hiidenkonttibeta

We just came back from the movie theatre. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is definitely worth seeing. The story is quite simple, but the way it is told is just wonderful.

IMDb trivia tells us that

This is the first feature to be made with commercial digital still photography cameras (31 Canon EOS-1D MARK 2 SLR cameras with Nikon Lenses) instead of film cameras.

An interesting technical feat. They really had to think Nikon lenses are far superior to Canon’s offerings, since the only widely known adapter which does the job doesn’t have any kind of electrical contact between the Canon body and the Nikon lens mounted on it – which means manual focusing and setting aperture by hand. But it probably isn’t an issue in their case, it’s likely they would have focused manually even if the lens supported automatics, just to keep the focus in the same place. And the exposure probably doesn’t change during some sequence either.

After a long while I went again to horse races on Monday, at around 18:30. The Sun sets a bit after half past two in the afternoon, so it’s completely dark at that time of the evening. I was just curious about the lights they have there, and if it was possible to take photographs.

I set the camera to ISO 1600 (tried with 3200 also), turned the image stabiliser on and used shutter speeds of 1/30 – 1/60 seconds. This resulted in many blurry photos but also in horses that were partly sharp, and quite a blur on the head and feet.

Cameraphone saw them like this:

A horse approaching light speed. Or, at least, FTS. Faster Than Shutter.

-5°C, a light snow coverage. The second attempt in starting the winter this year. Infinitely more pleasant weather than +3°C and rain we’ve had for a while now.

It snowed today. For an hour or so, then it turned quite a lot wetter kind of not-exactly-water rain. Not funny cycling back home, lenses of glasses covered in the stuff. Bright lights looked pretty, though:

At this time of the year the Sun rises at 08:45 and sets at 15:16 here in Oulu. Today I made a quick trip to the park with my camera a bit after midday, but it turned out to be too dark to do any photography without a tripod. I pumped the ISO setting up to 800, my lens had Image Stabiliser, and the light wasn’t enough even then.

It’s the deadiest time of Autumn – there’s no snow yet, and no more colourful leaves. They’ve all turned black or dark brown, and there’s an almost constant cloud cover on the sky. Not that the lack of clouds would help much, the Sun’s keeping pretty close to the horizon already.

Some plants hang on to their green color even now. Everything outside is wet all the time, and the little light there is doesn’t cast any radical shadows, so there might be chances for some nice, deep colours to photograph – but a tripod is a must.

I found new flavour of roasted nuts – covered in Japanese wasabi “mustard”. They come in a big 350g can, but I still had to try them:

Every nut attacks the senses with the sharp, sinus-clearing taste of wasabi. Now this is a snack that will easily last the duration of an entire movie. The extended version of the entire Lord of the Rings, for example.