Cameras

I've been working on an automated panorama head for a while (more about that in a later post), and wanted to see how far I could push it. This weekend, the Red Bull Air Race in Rotterdam provided an interesting view, and after a lot of stitching my very first gigapixel panorama was the result.

Click the image for a zoomable version.

In november, VRMag returned with a brand new issue. Marco Trezzini chose one of my Sziget panoramas for the interactive index of the issue. The issue got a very nice mention on boingboing. If you just glance over the article on boingboing, it is almost as if John Gaeta is talking about my panorama ;-)

When I've been working too hard on projects that take a lot of energy, I often indulge myself in doing something completely different (though Tessa would argue that it's still behind a computer, so it is not all that different).

So my S2 Pro died on friday April 22nd. I handed it in for repair on wednesday, April 27th. I finally received it back this morning, friday June 3rd, more than 6 weeks later!

What strikes me as odd, other than the fact that it took so much longer than some other repairs who quoted as little as 36 hours, is that Fuji in the Netherlands seems to be the only ones charging for the repair; Sure, Fuji NL didn't charge me for the replaced CCD, but it still cost me ~180 euro labour, whereas Fuji US, Fuji Canada and Fuji Germany are doing the same repair free of charge. I even phoned Fuji NL to inquire if they had more cameras with the same problem in the Netherlands, and they answered to the extend of  'yeah, we've quite a couple coming in'. Nice way to earn money for what looks suspiciously like a production flaw...

Today I received a package containing no less than 4 cameras with fisheye lenses. "Business must be going well" you might think... Not that it isn't, but if I tell you the cameras are from Lomo, you might start to realise it's not actually all that impressive price-wise ;-)

The art of Lomography is to 'shoot from the hip'. From wikipedia:

Last friday night, I found out that the camera I use for my panoramic images (Fuji S2 Pro) had ceased to work. Or rather, it works fine but only records black images. After only 22 months of use and about 5000 shots, it struck me by surprise (I rather like the camera).

It turns out that it is a common with S2's in my serial nr range, judging from this dramatic list of S2 failures. Fortunately, word on the proverbial street is that Fuji is replacing the dead CCD at no charge.

DPReview has some news about Fuji's upcoming S3 camera.

I'm using an S2 for my panoramic photography, and am very happy with the camera. If the Canon 300D and/or Nikon 70D would have come out sooner, I would have probably bought one of those, but in the end I think it is a good thing I went for the S2. It's a great camera.

Now the S3 is something I'm really looking forward to. Many people are whining it is only such a small update from the S2. No 'professional body', no full frame sensor and no actual higher resolution. The only major new feature is increased dynamic range. And that's exactly the feature I was hoping for ;-)

On SlashDot I read an article on a 70 megapixel panoramic camera. Interesting technology...