High Dynamic Range

The weather outside is beautiful. The leaves are a beautiful emerald green where they catch the sun, the shadows are dark and cool... I want a new camera. *hee*

I am thinking Canon Powershot S3 IS. There's a newer iteration of the series, the S5, with higher resolution and a bigger LCD screen, but it's quite a bit more expensive at ~£400 rather than ~£270. The S3 also compares respectably the Powershot Pro 1, which was a £1,000+ level prosumer camera from 2 years ago. (Note to self: fix desktop computer today. Getting very tired of having to use charmap every time I need a pound sign)

The S3 can't do RAW images off-the-shelf, but there's a firmware hack to enable it. It has AVI recording (640 x 480, 30 fps) and continuous shooting at full resolution at 2.3 fps. These are all nice things, mentioned in this rather good review. As a bonus, MMC have an adapter for the S3 that allows it to be used with any standard trinocular microscope; that'll be handy when/if I want to go into real micro-photography. I'd like to try doing darkfield photography of little invertebrates - they can be very beautiful.

So this will be my next present for myself, although I have no idea when there will be money for it. I'm relaxing for a week or two before I have a chat with A at which we'll probably decide my start time with him - which obviously will determine my first pay day... but I'm determined to take this time to unwind properly, and not stress too much about the summer.

L and I are thinking of visiting a bungalow we saw advertised for rent in Bar Hill. It would be nice to have a detached property, rather than an apartment... not that it's likely to still be free by ~September, when we move out of here. Something else might be, though.

I am off into town to enjoy the sunshine and do some shopping. There's a lot of housework that fell behind while I was studying. ^^;

If you are interested in learning Japanese, this game is a really effective (and ever so appropriate) way to get started learning kana.