I was a die-hard Canon man until this camera came into my life.

What sold me on the Nikon D5000 was that — right there in the store, standing in a Costco in Warrenville, Illinois — I took test photos with just about every camera they had on display.  All showed nice, crisp photos, some better than others, and then I picked up this bad boy.  Took a shot – the same shot I was taking with all the others – and looked at the screen to see how it turned out.

I exclaimed, out loud in that store, with enough emphasis to startle people standing next to me:  “Whoa!”

I took a couple other pictures with the same reaction, then compared them with the two Canon DSLRs I’d been playing with.

Wow.  The depth of color, the crispness, the sense of presence, it’s unmatched.  The test photos weren’t only better, they were all a whole other level of better.

See for yourself.  Here’s a few examples of what I’ve taken since then:

I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of all the features.  I’ve found that when you put it into black and white mode, you get by default a very nice, high contrast shot – as opposed to the washed out B&W shots I’ve gotten with my other digital cameras, which you then have to photoshop afterwards.

Un-retouched black and white image direct from camera:

Other things I’ve found (but have yet to use) include an intervalometer setting that will allow you to take time lapse shots (which you can put together to make time-lapse movies, or even animation) and a stealth mode that makes the camera very, very quiet.  Couple that quiet feature with the fact that the screen opens and swivels, and allows you to take photos from around corners, and it’s perfect for spies, paparazzi, or perhaps even war correspondents.

For an in depth review of all the features, check it out here:  Nikon D5000 Review at Digital Photography Review

What it boils down to is that Nikon took the guts of their D90 professional camera (the outstanding image sensor and much of the features) and put them in this high-entry-level package.  The disadvantage of this camera is that you must use lenses that have the various motors for the auto-focus and anti-vibration control built into the lens itself, whereas if you go with the pro D90 model, the motors are built into the camera body.  Having them in the camera body gives you a much wider selection of lenses.

This is actually the second Nikon D5000 I’ve had.  Unfortunately there was a recall, and the serial number of my original camera fell into the recall range.  But instead of sending it in to a Nikon repair center, I took advantage of Costco’s 90-day no-questions-asked return policy, got my money back, and bought another one (for $100 less – they were on sale!) and the serial number of the new one was not on the recall list.

That was a happy day.

And, recall or not, this is one groovy camera.

My kids gave me this little flying toy from ThinkGeek.com.  The video was taken on my new iPhone 3GS.

Griffin’s Clarifi is the best iPhone case I have ever seen.

As nice as the iPhone’s little camera is, it’s a bit farsighted.  Close-ups of people’s faces, objects, and especially text, all end up being blurry.

Paul Griffin at Griffin Technology noticed this and asked one of his case designers to see if a corrective lens would help.

Thus the Griffin Clarifi iPhone case was born.

Not only is it a really sleek, tough polycarbonate case for the iPhone, but it has a little monocle that you can slide over the top of the iPhone camera lens, and suddenly the things closer to you become nice and sharp.

Now, here’s the thing.  If this were just any camera phone , the story would end there, and most people would yawn and say, "So what?  Big deal."  But the iPhone is not just another camera phone — it’s a full blown computer in your hand with all sorts of ingenious, web-connected, distributed-processing applications just a screen-touch away.  So not only are your close-up portraits now clear, and the trinkets you sell on eBay now sharply in focus, but the iPhone has — thanks to the Clarifi — become a powerful text scanning device.

So what?  Why is that a big deal?

Add the application Evernote to the picture.  I love Evernote.

Evernote is an external peripheral for your brain.  Not joking — that’s what it is.  It’s a database to help you remember everything, with several ways to enter things into it — from keyboard, via copy-and-paste, via voice, and (here’s where Clarifi comes in) via pictures.  Load the free app up in your iPhone, connect to their website, and start taking pictures.  Every picture is run through very powerful and accurate Optical Character Recognition that can even read your handwriting, so the text is scanned and put into your personal database, where it can be sorted and searched.

Imagine it.  Every business card you come across … every ingredients label … all your napkin-idea scribbles … every recipe … all of it scanned, stored, and available for instant recall.

But not without the corrective lens on the Clarifi.

Another iPhone application that exists only because of Clarifi is the 1D barcode reader produced by Snapper.net.  This fledgling service allows you to snap a picture of a product’s barcode while standing in a store, and it returns comparative pricing information.

According to Jackie Ballinger at Griffin Technologies, the Clarifi is selling really well, and feedback from customers indicate they would be interested in more Clarifi models.  "Many people have requested color options other than black, and a zoom model," she says.  "We’re certainly investigating these ideas, the concept of a case like Clarifi that adds functionality and is more than just a fashion accessory is really appealing to us and something we’re continuing to explore."

Final word: this is one awesome case, adding functionality to the iPhone that greatly expands its capabilities.  I’m a raving fan, and I hereby officially declare the Clarifi a Groovy Gizmo.