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iPhone 4 camera vs Blackberry 9700 Bold camera
Wow, I was really blown away by the difference in the iPhone 4 camera versus the Blackberry 9700. In daylight, the color is more accurate on the iPhone and the images are crisper. The resolution is 60% higher on the iPhone (2592 x 1936 = 5 MP) vs Blackberry (2048 x 1536 = 3.1 MP), but more importantly the iPhone photos look good at full resolution while the Blackberry photos only look good if the image is shrunk 50% to 1024x768 = 0.79M . So the usable resolution on the Blackberry is not even a full megapixel, while the iPhone 4 looks great at full size.
Here's a photo where the lower left is from the Blackberry and the upper right is from the iPhone. The blurriness of the Blackberry is evident even at this resolution.
Here are the full res photos:
Blackberry vs iPhone
More images to follow!
iPhone 4 camera photos
An iPhone 4 arrived in the mail today. I know I was curious about the camera quality, so I wanted to share photos taken with the new iPhone 4.
Stay tuned for another gallery of photos taken with a Blackberry Bold 9700 at the same time.
Costco wine prices beat even the winery
2008 Oregon Pinot Noir has received a lot of acclaim -- one writer said it was the best ever -- so I drove to Oregon for the Memorial Day Weekend wine tasting. Thursday and Friday were the calm before the storm, and the wineries were packed on the weekend. It wasn't quite as bad as Barrell Tasting in Sonoma, but that's probably because wineries charge individually for tasting instead of the all-you-can-drink $20 bracelet in Sonoma. That seems to have discouraged the binge drinking crowd that was so visible in Sonoma -- like the guy chugging a beer at a winery near Healdsburg.
My focus was the illusive budget Pinot Noirs, and the 2010 Oregon Wine Awards had a $20 or less category for Pinot Noir that served as helpful guide to picking the wineries to visit.
In theory, it should be possible to get a better deal by buying direct from a winery than though Costco, Whole Foods or another chain. But wineries are in the business of building a brand, and if they offer deep discounts at the winery then consumers will balk at paying the full retail price at their local wine store. The best case in point was Carlton Cellars Seven Devils Pinot Noir 2008, which the Wilsonville Costco listed for $14.99 while the winery sold it for $20 (or $18.33 with a case discount.) Seven Devils is excluded from the Wine Club discounts, so $18.33 is the best you'll get buying direct.
The other thing I noticed was that wineries seem to only sell their 2nd labels at Costco, especially those that are not branded with the winery's main logo. A wine that was in plentiful supply at Costco was King Estate's next: Pinot Noir 2008 for $13.79. While the Seven Devils pinot was aged 10 months in French oak (2 years and older), next was aged in 100% stainless steel. Seven Devils had subtle smokey oak while next was bright cherry with noticibly more acidity (3.6 vs 3.77 pH). Seven Devils tasted like wine that was originally in the running for a winery's primary label (thus the French oak) but was "declassified". Only 288 cases of Seven Devils were bottled originally, but after the initial October 2009 release sold out quickly the winery claimed to have "sourced more great fruit from Willamette Valley vineyards of the same caliber as the first Seven Devils and vinted a second run" of 600 cases. Unless their sales and marketing folks have a time machine that allows them to source fruit from 2008 in 2010 and compress 10 months of aging into half that time, I'm guessing that they just bought some extra barrells from other premium pinot producers.
I think it's great that premium wineries are releasing wines that don't justify $40+ prices as 2nd labels that can be found at Costco and other discount outlets. Cameron Hughes was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal as a negociant who buys the lesser barrells from top-tier producers and sells them directly to Costco and other big box stores for rock-bottom prices. Sadly, he doesn't sell wines in Washington (because of the 3-tier distribution system) and his current pinot is $18, much more than his other wines.
Let's find great deals together
Even with all of the wine websites out there, it is still really frustrating trying to figure out which wines to buy when you're standing in the wine isle. You know that some of the value wines are great, but there are so many bottles and the descriptions provided by the store make every wine sound delicious.
Like many people, I thought good value wines could be found by looking for reasonable priced wines rated 90+ points. Then three things happened:
1. Try before you buy. A wine store opened near me that offered tastings of multiple wines. It's a lot easier to decide whether to buy a bottle when you can taste the wine beforehand. The wines I ended up buying after trying never rated 90+ points but the wine was a great deal.
2. Sideways. Good Pinot Noir rarely made it into my price range so I thought all red wine should taste like a table wine from Italy or a Shiraz from Australia. Pinot made me realize that wine could be seductive. But most of it was too expensive.
3. Grade inflation. A few years ago I noticed that ratings for new world wines by the Wine Advocate seemed a few points higher than similar wines that Robert Parker had personally rated back in 2004 when I was (briefly) a subscriber to his newsletter. It was later revealed that the Wine Advocate's reviewer for Australia had gone on fancy trips paid for by wineries. Critics know that 90 point ratings drive sales, and there are enough people rating wines that two critics will often rate the same bottle 4+ points apart.
Wine is supposed to be fun, so WineDeals.org makes it easy for anyone to share a new wine deal using only a phone.
- Eric