Pterodaktyl…

Due to our local railway line being closed for repairs, Lil had to leave for work earlier than normal all last week. Getting up at the usual time this morning I was amazed by how much earlier the sunrise has got in just one week - and today’s was particularly spectacular!

For several months now I’ve been considering getting a super-zoom digital camera. We already have a Nikon D70 SLR, which is a superb camera, but the lens that came with it is a fairly average 28-80mm zoom. This is fine for landscape shots, but since we both like wildlife photography a lot of our subjects are either very far away or very close up, putting you into macro or telephoto territory.

Since our budget at the moment won’t stretch to a pair of decent Nikon lenses, a compact with a super-zoom lens seemed like a reasonable stop-gap. It’s also smaller and lighter for when you don’t fancy lugging around a full-size SLR!

I was planning to wait another month or so before getting one, but while on a visit to Bristol last Friday I spotted a camera shop selling the Canon Powershot S3 for £280, only a few £ over the Amazon price. Since it’s always nicer to physically walk into a shop and buy something rather than order online, I decided to go for it. I’d settled on the S3 partly on the basis of reviews and partly because the Powershot G2 I bought way back in 2002 is still going strong.

I haven’t yet had a chance to take the camera out in the field and test it properly, but after playing around with it at home I’m very pleased. Obviously when you’re used to a £600 SLR there are going to be some things about a compact that aren’t up to the same standard - the noise at high ISO settings and the overall build quality definitely don’t match up to the Nikon - but being able to go from super-macro to 12x zoom in a second is more than enough to keep me happy. It also has image stabilisation which makes the zoom usable without a tripod and enables you to shoot in lower light conditions without needing the flash.

One other feature which I didn’t even know about until I was reading through the manual is an on-board stereo sound recorder. With sound effects forming a significant part of the work my business does, I often find myself carrying a minidisc recorder and microphone on the off-chance that I’ll want to record some sounds. Again, I’m still waiting to carry out a field test, but I have a feeling that the camera’s recording quality will be more than enough for the odd bit of sound effect capturing.

The only not-so-good thing is that the unit I bought makes a clearly audible buzzing noise when you power it up. This changes pitch as you move it around, making me suspect it’s connected to the image stabiliser, but stops when you zoom the lens. It’s a fairly minor issue, but luckily we’re going to be in Bristol on business next week so I can pop into the shop and get it checked over.

Just watched the shuttle Discovery lifting off on a mission to the International Space Station - the first mission in almost a year and only the second since the loss of Columbia in 2003.

I always find watching shuttle launches a fairly nail-biting experience, but I’ve barely missed one since NASA started streaming the footage over the Internet. It’s amazing how things have moved on - I remember watching a video window somewhat smaller than a business card which froze every 10 seconds or so - now I can watch it full screen without interruption!

I’m afraid it’s been rather quiet around here for the last month - but after a period when business was worrying slack, it’s suddenly become incredibly busy!

We’re currently working on three projects, including some flight simulation modelling, which is a whole new area for me. It’s taken some getting used to, but it’s interesting to be building planes instead of trains. They’re certainly much more complicated shapes! I really need to get my 3ds max skills up to scratch - these pictures show the standard of modelling that’s going to be set over the next few months. Unfortunately, the version of max that we use throws its toys out the cot if you try and render to texture under XP SP2. This technique is essential for getting the shadow effects that make those shots of the cab look so real, so we’re looking at a fairly expensive upgrade to the latest version. Discreet produce great software, but their tendency to cease producing patches for superseded versions tends to make me grind my teeth…
Tomorrow we’re flying up to Glasgow, then Wednesday we have a business meeting in London.¹ I’ll be checking e-mails when I get the chance. I’ll also try and do a few mobile updates, as I’ve finally got the post-by-email feature working on Wordpress.

On the subject of mobile internet access, I recently switched from Orange Pay Monthly to Pay-As-You-Go - I wasn’t using the phone enough to justfy spending £24 a month on a contract. I was worried that I’d lose the £3 for 4MB GPRS deal I got on contract, but in fact there’s an equivalent deal on PAYG. There’s also the option to buy a single day’s unlimited access for £1 - which for occasional heavy use works out pretty well.²

Well, that’s about it for tonight, I’ll try and update from Glasgow - it’ll be the first time I’ve been to Scotland, so that should be fun!

Oh yes, and I’ve installed a footnotes plugin for Wordpress³

1. 7am train from Honiton, the joy [↩]
2. I tend to go for weeks without using GPRS, then want to upload a load of cameraphone pics at once [↩]
3. Which I promise not to use this much in future [↩]