Archive for January, 2008

It’s not only a naming game. Since people are waiting for a possible launch by Canon on the 24th of January, and since they don’t see anything coming during the waiting period, speculations abound. Now the rumour is that Canon will launch only a EOS 450D (or Rebel XTs, Rebel XTS, the silver version of 300D/Rebel XT) at the February PMA and the replacement for the Canon EOS 5D will wait until Photokina.

This would be the occasion for Canon to shoot higher than the supposed slight improvements over the 5D (with a slight name change like EOS 5D Mk II) and pile up major features to fight back Nikon and its most recent D3 and D300 (explaining a move to the more severe name change of EOS 6D or EOS 7D).

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Bare-faced Ibis, whispering ibis (Phimosus infuscatus, Ibis à face nue). Brazil, 2007.

A photo has popped up on the Internet forums allegedly showing the Alpha 900 in Berlin IFA. If it’s a fake, it’s a rather good one.

From the look of it, I would draw a few conclusions and comments (only valid if the image is a real scoop).

• Sony has cleaned up the original design a little from what was shown last March. Specially the pentaprism, while still large, looks less rough and unfinished.
• No weather-sealing visible between the body and the lens, but there could be some level of weather protection for the body buttons and such.
• Upper LCD screen, probably in addition to the one on the back of the body. This was a feature disappearing from most cameras (think high-end customers, pro photographers in sight).
• Most of the interface elements have already shown on the Sony Alpha 700 (incl. the battery grip)

Anyway, it’s probably a fake model (look at the chamber closed by a black plastic, and the alignment of the top LCD with the rest of the body looks a bit low). But it could well be a reasonably good demonstration of the current state of the external design in the Sony labs.

We all want to see the newest pro camera from Sony (allegedly Sony Alpha 900, previously presented by Sony as the flagship model). But the problem is that we only have rumours to look at. But here is a short summary of a few of the things I could collect here and there.

• Sensor is nearly certain to be full-frame, but size could something in between 14MP and 21.42MP (possibly 16-18MP)
• Sony anti-shake
• 3″ LCD (it’s now standard)
• Full weather-sealing (isn’t it just whishful thinking/dreaming?)

It’s even visible as product page on the kamera-express.nl web site. But it looks a bit too early to believe them (they don’t even try to give a sensor resolution or a price). Probably, just a way to collect Google attention.

The Crysis game just received its first major patch. It brings a number of little improvements and some big performance improvements, too.

Link to Crysis Mod.

This was a test flight to meet the most extreme take off conditions, not the usual day-to-day routine of the airplane. But, you have to admit that being a test pilot is not always fully safe.

It’s amazing the number of unfounded rumours flowing currently about the future replacement of the Canon EOS 5D camera, a nice Full Frame digital SLR from the market leader. It seems that Canon has put a tight cover on all information, it is quite probable that an announcement will be made on 24th of January (but will it be a replacement for the 5D or for the smaller 400D/Rebel Xti?), and people start creating rumours just for fun.

Recently, I noticed the information about the sensor size of the future 6D or EOS 5D mk II (just in January):

• 12 MP (unchanged from EOS 5D)
• 16 MP
• 18 MP
• 24 MP

Either, Canon invented the technology to reconfigure the sensor size on-the-fly, or the vast majority of these guesstimates are plain wrong…

For those of you who had been disappointed not to be able to see the photography of the Rufous Hornero, I want to tell that I’m back from my trip to South America and I have been able to repair the image.

 

 
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Red-capped Cardinal (Paroaria gularis, Paroare rougecap). Brazil, 2007.

I have already spoken several times here about a PC First Person Shooter (FPS) video game currently known under the name of Project Offset (a working title htat will certainly be replaced before the project goes to distribution). Its innovation comes from replacing the tired old “Space marine in charge of wiping monsters out of Earth” with a medieval-fantasy world where -instead of shotguns and pulse beam guns- you will get sharp blades and bows.

If you want to check the current screenshots, you can find them on the developer’s web site. They look quite good (even if this does not tell us anything about the playability of the finished game).

After having shot a few hundreds (er… a few thousands) photos in Brazil, I ended up with a stack of images. Some were easy to label. Some were less esay to label. Particularly, for wild birds, the problem is to quickly determine the species that is appearing on the photo. Several solutions are open to an amateur photographer like me to avoid making too many big mitakes when trying to differentiate two species of brown hawk-like creatures, to greyish little birds, or even two small greenish parrots.

The first solution (and certainly the best one) is to ask experts. You can go to the nearest University, but the Internet made it even easier with the appearance of many amateur forums with an impressive collective knowledge. Some are so precise and helpful that the best experts may pale in comparison. We’ll come back to it. There are other solutions too.

First, I decided to work all by myself. Failing to write down all the information provided by the guide during the safari (note to myself: next time, bring a small paper notebook), I had to find a large and good source of reference images for the animals I was interested into. With a minimal knowedge and some personal work, a lot of identification can be done like that without too many errors if you stayed concentrated on checking all details in bird feathers and colors (and, sometimes, note : “Right! Noam told us this one was a…”).

For Brazilian birds, I used mainly two good sources: Arthur Grosset’s Birds and Oiseaux.net. The first is in English and contains an astonishing amount of data, surprisingly coming from one guy only. The second is in French and is the result of cooperation on a common project where there are description, photos, living regions, etc.

Like so many collaborative Internet sites, there are surprising holes and it is a work-in-progress. But for all common species, endemic species and even some rare ones, the information is very detailed and precise. Often enough to cross-check and identify firmly the animal. Text comments may be needed to support the small differences between two similar birds, when it all lays in photo details not easy to spot.

Let’s add a remark: recent changes in classification categories and names, recent splits and regrouping of existing species often create some added diffiulties. Finally, names are quite different from one country to the next (not only from one language to the next). So, it may happen that a single birds has several names. Beware!

Source: 11 phenomenal images of earth.