Saturday, September 4, 2010

Kindle 3 and Kindle 2 under Microscope. And More Photo Comparisons


From KEITH PETERS' MICROSCOPE:
Kindle 2, at 26x Kindle 3, at 26x
Kindle 2 text, at 26x Kindle 3 text, at 26x
Kindle 2 "m" vertical stroke, at 400x Kindle 3 'm' vertical stroke, at 400x

A little over a week ago, we had Paul Biba's microscope comparison of his Kindle 3 and Kindle 2 at 10x and 60x magnifications.

Now we have Keith Peters' comparison of his Kindles 2 and 3, but at 25-26x and 400x.
  Keith was the one whose Kindle 2 and iPad font-magnification comparison earlier seemed to irritate some iPad users and he is sure this will be less controversial.

Here are only a few of his results -- I'm not linking to his original very large shots, to encourage people to click the links to Keith's report -- and when you click on each of his images at his site, they'll take you to the larger ones for closer examination.  His other images and full analysis are very interesting.

One thing he points out is that
' ...the microcapsules of E Ink are either spaced a bit further apart or somehow have some kind of dark border.  They are very distinct from each other, whereas the K3 capsules seem closer together with less of a noticeable border.  Thus, in the K2, the “white” areas still have so much dark border around them that the areas appear more gray than white, whereas in the K3, the white areas are more uniformly light. '

MORE SCREEN-SLEEPER COMPARISON IMAGES FROM KINDLE 2 AND 3




On the text photo, the way the light hit the lounger seemed to have an effect on the tint of the Kindle 2 bezel on the left, maybe because of the beige arm of the chair (not shown).  Both pictures are of the Kindles side by side.
  The larger version of the text photo gives a much better idea of relative contrast ranges.

  * Click on the screen-sleeper images to get the larger versions. *

I'll later add a photo of text that has both normal and bolded fonts.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

8 comments:

  1. I don't know why some people are posting to the Amazon boards that the k3 isn't sharper. It certainly is. Wish I had one :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. The quality looks much better than the last version. I'm certainly going to want to get this version. I love how Kindle always make improvements on every version without ruining the point of reading a book.

    e-book and novella

    ReplyDelete
  3. Andrys,

    I am considering getting the darker Kindle 3, but I wonder if the readability of K3 is better if the Kindle is white instead of gray? It would appear that the contrast perception to the eyes with darker ink might stand out more.

    Are there any comparisons that people have found with the gray Kindle vs. the white Kindle with reading long selections? Thanks.

    /rick

    ReplyDelete
  4. Deanna, the K3 is definitely sharper and more contrasty than the K2, but on font size 4, the Kindle 1 is almost as contrastty (to my surprise) although Kindle 1's plain font, size 3, is pale beside it and size 3 is the default.

    Kindle 1 used only 4 levels of gray so there are not the many shades of lighter gray as there are in the 16-gray level Kindle 2, which seemed optimized for speed for some of us rather than for contrast. But the Pearl is just stunning in default 3 and smaller sizes as well.

    Brett Bob, it takes real effort to type html to make a sign-off link on blogspot sites as you did, and I usually don't post those as they seem bent on the link rather than the comment.
    What you should do is what others do -- make your Blogger profile link back to your site so people can click on it if they're interested. (That doesn't work with pages where people are just selling products and have no actual content but yours focuses on a book or some books and I made an exception here but generally (99% of the time) won't post html typed to make links mainly to sell things.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I received the Kindle 3 a week ago. My first ereader. First, I like it a lot. I am disappointed on the Kindle support for showing other language scripts and other scripts and also the pdf converter. For instance, many books on hinduism and buddhism will show the letter a or u with a line over it to indicate a particular pronunciation. Kindle just doesn't support this in it's native mode or in it's pdf converter. There doesn't seem to be a quick and easy place on Amazon to report minor technical software problems.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous,
    PDF converter? What about just reading the PDF as is? Those are usually embedded fonts and would show them as-is. You're saying that reading the actual PDF with native Adobe support doesn't show the line? Interesting, I don't usually run across PDFs that depend on the computer's or e-reader's fonts.

    The PDF conversion that you do by sending to Amazon to convert to Mobi format by putting "Convert" in subject line is fairly primitive (done by MobiPocket Creator). But the original
    PDF would normally show things as is.

    What books are you putting through? They're not Kindle books, I guess, but all PDFs?

    No quick and easy place on Amazon to report minor technical software problems?

    Sure there is -- your enclosed box material and your Welcome letter on your Kindle both say to send comments to kindle-feedback@amazon.com ... and it's on the site too.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous,
    The Graphite border will always make the inside material look lighter and that includes the blacks as well, though people don't mention that much. I use black backgrounds on my images at pbase.com so that the details within the black shadows can be seen.

    The blog article I'm working with -- had to take the pictures first and then crop and show them at different sizes -- includes a comparison of the Kindle 3 text vs the large Kindle DX Graphite's.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you so much for sharing it.
    Nowadays, with advancement of science & technology, people prefer to buy upgraded scientific instruments to serve the different purposes. Microscopes are one of the required research instruments which are widely used in scientific institutes, medical colleges and high schools for investigating case studies

    Microscope

    ReplyDelete

NOTE: TO AVOID SPAM being posted instantly, this blog uses the blogger.com "DELAY" feature.

Am often away much of the day, and postings won't show up right away. Posts done to use referrer-links may never show up.

Usually, am online enough to release comments within a day though, so the hard-to-read match-text tests for commenting won't be needed this way.

Feedback and questions are welcome. Thanks for participating.

Technical Problems?
If you're having problems leaving a Comment, Google's blogger-help asks that you clear the 'blogger.com' cookies on your browser's Tools or Options menu bar and that will fix the Comment-box problems (until they have a permanent fix).

IF that doesn't work either, then UNcheck the "keep me signed in" box -- Google-help says that should allow your comment to post (it's a workaround to a current bug).
Apologies for the problems.

TIP: There's a size limit. If longer than 3500 characters or so, in a text editor, make two posts out of it.

[Valid RSS]