The various forums devoted to Minolta have been quite emotional the last few months. Ranging from wild rumors of how Sony is going to ruin everything to truly sincere “thank-you’s” to the various people working at Minolta who are going to be without a job tomorrow. I just saw this post by an ex-Minolta employee on dpreview:

If you don’t know who Mr Kusumoto is well he’s the man who came from Japan many years ago with two suitcases full of Minolta cameras and started it all for Minolta. He was talking with the manager about something. When he was done about four of us techs who have been here a long long time watch him glance at us for an instant as he walked towards the door. He turned around and stared at us. In the most humblest words he said “I am so sorry”. He is a most honorable man. He made this company great! It was great working for someone who really cared about his employees and his customers. I walked over and extended my hand. He did the same. I thanked him and that’s all I could say without getting too choked up. Next tech did the same and so on. Sorry if this is a bummer but It is an end of an era. - Xtech

Tomorrow is a new day. Sony is in an amazing position to take over the DSLR market by storm. But Sony being Sony, they are just as likely to ruin everything just like they did with the Walkman. I doubt they will make any new announcement before May/June. Its going to be a long wait…

Good (I knew you’ll continue reading), with that out of the way, let me introduce you to notpron. The self proclaimed “hardest riddle available on the internet” is not only the hardest, it is also the most addictive, interesting, and clever. It has 138 levels (so far), and each one of these can take days to solve. The riddles involve interesting computer tricks, math tricks, google searching, html tricks, and just about anything you can think of. I am currently stuck at level 16. It is very frustrating because I think I have decoded all the clues, but cant figure out how to put everything together so that I can unlock the next level.

So if you believe you can think laterally, and fancy your computer, math or searching skills, give it a shot. You’ll never forgive me

If you have never heard of BSG, and are even mildly interested in science fiction (or even if you are not), give the miniseries a shot to see if you like it.

With the death of Minolta, and the future uncertain with Sony, it is good to see atleast one camera company has the right idea. The new Panasonic has a dedicated shutter speed knob (when was the last time you saw one on a new camera!?), and even has a functional aperture ring! To top it all off, Leica announced support for the four-thirds system with their new 14-50 mm lens with image stabilization. If the camera+lens is reasonably priced (instead of the snobish Leica price), this is sure to be a killer camera.

Cant wait for Sony’s announcement on their new camera and lens lineup. I only hope they keep the Minolta design, ergonomics and glass and improve it in Minolta spirit, instead of Sony-izing everything…

For those unaware about Minolta’s heritage, here is a brief history. Minolta was the first company to introduce an Autofocus SLR, wireless flash, first (and till date the only) to incorporate anti-shake in the camera body, and a bunch of other firsts. It was perhaps the only company that actually put some thought into the camera user interface. Nikon is really quite bad, and Canon just downright pathetic in terms of the user interface on SLRs. As long as Sony doesnt try to impose its “memory-stick culture” on these cameras, there is bright future ahead for the Maxxum/Dynax mount. Now if only they would make a formal announcement on what their plans are, it would silence a lot of speculation and fear on various forums.

Update: A day after the announcement the dust is starting to settle and more information is slowly coming out. According to Sony, they are aiming at a 25% share of the DSLR market. Also, ebay prices for Minolta lenses is already starting to rise. I saw an old Minolta 100-200mm/4.5 lens (good but not great) go for around $80! Just last week I almost bought one for under $30! I knew I should have gotten more lenses earlier :p

pbase was one of the very first photo sharing sites on the net. It has some really cool features like searching the camera/lens database. Unfortunately the interface is somewhat antiquated (though very flexible), and they offer very little storage space.

And then there is smugmug. It has the best UI by far (though not very configurable for the standard account). They offer unlimited storage and a generous bandwidth cap per month. They have a fairly decent API for third party apps (though not as popular as flickr). Nice full screen slideshows, print ordering, and the option to upgrade to a power user for a highly customizable look are added benifits. The only thing that really goes against smugmug is the lack of a real photo-sharing community like flickr.

So, I was really jumping between smugmug and flickr and finding it hard to decide until I came across this thread on their smugmug’s support forum. This guy basically wants to upload 2+ terabytes worth of images, and is wondering if smugmug can handle this. Here is the response that he got from those incharge:

Wow, that must be close to 500,000 JPEGs! Quite a collection - I can’t wait to see them.

So we’ve always said “unlimited storage” and we mean what we say. We’re happy to take your photos and host them, but we need a little time to prepare.

Just so you know, this is something like a $20,000 first-year commitment for us in terms of disk space, power, cooling, and physical space. You’ll basically have two complete RAID arrays to yourself in our datacenter. Of course, you’ll only pay your $30, $50, or $100 per year, depending on your account level. Again, we’re happy to do it - but I want to be up front here and let you know that we need to order some equipment and get it installed to accept your photos. We’re not geared for accepting 2.5TB overnight.

We’ll also be buying extra image processing machines just for your batch of photos. Luckily, once yours are done, everyone else at smugmug will get to benefit from them, so I don’t consider that a cost to host you.

Does that sound fair? Can we ask you to hold off while we order and install the equipment and power required?

Thanks!

Don

Wow! This is called customer service. I immediatelly signed up for a standard account at smugmug

Here is my smugmug webpage. I’ll be adding pictures and organizing it in the coming weeks. Will also post links here, and hopefully have something like a photoblog that is linked to smugmug soon.

Finally, if you do decide to go with smugmug, use this referrer code while signing up MwBAowRs6Oiis - it will save you $5, and give this poor graduate student a $10 credit towards next year’s service.

To get started, here is a nice little twenty minute special on the best TV serial on air - Battlestar Galactica. Its not much, but atleast something to chew on while we wait for the rest of the second season.