sort of technical

Trying a Canon DSLR

Intrepid cyclist and technology guru Geoff has lent me his ‘spare’ Canon EOS550D camera while he is away dodging people with iron bars trying to mug him in Vietnam. As my latest distraction I have been bidding on mid range DSLRs on Ebay and luckily being unsuccessful. I’ve also got out my old Pentax ME Super that I bought duty free in Singapore on my way to my first visit to Australia in 1983 and have been shooting B&W film. In the meantime I’ve borrowed a Canon zoom (18-55mm) for Geoff’s camera and been trying to work out how good the photos are that these cheapish DSLRs take, comparing it with H’s Sony Alpha that seems to live permanently in a drawer here where its battery seems to go flat without so much as a click of the shutter (as one reviewer has noted).

The Sony is cute alongside a conventional DSLR but it is actually rather weird to hold and use as the lens is so heavy compared to the body and, of course, you end up holding it away from yourself to compose pictures on the back screen.

photo

the quality of the pictures that both produce are very similar. The Canon tends to give more exposure. Its on the left at the top but on the right in the photographs of the studio here:

exposure-canon left

exposure-canon-right

Both lenses show colour fringing, which I think looks tacky. On the Canon it is orange and on the Sony, purple as below:

Colour fringing

and both show some barrel distortion when on the most wide angle setting. Canon is on the right. The two pictures were composed identically and the Canon viewfinder shows less than 100% of what the camera takes:

barrel distortion

Finally, both have some distortion with detail. These shots are taken at the lenses’ longest focal length.
detail-canon left

Overall, I expected better from this £500-600 price range.

Actually, the Canon is better than expected at low light. The first shot has only one 60w bulb lighting the kitchen, the exposure is 1/4 second:
one-quarter-second

Here all the lights apart from the light in the oven hood are off and the exposure is 2.5 seconds, hand held, obviously.
two-point-five

A lighter adventure motorcycle

Sometimes I think how good it would be to be riding a really light bike. The BMW Sertao caught my imagination when I borrowed it last year. How good a long-distance traveller would it be?

Here’s someone who smeared his in Araldite then rode it through a Touratech showroom. You’ve got to wonder how that little single cylinder engine copes with all this stuff.

Seat post for H

Strangely the seatpost did fit after seeming too small so the nice Brooks saddle can be unwrapped, and we have a nice high stem. Now just awaiting the tricky handle bars with the brake levers and gear shift lever, and how to route the cables on this frame without lugs for cable ends.

H-bike-july-6

Bodily or metal fatigue?

Every morning I cycle up the hill from Kings Cross station up to Archway. Since the New Year things have been getting tougher and I’ve been afraid that I’m getting less fit. From about this time I have been intending to bring the bike home to give it an overhaul.
This is what bearings are meant to look like and the deranged piece of metal is what I found once I opened up the bottom bracket.
photo

Sharing routes from Garmin Zumo and Basecamp

Basecamp is the Mac sort of version of Mapsource. If you are both clever and lucky you can design routes on the Mac and export them to the Garmin and retrace them. Its easy to import routes into Basecamp from the GPS. But what about sharing them on a blog or something similar in a more intelligent way than just taking a screenshot and posting the picture? This is useful but not quite it: http://rolfje.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/how-to-share-garmin-routes-with-your-friends/
Then there’s Garmin Connect but that doesn’t seem quite right.
What about this from Motowhere. Its a route I’ve placed there a while back and it should show up here:


What about satellite images?


Here’s an import from another motorcycle route sharing website Open Road Journey. It seems a bit more developed than MotoWhere, where the ‘forums’ are moribund and just full of spam. ORJ appears to have real articles on it:


Finally, there’s Everytrail of course.It seems more sophisticated when tacking GPX files from the Garmin.
the ‘back’ way to Ipswich and a route around Cambridge at EveryTrail
EveryTrail – Find trail maps for California and beyond

My Ascent to Suffolk and back

I took advantage of today’s sunshine to ride over to Sproughton in Suffolk to see Andrew Vass and Alex Pearl’s exhibition. My GPS took me straight there for once and let me keep a track afterwards of my speed and height above sea level in Ascent thanks to Geoff for this application. As you slide a yellow dot through the graph of your speed, another friendly dot moves through the route on a map. You’ll see that I didn’t make 122 mph made by unfortunate jailed biker Mr Bennett.
Here’s a graph of my speed
picture-1
and here’s the map of the A14
picture-2