Sony In-Body Image Stabilizer Helps 3rd Party Lens Sales?

According to BCN Japan, half of the top 12 lenses sold in Japan for Alpha mount cameras are 3rd party lenses.  What I can make out of it is that all top 12 lenses do not have in-lens image stabilizer and if you compare this with the top 10 lenses sold for Nikon and Canon, it shows that 3rd party lenses fair quite well. Click on the BCN logo below to go to the rankings, it’s on page 2 of the listing.

On another observation, none of the top 12 lenses sold for the Alpha mount cameras are high-quality professional lenses.  As someone mentioned before, Sony are for newbies!

The surprising thing for me is that the top selling lens is the one that I had and found it horrible.  I exchanged it for the 3rd best selling lens instead and got myself the 9th best selling lens to cover the range.  In simpler terms, I got rid of the SAL75300 for the SAL50F18 and separately bought the SAL18250.  These are the 2 main lenses that I use these days (in addition to the occasional use of the Minolta 70-210).

Novoflex to announce Sony NEX adapters at Photokina 2010?

Photokina 2010 will be held in Cologne, Germany this September and with all the hype and praises for the Sony NEX EVIL cameras, it is believed that Novoflex (www.novoflex.com) a german company will be announcing NEX adapters for all sorts of other lenses except Alpha mounts!?!?  I guess it is because Sony already have those adapters available for the E-Mount to A-Mount type.

The company already has adapters for APS-C sized-sensor cameras, namely the Samsung NX and hence it is only natural that they will hope onto the Sony NEX bandwagon as well.

Anyway, we will know soon, maybe even sooner than Photokina 2010!  Believed to be in the region of USD300-500 per adapter type.

Sony Launches A290 and A390

Why the late posting on this two new DSLR introduction?  Well … there’s really nothing special or anything interesting to blog about these.  The A290 was already out earlier in Vietnam (of all places!) and the A390 is just an A290 with LiveView.

If you need a 14MP DSLR at a bargain, then these models may be for you.  Yawnnnnn ….

I have refrained from posting about the Sony NEX-3 and NEX-5 as I am waiting to get my hands on them before making any comments.  So far, it seems like it is the camera to get!

Nokia N900 Uses MeeGo!

For the sharp eyed reader, you will notice that the pictures in my previous post on the Hainanese Delight Restaurant were taken by my new Motorola Milestone camera phone.  The Milestone is one of the early models that used Android version 2.0.  The main reason that I got it was due to the sliding qwerty keyboard.

I have recently tried MeeGo v1.0 on my netbook and realised that Nokia has also launched the Nokia N900 that runs MeeGo (what was Maemo, coupled with Intel’s Moblin effort).  It looks like an impressive phone and runs on pretty much the same platform as the Motorola Milestone, i.e. uses a 600Mhz processor.  MeeGo, similarly as Android are both based on the Linux OS and as such I would expect it to behave relatively similar.

The form factor is even similar!  Except that the Nokia uses a smaller touch screen with slightly less resolution as well.  Other specifications are just too similar to the Motorola Milestone / Droid such as a 5MP camera, the 600Mhz processor (although different manufacturers), video resolution, A-GPS, and so on.

If the MeeGo on my netbook is anything to go by, it should run pretty well on the Nokia N900.  One major drawback currently on the Nokia is that unlike the iPhone and Android phones, it does have many third party applications BUT Nokia is still the world number 1 phone manufacturer, so many things can happen.

Best Chicken Chop In Penang @ Hainanese Delights?

I was informed that the Hainanese Delight Restaurant located at the 1926 Hotel on Burma Road in Penang serves one of the best chicken chops in Penang.  So, on the way driving towards Fettes Park, we decided to stop by for an early dinner.  There are ample free parking at the hotel itself, so that is not a problem and when you enter the hotel, the restaurant is located on the right.

As we sat, we noticed that it is probably a family run business but what is “un-authentic” was that the people serving us spoke hokkien instead of hainanese among themselves.  I guess being in Penang, that’s only natural but since it is a hainanese restaurant, would have been good to have that feel.  The menu came with a short story about how hainanese cuisine came to Malaysia.

Anyway, since this is our first time there, we basically just ordered the chicken chop and the chicken rice set for the kids.

Maybe our expectations of the best chicken chop in Penang was a tad too high and when it came, it looks too ordinary and when we tried it, it taste too ordinary except that the sauce is very sweet!  Personally speaking, I find that the batter did not have enough egg content, the sauce is just too sweet and it is missing that oomphhhh …

The chicken rice set looked very ordinary with the exception that the ginger that came was green in colour!  I am also used to having sweet black soy sauce with my hainanese chicken rice and was also expecting the chicken to be yellower than it is!  However, the ginger was really special and the rice was just nice!

And … the chicken!  Was excellent!  The skin was smooth and nicely slippery whilst the meat was tender and juicy!  The soy sauce was again on the sweet side but it goes really well with the chicken.

Although I was kinda disappointed with the chicken chop, I would definitely visit this place again.  Main reason is that other than being on the sweet side, there is really nothing wrong with the chicken chop and after experiencing the chicken rice (which is an ordinary dish), I would like to give other dishes a try as well.

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Someone has actually included it into google maps if you zoom well into it.  Worth a try.