More snow and cameras

Posted on by Ian C.

At least when it snows again, it re-colors the piles from ugly brown to pristine white! Perhaps 3″ so far (started falling in the night) and a few hours to go yet …

Still comparing cameras, and today the Sony A55V DSLR came out on top; it’s wider field of view gives a much better impression of the weather and today it got the white balance / color better than the HTC Inspire 4G phone camera …
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The HTC Inspire added a very strange “warm blob” to the middle of this picture, no idea why; but a second shot did the same – somehow the camera’s color correction went crazy this morning!
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The Essex river, still frozen

Posted on by Ian C.

I took pictures this morning of the still ice-covered Essex river, at Farnhams. As well as impressive river view, the pictures compare the camera in my new HTC Inspire 4G phone, with my new Sony A55V DSLR camera – amazing, but the phone does a really good job here …

Essex river pictures by camera phone:


The same view with the Sony gives a wider image, but the lens clearly curves the horizon and the camera white balance is a little off, giving too much purple to the ice:

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I also took a quick video panorama with the phone camera:

A GP is for sale

Posted on by Ian C.

Actually there’s often a GP for sale (some get listed on my GP owners forum), but this one is significant being like my GP0203 one of the few delivered at Monterey and owned by another “once active” web presence owner, Todd … He took the interesting step of “advertising” on MotoringFile today:
I was so in love with the GP that a couple years later I bought a second one when it showed up at my local dealer. The car is that great. After almost a year with two GPs, I’ve made the tough decision to sell that first GP. You read that correctly. At the risk of sounding self-serving, I’m writing about it here because it’s a rare car with a great history and, while a GP shows up for sale now and then, it’s nice to be able to let the MINI enthusiast community know about a great car like this when it becomes available. So for the next week, you can bid on GP #0083 by clicking on over to eBay. Not to worry, I keeping the second GP and will stay a MINI owner and enthusiast for a very long time. It’s just time for someone else to enjoy owning this truly great MINI.

So, who’s next? I guess nearly five years is quite a long time to own a car …