It has probably been a good 2 years since I bought any computer hardware and today I just bought something. Yep, it’s a new DVD burner! What I have here is a Pioneer DVR-212D. This version however uses a SATA port instead of the regular IDE and I must say, it’s about time they brought something like this out. Plus at only $50 AUD, it was cheap. Though I wish I had a black one to match the case, but unfortunately the place I went was sold out of black.
The old DVD burner is a Sony DRU700A and it was one of the first dual layer DVD burners out in Australia. Funnily enough I have never ever burnt a dual layer disc with it. Well now that one will probably goto one of my siblings as I don’t have the need for two burners. But now I can finally burn DVDs at 18x rather than 8x!
$50~!? Wow, they’re getting cheaper byt he day o_O
I got mine a few months back, it’s a Pioneer DVR-111D.
I find myself burning a few dual layer DVDs, but rarely.
Why do you need a new burner anyway? Or is it because it was so cheap…which I guess is a good enough reasons actually lol
The Sony one I’ve had for well over 2and half years and that I have burnt well over 1500 DVDs on it. Thought it would be a good time to retire it from my machine and get myself something new. Plus I can now burn at 16x rather than 8x and $50 is not much at all.
I hated how I had to use a floppy disk to install the SATA driver while re-installing WinXP after I kicked Vista off of my new computer.
Talking about burning DVDs. I think it’s time to burn some anime to get more space^^
Hmm… sata port burner eh. It’ll be a nice upgrade from my old Lite-On (no problems, but it’s about 2 years old now). I wished my motherboard had more than two sata ports.
David: Same here. Though in some cases you can use a removable device like a USB stick, but whether or not the computer detects it is another problem. At this point I can’t really format my hdd since my system drive has too much valuable data and I don’t have the capacity to move it, lol. Well not like I need to format anyway.
Hijiko: Luckily for me I have 8 SATA ports since my motherboard has two controllers.
SATA for dvd burner seems a bit overkilled.I never burn a dvd faster than 8x.IDE version of the burner would be much cheaper
I myself never burnt dual layer disc, dual layer disc isn’t cheap..
on other note, around this month pioneer will release blu-ray drive (not burner) with the ability to read and write dvd and cd for $299.
I’m still skeptical about moving over to SATA DVD burners, but I haven’t kept up lately on that portion of the tech news. I never burnt any dual layers myself (only a few exceptions) with a DRU-800A
I also have a old 710 as well and I do believe a firmware update brought it up to 16x burn speeds… not sure though. Will check.
Also, thanks for posting the EXIF for the pictures. I assume you were shooting in manual correct?
Oh, I’m a young otaku myself and my family owns a video and photo business for weddings, so I’m a enthusiast in that area too, almost as much as being an otaku lol.
HisuiIBMPower4: Well so far I’ve been burning at 16x and everything is fine. Plus the benefit of having SATA is that I don’t have fat IDE cables inside the box anymore.
ron~: I’m going to hold off from a Blu-Ray player. Simply because the only DVDs I buy are anime, and right now there isn’t a lot of anime out on Blu-Ray.
AOforever1: Pretty sure the latest firmware for the 700A still limits it to 8x. But two and half years is a long time and having an upgrade is nice. As for the photos, I used Programmable mode as the boss told me it’ll adjust the aperture automatically since I’m using a flash. Using manual mode would be time consuming as you need to take a lot of photos during a wedding.
I started off with a DRU 700A, followed by a DRU 710A , and now a DRU 800A on my secondary pc and a DRU 830A on my main
The first 2 died due to power outages.
Adun:
That’s interesting, when I saw those pictures I had to stop and ask myself if that was shot in P mode or not. And I’m actually surprised your boss told you to shoot in P mode; professionals use manual most of the time, next to that would be semi-auto, but even then from my experience with the low end pro line of Canon SLRs the picture is not as consistent. But considering you had a rebel XTi/Kiss/400D, P mode probably had better automated functions. oh, please keep in mind I am not trying to mock or insult you Adun, just curious what other Wedding Photographers are doing around the world.
In general for a reception hall that has low ceilings that allow bouncing, I go with:
F 4-5.6
Shutter at 1/80-1/125
ISO ~800 (somtimes 640, and 1000)
Auto white balance if there is lots of white; if not than a kelvin preset.
Flash is manual at 1/4 power (with a stofen/omni bounce cap)
Flash is bounce angle varies for me, I use it to adjust my lighting on the fly.
Now DVD writer are way cheap here. Can get one in the same amount as AUD40
Windbell: Wow, you must really love Sony. Luckily I’ve never had power failures that wrecked any hardware.
AOforever1: Well I can see why you would use manual in most cases, but in my case I’m pretty much a beginner. I’m sure he’ll teach me more if I get the chance to work with him again. Also to use ISO 800+ seems a bit high as you’d get more noise that way. The highest I go now is 400 but only in extreme cases do I goto 800. Also I must say it’d be pretty interesting to work with photography in a family business.
Kippei: Do keep in mind that Australia is pretty far from a lot of the Asian countries, so the prices tend to be a little higher than in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Mayalsia etc.