Year: 2004

Girl and ice cream

Olga and I went for a sunset walk in Molos promenade today. I was surprised to find a lot of people there. Some were running, others walking, yet another others – sitting on the benches.

There were a few photo opportunities. The best two were the girl with an ice-cream and a couple of kittens. The girl was the best ever, but she was almost running trying to catch up with her parents, so I had only one shot. I guess with better cropping the image can get better. Kittens, though were very atmospheric and would have been much better on the video. They were very synchronized. They were sitting and moving their heads in exactly same directions at exactly same time. Very cool. But they were wild and were scared away when I tried to get closer.

Album location: /photos/2004/2004-09-28_POTD

dump_photos

I am using dump_photos.pl script to copy (or move) images from my Canon EOS 300D to my computer. Canon’s in-camera filesystem is not very convenient to copy files manually, because images are distributed across a number of folders (100 images per folder thing). Canon original software is for Windows only and is way too complicated and slow for such an easy task.

My script uses standard Perl modules (Getopt::Long, File::Copy, and POSIX) to copy or move files to specified or default (date-based) directory. It also mounts the Compact Flash before processing images, and umounts it after everything is done. It also uses jhead to optionally rotate images based on the information in EXIF header.

Run “dump_photos.pl –help” for a list of options. Although it was tested only with my Digital Rebel, I think it should work fine with most of Canon cameras.

dump_photos.pl

Canon rules

PhotographyBlog has quoted press release from Canon which shows why exactly Canon rules and owns. For those, who is not going to click through, here is an executive summary: Canon is announcing 90 new products in 2004, which roughly one product every four days. 19 out of these are new digital cameras. Canon is the only company in the world who is not only developing, but manufacturing itself all of it’s cameras, sensors, and lenses. It pushes a whole tonne of money into Research and Development. This year it will be 8.2% of its all global revenues, which is almost 2 billion Euro. And blah blah blah…

Not only they do a lot, but they do it well too. Same site has a link to one week with Canon EOS 20D review. Faster power-on cycle, more settings and effects (like black and white photography with colored filtering), better focusing system, better battery, and less noise in low light conditions. In the review, there is an image shot in candle light with ISO 1600 setting, which has alsmost no noise. They boast that ISO 1600 with 20D is roughly the same as ISO 400 with 10D. Now, that’s an improvement!

Anyway, the point is – Canon rules and owns all the way!

George says…

George says...

Did you ever wanted George Bush to say something stupid? Oh, wait… Let me try once again. Did you ever wanted George Bush to say something smart? Well, it appears that there is some control over what he says. You can also make it look very realistic. Just choose your options and type in the text at George-Says.com website and voula – you have it. Don’t tell me it wasn’t easy!

The Stepford Wives

Olga and I watched an excellent movie today – “The Stepford Wives“. It had a rather weak trailer and Nicole Kidman is playing there, who is neither mine, nor Olga’s favourite actress, so we didn’t want particularly to see it.

We almost missed an excellent, as I already said, film. Everything is great about it – story, acting, music – everything. It somehow managed to be very light and easy going while delivering few strong points and a tonne or so of satire. Amazing. Another great thing about it is attention to details – from the opening titles and through the whole movie. I could almost feel the smell of things. Excellent work.

I’ll give it an 9 out of 10. Get it and watch it. It can survive the DVD.