Another rambling tome by the master. But with some fun at the end if
you want to skip ahead.
On Apr 19, 2010, at 01:17 , David Mann wrote:
Same here. A few months back I missed a Pentax 67II kit with a
couple of lenses for NZD800 after opening my laptop one minute too
late. I'm still bitter about that. I console myself by assuming
I'd have just gotten into a bidding war.
I made up for it last week by being the only bidder on a nice sports
watch. How did I ever live without an altimeter...
You'll be sorry. Multiple trips down to sea level to set it, finding a
web site that has up to the minute barometer readings near where you
live or hang out. The disappointment when your watch disagrees with
your GPS. All so you can tell how high the bridge you just drove over
is above the fiord. Unless you do happen to climb mountains or hike in
them. Then it's useful to know that you've averaged 35 vertical feet
of elevation in the past 15 minutes.
Haven't set mine in years, and it tells me I'm 420 feet above sea
level, when I know I'm only a hundred feet above. What's a guy to do?
So I just reset it to read the correct sea level reading from 5
minutes ago, and it says I'm 40 feet under water. Time for a trip to
the Navy base to wiggle my toes in the water while I set my watch.
Setting the compass is even more grueling. The watch has to be level,
and rotated slowly thru 360°, sometimes 2 or 3 times, in the middle of
nowhere so it's not metallically influenced. I tape mine to my tripod
head for that task.
The printed out single sided manual is 180 pages! I found the damn
thing 12 years ago laying in the road in the pouring rain, sent it to
L.A. for a $35 overhaul, bezel replacement and new battery after a
Google search told me it was a $250 Suunto watch. Hooray! :-|
If you've read this far, you deserve a reward...
I attended a Gerlach Nature Photography seminar Saturday thinking I'd
get some insights and inspiration for getting out into it this
summer. Don't bother. It turned out to be a photo 201 class on how
ISO, aperture and shutter speed are inter-related and can be used to
control many aspects of your images. Oh, and they've been to
Yellowstone and Kenya. And OH! Nikon and Canon are the cameras of
choice, maybe Sony too.
But they bitched about the histogram display on the Canon not showing
R G B, and the edge on the right not being defined other than by you
brights climbing it. Also the tedium of removing the lens hood
constantly to adjust their polarizing filters. So I went home at
lunch, got the K-7, threw a couple of images on it that had a very
high dynamic range so I had blinkies in yellow and red, went back
after lunch and handed him the insert from the lens hood. Asked him
what it was. Dunno. Something broke? Showed him the bottom of the lens
hood. Showed him the composite and R G B histograms available with a
small image on the LCD. He grabbed my camera, held it high, turned on
his mike and announced that Pentax had solved some of his problems,
and suggested perhaps it should be highly considered when looking at a
new purchase.
So there!
If it doesn’t excite you,
This thing that you see,
Why in the world,
Would it excite me?
—Jay Maisel
Joseph McAllister
[email protected]
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