Light camera action#

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:09:55 +0000

I said I'd talk more about the camera, and when I get better with it I'll do so probably at length. For the moment, I just want to say that it's surprisingly good at shooting night skating (in London it's never really dark, of course) and overall is far better at taking pictures of what I'm pointing it towards than I am at pointing it towards anything worth taking pictures of.

A few notes for the moment:

• it copes well in the light and acceptably well in the dark. Gets very confused if half the picture is dark and the other half not (e.g. a dark room with sun outside the window)
• although not well enough in dark that you'd really want to use it for stills in that situation (see right)
• kino will do nicely at getting data off the camera and into a computer
• The controls are designed for use when the camera is held at eye level with the hand cupped around the base. When I'm skating I'd rather hold it at waist level with my hand around the top: in this position I can reach the zoom ok, but the start/stop is inaccessible (unless I use both hands). Pretty much anything else I leave in automatic: if autofocus can't do the job at 15 mph, then tough - I can't either
• sometimes I find I've knocked the zoom unintentionally: "objects in the lcd may appear closer than they are"
• Today I found out about youtube-dl : hooray, at last I can look at the youtube cesspit without having to go and look for an adequate flash plugin.

I know I'm supposed to be writing about skating, but I don't think I've done much lately. Here's a summary for completeness' sake

• 7 Nov: RC
• 10 Nov LFNS was rained off, would have ridden bike
• 11 Nov Stroll RC + crossover drills courtesy of Mike's Practice Club
• 12 Nov Brief appearance at the Marshals' Speed session (starts), then Stroll bike riding
• 14 Nov RC
• 17 Nov LFNS was rained off, would have ridden bike
• 18 Nov more at the Practice Club: a bit of parallel turning and some one-foot skating. Then a session on armswing, which will inevitably force me to write at length on that topic one day soon...