Tag Archives: sponsored

This post is sponsored by eBay. From the new to the hard to find, when it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay.

The summer came and went in the blink of an eye, and now we’re all getting ready for the winter months ahead. But in the meantime, let’s not forget that autumn can bring with it some pretty spectacular photographic opportunities. With that in mind, you would do well to arm yourself with a few essentials before you head out into the the great outdoors. Let’s look at three.

The Nikon D800

Really, if you want to be taking professional looking photographs, dSLR cameras are probably the way to go. The D800 is not Nikon’s flagship camera, but has garnered a “better quality to price ratio than the D4″ from DxO labs, which is high praise. Its most notable feature is the megapixel count: 36 million. That’s three times the amount of the camera it replaces, the D700. It’s a full-frame camera, which means its sensor is the same size as a 35mm film frame.

The Sony NEX-5N

If you really want to avoid dSLR cameras altogether, there’s a new type on the market that might bridge the gap between boring point-and-shoots, and their bigger cousins. The Sony NEX-5N is a mirrorless device with interchangeable lenses, which gives it the best of both worlds. Much of the quality of dSLR pictures come from the top notch optics in the lenses, and this particular camera can be had with an adapter that opens the door to an entire world of lenses. Its sensor is of 14.1MP, which is plenty enough for most uses, especially in this price range.

The Think Tank Streetwalker

Once you start taking pictures, you realize that you need something to carry all this gear in. You buy one lens, an extra flash, and next thing you know, a dedicated solution is a must. As long as your collection is still relatively small, the Think Tank Streetwalker is perfect for you. It’s compartmentalized and can hold a couple of lenses aside from the main camera and related gear. There’s even a removable seam-sealed rain cover if your timing is off and get caught outdoors during a downpour.

This post is sponsored by eBay. From the new to the hard to find, when it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay.

Sadly, summer came and went and you barely noticed. This means that for a large chunk of the world’s population, it’s time to get back to school and work to get that degree. But university life means more than just showing up for class and getting your assignments done on time. A lot of you will be living in dorms, or getting an apartment near or on campus, and aside from paying for your tuition, you’re going to have to think about what else to get to make the best of what could turn out to be the best years of your life. Books, bags, phones, calculators… the shopping list is long. This article is going to look at three articles we think are essential.

The Macbook Pro With Retina Display
Let’s take care of the serious gear first. For pretty much any discipline, we think having a solid laptop is essential. You will take notes on it, do your assignments on it, research your papers on it, you’ll… do everything on it. And granted some of you will argue that the MacBook Pro with Retina display is overkill for many fields, but we beg to differ. While you might find it has too much horsepower right now, a couple of years down the line it’ll still be near the top of the stack, performance-wise, and you won’t be feeling the need to swap it out for something faster. Packing quad-core Core i7 processors with specs up to 2.7GHz, 6MB of shared L3 cache, and Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7GHz, you’ll tear through any application today… or three years from today. It’s slim and svelte at 0.71 inches and 4.46 pounds, but most importantly, its display has 5 million pixels. That’s right, 5 million. It’s only a matter of time until the web adjusts to this new resolution and starts producing websites that will look larger and larger on regular laptops, but just right on the Retina display. And like the iPhone changed the smartphone landscape, there’s a good chance these displays will do the same to websites in a few years.

A Vizio TV
Now we move on to something less serious, but we think just as essential: a good TV. You’re going to want to watch movies now and then, whether you’re alone or with friends, because let’s face it, you won’t be studying all the time. A good place to start is with a Vizio TV. Vizio is an American company founded in 2002, and does brisk business on the back of the quality of its products as well as its reasonable prices. Sets range in sizes from 32″ to 65″, as well a pretty stunning 58″ 21:9 aspect ratio 3D TV called the XVT 3D CINEMAWIDE® RAZOR LED® SMART TV.

A Polk Audio Sound System
Of course as much as we like the picture on most LCD TVs these days, we wouldn’t necessarily want to listen to their integrated speakers. It’s not a bad idea to invest in a separate set, like some Polk Speakers. These come in all shapes an sizes, like the Polk SurroundBar 6000 IHT Speaker System, or the RTiA1 High performance bookshelf loudspeaker. Both of these will satisfy your audio needs, although any of their current products would too. We’ve come across some pretty solid reviews of their subwoofers by the way, but we wouldn’t want to suggest you getting anything that’ll make you a bad neighbour, right? Right?…

Oh, we’re lying. We’re tying these speakers in with the TV above, but really, we’re not fooling anyone: these will be essential to have any kind of party with. It’s not college if you don’t have a bit of fun.

And with this, we wish you the best of luck with your upcoming semesters. We hope you have fun shopping if you haven’t already done so.