Eternal toggling of the spotless lens

Eternal toggling of the spotless lens.

Alo alo, it’s a damn camera article once again, and that’s all there is on the title too. Today is camera retrospect day.

The Canon G7 came, shot, conquered and sold. It was one of the best compacts I had. Wuz. It had great stills in ample light and sometimes surprising results even in low-light. But the bulk and weight just did it wrong. That brick can really get brickier and brickier the longer it hangs around your neck. Forget about slipping it in your pocket, it just won’t. It doubles as a weapon though. I still love it, but priorities change.

Like sunbeam parting clouds, it unfolded one day. You can never ever get a compact to perform like an SLR and vice versa…well, at least yet (before the digital Olympus Pen) so you need to get both – an appropriate consumerist response. Review, review, then voila!, TZ5 = all around compact. I then sorted my way to justifying a DSLR because of what the compact was not…and I was getting married soon so I needed decent pictures.

And so it was the TZ5, it was great while we lasted, a short relationship and it is now shooting happily with my co-worker who gave up a few clams for a decent 3-month old compact, she made a smart choice, it was a bargain at $180 (the TZ5). Wide at 28 and narrow at 10 (the TZ5). A compact, but not really, unless you are into deep pocketed low-rise look-me-undies-are-showin jeans. The TZ5 did it all, you name it: face detect, choose the scene and ISO for you, shoot video, wicked zoom, format select, vacuum room, teleport and all bunch of craps that you will not remember when its time to shoot. It was almost perfect, it became – utterly boring. My biggest peeve was the flash being under the zoom lever which eventually gets covered by my finger. I know, it’s not her, it’s me. But we can’t go on making pictures with half of my subjects lurking in the dark.

An angel came to my dreams and told me it was time, I will be-get-ting a DSLR soon and it shall be called Canon450D, Lumix G1, Olympus E420, … a Nikon D60! And so I became a Nikonian and trashed those bloody user-interface-challenged Canon users. I made good results with city lights taken from the roof-deck of a building tower…tower-building. ..A building that is tall. Tall building. But, it does not have “live view”. Most people got confused and their mouths frothed when they realized they can’t see subjects on the screen. My patience was challenged every time I had to explain why a “real” or “like a pro” camera cant display the subject on the screen. It’s not her, its them.

Every so often I would see a nice Kodak-moment opportunity. I needed to be fast and furious but often end up slow and infuriated, hoping I had the “real” camera with me. And then I realized…(yes, half of my life is spent on realizations) that there it was, my D60 zoom set that I was NOT lugging around. The sleek AF-S DX VR 55-200MM F/4-5.6G IF-ED lens with all the codes they can slap on it; waiting as pristine and unused. The adage lives on, a compact in your pocket beats any DSLR that you don’t have with you. It was gone in 60 days.

Enter Eleanor…errr LX3. I now attest to Pannie’s success in flooring its camera business from zero to 60 faster than any of the old boys. Which also begs to ask why Sony failed - even with the Minolta legacy under its belt. I’ve went around 3 Lumixes now. I can say Pannys are fun. They’re like the Tamiyas in the RC world, never a champ at competitions but always comes out with the most interesting and fun factors; like Wild Willy’s and Lunchboxes, fun, fun. But I digress, the LX3s selling point are: the rangefinder look, F2 lens, wide at 24 and all the crap that I’ll never use. The bummer: short 2.5 zoom and a missing view finder. My D60 had a good view finder and no live view and now this has a live view but no v-finder. Irony rules.

The Jurassic lunch box casio camera begat casio compact, which begat panny Zoom camera which begat lumix pocket camera (again), and everybody in da house went hoooow~hoo~oow, pocket camera begat canon brick enthusiast camera which begat panny zoom compact which was joined with entry level Nikon DSLR.

Now that I look at it, I remember that day when I was at a Japanese roadside festival shooting with my manual, a Canon AE. , I saw this guy shooting around with what looked like a tiny version of my SLR, I moved closer and a Leica M7 it was. From then on I thought I will have somethin like that. Soon. The LX3 is the closest (at that moment) and most affordable rangefinder (that is not really a rangefinder), that I was probably wanting all along.


“Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t care where…” said Alice
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Wintel has gone and I found God

Hillarious Engrish site at Engrish.com

We has to check your sick

Grammar cop caught this breaking news on the Swineflu panic, pandemic, manic/ outbreak. There never seems to be enough resources to hire or find that one person who can construct grammatically correct English in Japan. Even Reuter's caption was not spared.

Ang Pintorero - Budding artists of Mandaluyong

http://www.pintorero.blogspot.com/

Its up, its up. After some time. 8 years to be exact when we had our petty exhibit. Who knows where the budding (desperate) painters ended up after that. Carlo for one got picked-up by the Boston Gallery, the rest will have to settle for building portfolios... some went full time and some opted for a day job.

Fast forward 2009, by sheer luck I had a friend who wants Amorsolo replicas, and since I dont have the patience and time for landscape paintings, especially farmlands, I contacted wellers - which contacted conyat, then the deal was set. When we first had our exhibit, I guessed we've learned a lot from each others work, perhaps this time again, on a whole different dimension.