Picstop win the What Digital Camera Good Service Awards for “Best Online Retailer” for the third year running.

What Digital Camera like to give us a helping hand in not only choosing which particular camera or accessory  to buy but also where to buy it, this is where the What Digital Camera Good Service awards come in!

Based on reviews left for different retailers they work out a percentage of positive reviews. What Digital Camera then give Silver awards to retailers with 85% postive reviews and Gold awards to retailers with 90% positive reviews.

For the third year in a row PicStop have won a gold award for “Best Online Retailer of the Year” with 97% positive, the highest percentage achieved this year. Not only that but we are the outright winner polling more votes and a higher percentage that any of the other retailers, even though you might see other retailer display the “winners” logo PicStop was the outright winner again.

We’d like to thank everybody that took the time to vote for us and hope to continue the good service that we are known for in 2010.

Here is the video of the Awards Ceremony (PicStop’s Award is at 4mins30s)

We all know how much easier photography has become since the advent of digital cameras, being able to delete unwanted shots as soon as they are taken and keeping them backed up on a USB Flash Drive or External Hard Drives.

This prevents the problems we used to face with using film, having only 24 or 36 exposures, paying for development and then being disappointed with the shots that didn’t quite work.

But what happens to all the photographs we have taken on film over the years, all of the memories that have been forgotten due to the fact that it is much easier to show off your digital pictures than it is to dig out old photo albums. Read the rest of this entry »

We here at PicStop like to help our customers in all aspects of their photographic journeys.

This starts with helping choose which accessories suit their needs and supplying these items as quickly as possible at a reasonable price. But once you have got your memory card or tripod and have been out on your adventure and captured that perfect image what happens next?
Read the rest of this entry »

Manfrotto are a big name in tripods as you will probably know if you have every looked for one.

Another thing that you will notice is that the tripod legs and tripod head combinations you can go for are endless.

This can leave a photographer quite bewildered not knowing which tripod head or legs to go for and most of all how much it will all cost!

We here at PicStop have decided to help you out by giving you a rough guide to choosing a tripod. Read the rest of this entry »

Fuji have recently announced that their famous eXtreme Digital (xD) memory cards are now discontinued.

This means that all future cameras manufactured by Fuji will have to use either SD or Compact Flash memory.

Olympus, the only other manufacturer to use the xD memory card format, have not yet discontinued their range of xD cards, although they have started offering MicroSD support in their newer cameras. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s all very well having all of your precious digital photographs stored safetly on your memory card or computer, but unless you have one of the many digital photo frames that are available, you still have to print all of your images off the computer or memory card to display them.

Of course as many of you will know this can prove to be very costly as original ink cartridges can cost up to £30 each! Read the rest of this entry »

SanDisk Extreme Pro Compact Flash cards are the latest addition to the vastly popular SanDisk Extreme range of Compact Flash cards.

SanDisk Extreme Pro cards not only surpass the speed of the current fastest Compact Flash card that SanDisk offer, the SanDisk Extreme IV, they in fact double it, clocking in at a massive 90MB/s which is equivalent to a speed rating of 600x.

This speed gives photographers the more opportunity to capture their best shot, especially when shooting continuously in RAW. Read the rest of this entry »

Sony have unveiled the PSP Go, the latest revison of Sony’s Portable gaming solution

The new Sony PSP Go will feature a 3.8″ screen and will weigh 34% of the original PSP.

Replacing the UMD drive which was primarly used for games, the PSP go will have 16GB of internal memory which is expandable up to 32GB with Sony’s Memory Stick Micro M2 cards. Read the rest of this entry »

Following on from ou recent review of the Jobo GIGA Vu SONIC we here at PicStop.co.uk have decided to test drive another new portable storage device

The Vosonic VP5500 storage device.

The Vosonic VP5500 boasts a 3.5inch QVGA RGB screen which is 0.3 inches larger than the Jobo Giga Vu Sonic.

The build quality of the VP5500 is very high which is very important with a portable storage device as it is designed to be lugged around with all of your other camera gear.

This Vosonic Portable Storage device takes the usual card types listed below:

Compact Flash (CF)
Memory Stick (MS)
Secure Digital Card (SD)
SD High Capacity (SDHC)
MultiMedia Card (MMC)
Mini-SD (with adapter)
RS-MMC (with adapter)
MS Duo (with adapter)
MS Pro Duo (with adapter)

It may also be worth noting that although the xD Picture Card is not listed in the above list, I have used both Type M and M+ cards in this device and they work a treat.

Vosonic state that the VP5500 has a transfer rate of up to 10MB/S and will transfer 1GB of data from a UDMA CF card in 1.5 minutes.

When I tested this with a SanDisk Extreme IV - 4GB it was closer to the 1 minute 40 second mark which is a bit sluggish compared to the Jobo GIGA Vu SONIC which completed this task in under a minute.

I found it quite amusing that Jobo list the transfer speed of the GIGA Vu Sonic as “Ultrafast” where as Vosonic only boast a “Super-fast transfer rate” on the VP5500.

This new Vosonic has an impressive set off features including data verification (compare function) and PictBridge and USB Direct Print capabilities.

Another great feature about the Vosonic VP5500 is that the hard drive is easily interchangeable allowing you to upgrade the the capacity with any 2.5in SATA hard drive.

A feature that is often overlooked with portable storage devices is the battery. Most photographers like to carry a spare battery for their camera, so why not a spare battery for your portable storage device?

The new VP5500 uses the Fuji NP100 battery which means you can carry a spare battery for your Vosonic as well as your camera.

The Vosonic VP5500 is a very impressive little unit that doesn’t come with a price tag that will break your bank. At nearly half the price of the Jobo GIGA Vu SONIC the Vosonic VP5500 is a definite one to look at when selecting a portable storage device.

Have you tried one of these? or better still do you own one of these? Let us know what you think!

SanDisk have re-launched their famous Extreme FireWire Compact Flash readers.

This SanDisk Extreme reader is designed for use with UDMA Compact Flash cards including the SanDisk Extreme IV Compact Flash Card.

UDMA stands for Ultra Direct Memory Access.

This technology is designed to take some of the strain of data transfer off the host device and onto the card.

Of course this does not mean that you will not be able to use lower speed cards with this reader, it is just optimized for the UDMA protocol.

The unit comes in a stylish metal casing and as with all SanDisk products feels sturdy and is built to last.

The SanDisk reader allows transfer rates of 40MB/s when used in conjunction with a UDMA Compact Flash card which makes downloading large RAW files a breeze.

With file sizes getting larger due to larger sensors and higher megapixel ratings this is a must have for any serious photographer.

This Compact Flash reader is plug and play compatible with both Mac and Windows computers however as the name suggests you will need to have a FireWire 400 or 800 port on your computer to use it.

Product Code:
SDDRX4-CF-902