You might have heard some crazy talk about the ioSafe gear before now? “They ran over it with an earth mover” “He sprayed it with a fire hose” That sort of thing? Well it’s all true – see the video below!

So, we’re giving one away, a 1.5TB drive that is fire, water and baby proof!.. To be in with a chance, check out the details in this thread in our forum

The last time we ran a competition to win a 500GB ioSafe, this time the guys at ioSafe have told us to give away a 1.5TB ioSafe! That’s enough room for all of your photos AND you could take it swimming if you really really had to… …

Camera touch screens are all the go in 2010 as I seem to recall Samsung got in early — and elegantly — with their ST550 camera.

Now the company has also poured some pretty impressive comms tricks as well into the ST1000 with GPS and Geo-tagging capabilities, WiFi and Bluetooth.

First the camera…

Samsung ST1000 Features

The ST1000 captures 12.2 million effective pixel pictures via a Schneider-Kreuznach 5x optical zoom lens, viewed on a backlit 8.9cm LCD touch screen.

I have a small problem with some black cameras and this one is an example of my difficulty: it’s all over black, with just four buttons: power, shutter, zoom and replay. All OK and easily found but the descriptive text is etched in tiny grey letters, hard to see even in bright light.

The brilliant LCD touch screen to the rescue: a row of buttons appears on each side and bottom of the screen: AF and focus options, ISO, exposure compensation etc plus the main menu. Press one and you see the options for each. It takes you five minutes to get used to the approach but after that you’re happily at home. I liked it.

In replay you can run an auto slide show; at any point touch the screen and the image pauses. Wipe your fingers (iPod-like) and the image zooms up. Want to crop it? Tap your finger. Apply a special, effect? Same action.

In some ways the camera is a no-brainer: set to Smart Auto, point it to a landscape, portrait or 14 other scenes and it will adjust the settings to maximise exposure and focus. Its Smart Face recognition mode learns up to 20 of your friends and family and auto focuses on them first.

Using an optical image stabiliser you can enjoy steady shooting, but then Samsung goes further and claims it has dual stabilisation, which I can only presume is a digital helper by means of shutter speed juggling.

Another nice touch: the recycle bin stores deleted shots in a temp folder — just in case you discover you really needed that shot later!

And the show stopper: you can set up the ST1000 to fire a self-timed shot of yourself just by standing at a distance and waving your arm at the camera.

ISO Tests

(insert Samsung ST1000 ISO 80 f4.2 1/20 sec)
At ISO 80, f4.2 and 1/20 second the parameters are as they should be.
(insert Samsung ST1000 ISO 400 f4.2 1/90 sec)
At ISO 400, f4.2 and 1/90 second, still OK.
(insert Samsung ST1000 ISO 800 f4.2 1/750 sec)
Reaching ISO 800 f4.2 1/750 second, noise is now apparent and sharpness is down.
(insert Samsung ST1000 ISO 3200 f4.2 1/750 sec)
At ISO 3200 f4.2 and 1/750 second we are far beyond a useable shot — noise and other problems make it impossible.

Smaller companies often take a different and braver route in satisfying demand for digital cameras. This particular bunch of boxes is Ricoh’s answer to the need for more compact, versatile, yet more powerful digital capture devices.

Described as ‘the world’s smallest and lightest interchangeable lens camera system’ the Ricoh GXR unit integrates lens, image sensor and image processing engine into a single interchangeable unit: when you change the lens, you also change the sensor, shutter, aperture, processing engine plus the motors to drive auto focus and zoom (if needed).

The basic unit holds little more than the LCD screen, card slot, camera controls and flash.

A different lens module can have a different sensor size and type (CCD or CMOS?). The whole structure is dictated by the lens, not the body. A true interchangeable system.

The review package included the die cast magnesium body, the A12 module — an f2.5/33mm lens — and the VF-2 electronic viewfinder.

Set Up

Taking the GXR body in my left hand I slid the A12 module leftwards across the camera body to attach it. The VF-2 viewfinder (AUD299) simply slid into the accessory shoe. I then had a faux DSLR with two viewing options.
 
The A12 is a 33mm lens, equivalent to 50mm in 35 SLR terms, imaging to a 23.6×15.7mm CMOS with 12.3 million pixels. Apparently a highly corrected optic, it protrudes from the body by 45mm … a pancake lens it’s not! But it could well serve as a portrait or macro lens with the latter benefiting from its manual focus capability.

Budget-priced DSLRs make up a pretty crowded sector and one that deserves investigation from anyone about to enter the wonderful and empowering world of this type of shooting gear.

As a DSLR, the Pentax K-x is about as good as it gets and, aside from engaging with a venerable name in cameras, taking it on would also deliver a camera to you with the benefits of Live View and High Def movie capture.

With the f3.5-5.6/18-55mm lens attached the Pentax K-x, built around a stainless steel chassis, is compact and not too heavy at around 800 grams. The knobbly speed grip makes it an easy one-handed shooting piece of gear.

Colour? Yes it can shoot colour (goofy!) and it comes in colour in a choice of white or black, as well as special, limited …

Yesterday we revealed some of the results of a recent reader ‘census’ looking at the cameras that they use as their primary camera. We shared that 94% of our readers use a DSLR camera as their primary camera that Canon is the most popular brand of DSLR (46% vs 40% for Nikon), that Canon dominate the point and shoot market also (just over 50%) and that Panasonic are #1 in the Micro Four Thirds market (just uner 70%).

Today we’re going to look at specific camera models in the three different classes of cameras and reveal which camera is most popular with our readers.

Popular DSLRs

Lets start with the DSLRs (as 94% of our readers use them as their primary camera).

As mentioned yesterday – over 11% of our DSLR using readers use 1 single

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