The venerable DCS-520

After reading my posting on my "Neglected Gem", my good friend Huggies Chew of Singapore commented; tongue-in-cheek in Face Book:

"U are back to your old hobby of keeping sunset cameras..
Remember Kodak DCS 520? Only got 0.8 Mega Pixel and cost $23,000.00. I brought one to cover the 1999 Malaysian General Elections and wow! Don't need to process films !"

Those were the good old days my friend! But I remember you actually took a Kodak DCS 3 to Malaysia, take a look at the picture above :)

Neglected Gem - Coolpix 8400

The "GEM" in question is the Nikon Coolpix 8400 point and shoot digital camera I bought way back in 2005.

When the camera was launch in late 2004 it features the widest-angle of coverage of any digital camera available then, it was the answer to my search for true wide-angle photography from a compact digital camera!!

The Coolpix 8400 came with 8.0 effective mega pixel and a very sharp and low distortion ultra-wide 24-85mm (35mm equivalent) zoom with Extra-low Dispersion (ED) glass.

I also bought the optional WC-E75 wide-angle converter lens which takes the build in zoom lens even wider to an unmatched 14 mm (equiv) of ultra-wide coverage!

My DELL Saga

Every end of the year Kiwis chill-out during their "silly season".

We love our silly season in Wellington! The city is half empty, traffic are easy; we just laze about from 24 December till 11 January, then we go back to work.

During this silly period, internet is VERY important to us! We spent umpteen hours in front of our screens. So can you imagine the kind of stress and frustration on Tuesday, 5 Jan; when Le General's DELL Dimension 9150 refuse to start up?

Here are the day by day account of my saga :)

Wednesday (6 Jan) - Call the 0800 number for DELL NZ and get connected to their help desk in Philippines. It pay to have your service tag number and your "Express Service" number ready.
And the tech will understand you better if you say "One-France-Wellington-Thailand-Holland-One-Singapore" instead of 1FWTH1S ;)

After listening to my problem, the helpful tech asked me if I am comfortable to open the case cover and do some testing! I have been inside a Mac G4 and G5 before and I suppose a PC is not that different, five minutes later I am looking at the DELL innards.

Inside the DELL, arrows show where the RAM strips are located.

Welly Pano, 10 years later!

A decade ago, on a cool summer night; I was up at Mt Vic lookout with my family admiring the setting sun at 8.35 pm.

I had with me a tiny Canon S10 digital camera that Canon Malaysia loan me, the 2.1 mega pixel point and shoot was on a small Silk tripod for my first panoramic shot of Wellington.

The seven shots I took were later stitch together with Canon Stitch that came with the camera. The "low resolution" pano was enhanced and work on with Photoshop and I was please with the result.

The "Welly Y2K" pano was like by many who saw the print, through the years I gave it away as gifts to friends, some of the left over prints were sold by a local gallery. there can't be more than 20 of this collectible pano in New Zealand! If you own one, treasure it :)

Wellington Y2K, summer evening, click on picture for a grand view :)

A Foggy Day!

Another two days, 2009 will be history! Here we are, stuck in our little house in Karori. Why? Take a look outside, it is all misty; on a day like this the best thing is to chill out in front of our computers! Our favorite pass-time! ;)

In New Zealand, this time of the year is known as the "silly season"; large part of the population went on holiday and business slow to a crawl.

Where I work, we were let off from 24th December and we will chill till 11th January. Usually, we took this "shutting down" period to go traveling. This year we are saving what ever left of our leave for a important April trip :)

While tidying my photo archives I spotted this pano of our Karori valley I shot a while back, unlike today it was a beautiful sunny day!

The embedded meta data told me the pano was shot with my D300 DSLR and the 15 years old Nikkor 20/2.8 lens. What a glorious view from our deck on a day like this!

You must click on the picture to see a glorious sunny Karori day!

Graduation and Family Portraits

Last week, out of the blue; our friend Rachael told us that her twin boys are attending their graduation ceremonies Wednesday next and since her other son and daughter also came back from Perth and Hong Kong just for the occasion; can I take some family portraits for her?

I told her, physically; I am unable to cover the ceremonies. To get a good coverage you are looking at FIVE hours for each ceremony and trotting a bag full of heavy camera and lenses (300mm included) is for younger photographers :)

In Wellington, graduating students from Victoria University traditionally march from the Law Faculty, Government Building in town to Civic Square, 30 minutes (slow walk) away.

Picture above show our eldest girl May-N, Lamont and friends during their march in 2001.

New Pano Maker for Mac

Yesterday, Simon; our Manager for New Operations Development inform me that there is a new panorama maker for Mac available for free! Thanks Simon!

Back home, at 8 pm; the late evening sun is setting over the Karori Valley. I noticed the nice cloud formation from our wide French door, a perfect "spread" to test out the free beta software!

I spent a pleasant 30 minutes on the deck with my Nikon D300 DSLR with a 20 years old Nikkor 35-70/3.5 zoom lens. The sunset was shot at ISO 200 at 35mm, f5.6 and 1/80 second, four shots; handheld and moving the camera from left to right.

According to Stoik Imaging, the free beta version of their PanoramaMaker for Mac is:

"a automatic panorama software that turns any group of overlapping photos into high quality panoramic image. The program combines very simple user interface, step by step work flow and powerful modern mathematical approach to image matching.

You can create panorama either automatically with just few clicks, or assemble and stitch pictures manually if automatic procedure fails to perfectly match images in complicated cases"