Apacer AM500 memory card reader

I've been using this so called USB2.0 All in 1 Card Reader. It's an absolute nightmare.



I thought all card readers rated as USB2.0 should have the same performance. How wrong. I never realised how slow this card reader is coz I always upload the pics after taking a few shots for my PC Modding worklogs. I only realised it's dog slow when I came back from the trip to Shanghai when I had 2 full 4gb CF cards n a full 2gb SD card. It took an eternity to upload the pics to my PC. So I went n bought a proper card reader yesterday. I had my eye on the Buffalo n Sandisk brands coz I've read their pretty fast. Couldn't find Buffalo so I looked at the Sandisk Imagemate which came with some freebies like Photoshop Album. It looks pretty good too with a docking station.

Then I saw a really stylish looking reader called Apacer AM500. I whipped out my iPhone n did a quick Google search on it. Seems it's a just released high performance product from Apacer so I bought it immediately. It's a sexy beast. The casing is sandblasted aluminum with black chrome trim. Looooooooovely just fantabulously looovely. I like all my things in black. It supports all major memory card formats. Here's how it looks like.









Looks nice eh? Howzabout the performance? Well, I ripped it out of the box as soon as I got home n did a quick test. I had a 2gb SD card with 920mb worth of pics in it so I used that for the tranfer test. I tested by transferring the 920mb to my PC using Windows Vista n timed how long it would take to completely transfer over to the PC.

Vitac All in 1- took 15 minutes and 26 seconds.
Apacer AM500- took 1 minute and 18 seconds!!!!!

Incredible results I would say. The Apacer AM500 did it at more than ten times the speed of that generic piece of $#!7. LOL. This Apacer AM500 card reader gets 10 thumbs up from me. Awesome performance n svelte sexy look with superb build quality.

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DiGi fair at 1 Utama

I received a text message from DiGi yesterday. It said 1st 300 people to turn up at the registration counter will receive a free gift. I was wondering what gift it was. Since I live about 5 minutes away, I decided to take a drive there to pick up my free gift.

They took up the whole Oval concourse area. Looooooove my Leica D-Lux4 24mm wide angle in this shot. hehe.







The only cool thing I saw at the fair was this Interactive Wall thingy. Anyone remeber the show Minority Report? It was kinda like that display wall Tom Cruise was drawing n working on. The DiGi guy was using his hands to draw n paint on that big screen. Cool Stuff.







I went up to the top floor to try n see if I could get an unusual wide angle shot of the whole concourse area n got a pretty interesting perspective with the 4:3 mode switched on. Kinda looks like a fisheye lens eh?







Now, to the free gift. Pretty dissapointing I'd say. Come on DiGi, I've been a loyal customer since you arrived n set up shop in Malaysia n this is all I get? A lousy looking neoprene CD bag. :( Please give us something a lil more useful next time eh? In this day n age of MP3, how useful is a CD bag? LOL.

Flash for D-Lux4 n LX3

I recently read that Olympus flashes will work in Panasonic cameras n vice versa. I also own an Olympus SP350 which could use it. Soooo............. off I went in search of a nice n cheap Olympus flash. I wanted something cheap n compact as I already have a big flash for my Sony Alpha DSLR. I really like the Leica CF22 flash but it's not available yet. The Panasonic FL360 costs about $300, is so big n ugly on top of our sexy lil LX3/DL4. It's just waaaaaaaaaaay too ugly for my tastes.

I went looking for the Olympus FL20 which is small, light, compact n cheap. It costs only about $100. Found it at a local camera shop called Photo Trillion at Mid Valley Mall n proceeded to try it out. I'll just add that Photo Trillion provides top notch customer service. Here's how the FL20 looks like. It's very small n compact, looks perfect sitting on top of the LX3/DL4. Sry, forgot to take a pic of it sitting on top of my camera.





Here's a reference pic taken by the DL4 without flash.




DL4 with pop up flash.




DL4 with the Olympus FL20 on Auto mode. It doesn't do TTL. I tried, it doesn't fire.



Argggggggggghhhhhh, as u can see, the auto mode doesn't work too well. TTL doesn't work at all. The only way to get proper pics would be to set it manually. Getting a manual flash for the LX3/DL4 is gonna be kinda silly so I didn't. I want a full auto flash that complements the instant point n shoot capability of the cam. Looks like I'll hafta wait for the Leica CF22 then. :(

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