"Bargain Zoom, Compact Giveaway, Drobo Part 2" - Digital Photography Podcast 354

This week stories: A Bargain Canon Super Zoom, The Return of Drobo Part 2, and the Olympus TG-1 camera giveaway.

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Story Number One: - The Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS II lens, Standard street price for the zoom is $299. But I've see it going regularly for $249, and I even scored one brand-new in the box with warranty for $195. This is not a fancy lens. But it certainly takes good pictures. What I like about it is that it has four-stop image stabilization, and that it is light and relatively compact for a zoom with an effective range from 88mm to 400mm. More on this lens in the first segment of the show.

Story Number Two: - The Return of Drobo - Part 2. Let's go under the hood and look at some of the specifications for the set up that I'm testing.

I have all five bays of the 5D filled with drives. That includes three 1-TB drives and two 3-TB drives that occupy the five slots. In the bottom slot (on the bottom of the unit), I have one mSATA SSD Accelerator Drive installed. This is a solid-state chip with 64 GBs of memory that improves performance. With a total of 9 TB of disk space installed, I have access to 5.4 TB of space. 2.77 TB of the 9 TBs is used for protection. More on how this all works out in the second segment of the show.

Story Number Three: -The Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS Digital Camera Giveaway. To celebrate the holiday season, I want to give away an Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS Digital Camera. It's one of my favorite compact cameras, and I think someone else should enjoy one too. I go over the details in this segment of the show.


The Gift Guide for Photographers features 12 tempting goodies for the photographer in your life. Each item includes a background article about it and a direct link for the best price.


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Monthly Photo Assignment

Long Exposure is the Dec. 2012 Photo Assignment. You can read more about how to submit on our Member Participation page. Deadline for entry is Dec. 31, 2012.

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2 Comments

Re: Drobo 5D

After listening to all three recent podcasts regarding the Drobo 5D which you are giving a workout, I don't recall which drives you chose to use. You of course mentioned 3 - 1tb and 2 - 3tb drives. I'm guessing these are 7200 rpm drive. Do you have any other specs?

The reason I ask, is because you mentioned B&H as a supplier for the Drobo 5D which has several configuration options available from empty bays to 20tb and noticed that some of their turn-key options include WD Black drives. After visiting WD's product page for their black drives, they DO NOT recommend black drives for NAS environments. Drobo's page titled "Which Drives Are Right for my Drobo?" leads to believe that WD Black drives are fine.

I'm sure that Drobo (or B&H) wouldn't offer/recommend such combination if there were issues or incompatibilities. Rather, WD likely doesn't recommend so that they can push their Red drives for specific NAS use.

Besides WD do you have any other drive recommendations for use with the Drobo 5D (Segate, Hitachi, ...) or other thoughts?

Links:
WD Black (states that it doesn't recommend for NAS use):
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760

Drobo (recommended drives):
http://www.drobo.com/products/choose-drive.php

Hi Jeremy, that's some great research and good info you've uncovered. The Drobo kit I'm using was assembled by the folks at Drobo. So I'll pop the front cover and see what drives they installed. Will include that info in the next podcast.