I felt like I needed to write about my M3 SMG driving experience otherwise my comments regarding the 2006 Lexus IS350 may lack credibility.. ok, maybe not.. but by far, the most comments I receive are about the statement I made about the 2006 IS350 being able to hang with an E46 M3.. I won’t “take that back” because if you want to bench race the two cars, you’ll see that the IS350 is nearly as fast as the M3.. and being that the IS350 is only available in a 6-speed automatic, I would also bet that if you took your average E46 M3 driver and raced an IS350, I’d go so far as to say 7 out of 10 times, I’d bet the IS350 would win.. now, the M3 SMG may be a different story though.. which leads me into the point of this post..

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to drive my friend’s 2003 (I think) BMW E46 M3 SMG. It has some coil-over suspension (don’t ask me what) and he had some 19″ HREs.. dunno the width or offset, but the rear was FAT and had an almost obscene amount of lip.. anyhow.. the SMG was definitely different.. it was hard to get used to the idea of shifting, but without a clutch.. perhaps the fact that I’ve been driving an automatic trannie for the past year made it a bit easier, but it was still weird.. one thing I learned, which I never knew.. was that the.. umm.. shifting was adjustable.. I dunno what BMW calls it, but basically, you can adjust the trannie to shift hard or soft.. when I first went for a ride, I thought the shifting was crappy.. now I know.. so I take all those bad thoughts back about the SMG..

Anyway, once I got on the main road I got on it.. at first, I was really granny shifting it.. trying to get a feel for the trannie.. I made a right on to a deserted road (new home construction area) and got on it again.. this time though, shifting more aggressively.. I can’t remember what the “shifting” was set to.. but I do recall telling my friend that the shifting was very solid and precise.. like, no clutch slippage.. nothing.. in fact, it felt like the driveshaft or rear diff was going to launch itself out from behind the car.. really bone jarring.. but in an good way.. second thing I noticed was the music of the 3.2L I6.. my first thought was that it sounded like a racecar.. there was a fair amount of valvetrain noise.. more than I thought there’d be, but I think it all just added to the musical redline.. I never got to test out its handling.. but the car did feel firm and solid.. I didn’t drive it long enough to witness the phenomenon known as “the ultimate driving machine” though.. I was having too much fun slamming the gears without really slamming the gears.. oh, and it was really torquey.. I remember that.. it pulled really strongly and really steadily..

How does it compare to the 2006 Lexus IS350? Like I said before.. if I were offered the choice, I wouldn’t hesitate in reaching for the BMW keys (and not just because it costs more :mrgreen:).. on paper, the IS350 is almost as fast.. but I agree, that’s where the comparison ends..

Just for kicks, here, again, are the specs:

2006 Lexus IS350 (6 speed automatic) as tested by Car & Driver October 2005 issue:
0-60 MPH : 5.1 seconds
0-100 MPH : 12.8 seconds
1/4 mile : 13.7 @ 104 MPH

2005 BMW M3 (as tested by Car & Driver):
0-60 MPH : 4.8 seconds
1/4 mile : 13.6 seconds (Edmunds.com said they hit 105 MPH in the quarter mile)

Speaking of specs.. I just received word my boss-boss ordered a Bugatti Veyron 16.4.. yeah, THAT car.. 1001 metric hp (like 986 standard hp), W16 quad-turbo, 0-60 in less than 3 seconds.. 0-188mph in 14 seconds.. now thats cool.. oh, and a top speed of somewhere around 256mph or something like that.. I’ll take pics on delivery day, whenver that is.. hopefully I’ll get to drive it.. because as of right now, the most expensive car I’ve ever driven was his old Ferrari 456GTA (a measly $230k)..

Just for the record, he currently owns, I believe:

2004 Porsche Carrera GT
2006 Ferrari F430 Spyder
2005 Mercedes McLaren SLR
2003 Aston Martin Vanquish
2003 Mercedes S600 - the daily driver

I’m not sure about the years.. but all the cars were purchased new.. I’d also like to drive the Carrera GT (I heard it take off once and it sounded like a motorcycle) and the F430.. not too thrilled about the SLR or the Vanquish though..

Ok, enough about cars for the night..

Cars | 1 Comment »

UPDATE August 24, 2006: Start here for the latest Canon leaks!

Of course, this is not official word.. although I’ve been following the rumors on DPReview.com for quite sometime.. partly because I now own a 20D and partly because I will be upgrading to the new 20D replacement as soon as it comes out :lol:.. in any case.. I saw this pop up in a post today:

Now, at first I was thinking.. ok, this picture of the so-called 35D looks a lot like the “leaked” pictures previously posted on DPReview.com.. in case you didnt see those, they looked like they were taken with a crappy cell phone camera.. but there were some noticable differences that couldnt be attributed to Photoshop magic.. but then there was the following picture of a 35D owners manual:

If you look at the first photo of the two camera, the 35D emblem on the camera on the left looks kind of photoshopped.. so when I saw the picture of the manual, I figured, “eh, this one is easy to photoshop”.. but upon closer examination, you can see the faint printing of a URL at the bottom:

Please excuse the bad circle drawing.. it was done on my touchpad mouse on my HP L2000 AMD64.. anyway, in case you cant read it, it says:

canon.jp/35d

I thought.. “ah ha.. I’ll check out this URL and if it doesn’t work, then this is a nothing more than a photoshopped picture”.. so I tried it, http://www.canon.jp/35d.. and it redirected to the Canon Japan 5D page.. now, a redirect isn’t out of the ordinary if you come upon a non-existant page.. the fact that it redirected me to the 5D page is questionable.. so I tried something else.. if the Canon Japan web guy was trying to be cool by redirecting non-existant pages to the 5D page, then if I tried a totally weird URL, like, http://www.canon.jp/40D, it should do the same thing, right? WRONG.. if you try that URL, or any weird URL you can think of, it takes you to an error page.. which leads me to believe theat the canon.jp/35d page is there for a reason..

Now, you’re probably asking what the specs are going to be.. here’s my guess based on all the rumors I’ve read:

- 10.4 megapixels or something around there (gotta at least match the Nikon D200 specs, right? and megapixels sells!)
- 5.5 fps (just to provide a marginal improvement over the 20D’s current 5 fps)
- Better noise reduction, possibly from the introduction of the D!GIC III processor
- New focusing system, perhaps based on the 5D
- New battery grip, because, well, Canon just likes to dick with existing Canon camera owners (plus, you can see in the photo the grip is different)

Aside from that, I guess we’ll see at the PMA show in February..

EDIT: Ok, its been pointed out that any page ending in a 5D will re-direct to the 5D page.. although I checked 50D and it did the same thing.. 40D still does not.. and 3500D goes to a generic error page.. I guess we’ll see soon enough..

EDIT 1/31/06: Here’s another pic on this page

UPDATE 02/08/06: Canon may introduce Canon 20D successor on Febuary 21st, read more here..

UPDATE 02/17/06: Latest “leaked” image of THE CANON 30D!.. read more here.. but for the most part, all 3 pictures look very very similar.. there are differences though.. but I’m starting to believe that this latest pic is the real deal..

UPDATE 02/18/06: Latest news here, but it looks like its going to be called the Canon 30D. Also Canon will be releasing at least 2 new lenses, the EF-S 17-55mm and most likely an EF 85mm f1.2L MkII.. read more here

Photo Gear, Tech | 11 Comments »

Happy New Year everybody.. well, I did it.. I took the plunge.. I ordered the Canon 20D to replace my current Digital Rebel 300D.. I’ve used my friend’s Canon 20D on many occasions.. in fact, I think I may have used his Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS zoom lens more than he has.. everytime I used his gear at Formula D or D1, I’d give it back thinking that I should upgrade.. that feeling would last about a week or so until I realized that I for most circumstances, I didnt need the extra speed (5fps versus 2.5fps).. this time was different though.. this time, I was asked to take some pics for DSport again.. but I had a birthday party to attend that started at 1PM.. the practice session started at 10AM at D1.. so that was the only time I’d be able to photograph the cars.. with a 2GB CF card in hand and an hour or so to shoot, I really had the opportunity to “waste” shots.. in the past, I’d have to ration 1GB or 2GB for the whole day.. but with 2GB (about 700 shots) and 5fps, I went nuts.. and it paid off. I ended up with lots of garbage, but the percentage of good shots, I think, was much higher than in the past.. which makes sense.. if you only shoot 3-4 pics of one drift and end up with 1 good one, then it would be reasonable to assume if you shoot 6-8 pics, you’d get at least 2 good ones.. however, I think with the faster camera you get a lot more good pics to choose from.. if I take 5 consecutive shots over a period of 1 second, its true that the 5 shots may look very similar to each other, but in that span of 1 seccond, you get different drift angles, different amounts of smoke, different “backgrounds”, etc.. I really think the camera speed helped a lot.. I had my 300D with the 16-35 f2.8L on it just to take “supporting” shots of the cars towards the end of their drift.. and even then, I ran into times where my shot buffer was full (4 shots) and I missed shots that I wanted to take (usually when the cars were close together during tandem drifts)..

Anyhow, now I’ll be selling my Canon Digital Rebel 300D with BG-E1 battery grip on eBay.. the prices have been decent, which was a big factor in me deciding to upgrade.. the other factor being Canon’s triple rebates ($300 rebate on the 20D alone)..

In the meantime, here are a few more D1 pics that I hand picked as “good”..

Photo Gear, Photographs | No Comments »