welcome.

Camera Shootout: Nikon D50 vs A Grapefruit. Neil and I were having a discussion/argument about what camera(s) to use for our camera club's upcoming photo outing affair, the humorously-named Hubcap Rally. Since the entrants are limited to 24 shots each, the discussion quickly turned to the merits of shooting film over digital, which quite a few people seem to be doing these days. My logic was that if one can transition from digital to film, the next step is obviously to move to fruits and vegetables. I thought I would do a quick feature by feature comparison to see just what you can get out of such a move. Nikon D50 A Grapefruit Release date 2005 Antiquity Price ~R6000 body only R2.50 ea. Dimensions 133 x 102 x 76 mm 120 x 120 x 120mm (approx.) Sensor 6MP CCD n/a Shutter speeds B, 30s - 1/4000s n/a ISO 200 - 1600 n/a Viewfinder Pentamirror Human Eye(tm) Exposure modes P, S, A, M and Scene Modes n/a White balance Fixed presets and white-card Orangey-pink Memory SD card All types* Remote ML-L3 wireless Voice control** GI value n/a Low Snack value n/a Medium*** Hurlability Good Good Awesomeness Medium to low Off the scale * Caution - juices may cause damage if certain brands of SD and CF cards are used. ** Requires another person to shout instructions to. *** May require Sugar(tm) add-on to function correctly. Clearly, which to choose is highly dependent on the situation. Each have advantages and drawbacks, although on the whole I find I'll reach for the Grapefruit more often than the D50. Some may argue that it's old technology, but I'd say that really means the bugs have been worked out ages ago, and there is something about the custom Grapefruit User Interface that just makes it feel right in my hands. Truth be told, I think I'll be keeping both in my camera bag from now on; the combination makes for far more versatile photography! More tomorrow. -q- comments[2] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/07/01 10:47
On Band Names. If one ever has a band, I think Wailing Fungus should be high on the list of possible names. In the top three, at least. -q- comments[0] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/06/29 08:40
Andrew Lloyd Webber Is An Odd Man. Well, strictly speaking, David Garnett, who wrote the book that the musical is based on, was an odd man - a bit of a nonconformist and weirdbeard in general, and certainly as pertains to his personal life. Still, none of this prevents Aspects of Love from being a witty, charming, humourous production with some razor sharp songwriting and dialogue to comment on the foibles of human relationships. The local production is on at the Civic at the moment, and definitely worth catching if you get the chance; we went to see it courtesy of G's folks who took us for our birthdays. Oh yes, and belated happy Fathers' day to my old man, who was probably being ill off the side of a boat somewhere south of Maputo most of yesterday by all accounts. Diesel fumes and seasickness, yum! Sorry dad ;-), hope the race goes better this week. More tomorrow. -q- comments[0] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/06/22 12:34
SA Choke Again. We've really got this down to a fine art now, don't we? -q- comments[0] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/06/19 07:32
The Brawn Supremacy. My my. How quickly the extraordinary becomes the new normal. Additional madness looks likely to ensue in 2010 if Ferrari and co. don't get their way about the revised budget cap rules and follow through on their threat to quit (and possibly form a rival series); watch this space. -q- comments[0] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/05/25 10:40
Cunning Photo Trick. Thanks to Peter W, who saw this in a photo magazine somewhere. It's brilliant. Get a blank white page to display on your laptop screen. If you're using Firefox, the easiest way to do this is start up your web browser, type "about:blank" into the address field and load it, and then hit F11 to display fullscreen. Now tilt the laptop up so the screen is lying flat. Then take a bunch of clear plastic objects, eg. CD jewel cases, plastic spoons, ballpoint pen casings, etc, and plonk them on top of the white screen. Finally, take a few photos of the objects with a circular polariser on your camera. Fun! This works because LCD screens have a layer of polarising film in front of the screen elements. The polarised light creates interference patters when viewed with a second polarising filter, hence the wild colours. Incidentally, before computers took over the world of structural stress analysis, it used to be done in exactly the same way. -q- comments[2] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/05/12 12:34
The New World Order. So, I think everyone thought that the start of the European season in F1 would put these young whippersnappers in their place, and we'd see a return to the old boys' club of McLaren and Ferrari whitewashing the podium. Guess not ;) More tomorrow. -q- comments[0] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/05/11 07:26
Honeymoon Photos. Tropical island paradise! Check it out in the usual place, a selection of photos taken by Gaby and I. -q- comments[0] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/04/22 11:39
The Married Life. Right ho, so, first off, apologies for being slack on the blogging for the last few weeks. There was (surprisingly) a valid reason other than "I forgot and was lazy". Gaby and I got married :) The wedding was awesome, G organised most of it and it went off without a hitch. We were a bit worried about the weather given that the ceremony was at the botanical gardens north of Joburg and outside, but it cooperated magnificently and delivered a stunning April morning. Most of the day passed in something of a blur, but I do remember smiling for a quite ridiculous number of photographs; my jaws still ache at the memory. And of course I remember Gaby, who was radiantly beautiful in that way that very happy people have :) After the wedding, we headed off to Mauritius for a week of chill time. It was pretty fantastic, white sands, aquamarine ocean, and startlingly hot and humid after the autumn highveld weather we left behind. Days were slow and lazy, and involved a lot of walks on the beach, floating around in the Indian ocean, and generally doing as little as possible while being waited on hand and foot. If you've never been on a tropical island holiday before, I can highly recommend it! Photos to follow soon, once my brain is back in gear ;) More tomorrow. -q- comments[0] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/04/16 08:50
Eulogy RIP: Elizabeth Maureen Reynolds, 1920 - 2009. 1920... Einstein, Talkies, Great Depression, Gandhi, Nazis, WW2, A-bomb, Cold War, beat generation, DNA, JFK, civil rights, Beatles, free love, TV, heart transplant, moon landing, Vietnam, disco, Reagan, Thatcher, Chernobyl, Challenger, Exxon Valdez, Berlin Wall, end of Apartheid, human genome, computers, the Internet, 9/11, mobile phones, global warming, and about a million other things I can't remember right now. Quite a life. Miss you Gran :-/ -q- comments[0] | rss	Posted by: quinn 2009/03/16 08:15

This webspace is maintained by Quinn Reynolds 3rd July 2009