Anyhow, I quickly discovered that the clock battery is not stored in the same location as it is on my older 5d mark II.  A quick Google search turned up plenty of references to performing the process, but nothing that indicated just where the clock battery was located or how to remove it.  Since I was on my own, I decided to go exploring and post images of the process.

You’ll need a very small Philips-head screwdriver; something you might use for repairing glasses.  There’s only a single screw to remove, but be very careful not to lose it.

First, open the rubber flaps that protect the connectors on the camera body’s left side.

Use a small Phillips screwdriver to remove the screw securing the battery holder.

Once the screw is removed, slide the tray out that contains the battery.

The tray holds the battery even after it’s removed from the camera.

Did this help you out?  Please leave a comment below, and follow my Facebook or Google+ page!

By: Gavin Farrington

If you leave your files in the native Canon .cr2 format, there’s nothing to worry about.  But if you’re like me and always convert everything to Adobe’s DNG format, you’re actually increasing the file size.

The reason has to do with the way the data is stored.  Unlike a full RAW file, the sRAW and mRAW files are not true RAW files.  That is, they’re more like a super-powered .tiff file in that the pixels are a full mix of all three color channels.  When you convert this data to DNG, it cannot store it as efficiently as it can store a true RAW, and the file size increases significantly.

Consider this example.  I took one photograph with my Canon 5d mark III set to mRAW.  I then made two copies of that file for three total.  One I left in its native .cr2 format, one I converted to DNG, and the third I converted to lossy DNG.  Here are the resulting file sizes:

CR2 (original file):  21.3MB
Lossless DNG:  31.2MB (46% increase)
Lossy DNG:  3.8MB

As you can see, the increase in file size is significant.  But there’s hope!  Adobe’s Lossy DNG format sees huge gains from the lower resolution file.  I know “lossy” sounds scary, but in my experience the files are robust and retain a very high degree of quality.  Next time you’re out shooting for fun, try it out and see if you can detect the loss of quality in the Lossy DNG files.  Perhaps it’s a good solution for you, and it would mean even more storage gain.

[Notes - DNG Conversion Settings]
All of the above files were created with the DNG converter set to embed a full 1:1 preview.  This was done to create the most fair file size comparison, since the .CR2 file contains a 1:1 preview created by the camera.  If you choose to completely disable the preview, you’ll see even smaller file sizes.

Well “Adrynalyne” has found the solution, and fully details every step over on his post, “Fix Brightness Control for Windows 8 AMD SG Drivers.”

You can read everything there, but if you’re just looking for a super quick answer, find this registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0001]“FeatureTestControl”=dword:0000f842

Double click “FeatureTestControl” and change the value from “f842″ to “f940″.

Reboot.  Fixed.

My laptop is using HP provided display drivers.  If yours is not, you may want to refer to Adrynalyne’s article for more options.

Whenever I buy new memory cards, I want to QC them myself.  I suppose I could go out on a photowalk and shoot until my card is full, but that would mean reviewing all of those images back home to verify that nothing is corrupted.  Sounds like a lot of time to me.

Enter Charles Mihail.  What Charles has done is create a free little utility called Check Flash that tests memory cards by writing a known data pattern to the entire card, then reading back that pattern to be sure it matches what was written.  In the process of running its test, it will even give you a handy little performance readout – one for read and one for write speeds.

This gives me great peace-of-mind when going into a job with a brand-new memory card.  Between this, and using the “record to multiple” feature on the Canon 5d mk III and Canon 1D-X, I can be confident everything is stored properly.

Here’s a screen-shot showing the settings I used.

Caution:
Be aware that using this utility fills the entire device with randomized data.  This means that if you overwrite files you need, you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RECOVER THEM!  I don’t care how fancy your recovery software is, it won’t work.

Note:
It took Check Flash a little over 50 minutes to test a 400x CF card using a USB3 card reader.  Take this into consideration if you buy them a few minutes before  a shoot!

Select "External Speedlight control" on the first page of the red menu.

Select "Flash firing" in the submenu.

Using the set button, change to "Disable."

Notice much of the menu greys out once the flash is disabled. All control over slave flashes, and the AF assist beam will continue to work. This setting will also disable any other trigger devices you may be using such as PocketWizards.

To speed up this process in the future, consider adding the “External Speedlight control” menu item to your “My Menu” on the camera.

External speedlight control added to the Canon 5d mk III's "My Menu."

Don’t forget you’ve made this change, or you’ll make yourself nuts the next time you need the flash to work!

There’s also access to this setting through the menus on the flash itself, but I find this to be the fastest way to do it.

I chose to get two of the Transcend 400x 64GB CF cards, and two of the Transcend 64GB Class 10 SDXC cards.  I use one CF and one SDXC as a set in my 5d mk III* cameras, and configure it to “record to multiple” so my camera is making backups on the fly.  It is a wedding after all.  No second chances.

So how do these perform?  Pretty good!  For the CF card, CrystalDiskMark reports 135MB/s read, and 72MB/s write.  Compare that to my 400x 64GB Lexar Pro UDMA7 card at 116MB/s read, 73MB/s write.

As expected, the Class 10 SDXC cards were much slower.  CrystalDiskMark reported 23.4MB/s read, and 17.7MB/s write.  Compare that to a Sandisk 64GB SDXC UHS-I 30MB/s card, which clocked 40.7MB/s read, 14.1MB/s write.

For the most detailed info, check the bottom of the article.  Here’s an easy-to-read chart.

All tests performed on Win8 Pro x64, USB3.  CF cards were tested with a PixelFlash USB3 card reader.  SDXC cards were tested with a Transcend TS-RDF8K.

*The Canon 5d mk III doesn’t support the UHS-i spec, so while these cards function just fine in the camera, they provide no performance benefit.  Yes, it makes the camera slow.  No, there’s nothing you can do about it.  If you like conspiracy theories, consider that Canon may have intentionally nerfed the 5d mk III so that you’d have another reason to upgrade to the 1D-x.  Check out my article for more details on the performance impact of writing files to the SD card in the 5d mk III.

If you like seeing the dirty details, continue reading.

CF Cards

Transcend 400x 64GB CF
———————————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2012 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
———————————————————————–
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 135.967 MB/s
Sequential Write : 72.256 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 130.312 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 20.882 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 8.296 MB/s [ 2025.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.195 MB/s [ 291.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 9.874 MB/s [ 2410.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.315 MB/s [ 321.1 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [L: 0.0% (0.0/59.6 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/11/19 17:14:59
OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

Lexar Pro 400x 64GB UDMA7 CF
———————————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2012 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
———————————————————————–
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 116.729 MB/s
Sequential Write : 73.921 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 112.638 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.421 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 9.622 MB/s [ 2349.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.010 MB/s [ 2.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 10.711 MB/s [ 2615.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.011 MB/s [ 2.7 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [L: 0.0% (0.0/59.6 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/11/19 18:47:12
OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

SanDisk Extreme 60MB/s 64GB
———————————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2012 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
———————————————————————–
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 78.645 MB/s
Sequential Write : 50.386 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 78.604 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 2.347 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 5.035 MB/s [ 1229.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.575 MB/s [ 384.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 5.721 MB/s [ 1396.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.541 MB/s [ 132.1 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [L: 0.0% (0.0/59.6 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/11/19 21:55:27
OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

SDXC Cards

Patriot LX SDXC
———————————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2012 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
———————————————————————–
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 38.894 MB/s
Sequential Write : 20.136 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 33.528 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 0.972 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 1.735 MB/s [ 423.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.373 MB/s [ 91.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 1.757 MB/s [ 429.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.118 MB/s [ 28.8 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/59.7 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/11/19 18:28:49
OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

Transcend Class 10 SDXC 64GB
———————————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2012 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
———————————————————————–
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 23.425 MB/s
Sequential Write : 17.785 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 22.450 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 5.059 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 3.781 MB/s [ 923.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.825 MB/s [ 201.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 3.758 MB/s [ 917.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.877 MB/s [ 214.0 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/59.5 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/11/19 19:24:12
OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

SanDisk Ultra 30MB/s SDXC
———————————————————————–
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2012 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
———————————————————————–
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 40.685 MB/s
Sequential Write : 14.183 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 38.390 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.040 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 4.422 MB/s [ 1079.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 2.074 MB/s [ 506.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 2.811 MB/s [ 686.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 2.020 MB/s [ 493.1 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [I: 25.1% (14.9/59.4 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/11/19 20:38:01
OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

One of the ongoing challenges for photographers is storage – there’s never enough.  That goes double for us RAW shooters.  Video folks have it even worse, but no matter how you slice it, we’re one of the few small businesses that can generate more data at a single wedding/event/shoot than most medium-sized spreadsheet-and-email businesses generate all year.  Our challenges are compounded by the fact that most storage devices designed to contain this volume of data are targeted at medium to large business IT budgets.

You know you’re supposed to back up regularly, but when you’re constantly running out of hard drive space, it gets to be a bit of a headache just managing where everything is kept!  Perhaps you’ve looked at NAS or Drobo type devices (and many of those are awesome products with lots of cool features) but what’s a good alternative when you want to do it for a lower cost-of-entry, or you want an inexpensive backup to a NAS product you already own?

Windows 8 to the rescue.

A new feature in Windows 8 is called “storage spaces.”  This will take plain old drives, and “pool” them together into a single, expandable drive letter.  It will even add redundancy if you configure it correctly.  It works with SATA, eSATA, SAS, and USB drives.  (Be aware that USB2 devices are performance limited, though this may not matter much if you’re simply treating it as a backup device.)  They do not have to be matched in any way, so you can add your older 1TB drives, and that new 4TB behemoth you just bought.  And the awesome part?  When the drives in the pool fill up, just add another drive to the pool, and it expands the size of that existing drive letter, without impacting your existing data!  That’s right – no more overflowing backups to yet-another-drive and having to keep it all organized.

So what do you need to get started?  One, two, or three drives, and a moment to read through this tutorial.

WARNING, DATA ON THE EXISTING DRIVES WILL BE WIPED OUT WHEN FIRST CONFIGURING THE STORAGE SPACE!
This process shouldn’t be scary, but I have to say this.  I’m not responsible if you lose data in the process of setting up or using this feature.

In my case, I have three USB3 Seagate GoFlex Desktop drives.  One is empty, and two contain current backups.  What I want to end up with is all three drives in a single pool, with RAID5 equivalent redundancy.  This makes it so the entire pool can survive a single drive failure.  There are other configuration options, here they are:

• Simple (no resiliancy)
  • Use this option if you don’t care about data loss due to a drive failure.  Examples might be a home movie or music collection which is also backed up somewhere else, and you simply want the maximum usable space possible.
• Two-way mirror
  • This is the option I’m choosing.  You are required to begin the pool with at least two drives to enable this configuration.  The data in the pool will survive if one drive fails.  The trade-off is that you may experience slightly lower performance, and you’ll have less usable space than the total sum of the drives.  This is because the computer is using some of the space to store multiple copies of everything to protect against the loss of one drive.
  • Edit: After reading more, I may change to the “parity” system.  For my use, backup capacity is more important than performance.  Parity offers slightly better space utilization at the cost of slightly reduced speed.  If this will be an actual working drive, two-way-mirror offers better performance at the cost of some capacity.
• Three-way mirror
  • For the extra-paranoid.  You must begin the pool with a minimum of three drives to enable this configuration.  This option works identically to the “two-way” option above, with the exception that your computer keeps three copies of everything and can survive the loss of two drives from the pool.  Because it keeps three copies, you’ll notice significantly less usable space than the sum total of all the connected drives, which increases your long-term storage expenses.
  • The primary reason I’m not using this option is that I have other backup devices which store copies of the same data that I’ll be putting on the pool.  NEVER TREAT ANY SINGLE POOL, RAID, or NAS DEVICE AS YOUR ONLY BACKUP, NO MATTER HOW RESILIENT IT CLAIMS TO BE!
• Parity
  • This option offers the same level of data protection as Two-way mirror, but it requires you to begin with three drives.  Under the hood, this is a much closer match to a traditional RAID5 volume.  If you’ll only use the pool as a backup device (not a working space) and you have the three empty drives to begin with, you might choose to begin with this option.

Let’s walk through the process of creating your starting storage space.

1. Hold the keys Windows + X, and open the control panel from the menu that appears in the lower left of the screen.
2. Click on the green text System and Security.
3. Click on Storage Spaces
   
4. Click “create new pool and storage space.”  You will be given a UAC promt, so enter your password or click OK.
   
5. Select the drives you want to begin with.  Remember, for the “two-way mirror” option to be available in the next screen, you must begin with two or more drives.  For the “three-way mirror” and “parity” options to be available in the next screen, you must select three or more drives on this screen.
   1. 
   2. CAUTION! This screen does not identify drives by drive letter.  Use the “view files” link to be absolutely sure you are selecting the correct drives.
   3. CAUTION! Clicking “create pool” to go to the next step, makes the existing data on your selected drives gone baby gone!  This is your final exit!
6. Name, resiliency type, and size
   1. 
   2. Set a name for the storage space.  This is the same as setting a name when you format a traditional drive – it’s entirely up to you.
   3. Select a drive letter.  I chose P for “pool” (or “photo.”)  I’m just goofy like that.
   4. Set the size.  It can be anything you like, and you can change it later without loosing data, too.  Plan to use this one storage space for ever and ever?  Set it to something crazy like 200TB.  You’ll be able to continue adding drives in the future.  If you’re an old-hand at RAID technologies, notice that the capacity you enter on this screen becomes your usable data capacity, not the raw-data capacity.  Thank you Microsoft for making this decision so it’s easier for end-users to understand!  (In this case “raw-data capacity” has nothing to do with the RAW files your camera creates.)
   5. Click “create storage space,” and after a moment of configuring the drives you’ll be on your way!
   6. Notice that if you click “cancel” at this point, Windows automatically performs a standard format on the drives you selected in the previous screen and re-connects them to individual drive letters.  I wasn’t kidding in the previous step when I told you your data would be gone!  (Recovery software may help if you f*cked this one up.)

Done!  Windows will warn you when the drives are running low on space, and you can buy additional drives to add more capacity (up to the size you specified above.)

If you’re a power user, and you plan to use a storage space for your working-environment (not just a backup location) then you might want to read about performance considerations.  Microsoft has a great page: Storage Spaces Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).  This will help you map out your starting configuration and manage capacity expansion for peak storage performance.

Are you planning to use Storage Spaces in Windows 8?  What’s your current backup configuration?  Tell us below!

This bears mentioning only because, if you paid attention to the Microsoft Upgrade Advisor for Windows 8, the Spyder 3 Pro was flagged as a software item that would require a “paid upgrade.”  Well never fear, my dear reader, as this information is incorrect.  I’ve just finished installing Windows 8 Pro on my computer (whether it’s pro, home, or otherwise should be irrelevant,) and the Spyder 3 Pro software is working quite nicely.  I’ve already calibrated and profiled one screen, and my other screen is ticking along nicely as I type this.

In case you’ve lost the installer for your software, you can download it from Datacolor here:
http://support.datacolor.com/index.php?_m=downloads&_a=view

Happy upgrading!

I just unboxed my girlfriend’s Canon EOS-1D X, and wanted to do a quick-n-dirty high ISO comparison.  In the process, I also discovered how very different the colors appear at the same white balance in Adobe Lightroom, and I thought I’d share the results with you.

The following test was conducted at sunset.  This is the reason for the white balance setting, which on my 5d3 most closely approximated the warm tone of the light.  Both files were dialed in at 8000k, +15 magenta.  Both use the exact same lens, and were shot within 1 minute of each other.  Both files are DNG 7.1, process version PV2012, and use the camera calibration setting “Camera Neutral.”  All other settings including sharpening, noise reduction, tone curve, etc are all zero’d out for consistency.  I’m using the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom available as of this writing, which is 4.1.

The camera settings on both the 1D X and the 5D Mark III are: ISO 25,600, f2.2, 1/6400s.  Click the image to see it full resolution.

Click for full resolution.

I’m quite pleased with the improved image quality, especially in the shadow areas.  Consider the black cowling on the side-view mirrors, which show a huge improvement in noise and detail.  Also consider the sharpness of the molding on the side of the doors.

This was a great test, but I wanted to get a more realistic representation of what a file might look like that I would actually deliver to a client.  For this version, I took the exact same files and applied some sharpening and noise reduction.  While I realize this isn’t how everyone would deliver files, my clients are absolutely thrilled when I get results, hand-held, under candle light.  They’re willing to pay for this, even if it means sacrificing a little detail to the NR demons.  The settings on this are identical to the previous, except:  Sharpening – Amount 60, Radius 1.0, Detail 15, Masking 45 and: Noise Reduction: Luminance 45, Color 25.  The numeric values are identical for both the 5d3 and the 1Dx so that you can make an effective comparison.  As always, click to enlarge.

Click for full resolution.

What do you think?  Do you work under such extremely low light that this would benefit you?  Or are you a tripod shooter?  What do you think of the difference in color between the two cameras?  Comments and questions welcome!

Special thanks to Grace Havlak for letting me play with her brand new baby, the 1D X.

Multiple screens can spoil you so bad, in fact, that you’ll never again feel as productive on your laptop.  (Oh the curse of first-world problems, amiright?)

So how can I get a similar experience on the road, without lugging along a huge screen?  And in the process of solving this issue, can I perhaps improve the color accuracy so I can get some color work done, too?  Yes and yes.

The secret lies in your iPad.

Apple doesn’t allow a video signal to be streamed directly over the USB connector, but some intrepid developers have worked around this by creating a link via WiFi.  So long as your laptop and your iPad are on the same WiFi network, you’re good to go.  And the best part? If you already have an iPad, you can do it for free.

There are a few solutions available, but I’m using the one from DisplayLink.  Why?  Simply because it was the first one I tried, and it worked great.

There are two pieces of software to install.  The first is the DisplayLink app that goes into your iPad, or search for “displaylink” in the Apple App store.  Second is to download the piece of software that goes into your Windows laptop.  You can get it free on DisplayLink’s website.  The file to download is near the bottom of the page, and is labeled, “DisplayLink iPad software for Windows.”  This program creates a “virtual” monitor in Windows, and links it to the iPad app via WiFi.

(Mac folks, from what I read your solution is Air Display by Avatron, but I can’t speak for it as I haven’t tried it.  It also works on PC, but it’s a paid solution vs DisplayLink’s free software.  If you’re using it, please comment below on your experience.)

Connecting the two pieces together is quite simple.  Make sure both devices are connected to the same WiFi network, then launch the app on the iPad.  It will show you a list of all the PCs running the Windows DisplayLink App.  Simply tap the name of the computer that you want to connect to.  On your very first connection, you’ll be asked to put a password in.  The software will remember the password on subsequent connections.

The screen may flicker on your Windows PC once or twice while it initiates the new “monitor,” and this is normal.  If at first all you get is a mirror of the screen on your laptop, right-click anywhere on an empty space of your desktop and go to “Screen Resolution” (Win7/Vista) or “Properties” (WinXP).  From here you’ll be able to change the mode between mirroring and extending the desktop.  You want to extend.  Also drag the screens around so they are organized in the computer the same way they’re organized in your physical space.  Windows needs to know that you’ve chosen to put the iPad to the left of the main screen, so that when you move the mouse cursor to the left edge of the laptop, it then continues on to the right edge of the iPad.

So what are the pros, cons, and limitations of this setup?  Well first off, if you’re on the 3rd gen iPad, DisplayLink only runs at 1024×768.  This is the exact resolution of gen1 and gen2 iPads, but on a gen3 if you look closely, the image may appear a tad bit soft.  For my purposes I still found it usable, and far better than nothing at all.  Secondly, because WiFi bandwith is very limited compared to a real display connector (DVI, Display Port, HDMI, etc) the software does have to compress the image some.  The result is a little less color fidelity and some banding in smooth gradients.  Again, still better than nothing.  Third, you probably don’t want to use the iPad display for video or motion.  There’s a bit of lag, and the framerate may not be acceptable.  If you want to watch Netflix while working, download the native Netflix app to the iPad and don’t bother linking as a second screen.

So what does it work well for?  I use it for color correction in Lightroom.  I put the main LR screen on my laptop display, press F11 to enable Lightroom’s secondary monitor support, and put a loop-view on the iPad.  The color on my gen3 iPad is good enough that I can get the bulk of my color correction done on the road.

Is it perfect?  No.  All generations of iPad are limited to about sRGB color gamut.  Further, while the gen3′s screen is pretty close to perfect sRGB, the screens in a gen1 and 2 have a very slight twist in the gamut.  Again, we’re looking for good-enough while working on the road, not absolute perfection.  For me, this gets me damn close to what I want, and I can do final fine-tuning when I get home.  I’ve found that the iPad setup gets me to the correct degree of white balance, shadow, and highlight detail.  There are no major surprises when I get back to my fancy 30″ wide-gamut screens at home.  Further, I’d consider this just fine for creating blog posts.  (Remember, 99% of the people on the web are looking at your blog with far inferior screens, anyway.)

What would I like to see in the future?  I’d like to see the option of connecting via USB, I’d like to see less compression in the signal, and I’d like to be able to use the full resolution of my gen3 iPad.  All pretty tall orders.  My understanding is that Apple hasn’t opened up the software API to allow writing directly to the iPad over the USB port.  This may or may not come with a future iOS upgrade.  If it does, that would give devs a little more bandwidth to play with, and may create the possibility of my other two requests, both of which require more bandwidth to implement.

What do you think?  Will you try this out?  Are you using a different solution that you think I should try?  Let me know in the comments below, and come join the discussion on Facebook!

[Edit:  Here's a photo of my setup, working "on the road" in Vail, CO.]