port, network port, USB port, and of course an SDHC card slot.




The right side contains a cable lock port, power, two additional USB ports, a Mic in, and Headphone port. I have my power cable plugged in. Also, I have a USB thumbdrive that's acting as my "ready boost"...giving me additional memory that the OS uses.





The newer netbooks come with Windows Starter 7. It's a limited OS. So far, it's working beautifully for me. I have upgraded the memory from 1GB to 2GB. Most netbooks only come with 1GB and one memory slot. So, if you're interested in 2GB, you have to buy a 2GB memory module and replace the one that came with the netbook. Yes, I had to do some additional research for the memory as this system was quite new and there were problems with older/existing memory modules.

This netbook comes with 250GB hard drive. More than enough to store pictures. I won't have to worry about running out of space. It also has wifi capability as well as an internal NIC if you want to be wired into a network. The battery life is awesome. I'm averaging about 7 hours and that depends on how I setup my screen brightness during the day and evening.

Installation and setup was easy. After getting to the Windows desktop, I was on a network within ten minutes and printing within 5 minutes.

Instead of narrowing my use with a PSD, I now have the capability to store more pictures, access the Internet, type up posts for my blogs, etc. This list could go on and on.

If anyone has this particular netbook and is interested in the memory module that will work with this system...leave me a comment.

I will be back to post the software applications that I'm using with the netbook. I've done some research in finding small footprint apps for manipulating photos, etc.

Taking Wedding Pictures

I had a wonderful opportunity to take some wedding pictures for a friend of mine from church. There was no pressure, as I was a backup photog. I'm actually my church's unofficial photographer and I'm always in learning mode. I keep that mentality, learning mode, so I can be as creative as I want to be.

The church's sanctuary has no natural lighting. It has a very high ceiling where bouncing a flash does nothing. I had rely on the equipment I had: my D5000 and SB-600 flash with diffuser and rely on my own techniques that I've learned while photographing inside this church over the last few years.






















Sometimes you just need to keep an eye on the bride, because you never know what she might do next...
















Overall, this was a fantastic wedding experience for me. I took over 250 pictures of pre-wedding, wedding, and post-wedding. Unfortunately, there are no reception pictures. My darling hubby wasn't feeling too well and we ended up leaving before the reception.

I set my camera to take both RAW and JPEG (fine) images. I didn't have any problems with camera lag time. My D5000 did a phenomenal job of keeping up with me. So did my flash. I used less than two SDHC cards (4GB each).

I'll be back to post more pics.


Camera: Nikon D5000
Lens: 18mm-200mm
Flash: Nikon SB-600 with Sto-Fen diffuser
Settings: Program, Single-point focus, Center Weighted
Post Production (PP) settings: Auto color and copyright information

More Hummingbird Pictures

Being Chased by Bees

Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do...to get a picture or two or three.

Yesterday, I camped out on the front porch enjoying the cool 80 degree (no humidity) weather we were having. I brought my knitting project with me along with bug spray and camera. The essentials. I could hear the birds singing, the hummingbirds chirping, and the bees buzzing all around me. The Swallowtail butterflies fluttering by. A perfect day to be outside!

The hummingbirds were hungry yesterday and camped out a few times in our dogwood tree close to our feeders. A few times, I caught them playing chase from our yard into our neighbor's yard.

Here's the result of my wait:









The honey bees have also found our hummingbird feeders. They share the feeder with the cute hummingbirds. I noticed they were starting to swarm around the corner of the porch where I was perched with my camera. It didn't take me long to figure out that I needed to get my rear in gear. Yeah, some of them started to chase me or so I thought. I could hear the buzzing around my head loud and clear. After waiting a few minutes inside the house, I poked my head out the front door and noticed they were buzzing around my knitting bag. Great! Didn't know that bees liked wool.

I'm wondering...do the bees like the bug spray I was wearing???? Must tell DH to move the feeders away from the porch.

My Favorite Backpack

It's only fitting that I'm a bag collector. Afterall, I'm a female. I have a tendency to look at function first and then cuteness. Sometimes, it's the other way around. Sometimes, a bag will not work for me at all. Usually, I can tell at first glance or within 5 minutes of wearing. Since I'm petite, I prefer to use small bags. There are times, I have to go bigger. That's when functionality is key. Color plays a role as well. My preference is black. A lot of you know that black makes things look smaller. It's true. Also, black doesn't stand out like bright/bold colors do.

I finally found the right camera backpack for traveling and for local trips. I stumbled upon it while at my local camera shop. There is a reason to go to a store and "try before you buy". It's the Tamrac Evolution 6. Perfect size and perfect for my smaller DSLR camera, like the Nikon D5000 with the 18-200mm lens and some accessories.

This backpack comes in two colors. Black and brown. If I could afford it, I would have bought both colors. That's how good the brown version looked.

While in the shop, the salesperson proceeded to pull out all the velcro sections from inside the bag. I was a bit miffed as I wanted to keep the default configuration/sections in place. As it turned out, I uncovered that going with the default configuration prevents one from looking outside the box. The velcro is STRONG in this bag. Rip, rip, rip and more ripping...as the salesperson was trying to show me different ways to configure the bag. You could rip out all the velcro pieces and come up with an empty backpack shell. That was pretty cool to see.


Here's my review of my favorite backpack (pictures taken without flash):

There are a lot of zippered pockets/areas of this backpack. The front contains a buckled strap in the mid-section along with a small pocket at the bottom. This is where a tripod can be attached





Here the backpack straps are configured to be worn as a real backpack. Notice that I folded and tucked in the long straps into the elastic straps.





It comes with waist straps that can be buckled in the front for added balance. If you prefer not to use, you can tuck them away in this built-in pocket.





This backpack can be worn also as a sling bag. Here, you can see where I've crossed over one strap and partially tucked in the unused strap into the built-in pocket. Cool, huh?





Here is the right side of the backpack with the closed pockets





Here is the right side opened. The top pocket can hold small accessories. The bottom zipper area is where the camera is placed.




Here is the left side with the pockets closed.



The top pocket contains the rain cover that can be pulled out and cover the whole backpack. I've used this type of cover on another Tamrac bag and it really works! The bottom section contains an opening where you can store camera accessories (e.g. flash, blower, etc). I can fit my SB-600 flash and diffuser in here.




In this top zippered area, I have my 35mm, a case for my AA batteries, my spare Nikon batteries and pens.




One can also carry extra small lens, P&S camera, and even an small flash can fit inside here or a lightweight jacket can be folded and tucked into this pocket.



The lower front zippered area gives access to the main camera compartment. The velcro strap keeps the camera in place when this compartment is zipped open. There is also a zippered compartment in the flap to hold additional accessories.




Here is the bottom of the bag. Appears that you can hook or attach some straps to carry other things that you may need.




Overall, this is a very functional bag for me. When I place my D5000 w/18-200mm lens, extra 35mm lens, SB600 flash, diffuser, S90 P&S, spare batteries, air blower, extra SD cards, business cards, pens, etc...the total weight of the bag comes to 8 lbs. It's a comfortable bag to wear as a backpack and I do not notice the weight.

The Wait...

Earlier this evening, my DH mentioned that the hummingbirds were playing near the feeder. I grabbed my camera and headed outside...to wait on the front porch. I waited along with the biting mosquitoes. After a few minutes, I noticed something was fluttering around very quickly. I was able to capture a few shots as the sun was setting:



There were two of them playing around and chasing each other. I was able to capture one of them. Thirsty little buggers, aren't they?



This was worth getting mosquito bitten. Tomorrow, I will be ready along with some sunshine, tripod, and mosquito repellent.

Happy Shooting!

A Trip to Chicago and The Global Leadership Summit

Last week, my hubby and I headed to Chicago for The Global Leadership Summit at Willow Creek. We attended the Summit last year and enjoyed it immensely. We knew we were in for a treat this year. We heard from Bill Hybels, Jim Collins, Christine Caine, Tony Dungy, Adam Hamilton, Dr Peter Zhao Xiao, Andy Stanley, Jeff Manion, Terri Kelly, Daniel Pink, Blake Mycoskie, Jack Welch, and TD Jakes. It was an awesome experience to hear from both Christian and Business leaders.


Opening the sessions with Nancy (S90)

There were over 7000 attendees (S90)


Bill Hybels (D5000)


Blake Mycoskie, owner of TOMS Shoes (D5000)


After the conference was over, we headed to downtown Chicago to do some exploring.


Downtown Chicago Riverfront - taken from car (D5000 w/18-200mm lens set to Active mode)


Downtown Chicago - taken from the car (D5000 w/18-200mm lens set to Active mode


On the Lake (D5000)


A feathered friend on the Lake (D5000)



We ate some wonderful food at Bahama Breeze (Schaumburg) and the Lucky Monk (Hoffman Estates):


Margherita pizza @ Lucky Monk (S90)


Portabello mushroom sandwich with Cuban bread @ Bahama Breeze (S90)


Tilapia with mango sauce @ Bahama Breeze (S90)

We had a wonderful time in Chicago and looking forward to another visit soon.

Note: All pictures were taken without flash.