Wearing Raincoats

The temperatures have dropped much to the appreciation of everyone, and the rain has arrived in time to put the damper for any New Year celebrations. 

To our family we had to say goodbye to Maxy today as his cancer is getting too much. Maxy has been eating for the cancer his body has just withered away. This morning he was so weak, and could not eat any more, so that was it. In the rain we took him to the vet and gave him a tearful goodbye.

So as tears fell from heaven, we saw that even the traffic police's speed cameras were wearing a raincoat to keep the system dry. 

Okay this has been a hard day for me, so I have only a jumble of words to write as the rain continues to fall.

Canon PowerShot D10

In a little over 3 weeks, Matthew will be climbing onto one of Thai Airways' aircraft and jetting over to Thailand for 12 days, nice.

We have been in preparation for Matthew's trip for some time now and today was the purchase of a camera for him. We wanted a high spec, point and shoot, small, durable, and reasonably priced camera. We played with a large number of nifty looking cameras from Samsung, Nikon, Canon, and Sony. And the winner for us was the Canon PowerShot D10. Why this camera?

Well since Matthew was already used to Canon's settings on the 550D and the S100 it wouldn’t be a big difference for him but it wasn't the be all and end all of our discussion. The D10 was rugged and ugly looking not to get stolen, shockproof to be able to handle a 15 year old boy and elephant rides, a bright blue and silver colour not to be missed, and the best of all waterproof up to 10m to be able to handle the kayaking on the Mae Taeng River.

Circus Back in Town

The media circus is back in town since Nelson Mandela was discharged from hospital last week. Now that he is back at his home in Houghton the media is camping outside. They must know something that even our government doesn't know. Serious, when he was discharged the foreign media reported it and our ANC elected government denied the next day that he is still at hospital in a stable yet critical condition. It is as if the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. So when the media start camping outside, they not there for fun.

Chastity Belt

One of my most popular posts is the one I did a few days after my birthday the year I first started posting. It is of a male chastity belt and only lost its number one most popular post last year and is now sitting at position five with 513 page views to date while my number one most popular photo of an armoured train has 927 page views.

A photo a day really took off last year with many people taking up the mantel of a photograph each day. Delia with her shocking pink camera took her photo today of an old padlock and key. When she showed me her stunning photo it reminded me of the chastity belt.

Sunninghill Crime

It doesn't seem to be all that sunny when it comes to crime in Sunninghill, Johannesburg. I drive through the medium density residential suburb of Sunninghill about twice a week on my way to work. And for the past few weeks this pile of rubble that sat alongside of the road intrigued me. Yes intrigued is what I am, because I noticed that whoever was in charge of security in Sunninghill pointed their security cameras to watch that no one takes the small pile of rubble. Aaah crime must have been rampant in Sunninghill for them to put up cameras to watch dirt. Bonus, the camera must work because the rubble is still there for over two weeks since I first noticed it. My question is, who is watching the watchers?

Canon PowerShot S100

This is it my birthday present from Canon, the PowerShot S100 camera. I started my passion for photography by working for a professional photographer for over two years doing post production work with my superb Photoshop skills. This photographer's main bodies were the Phase One with different backs and the Nikon D1.

My first camera I bought was the Fujifilm Finepix S240. It did a good job shooting some fine photos. I also bought a small camera for the pocket as I believed the best camera is the one you have on you. The small camera was the Finepix A203. With these two cameras I started my journey of street photography and the Joburg Photowalkers. On many photowalks I proved that you don't need an expensive DSL camera to take awesome photographs but been surrounded by many Nikon and Canon DSL cameras it was obvious my next purchase would be a DSL camera.

The choice was Nikon or Canon, both had good and bad points but Canon 550D eventually came top of my selection list that had feel quality, performance, initial layout cost and lens cost judging points. Because of my daily photo blog this camera went everywhere with me taking photos of a smorgasbord of topics. After one and a half years of everyday use, nearly 50 photowalks and over 23,000 photographs later the Canon 550D is showing a lot of wear and tear.

My natural progression is to get the Canon 5D MkIII but that is slightly above my pay grade so I thought the best companion to my battered Canon 550D is a smaller camera that I don't have to lug the larger DSL camera around but not to sacrifice the performance that I have to gotten use to with the 550. So this baby DSL, the Canon PowerShot S100 became mine. Mine baby.

The S100 is a fully adjustable small digital camera that has a similar CMOS sensor as my 550D, it shoots in Raw format at 12 megapixels at up to 9.6 frames per second. By fully adjustable I mean I have full control to change the ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and focus points. The only big difference from my 550D is that I can’t change the lens, well I can't go wrong with this nifty 5.2 - 26.0 mm f2.0 - 5.9 lens. The bonuses for me are that the S100 has a built in GPS, it can do HDR photos on the camera without the need of off camera software to merge the images, it is small enough to carry everyday with me and it carries a 2 year warranty. Remember the best camera is the camera that you have with you, and it does help if it is the Canon PowerShot S100.

EOS 1D X in my Hands

Canon UK walked in two recently launched Canon EOS 1D Xs into South Africa for the Canon SA Expo this weekend. And under Canon South Africa's hawk eye gaze I laid my grabby paws on the 1D X. And what a beast it is, I know can't afford it but continuous shooting RAW at 12 frames per second was heart stopping. Forget lens envy this is now Xenvy but how am I going to afford the estimated R65,000 for the 1D X when on my wishlist is a Vespa GTS 300 Super and new camera lenses. I had to leave my fingerprints behind on the 1D X as I walked away with my head drooped. Sigh. Here is Johnny also enjoying the 1D X so much that he wants to pre-order.

Another camera which caught my eye was the Canon Powershot S100. In the near future I will be in the market for a high spec pocket camera because lugging a large SLR around on my current Vespa is quite demanding; even sneaking a SLR into a concert takes skill. Now a small camera can get around those limitations. The S100 will retail about R5,000 and like the 1D X will only be available about March next year, which means that the Canon S95 prices will drop. Uhmmm, another wishlist addition.

Meeting of Bill

Ed and I went to ProCamera in Randburg to take Jame's lens in for repair and at ProCamera we found Bill. We had a long chat with Bill and it was hard to pull ourselves away. He is very knowledgeable on cameras and has a history of photography in Johannesburg not to mention the early Chinese community in South Africa.

Two Doctors

On Saturday my Canon 550D had a nasty accident and the glass protecting the LCD was smashed. This morning I dropped it off at the camera doctor, CameraTek under direction of Roger from Canon South Africa and then took myself off to the human doctor as my condition has been deteriorating since Thursday. I have been diagnosed with acute bronchitis boarding on pneumonia. Three hours later, I had my camera back, fixed under warranty. Thank you so much Canon South Africa and CameraTek in Randburg. I am sorry to say that it will take much longer to get me right as rain.