Wow, what an awesome weekend.

Late Friday night I headed down to my parents’ holiday house in Cape Schanck with a few friends in tow. You see, Elaine had organised a pseudo-surprise birthday weekend for me. How lucky do you think I feel??

Anyways, we got there late, but not too late to break out Dave’s poker table and drag Luke onto the Texas Hold’em bandwagon. After a bit of explanation about hand rankings, betting structure and some basic strategy, we were away with five runners; Myself, Elaine, Dave, Jae and Luke.

The game was tight, but Luke managed to pull out a good win while riding the wave that is known as beginners luck. That took us to about 2:30am, so we headed to bed so that we could catch some zzz’s before the rest of my friends arrived.

Saturday morning started relatively quietly with a muffin breakfast, not at all hinting at what chaos may ensue in the proceeding 24 hours.

The five of us who stayed the night drove down the road to see the Cape Schanck lighthouse and to walk down the boardwalk.

Don’t ask…

The first stop on our wine tasting tour was at Red Hill Estate. Mon, Vic and Kez arrived soon enough (they actually stopped by at Paringa on the way), quickly followed by Mike and Lei. With all ten of us present, we started moving down the tasting list.

Damn straight.

The rest of the afternoon saw our group move from winery to winery to brewery to winery to cheese factory to winery to the Rye Hotel for a bite to eat.

Nothing like a cold beer to relax after a long day of wine tasting.

The night started with a rather good game of poker which ended with a very deservicng win for Mike. Vic came a close second, while I came a disappointing third. But at least I got my money back. The rest of the night was… chaos. We’ll just leave it to that.

Saturday morning started… well… slow. 

Before lunch I took a few of the guys out on my dad’s golf cart to show them the golf courses. The morning was clear and afforded great views of The National Golf Club.

A leisurely brunch (that really was more of a lunch) was followed with a bit of time at the range.

All in all, great birthday weekend! Thanks to Elaine for organising, and all the guys and gals for taking the time out of their busy schedules to spend the weekend with me down the coast.

clickety click

Possibly the funniest 26 minutes of a Star Wars fan’s life…

26 + 1 = 27

 Yay me!

The average life span of a digital camera nowadays is only a couple of years. Not because they stop working, but because technology is moving so fast. Recently a few friends have been looking for help to choose a new camera, and somehow it’s got out that I know a little something about cameras (include mild dose of sarcasm here).

Unfortunately, there’s no one perfect camera out there that will be everything to everyone. So with literally hundreds of cameras currently on the market it’s not doubt that my friends (and the average consumer) are so easily confused.

Let’s try a simple and methodical approach to selecting a new camera.

The first question you should answer is “why exactly are you buying a new camera?” Sounds a like a silly question, but it often indicates how you plan to use your camera. Are you going to use it to capture the “you just had to be there” moments at parties? Are you planning to take it on your “once in a lifetime” overseas trip? Or, are you trying to progress from just taking “pictures” to creating “photographs”?

These are the types of more useful questions you should be asking yourself when buying a new camera. Your answers to these questions will lead you to which camera form factor is most suited to your purpose.

Cameras come in five main form factors:

• Mobile Phones
• Ultra-Compact
• Compact
• Prosumer
• SLR

Let’s start with Mobile Phones. These are the absolute last resort in regards to photography (for the next few years at least). Image quality is bad, and creative control is limited. However, it’s always better to have a technically ugly picture of a great moment, than no picture at all. So for the sheer “always there” convenience, they just make my camera form factor list. Just.

Ultra-Compacts are the fashionistas of the camera world. They’re the smallest of what I consider real cameras, which makes them the perfect camera to take out on the town. While many of them have limited creative options, the in-built digital smarts make them very simple to use in the pure sense of point-and-shoot. Picture quality is improving all the time. However a tiny camera means tiny optics, meaning this category suffers most in the trade-off between camera size and image fidelity.

Compact cameras form the bulk of the camera market today. The price you’ll pay for cameras within this category may vary quite considerably as they tend to vary in functions, features and size. However, when compared to an Ultra-Compact with comparable features, they should be a little cheaper. While Compacts are larger than their Ultra-Compact cousins, they still remain reasonably portable for almost any occasion. High-end Compact cameras introduce the photographer additional creative controls such as aperture and shutter priority. This may be a good feature for anyone who wants to start taking semi-manual control of their photography.

Prosumer cameras derive their name from “Pro” and “Consumer”. Cameras from this category are generally recognisable as they have large right hand grips and permanently protruding (but not removable) lens barrels. This makes them considerably less portable than the previous three categories as they won’t fit in your pocket. They have to be carried in a dedicated camera bag instead. However, their larger form factor allows for better quality optics and usually longer optics. This means better image fidelity and the ability to zoom into more distant subjects. The latter advantage is particularly good if you’re considering shooting wildlife (in the non-gun kind of way).

As their name suggests, they are perfect bridging cameras for anyone who wants to make the move from consumer to pro-level cameras. This is primarily because they offer full creative control and good zoom range, all in a single package.

Stay tuned for the next part of Choosing a Digital Camera where I’ll cover the hot camera category of the moment… the SLR.