Avengers (2012) Movie Review

I was waiting for the release of this Movie for a long time, and very excited ever since the trailers. The good news is I was actually impressed by how tight the editing is, and the whole story of the Avengers.

The trailers being so awesome, only tell part of the story, and there is actually much more the movie will offer.


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Movie Info

Marvel Studios presents Marvel's The Avengers-the Super Hero team up of a lifetime, featuring iconic Marvel Super Heroes Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins. -- (C) Marvel

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I was quite impressed on how the plot brought the Heros together, it was actually believable and builds on the background of the characters you've already seen in the other movies. At the start, my eyes rolled over when I saw the "Tesseract" which seemed like a weak plot, something they got from Transformers, but luckily, the story was much different.

There are tons of memorable quotes, and random stuff coming out from Robert Downy Jr's mouth, however, the truly enjoyable moments come after Bruce became the Hulk. Bruce Banner was kinda a lame character if you ask me, and wow, does the HULK kick ass.... Most of the hulk scenes make you want to cheer for him and he seems to be simply AWESOME!

For the other parts of the movie, I felt that Hawkeye, Black Widow and the other supporting characters do not seem on par with Loki, Thor and Iron Man, and but they do play minor roles that sort of make them part of the team... Yeah, just sort of. (Black Widow more so.) But they fit nicely in their part of the story, and have interesting plot hooks...

This movie is one, not to be missed. The special effects are AWESOME, and be excited, be VERY excited and this movie is simply lots of action and FUN FUN FUN!

Go watch it in Cinemas!

Overall: 9/10

-- Robin Low

 

x100 New firmware update review

I've recently updated to the latest firmware for my x100.

Here is the link: FinePix X100 / X100Black Firmware Update Ver.1.21

The instructions to update is fairly easy to follow and I updated without any problems. Previously, the photos were easily overexposed in the day or simply too dark, but the update fixes the problem and Ver 1.20 firmware (which makes significant changes) is fantastic.

This is what it fixed.
1. Some functions, which can be set to "Fn" button and shown as "Fn BUTTON" in SET-UP menu, can be also set to RAW button. After pressing the command dial to right in the SET-UP menu of "Fn BUTTON", "Fn" and "RAW" are displayed and each of selectable them, Also, by holding down RAW button for more than 3 seconds, same type of selection menu for RAW button is displayed, just as short-cut procedure.
2.By selecting in "ISO" menu in the shooting menu, either ISO sensitivity value or "ISO AUTO CONTROL" can be selected.
3.When AF MODE is set to "AREA" in Single AF (AF-S) mode, active focus point is zoomed in (magnified to approx 5x) by pressing center of the command control.
4.When "ND FILTER" is set to "Fn" button or "RAW" button, setting between ON ("ND" is displayed) or OFF ("ND" is NOT displayed) can be changeable by pressing "Fn" button or "RAW" button, which is set for "ND FILTER".
5.When the image is shot with vertical angle of the camera and played back the shot in the LCD, the image is displayed with whole area of LCD even after pressing "playback zoom in" button.
6.When the human face is shot, the detected face is displayed during the playing back, and pressing the command dial to down, detected face is magnified during displaying.
7.AE control system and AF performance including AF speed has been improved for movie recording mode.

 The camera is more responsive and takes good photos in the day as well, and the night shots are still as impressive.
The x100 literally sucks light from all sources making the photos much richer than any other digital cameras I've used.
 The APS-C censor is as big as the DSLRs and the image quality is definitely comparable or better than probably all DSLRs with kit lens.
Here are some photos I took after the update.

The camera does not over-exposed or underexposed anymore.
I think Manual focus needs some work, and perhaps an update to allow ISO 25,600 next?

Looking forwards to more updates by Fuji.

-- Robin Low