pictures

I had a mess about with Photosynth today, Microsoft's new 3D image viewer software that stitches together all your shots into an interactive environment

I put this together quickly just as a tester for the software, this image only contains 14 images although it is recommended to take a few hundred for a good synth.

You may need to install a plugin for your browser to view the synth although it is just a small download for anyone using broadband.

Lately I have really been getting into photography, a quick glance at my flickr account demonstrates that. I have been trying to put together panoramic shots of some of the wonderful views we have here, but the static panorama shots just cannot compete with the power and versatility of Photsynth.

I shall continue with this experiment, be sure to check out my Photosynth user account page and see what else I can conjure up.

I received an email this morning through my Flickr account regarding one of my pictures.

A social news website journalist was compiling a story about some new fossils that have been discovered and they wanted to use one of my pictures in the story.

Something that has been holding me back for a while now is the lack of a decent camera. My old Sanyo point and click has seen better days since its purchase in Hong Kong some 6 years ago. It is so frustrating to use now since it started having power problems and it now takes about 3 seconds to take a picture, I felt I was missing out on so many fantastic shots because my camera wasn't up to the task.

I have been scouring the market for a while now searching for a nice Canon EOS at a decent price, but last week whilst on our tri-monthly sabatical to the mainland [shopping], I saw a good deal for a mid-to-top range camera and just had to pick one up.

The Fujifilm Finepix S5800 is probably billed more like the poor mans EOS, but after allowing it to entertain me for the last week I am hooked by its easy to use menu,10x optical zoom [and 5x digital for that extra bit] and its 0.4s shot time.

A tad over 7,500 baht is reasonable I feel for a camera that will be a good training-camera for me before I eventually get myself a nice EOS-350 [@27,000 baht], donations are most welcome :).

So with the introduction of my new camera, visitors to my flickr gallery will notice a marked improvement in my shots since I now have the ability to zoom, focus, adjust shutter/aperture speeds and have it switched on for more than 10 minutes without the batteries dieing.Â

I am quite hooked on photographing dragonflies, we have so many of them swooping down over the pool all day, every day. Some of the colours are fantastic, ranging from deep reds and purples to the yellow and green ones. Getting shots of this quality is no easy task, Julia found it quite amusing watching me darting me head all over the place trying to follow them in flight; it is a damn sight easier when the land.

.... anything, really... It has been such a busy week here with machines coming in the door for repairs at quite a rate. Yes, thats a good thing but all I can think about is the stuff that I WANT to do, but I dont have time for. Something that I dont have time for is updating this blog, I have only logged in today to check the spam (and delete them).

As an extra treat here is a picture we took the other day as we were leaving our house.

Our recent visa run trip presented us with countless photographic opportunities. Most of the time I am far too slow at getting the camera out, the rest of the time I just forget, then think 'I should have taken a photo of that'. I am trying to force myself to take the camera with me whenever I am out and about, lets see how often I update my flickr account from now on.

Saw this on the drive into Surat Thani;

We have been driving past these guys for a few days now, they started digging a well for a neighbour but were having trouble finding water. This is the second 20m deep hole that they dug - the first one was dry at that depth. So they filled it in and started digging another about 40ft away.