Agloves

Agloves

Oh, OK… I was a little slow to get it… Ag = silver.

I got a pair of these for my brother this year as a Christmas present. With silver thread woven into the fabric of the entire glove, any part of the hand can operate a capacitive touchscreen device.

Last holiday season, I’d been looking at the DOTS Gloves, which approached the same problem by embedding a hard dot of conductive material in the fingertip. One drawback was that only one two dots were provided—on the index finger and thumb of one hand; you could pay a little more for both hands. I also wondered if that dot might scratch my device’s screen. But, the real deal-breaker was that they were always backordered. This year, they’ve dropped their namesake dots, now weaving conductive material throughout the product, and apparently come in a variety of colors too. But, that doesn’t matter as again they seem to have fulfillment issues.

I didn’t even consider those expensive ski glove types—bulky and looking like they were designed for sci-fi movies.

Agloves, as far as I know, come in only one style/color so far, but aren’t vaporware, look casual and work on touchscreens just as advertised. And, at $18 a pair, are very affordable. They’re thinner than I expected and don’t look like the warmest gloves around. But, have turned out to be comfortably warm enough so far; unless I’m playing in snow, I’ll typically wear only light knit gloves/liners anyway. Certainly, they beat texting with your bare hands in the cold. I ordered a pair for myself, with a snug fit, for more precise texting and to more easily slide into another pair of gloves or mitts in wet or snowy conditions.

Posted in gear | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

New toy

New toy

Since Santa wasn’t going to bring me that 11.6″ MacBook Air I wished for, I went ahead and got myself a present. I’d been coveting the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 for a while now, even considering the Japanese domestic model when versions with English menus were sold out everywhere. So, when its successor—the LX5—was announced, it seemed only a matter of time until I got one. When I dropped my Canon S90 (yet again!), resulting in the zoom lever functioning sporadically, that made it a certainty.

Coming from shooting Canons as my previous four cameras, the first thing I noticed is that the LX5′s got a lot of menus. It’s going to take me a while to figure things out. So, no in-depth review by me any time soon.

However, two common gripes about the LX series concern its size and the lens cap. True, it won’t squeeze into your front jeans pocket, but will fit just fine in most jacket pockets. The length and height are comparable to other compacts; it’s the front-to-back depth that makes it just a little bit on the large side. Regarding the lens cap issue, the camera dimensions would need to be even deeper to accommodate a lens that retracts into the camera body and a powered automatic cover.

As an aside, maybe pocketabilty isn’t necessarily a good thing for me? Of the multiple times I’ve dropped the S90, it’s slipped unstrapped out my grip once or twice, suffering barely a scratch. All other times, it’s fallen out of my pocket either as I moved around or as I was pulling something else out.

I already deal with a lens cap all the time when using my SLR. Yes, I need to be mindful that I don’t power up the LX5 with the cap on, causing a jam as the lens extends. But, although I haven’t played around with the camera much yet, but I don’t expect it to a big deal. And, for those times when I know I’ll be constantly using powering on and off, I’ve got one of those “exploding” lens caps.

Posted in gadgets | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Here I go again…

With a new year imminent, I suppose now is as good a time as any to revive the weblog.

Past attempts at maintaining an ongoing blog haven’t been too successful. While I want to post updates chronologically, not being able to find the right photography workflow is a big reason why everything effectively grinds to a halt. So, I will be abandoning that former condition for the time being. Having a huge backlog of photos (going back for years!) to process arbitrarily, there should be enough material to last me at least several weeks… Perhaps even long enough for this blogging thing to take hold as a habit?

Posted in meta | Leave a comment