Silent Devotion

Canon PowerShot SD500 Digital Camera In Review

One camera to watch available on the market today is the Canon PowerShot SD500 Digital Elph. Coming with an impressive 7.1 megapixel resolution this camera provides superior image quality.

The SD500 executes well on speed and sharpness tests. It also got a fun My Color feature that will be sure to please many kinds of users.

In the looks department, the Canon PowerShot SD500 is pleasingly comfortable to hold and operate. However, it can be easy to press the tightly laid-out buttons on the back accidentally during one-handed shooting. The optical viewfinder just above the large 2-inch LCD is very nice, and maintains a fairly smooth, bright, clear image when panning.

Aside from the 7.1 megapixel rating, the Canon PowerShot SD500 has most of the standard features of its class, including an f/2.8 to f/4.9, 7.7- to 23.1-mm (37- to 111-mm, 35mm equivalent), 3X optical zoom lens.

All the standard modes are available via the mode dial as well as through the menu system, including Playback, Auto, Manual (which lets you adjust white balance, ISO, EV compensation, and color effects), Macro, and Movie. The Movie mode lets you capture VGA video clips at 30 frames per second. Other modes available only via the menu system include Stitch Assist (for panoramas) and nine preset scene modes.

The Canon PowerShot SD500 has a very intuitive user control system. It also offers a very interesting shooting mode called My Colors. You can make blues, greens, or reds more vibrant, or lighten or darken skin tones.

Fantastic effects are created with the Color Accent and Swap Options. Color Accent allows you to isolate the color of one object, while the color information for the remaining portion of the photograph is removed. The result might be the bright yellow sun in the middle of a black-and-white sky.

In Color Swap mode, you choose a particular color in a scene on the LCD, and then select the color you want to swap it with. For example, you could isolate someone’s bright red T-shirt and swap it with the blue from someone’s baseball cap. You have to make your color selections before you shoot, though, so make sure you’re not going to miss the shot.

The Canon PowerShot SD500 allocates your pictures to SD memory cards for storage. There’s also direct link to Canon CP Printers and select BJ Printers. This in fact means that you do not need a computer to print pictures.

The Canon PowerShot SD500 makes use of proprietary lithium batteries. The marketed battery life is about 160 shots with the LCD on and about 550 shots with the LCD off. If a long battery life is a necessity, extra batteries are available for purchase at your local camera store so you can take along extras.

Another unusual feature is an elective DC coupler, supported by a flap on the battery/media compartment door. This lets you operate the camera from AC power (by the use of an optional adapter) while you charge the battery in the included external charger.

Overall, the Canon PowerShot SD500 is a smart little camera for the value. A few notes however are that it has some difficulty finding the intended focusing point in Macro mode. Macro mode also has the fault of overexposing pictures when the flash is used except for the bottom area of the image that is dark due to the extended lens blocking the flash.

The mode design could also be modified. Only the center (Manual) mode appears level when selected. The remaining modes: Playback, Auto, Macro and Movie are slanted as you turn the dial.

On the whole, the Canon PowerShot SD500 is a great ultracompact camera. It looks wonderful and gives impressive image quality. Add a couple of unusual features, and you have a versatile camera that is destined to be a hot-seller

Get Motivated Fast — 3 Ways to a New Perspective

Zig Ziglar is a motivational mastermind, and reminded us that motivation fades. This means that in order to stay motivated, we need a daily boost.

We need motivation in order to push beyond the ordinary and the mediocre. Whether it’s losing that last 10 pounds, or taking on that tough project at work, or a business venture, motivation wins out. Inertia is a huge factor in our lives.

If you’re going in a particular direction, inertia will keep you going that way unless you apply force. See if your body keeps going when you pull up to a stop sign in your car.

Inertia can work for you, because once you get going, you’ll tend to keep going. The challenging part is to get things started (and re-started), and that’s where motivation comes in.

Below are 3 ways to get your momentum going, get inspired, and out of a rut.

Select a mantra — Using a mantra can have some advantages. You can use it every day to remove negative thoughts and clear the way for positive things. A mantra is traditionally a sound or series of sounds that are repeated over and over again during meditation sessions. But a mantra can become much more than that.

Guy Kawasaki tells us that we can replace long mission statements with mantras. Short and to the point, we can rely on mantras to calm us and give us strength.

Mantras can also act as guiding principles for behavior and help with decision making. Google’s “do no harm” philosophy is a mantra for how to do business.

Mantras should be short, only a few words long at most. You can choose any mantra you like, and you can choose several of them for use in different situations. You can use them for meditation sessions as well as a sort of battle cry when you need strength and confidence. You can also use them to calm yourself when decisions need to be made.

Do something physical — When we feel a certain way, we reflect that in our bodies. As goes the mind, so goes the body. Pretend you’re depressed for a moment. What does your body do? Your shoulders slump, your eyes head toward the ground, and your head faces down. Can you feel that?

Now, try using your body to prevent a depressed feeling from overtaking you. Stand up tall showing off your best posture. Smile. Lift your arms and put them straight out at your sides to form a cross with your body. Tilt your head back and stare up at the ceiling. Lift one foot off the floor and hum out loud.

It’s hard to be depressed while smiling in that pose. Now, ask yourself what you can do physically every day to improve your state of mind. Maybe it’s standing in this pose, maybe it’s lifting weights, or maybe it’s yoga. Whatever your preference, do something physical daily to get motivated.

Time travel — This exercise will get you motivated as fast as anything I know. We all know that hindsight is 20/20. In each and every moment, we have choices to make. I hear people say that they have no choice. This is not true. You can eat the fattening dessert or not. You can do right or you can do wrong. You always have a choice.

After the fact, we sometimes regret the choices we made in the past. Worse, we delude ourselves into thinking we had no choice and still don’t.

Try this out. Imagine your future. Think about what it’s like in your future a few years from now. Now, look back at the present moment that you’re in right now. Given the opportunity, what would you have done differently?

What can you do right now to make that future that you want become a reality? Say it out loud. Write it down. Make a plan. Now, go do it.

These are just a few of the ways that you can bend your reality just a bit and get motivated. There’s no limit to the ways that you can gain control of your future if you’ll just apply a few simple principles.