July, 2024 - Sleepypete's Pillow

Hello everyone,

It’s summer again which mostly means attempting to retreat to places where it’s cool … Oh and occasionally dodging energetic thunderstorms too. I think we’re due one of them later in the week.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a tiny dark green dragon perched on a finger. Steam is coming out of its mouth. The caption is "Please take great care out in the hills and mountains of Wales today. The heatwave is prematurely hatching the eggs of the Welsh dragon. If you come across a baby dragon just leave it be, do not take it home. Dragons do not make good pets, they very quickly get too hot to handle." — I wonder if this will get the post blocked on Facebook again

The usual thing to say about GB weather is … it’s not that hot ! And it isn’t, the car was saying 32 C down to 29 by the time I get home. (cars will heat soak when they’re not moving). The room fan is saying 26 C. It’s Britain though, our houses and our bodies are set up to survive in temperatures that could range from minus 10 C (not seen that for a while) up to the high 30s. And we only have air conditioning in the cars. (So with no England cricket on this Friday, could be a short road trip ? Maybe).

I’ve been away from the blog for a little while. Same as usual there, I might not have something that sparks the inspiration off, I might be wanting to break up things like multiple lego build posts, or other similar themed posts. Lego ? I have more of that now … Oh and I still need to post the Caerphilly castle pictures at some point.

And there’s me getting distracted again. I did have a week off at the end of June (that feels a long time ago now). I’ll be looking to set up more away time soon, which could be :

Road trip Isle of Man via the ferry;

Scotland cottage for a week;

And the lovely Batkitto (from Twitch) was suggesting Halloween in Disney Paris with perhaps a few community members along, which would be a fun little extended excursion if it happens. Disney Orlando was a great fortnight holiday for me (summer 2005), it was just a shame what happened with the personal life upheaval when we got back. (That’s one for the dim and distant past).

I’ll be looking at September there probably for Isle of Man (or Isle of Wight) or Scotland, it’s cheaper and schools will be back so it’ll be quieter. And maybe with a cottage with a few rooms, I can bring a Friend along too.

Olympic action ?

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a black and white cat, intently looking at something to the right, they're hidden behind a small mound of snow. The captions are "Sly sneaks one past the competition in the Snow Stalking event." "A gold medal for sure - if the judges can even find her."

I do like Olympics times, both Winter and Summer. It’s a chance for a lot of sports that normally barely get any coverage to come out and have their time in the limelight. Maybe some of them get more attention than others should get ? It’s good to see the snippets. Plus it can definitely be a case of “ok, that’s enough of that for now to keep me satisfied for the next 4 years”.

Kinda like the swimming on at the moment, I want to know who is going to win. But … you see a couple of races, you’ve seen them all. Same with athletics, the skill seems to be in the preparation of the athlete in training and it’s just unleashing that potential in the race. There’s very little reaction to what the other people in the race are doing.

And that’s where the competition is for me, like in the Rugby Sevens where it’s a team game. I used to watch a lot more rugby (well … the Six Nations tournament) but drifted away from watching rugby because the rules changed far too often, going beyond small tinkering. It felt like the players were struggling to keep up and the quality of the games suffered as a result.

Cricket isn’t in the Olympics (honestly don’t think it should, not enough countries play it) but I mention it because they’ve steadily tinkered with the rules but … they’ve kept it to a way that enhances the game without changing it. Like adding in a very well grooved and efficient Decision Referral System for close decisions and giving the on field umpires a hand with No Ball flagging. (A No ball is when a bowler is too close when they let the ball go, it means an extra ball is needed where the batters can’t get out)

It’s good to watch the cycling races as they steadily evolve. There’s skill, judgment and intelligence needed there for deciding which breakaway group to go with and how much to help out in getting them clear of the pack. Do they help a rival that could get the gold instead ? Or do they drag them back to the group and let other rivals back in to the race …

Oh no, there is a “meet the athletes” segment on at the moment to ignore. I know it’s filler but … there’s plenty of other events which aren’t being covered and it would be good to see some of that instead of very cringeworthy shorts.

Hopefully we’ll see some of the sailing, we barely see any of that. And that’s a genuine test of skill where sailors will be chasing the optimum path through to have their boats catch the best amount of wind.

Bit toasty here and I need to add more warm in because I haven’t had any dinner yet (oops) so I think I’ll wrap up here for now.

Good to post again, it’s been a bit too long. My own condition has been … middling again, I’ve perhaps been a bit too distracted by World of Warcraft again :

Game screenshot. World of Warcraft. We're looking at the character selection screen with 4 characters and various menu buttons around the screen. Left to right we have Iceangel kneeling in purple robes and pointy hat. Bashara in armour. Keeladanna is a bear like biped standing up and Ninkinanka is a short gnome with a gun. They're gathered around a camp fire.

That’s my current 4 active characters with left to right being :

Iceangel the mage – because mage is a character class I’ve been playing in WoW for 19 years now and I’m familiar with it. Iceangel is pretty much the main character, first to go through new stuff.

Bashara the warrior (bashes things) – I’m playing as a damage character at the moment for levelling up but this character might end up tanking (being the character that soaks up the damage and collects the enemies together so they don’t go for the squishier characters).

Keeladanna is a Pandaran Shaman – currently set up to hit things really hard and throw elemental damage at the enemies (lightning, lava, windfury air attacks) but the shamans can be set up as healers as well.

And Ninkinanka, gnome hunter – Ninki Nanka is a name from West African dragon lore. From the wiki … “local residents were “dogged by fear of devils and chief among these is the Ninki Nanka… [If] seen by a man is a sure sign of approaching death.”” I saw the name and thought it felt in keeping with the gnomes, plus that’s a really cool meaning for the name.

Eek ! Time to put the dinner on. Nite all, hope you’re having a lovely summer.

Hello everyone,

I’m just looking at that title again and am now wondering about cameras that talk. Would they look at the picture you just took and start describing it like alt text ? Would they critique your style or make suggestions ? Could it say “Bright light bright light” if the exposure is too much ?

I think we need a picture …

Picture. We're looking at a brown dog, lying down on a sofa. He's looking up and left, with a very greying muzzle.

Aww. That’s lovely dear heart Ben who was with us for quite a few years. Always a little bundle of staffy bull terrier love, very inquisitive and deeply protective of his people. And the perfect model to start off the post with. Good to see the old chap again.

I was wondering about cameras and what to recommend people get. That picture above is with the ancient iPhone 5 camera, apparently downscaled to 960×720 from the camera’s native resolution. Bit fuzzy but still a nice picture there, if you ignore the crack in the lens :-D. The crack was actually the catalyst to me changing phones over to the Samsung Galaxy S7 which kept me going until I switched to the exceptional Pixel 4.

(side note – gotta admit I’m struggling for mental batteries at the moment although I was able to demolish a couple of books over the weekend, we’ll see where this post goes).

I didn’t have the Pixel 4 for that long before disappearing over to Canada for work … and then a pandemic broke out and I wasn’t taking pictures of much except for apparently my old sketch art.

Picture. We're looking at a fairly rough sketch of a green dwagon sitting on his butt. He's wearing a pair of glasses and has a book held open in front of him.

Hopefully the more processed version of that is visible at the top of the page. I should probably attempt the sketching again, I kinda moved back to more digital art and the photography stuff in particular.

Picture. We're looking at an enormous dark green 20 sided dice. Around it is curled the 3d printed rainbow crystal dwagon.

That’s a more recent one, taken on my desk. Yep, looks like I was using my little pen torch for extra illumination too. This actually gets me to a first point about mobiles vs cameras … usability !

I knew we’d accidentally stumble upon the purpose of this post eventually :-D.

I’d been thinking about whether it’s worth people getting a full sized camera these days, or if it’s ok to stay with a mobile phone. The phone cameras have come a long way since those early days. Ignore the number of pixels (although I’ll come back to that), just think about usability and how much the camera does for you.

In the case of the dwagon dice, that could have needed 3 hands because a phone is actually a bit awkward to hold as a camera. There’s no strap with them usually and you can’t be touching the screen. So you have to hold them by the edge and with a spare finger for the shutter button. Add a third hand if you’re using a separate light. However, you can get round that by using the timer. Sorted !

Depth of field can be a curious thing to play with as well … For this close work, I’ll traditionally hold the camera away from the thing I’m taking the picture of and cut it to size. Try it with your own cameras … see what you think. If the camera is close, it’ll all go a bit fish eye. If you hold it back a bit, then it’s a flatter image. Check it out ! Experiment, see what happens and enjoy learning how to get the best out of what you have. And there are so many pixels in our cameras now that we can easily crop out the extras (no one sees my desk 😀 ) and still have an amazing image.

I could use the R50 for these but … is it necessary ? One big difference is that with the strap to hold it normally, I can quickly pull that camera up with one hand and tap the shutter button. Maybe the left hand is operating the in and out of the zoom lens. The Ixus was a bit different there, as the zoom was on a ring around the shutter button. Actually physically moving the lens works better.

Proper camera time ?

Picture. We're looking out over a cricket field with the stumps in the centre. A wicket keeper is standing behind the stumps, gloves ready for the ball. The batsman has his bat held in front and they're about to set off to the right. The white ball can be faintly seen in front of the stumps.

There’s a cricket one taken by the Ixus a few years ago. One thing here is that the picture is taken with the camera braced on my knee, with it maybe being a bit too small to comfortably sit in an exact position. The picture isn’t quite centred there because it would move on the shutter. If you’re able to zoom in there, it’s a bit more mushy than …

Picture. We're looking at the cricket field again, with two players in the centre and a third player looking on behind. The white ball can be seen slightly behind the batsman.

That’s from the R50, taken this summer. It’s kinda night and day there with the sharpness, especially when you consider that it looks like the Ixus picture was taken in much better light conditions.

That gets me to another point ! Is it worth buying a cheaper digital camera in this technological age when mobile phone cameras are so incredibly good ? I don’t honestly think it is.

Let’s see :

Mobile phone camera – easy, portable, maybe a bit difficult to use one handed but includes a timer function that helps there. Huge amount of intelligence in the software tools to help make a perfect image. (Except for that tool that picks out different faces for people – I think that’s a bit of an abomination). You can take selfies with them.

Cheaper digital camera – don’t bother, they’re too compromised. It was exceptionally difficult to reliably get a good picture with the Ixus, although the image stabilisation has hopefully been improved. However, you can’t change the lens, you can only work with what’s been provided. Selfies were impossible with the Ixus (too blurry).

DSLR or Mirrorless camera – if you can afford them (and I got the second cheapest Canon), then they are massively worth the investment. The R50 has made it ridiculously easy to take snapshot pictures that have all turned out really well. Another one ?

Picture. We're looking across the central hall of the Excel Exhibition arena at a motley collection of 5 characters in assorted fantasy style outfits.

That’s actually a resurrected one from Comic Con. The original saw the people there in silhouette due to the lighting behind them. You couldn’t really see their outfits. This is with a basic Auto – Equalise filter in GIMP which has started bringing out the colour again.

Whereas I’ve done that in post processing in GIMP, a recent mobile (my Pixel 4 is from 2020) will include similar enhancement abilities.

One issue though is the battery. I did a precautionary change of the R50 battery on the Lords day with over 294 pictures taken with it on the day with a bunch deleted because they weren’t interesting. If you’re looking to use a mobile phone as a camera, you’ll need a couple of power bank things to take with you and that leads to awkward when you need to charge them up.

So …

Cheap camera like the Ixus’s and Powershots – don’t bother, use a mobile phone instead (with a powerbank to feed the battery regularly). It’s just so much easier to do stuff with the pictures via the mobile, you can upload them direct to where you want to show them off.

Mobile phone – I’m really impressed with how much they can do now. However … they do have their limits imposed with the space they have to fit in to. It’s pushing the boundaries of the physics of how the light travels around. (And battery life is nasty)

DSLR or Mirrorless camera – I think they’re worth the investment if you’re going places with a camera and want to share what you’re seeing with people. The ability to swap over lenses adds a lot of flexibility there. The bigger R50 (compared to the tiny Ixus) is a lot easier for my suffering eyes to set up a shot.

I think that’s it for my brain for tonight. Hope this was useful for anyone thinking about cameras.

Just remember, it’s your money to spend, you don’t have any obligation to spend it if you’re not comfortable that it’s going to the right place. Check out what you’re looking at via independent reviews. I don’t count me as independent, even if I’ve had no freebies, I only have recent knowledge of the Canon cameras (haha, no free samples to test the opposition with!) and older knowledge of a massively battery hungry Nikon.

And if you do go to fun places and want to share, enjoy the day out, capture the memories and share the best ones.

Goodnight everyone, have a great rest of the week.

Month: July 2024

Hot Olympic Action

Talking cameras …