Hey all,
So I have entered my busy season and added an extra job this year in the
form of two days coverage of student move in at a boarding school. The
school has just opened a new dorm, well actually reopened the original dorm
that the school first opened in the the 1860's, but anyway. Since I am
waiting for the E-3XPTi and don't know what cards will be the best fit for
it I decided rather than add extra memory cards I would get a portable hard
drive instead. After a little bit of agonizing over which model to go with I
settled on the Epson P-3000 since it is cheaper than the P-5000 model and
either can be upgraded to a 120GB drive should I see fit in the future. Also
as I always preferred my silver OM-2n over black models the silver P-3000
would be right at home (the P-5000 is black BTW).
Now that the machine is here I am glad I got it as at the end my first day
of shooting I have backed up five cards worth of data to it with no
problems. What really surprised me was the speed for reading cards as it is
considerably faster at sucking a 1GB card dry than any other card reader I
have owned. I haven't put a stop watch on it but I am guessing it is around
2 minutes versus the up to 15 minutes that my SanDisk USB 2.0 and PC card
readers were taking. Add that to the super fast HD to HD transfer when
emptying the P-3000 to my computer and I doubt I will ever use the other
readers again.
Functionally the P-3000 is very much like a big iPod with tiered menus that
you drill down to get to individual images and functions. A large four way
pad and an OK button serve to navigate with zoom and back buttons around the
pad and three special function buttons below the pad. The display button
steps through an overlay of the image file name, histogram with partial EXIF
data and then blinking highlights. RAW images are previewed just fine with
my E-1s files looking great on the 4 inch screen (and I must note it is a
very nice screen). The only slightly annoyance is the lack of zoom beyond
100% for RAW files though JPG files can be zoomed to 400% for critical
examination. The built in slide show feature is usable for quick and dirty
replay to clients.
What really sells me on how versatile this product is the connection
options, it has two USB connections and AV out. One USB connection allows
for upload and the other acts as a host to another other hard drives and
thumb drives or even a camera. The host option allows a single menu command
to backup your backups and to play back files from the host drive. I can see
where this would be great for traveling as you could bring a second drive
with music or video's on it to play back at night upon return to your
lodgings, perhaps even using the AV out hooked into the room TV. Oh did I
mention that it does music and video files too? Most of the popular file
formats are supported including those encoded with DIVX for smoother looking
video playback. Its not widescreen but plenty good enough for casual use.
Finally there is currently a $100 rebate on the P-3000 that brings the final
price to under $400. If you have been considering buying a portable backup
device now is the time. I am not associated with Epson just a very happy
owner.
Dan S.
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|