Author: chuck goolsbee

Update: (more) Thoughts on a new Camera

I really appreciate all the feedback I have received over the past week or so since I first started thinking out loud on this subject. After digging a bit, I’ve narrowed my specifications. I could not find anything that covered all of my wants, and that forced me to concentrate on what I need. The first thing to go was AA batteries – it seems that virtually no DSLR works from AA’s. The next thing to go was video. Very few SLRs do video, and it appears none of them do it well.

I came back to the features that I need, which are small size and light weight. I took the suggestions of people I trust and fed them through that filter and came up with the cameras you see arrayed above. You can see the whole comparison table here. I think now, that unless something about the other two really strikes me, my final choice is between the two in the middle: The Olympus E-420 and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1. These two are the smallest, lightest DSLRs available, at 15.5 and 12.7 oz. respectively.

The more I look at the specs, the more I’m favoring the Panasonic, with it’s Leica lenses and apparently amazing tilt/swivel/swing viewfinder.

The Sony’s appeal is the price/performance, the viewfinder, and some impressive technical stats. It is HUGE compared to the Olympus & Panasonic. The Canon’s appeal to me lay primarily in its ability to be driven by a laptop for time-lapse. After thinking very hard about that I realized that the sort of time-lapse work I do, I’m better suited finding a compact consumer-grade digicam that is supported by my time-lapse software.

So my next step is to go and get my hands on these and see how they feel. Stay tuned!

Review: Daemon

I read this book, literally in about 4 hours. Those hours were spread around about three days, in 5 to 50 minute increments. It did not even last long enough to make it into my “what I’m reading now” listing over there! ->

My friend and occasional commentator here Dan O’Donnell loaned it to me a while back, and it has been sitting in my bookshelf waiting in the queue. I love to read, and rarely in my life is there not some book in my bag that I’m working my way through. I tend to prefer non-fiction, with an emphasis on history, philosophy, and things that provoke thought. Daemon does not fall into any of these categories. It does provoke a bit of thought, but mostly it is a Crichton-esque techno-thriller. It reads like a near-future sci-fi movie (which, I understand it will become at some point.) I finished Jospehy’s definitive history of the Nez Perce and the Inland Northwest, and am pondering a lot of what I absorbed from that… meanwhile picking up something escapist and swift was a nice change of pace.

While most of the technology it explores is plausible, a lot of the plot elements themselves are absurdly implausible. But like a good Bond movie, you suspend your disbelief and ride the roller coaster anyway. One of my guilty pleasures is spotting continuity errors in movies (I add at least one “goof” to IMDB for every movie I watch) and as this book unfolded like a movie I was able to pick up a bunch of them. The errors started compounding rapidly towards the end, and as the final chapters converged my suspension of disbelief reached a breaking point. Several plot threads were either deliberately or mistakenly left dangling, and at least two major plot points seemed jarringly, or hastily, thrown together. The story line followed this wonderful trajectory that suddenly lost momentum and fell like a brick earthward… with a slight bounce as it closed. It seems to me that either Mr. Suarez felt compelled to leave a lot out there for a sequel, or he rushed to complete this story due to some external pressure.

A great geek bodice-ripper for a long flight, but not much more.

Published again! XKEData.com Calendar

My photographic work has once again been chosen for the XKEData.com Calendar. The top shot was taken hanging out the passenger side of the 65E while descending the Beartooth Highway in the 2006 GTTSR. The bottom shot is Gary Herzberg’s S1 FHC, shot at St. Mary’s Lake in Glacier National Park on this year’s GTTSR.

Always nice to see one’s work in print.

Go buy yours today: XKE Data – Store – Calendars.