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Reality TV has become a societal watchword.
Reality like the time the man-eating gerbils overturned Aunt
Martha's golf cart in Bermuda has made us a world of tourists
who won't leave home without a videocam.
The "world's most amazing (read terrifying, gruesome, stupid)
videos" preceded "Survivor" and goosed the sale of Sonycams like
no one could imagine.
I got a dose of reality this afternoon and am
glad (1) that I had my digital still camera charged and at hand
and (2) that there was no tragic aftermath for me to profit
from.
I've been an airship enthusiast all my life –
born a few years too late to witness the last of the dirigibles
– and will always pull out of traffic to watch a passing blimp.
Blimps are a familiar sight in the Tampa Bay skies, especially
around big sporting events such as the coming Super Bowl.
Further, the MetLife blimp – Snoopy I or II –
seems to have its winter quarters here this year. Every time I
hear the familiar whir of its engines, I pick up my digital
camera and step outside my studio to get a picture.
This afternoon, the whir was louder than usual.
Much louder. I grabbed my Nikon 990 and ran outside to see the
familiar Snoopy logo just a few feet above the trees in my side
yard, nose pointing down. I shot the first picture.
The blimp continued its downward course, curving
around toward our front yard. I ran there and shot the second
picture just before it adjusted its attitude.
Then, with a new roar of engines, it turned
slightly and pointed its nose into a steep climb. My third
picture captured it a block away with our street sign in the
foreground.
My final shot has the blimp at a safe altitude
and cruising sedately west toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Having worked with an experimental airship
development team, I know the blimp behavior I witnessed above my
yard was abnormal. For years I've hoped my wife would surprise
me with a blimp ride. How she'd do this, I'm not sure.
But I knew the Snoopy wasn't coming to pick me
up at my door. I'm thankful that it was just an extraordinary
low-altitude maneuver and not a tragedy.
What's the digital camera point of all this.
First, an unusual even occurred and thanks to my digital camera,
I was able to capture it in pixels.
Second, my son is a blimp fan also and I had
downloaded them, Photoshopped ‘em, saved high-res and 100ppi
JPEG images and emailed them to him – exactly 10 minutes after
the first shot. Then in my enthusiasm, I attached the images and
shipped them off to about 80 friends who I thought my be
interested.
What's amazing to me is that with a couple
thousand dollars worth of technology, I was able to emulate the
work of the great news gathering services and networks and
probably faster, since even non-news doesn't happen in their
backyard.
First chads, now nits.
First report on camera testing. Using a bunch of
unfamiliar digital cameras in a short period can be fun, and a
pain in the wrist. Especially if the camera in question doesn't
have a neck strap. That's nit number one that I pick with these
thousand buck investments that ship with a tiny G-string wrist
strap.
I mean, even a Czarina would not appear in
public with an investment like that dangling from her wrist by a
piece of dental floss. Expensive cameras should be worn. Around
the neck. Or at worst, over the shoulder.
Yep, this is a rant about good design gone bad. Along the same
line, how about SmartMedia card slots too narrow to retrieve the
memory card without forceps? I fear that SM cards are fragile to
begin with and pulling them with a needle nose pliers can't be a
healthy practice.
Andy Rooney would agree with me on my vent about
cameras that ship with expensive proprietary batteries and
require an "optional" recharger and rechargeable battery for
about 100 bucks. So this "lower cost" camera eventually costs as
much as its bigger brother.
I'm not wild about batteries that require
in-camera charging, either.
Wee buttons are for wee people. I'm equipped
with big fat fingers and they're not happy with buttons designed
for use by a rhesus monkey (ever look at the fingers on those
dudes?). I would rather wear a two-pound camera around my neck
than carry a five-ounce gizmo in my pocket if I can't use the
buttons to control it.
Ditto for other camera features/non features.
The hand grip (battery cover) is too close to the camera body to
get a good grip on one otherwise stellar model already tested.
Snap-on lens caps. The Nikon e-group has had
hundreds of posts about where to buy replacements. Since digital
cameras will make pictures with the lens cap in place, why not
throw the bloody thing away and forget about replacements.
You get my point. Another batch of test cameras
is arriving and with it, a new batch of nits to be picked, a new
crop of manuals to read and comprehend.
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