u/dr_doc27

Yes, if you're in Canada, buy from out-of-province to save on the PST. I'm in BC, so I like to shop The Camera Store, McBain, or Camera Canada. (I used to buy a lot from Henry's, but they now have a Vancouver store and will charge PST. But I will buy from them if the deal is good.)

I just received one of these emails. So many red flags for sure. Oddly enough, Gmail failed to flag it as spam and even delivered it to my Primary inbox.

But yeah, it would've been really sweet if the real Panasonic noticed my work!

Same here. I wanted to back Alice Camera back when it first appeared on Kickstarter, but the high price scared me off. The price still discourages me, even though they keep offering "30% off" on preorders. And they still haven't delivered in quantity.

When SwitchLens came out, it was half the price and I was ready to pull the trigger. Then I looked at their claims and didn't feel confident these guys knew what they were doing. Glad I didn't back!

I also looked at SwitchLens on Kickstarter and came very close to backing...but I backed out at the last second.

This product isn't really a "carbon copy" of Alice camera: if you look closely, they don't do any AI processing--they specifically disavow AI. They do offer you a 20MP m4/3 sensor--but that's an extra $100 USD upgrade! The base sensor is a tiny 1" sensor.

There is no autofocus or stabilization, though AF is a stretch goal. No mention of joining the Micro Four Thirds consortium officially, so I have doubts as to how much m4/3 standards they can adopt or how well they'll work. Their current lenses are purely manual.

In the end, I decided it wasn't worth risking $400+ CDN for a project that could go bust. At least Alice Camera is more real and beginning to ship. (Maybe I'll just wait to pick one up on the used market.)

Pressing the button 3 times activates the self cleaning mode, while pressing it once again cancels the cleaning mode. It is a hack to get hot water, but then it's hot water where the machine is cleaning out all its gunk into your cup. Not highly recommended unless you're super desperate.

This is a major design fail on Nespresso's part in not putting a hot water feature in the Vertuo. Lucky I have my old original Nespresso model sitting next to it, so I use that to get instant hot water.