Around the World in 180 Days

My employer has generously agreed not to pay me anything for the next six months in exchange for my not taking up space in their offices, and I am off travelling. First stop is a place which holds fond memories for me - Hong Kong. Further destinations are Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Rarotonga, the USA, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. I'm hoping to come back with a decent photo or two.

Canon 24-105L flare issue

Argh! Just got my EOS 5D and 24-105L lens in time for a 6-month trip, then all sorts of rumours appear that there are problems with flare in certain situations, that Canon have stopped selling the lenses and that they are offering a "repair". See this thread . I haven't heard anything official from Canon or my dealer yet. I doubt there is time to get my lens "repaired" before the trip, so I'll just have to work around it, which shouldn't be difficult as it seems the phenomenon only occurs in very specific lighting situations (where there is a bright point source of light at the edge or just outside of the edge of the frame). As you can see I was able to reproduce the problem although the posted image is the most severe I was able to create. Despite taking about 10 shots directly into a halogen desk lamp at a variety of angles, most showed no unusual flare.

Photos I couldn't take last year

This photo was taken in August this year on an EOS 20D with 17-85IS lens. Very few other camera and lens combinations could have taken it. It was hand-held at 1/6 second, which would be almost impossible without the image stabiliser (a tripod would not have been an option because the camera needed to be held right up to the glass, not to mention that the pod is moving!) The sensitivity was 1600ASA, which would have been unusably noisy on almost any other camera. On the 20D it is perfectly useable, and pin sharp - just look at the extract.


The man in the pod should have his camera confiscated for trying to take a photo of the London skyline at night, through glass, using flash. I imagine he got a nicely lit photo of handprints on the inside of the glass, but at least he created a focal point for my shot!

Death knell tolls for Microsoft

I read recently about what Microsoft has been up to for the last 4 years since releasing Windows XP.

XP was quite a good release, in that it worked better than its predecessors. Unfortunately that was largely a reflection of the quality of its predecessors (did anyone ever use Windows ME?). Sadly as well as making it actually work Microsoft added their usual stylistic kipple - cartoon dogs, Fisher-Price buttons, an extra 20 ways to do everything and another 28 zillion different pointless and time-wasting customisation options.

Since XP came out, LCD monitors have taken over and the average hard-drive has grown from 20gb to 200gb. Digital SLRs have gone from 3 megapixels to 16, and TV is now delivered digitally. With the rapid uptake of broadband, the internet has become a proper resource, used by normal people (eg your girlfriend/wife) as well as sad techie blokes.

So in an age where home computing technology is becoming a part of normal people's everyday lives faster than ever before, have Microsoft risen to the challenge? What added value does Windows Vista offer? Are there proper improvements or is mr paperclip man just available in a variety of customisable sizes and colours (with an extra pop-up menu to choose whether he appears at the left or right hand side of the screen) at a slightly higher resolution?

Do we have voice-control? Digital dictation via mobile phone at the operating-system level, perhaps? Maybe the computer-equivalent of predictive-text where the operating system finds those photos it's hidden away somewhere random for you? Core-level protection from viruses and spyware? Maybe the whole thing actually works without crashing?

It seems not.

But they have added a snazzy translucent "glass" effect to the windows. Only downside is that it requires a "games" level graphics card. If you have figured out that PC games are totally crap and it would be much more sensible to get a Playstation 3 instead, you may well find that you have to buy expensive new hardware just to display the operating system properly.

Basically I expect Windows Vista to be another "upgrade" in the vein we've seen before, ie just Windows 3.1 with added complication, confusion, irritating cartoon characters and expense. Microsoft is a monopoly, but no monopoly can survive consistent incompetence - there are plenty of other geeks out there who are more in tune with reality. My prediction is that Uncle Bill has horribly blown it, and his dominance of home computing will be over within a decade.

Windows 3.1 was designed for stand-alone machines in the days before the internet, digital cameras, and 3G mobiles. Nowadays we don't want stand-alone machines, we want access to our email, files and programs from any machine anywhere in the world. The next step for digital cameras (increasingly converging with mobile phones) will be for the photos to automatically be uploaded onto a server, from which they can be shared, edited, printed etc. This should be possible from any machine with a browser, be it a PC, a Mac, a mobile phone or a set-top box. Thus operating systems and microsoft software become less and less relevant, whilst the big bucks will be made by the likes of Google, Yahoo and mobile phone companies.

Putting it in Perspective

For £70 you can buy one of the best interchangeable camera lenses available, the Canon 50mm f1.8 prime. For £280 you can buy the ever-so-slightly superior 50mm f1.4 prime.

For the £210 difference, you could, according to Sight Savers International, pay to restore the sight of 12 people in Africa or India who were blind through cataracts.

I find this disturbing. Not least because I would be inclined to spend the extra £210 on the more expensive lens.

Why do we, living in a western capitalist society, have the choice to improve our ability to capture the wonders of the visible world by the tiniest of margins by spending more money, whilst those in Africa have to make do with not being able to see anything at all for lack of £17? I feel that doing some small thing about it may help lessen my guilt, and I have a few ideas...

Tribal Brand Loyalty

The forums of some photographic equipment websites would surely make fertile ground for students of psychology. What is it which motivates people to behave in such an odd way? The participants have endless discussions about whether Nikon or Canon is best, whether Olympus are going to disappear without trace from the SLR market (again) and whether the new camera which Leica might be bringing out next year will be better or worse than the one which Pentax may or may not be bringing out the year after that. These people protect their brand with such religious loyalty, you would think it was their families and livelihood (rather than a simple photographic tool which will be obsolete in under two years) which they were defending.

I suppose it's simply the same tribalism exhibited by football hooligans, only these guys have less testosterone so they prefer to sit alone in darkened rooms typing crap on internet forums rather than roaming the streets with cans of lager, shouting and chundering. But if extreme, emotionally charged tribalism can take a camera as its object, what's next? Zealots terrorising the streets, chanting passionately about their favourite breakfast cereal? Fanatics blowing themselves up because somebody insulted their preferred oven cleaner? My fear is that there is something inherently belligerent about us humans, and in the absence of a war or any need to righteously defend our Queen and country, petty squabbles over material goods step into the void.

Signing On

After 4 years online, I've decided that every good website needs a blog. Blogger is much less hassle than manually updating and uploading my own web pages, so I can publish more drivel more regularly with greater ease. And people can rant back at me using the comments feature!

Photographically, it's the end of an era for me, as it must be for a lot of us. I recently sold my fairly extensive collection of film cameras and their associated lenses and other kipple on ebay. I'm also in the process of selling my EOS 20D and its dedicated lens, as I now have the more "grown-up" EOS 5D. For the first time ever, the camera and lenses I'm using are what I would choose if money was no object. I would not swap them for anything else available on the market. I can therefore stop wasting time worrying about equipment, and concentrate on the photography...