Police Marching Band

I carried around my ever reliable G12 in its nicely padded case all day although through all the lifting, heaving, cable running and sound engineering, I hardly got a chance to use it until the parade, when I gave myself a half hour break.

As good as the G12 is for general snap shooting, I am reminded that it is almost useless at covering events like this. In all the noise and movement one gets hardly any feedback when (or if) a shot has been captured (when using the viewfinder at least) and everything is interminably slow from shutter release lag through focus to zooming. I missed shot after shot after shot. Talk about frustration. Remind me to stick to my CSC or SLR for this sort of thing in future. To make matters worse the parade goes past at 12:30. At the height of a bright sunny day a small sensor camera has no chance at tackling the dynamic range issues at hand, quite apart from a rear screen which cannot really be viewed at all under the conditions.

Should I stop whinging now? Yes ... had better.

In view of the prevailing circumstances we were delighted with the weather, with the crowds and with the event as a whole. Almost out of guilt (one might hope) the ABC covered the day and a report is supposed to appear on television tomorrow as part of Monday's 7:30 Report. We'll see if our efforts make it to air.

For the first time ever, the NSW Police Marching Band put in an appearance. They looked and sounded very good indeed.