New Toy - and I'm Back ( again )

edit: There are now some backblips, between this shot and Jittery Birds...

Hi folks - It's been a while. mainly because this stopped me in my tracks for a while.

So first off. I'm okay - if a little circumspect still. And thankyou so much to everyone who posted on that blip. It was really heartening.

It wasn't the only thing stopping me blipping though. I have some issues with the site's policy on not allowing people to assert their copyright on the images themselves - or near them. Despite saying that images are the copyright of the author elsewhere on the site, on the important page ( where the images are) none of that is to be seen. I find this perplexing, and have yet to get a satisfying answer. Telling me that someone could just press ctrl-print anyway, is not really the point as far as I'm concerned.

So it remains to be seen whether I renew my sub next month. If I do, it'll purely be becauseof the wonderful community that contributes here. And make no mistake, you are all genuinely brilliant people in my book.

It feels churlish to make this point as I have a huge amount of respect for what the people at Blipfoto are doing - creating a resoundlingly positive community on the net is a remarkable achievement in itself - but to me, it's an important one, in a world where your rights to your own creations are seemingly constantly under attack.

Anyway - the piccy above is of the world's ugliest modern camera ( apparently ). The Pentax K-01 - launched last year to some derision because of Marc Newson's apparent devotion to Fisher Price aesthetics. Also launched at a truly exhorbitant price and now discontinued. The latter fact was a real boon to me. I picked up a camera that was worth £800 or thereabouts ast year for just over £200. And it's no slouch.

Thing is. I love it. I love the way it looks. I love it's chunkiness. I love it's uncompromising devotion to ugliness. Someone with a face like mine will always have a soft spot for "unconventional" good looks ( as someone once told me ). But most of all, I love the fact that it and my old, manual only glass are the most perfect match.

You see, its innards are identical to my current DSLR kit - the K5. So the important bit, the images, are every bit what I expect from my cameras. It's mirror( and viewfinder)-less, so despite claims that it's huge, it's still smaller than my K5. It's inconspicuous when out and about as, coupled with my old glass, it just looks like a retro CSC. Perfect for street work.

I'm even finding that my own pet hate with compact systems ( viewfinders and the lack thereof ) is being negated. The focus peaking feature, has been a complete revelation. It's really what's made me forget about selling my old glass. Combined with the K-01, I can focus as fast as the autofocus can in many situations. And let me tell you. That glass is lovely.

So my G12 is going on sale - I just can't persuade myself to love it. Despite all the great things going for it. I don't like the inability to get shallow DoF most of all. This is my new, unpocketable "compact".

I've been taking images of random* things with it and am going to backblip a few of them.





* anyone else get the urge to manually focus on a coffee cup in a cafe and take random shots of it? I do.

edit: I've just discovered that right click > save is now disabled. I know some will not like this, but it's a major sticking point gone for me. Well done Blip.