ShelterBox

A brilliant and practical solution to really useful disaster aid: ShelterBox.org.
They started getting really noticed during the Japan disaster.

Love must illuminate

Our ol' doctor friend Pascal (he's not around so often now, as he's got his own clinic established) wrote this, I don't know where it's from, but it seems it's an original Rassi:

Le vrai amour, c'est comme la religion: il doit illuminer, pas éblouir au point de rendre aveugle. -- (Pascal Rassi)

Translation:

True Love, like religion, must illuminate, not dazzle to the point of blindness. -- (Pascal Rassi)

"Less Gear More Photos"

This guy gets it: LessGearMorePhotos

You always hear that in order to become a great photographer, you need to have your camera with you all the time. I always wanted to be that guy, the guy who carried around his [big, heavy] DSLR all the time, but to tell you the truth, I already carry a backpack, lunch bag and gym bag out to my car every morning. I tried to carry my big camera bag too. It worked for a few weeks, but inevitably I’d wind up putting it in the car each morning, and then taking it out (along with the three other bags) when I got home…with no photos on the memory card. Then the next day I forget to take it with me or just not feel like it, and kick myself when the sunrise/clouds/sunset/rainbow/storm/light/fog/foliage on the Hudson River looked amazing and I had no gear with me.

It was Olympus designer Maitani's life work: designing cameras that were as small as possible for the image quality. He wanted the perfect "take-everywhere" camera. I'm not sure we have it yet, there are many good choices, but compromises in them all. But things are moving fast now in the digital age, so in five and ten years it'll look different yet again.

The new Olympus Pen-F. A beautiful camera, and compact and light for the quality and powers it has. 

Cool plate pattern

Tommy found this fascinating video.

Superzooms are not all bad

I had a nice win today: I really want(ed) to use my Panasonic 14-140mm 3.5-5.6 lens for walk-around shooting, for it covers my whole shooting range in one small lens, but somewhere inside me I had the conviction that such a compact, long-range, economical, light-weight lens could not possible be all *that* good, surely not beyond "useable in many situations". For some reason I had never really tested it with intent.
(I felt like that because that had been the situation with two other 10x zooms I had owned from companies which shall remain nameless (Nikon and Pentax) so I thought it was the norm. They both were quite unsharp at points.)

In other words I felt I was stuck between a wonderfully flexible lens which may not be good enough for exhibition pictures, or lenses which are great technically, but *much* heavier and shorter-range, and so way less practical.

But I finally today did a systematic test of the Panasonic 14-140mm lens, and what did I find: It is *great*. Not just "Good for a superzoom", but really sharp from edge to edge, over the whole range. And also even on full aperture. And neither did any color-faults or whatever stick in my eye.

Wow. My walk-around photography is saved.
(I use it on my Olympus M4/3 cameras, but it'll work on Panasonic cameras too.)

And if I may at some point need shallow Depth of Field or faster lenses, I just plop the compact primes 45mm 1.8 and the 12mm 2.0 in a pocket (two in one pocket!), and that's handled.

Don't tell too many people, because so long as most people think that no super-zoom is good enough for serious photography, this may be my "secret weapon".  :-)

(Click for big pic)

 Above, the whole frame, below, crop from it. 
(No computer sharpness applied.)

Notice it's the newer, slightly smaller, 3.5 model on the right I talk about, not the older 4.0 model (which was not bad either though). Incredible how much goodness can come in such a small package. (Just like Reece Witherspoon.)

Robotics progressing (Updated)

Robotics are progressing, watch video.
It takes very fast and sophisticated balancing-computing to make the upright robot walk in a woods with snow on the ground!

Update:

John K said:
Spooky. Not too hard to imagine it with a gun. 

Nope. And I'm sure you're not the first to do so. I think many hard-ons around Pentagon has been inspired thoughts of what such a thing with a machine gun could "accomplish" in many a defenceless hot village around the world. Napalm has gotten so expensive.

And until they can think well enough for themselves, just plug them remotely into videogames globally, and let the kids do some "defending their country" while they think they are playing.

You need a permit, you need a permit, you need a permit, you

These Photos Got Me Kicked Off a Beach in Toronto. Article.
Because he used big cameras, he was assumed to be doing commercial work (by a maintenance man!), and had to have a licence.

So what I can learn is to use very good, but small cameras (say, Olympus E-PL7 with 45mm 1.8 or a Sony RX100 II or Canon G7X), then you'll be OK.

Camera naming and insanity

A reader commented:
"I understand nuttin' to Canon's numbering -- seems to me like they've been introducing the same friggin' camera over and over." (Canon 1D, Canon 1Ds, Canon 1D mark II, Canon 1D mark III. All of them visually near identical too.)

No kidding. I guess it started when Nikon had the Nikon F in the fifties. Some genius at Canon decided to call their supercamera the "F1".
But then Nikon replaced it with the Nikon F2! Argh, what to do? If they called their next model the F2 also, they would look like a me-too. So probably the same genius called it the F1 mark II. And both companies, sticking to the guns they know, have been following the same pattern since, with the big models. They did the same with the big electronic cameras on the nineties which still used film. Those very rounded ones. Weren't they called D1 or 1D or something like that also? Maybe just "1" and "3".

Of course come digital, Nikon calls their cameras D.... , while Canon calls theirs ....D. It's insanity. And spare me the "EOS" and "Coolpix" and "Powershot" just before the name... Who the heck knows  or cares which Canon is a Powershot or not, or why?

 Camera companies and many others too would do well to hire somebody with a drop of sense and imagination to name their products. 40 years ago I read of a Canon experimental camera called the Canon Frog. See, *that* name I can remember, decades later.

Despite them being near triplets, the 7D is not full-frame, while the other two are. And quick, tell me: the successor to the 5D mark II, is that the 6D or the 5D mark III? (Both exist, but oddly the 5D mark III is much more advanced and expensive than mark II, while the 6D seems very much like a successor...)

This is what Mike Johnston calls the "bar of soap" school of design. You take a big wet bar of soap and press it until it's nice and rounded and fit in your hand. Ergonomically not a bad idea, but it gets really boring when all models look near-identical.

New Amazon wrinkle

Amazon has for a couple of years now had their own delivery network here in the UK. And it's buuuuuusy! I got a parcel once later than 10pm!
But they have problems with people taking/receiving parcels which they did not buy.
For a little while they asked the name of the recipient first. This should work. But maybe the typically young and inexperienced drivers forgot to ask before they handed over the parcel, where the receiver can read the name anyway.

Today I saw they have a new gadget. Like a fat smartphone. With touch screen which you sign on.

I asked if it was new, and he said it was. And over his shoulder on his way out, he also said: "It also takes your finger print."

Woa. I don't know how they will handle it in case of misdelivered packages. Will they really go out there again and ask for a person's fingerprints??
And can it really do something with a print of just the tip of a finger?

I do know there's a big chance of some people getting very upset indeed about this development.

Update:
David E says:
"I have signed for Amazon deliveries using these gadgets. I don't see how they could reliably take a fingerprint. I think it's a myth."

That does seem probable.

Dark Picasso

Here's a new photo I call "Picasso loves his iPad".

(Click to see texture.)

Neil Gaiman and FourPlay: Makin' Whoopee

Here's one of those things you never thought you'd see: Neil Gaiman, famed writer (Sandman, American Gods), on stage with a string quartet, singing, of all things: Makin' Whoopee. 

I found it while looking for a video of the string quartet, FourPlay, playing their wonderful rendition of one of my favorite Sinead O'connor songs, Just Like U said it Would B. 

Pen-F review

 Here is a review of the brand new Olympus Pen-F, from the 'Camera Store'. it's a video, and I like the camera stores reviews they are entertaining and still sober.