SiC – David Sidwell

Have seen two great digital (photo) cameras over the last few days:

“Point and Shoot” Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T1. Review and samples at
this review

“SLR” Konica-Minolta Dimage A2 . 8 MP of camera temptation. Described as “Hitting One Over the Fence” in this
review.
RRP in Australia is apparently $1999. Yes the same price as its little sibling – the A1 – was only a few months ago…

For no particular reason, here’s some of the songs that my Media Librarian advises I’ve been playing the most. Didn’t know it was keeping count until recently. A pleasant surprise. I probably wouldn’t have guessed some of these:

• “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” – Alison Kraus
• “Different Drum” – Linda Rondstadt
• “Smelly Cat Medley” – Phoebe Buffay and the Hairballs, and the Pretenders
• “Love and Mercy” – Brian Wilson
• “Good Dancers” – The Sleepy Jackson
• “Mack the Knife” – Bobby Darin
• “Embraceable You” – Oleta Adams
• “Does Your Mother Know?” – ABBA
• “I’m Stranded” – The Saints
• “Ever Fallen in Love?” – The Buzzcocks
• “Livin’ la vita Homo” – not sure
• “Love Will Never Do” – Janet Jackson
• “Some Velvet Morning” – Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood
• “Don’t Stand So Close to the Window” – Paul Kelly

This tiny ex-gold-mining town clings to the side of a very steep valley in West Gippsland. It once boasted a population of hundreds, if not thousands. Today it’s about 20.

Wahalla has hung on, literally, since 1862. It has survived the mining bust – nearly 90 years ago – floods and fires. It only got the power on in the 1990s.

I usually stay at the nearby village of Rawson at the Rawson Village Scenic Holiday Resort. The price usually includes breakfast. They also serve a dinner in the dining room (hall!) – at extra cost. But all very reasonable, particularly considering when I last looked, there was nowhere else to eat in town.

My advice would be to drive up either Friday after work or early Saturday morning. Should take about 2 hours.

Things to do:

• Visit the Museum
• The Long Tunnel Extended mine tour – a must
• Do a town walk with a brochure (comparing the old photographs with today. Amazing!)
• The Copper Mine tour etc (run by Mountain Top adventures – good people, great tours). They do the driving in their 4WDs.
• Visit the Thomson Dam – Melbourne’s main water supply

Directions: Follow the Princes Freeway south-east out of Melbourne. Pass Warragul and take the Moe exit. Follow the signs north to Walhalla. Roads are all asphalt – for all of the above – but they become gravel past (north) of Walhalla. 4WD strongly suggested for this section.

Read up a bit first if you can before heading there. Will make it more rewarding. The Walhalla Heritage and Development League would be a great place to start. Also my very own contribution to the excellent Wiki Internet Encylopedia may be of value.

A recent radio review of a movie highlighted (again) the need for reviewers to be very careful of not giving the plot away; even accidently .

This time it was a panel, all waxing lyrical and enthusiastically about Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River. I, like most of the listening audience, hadn’t seen it yet. It had only just opened and the reviewers had probably seen an earlier critics preview anyway.

In their excitement during this live show, one of them, whilst praising a certain element of the film, said something like “at the end when XXXXX points his fingers in the shape of a gun at YYYYYY. ”

Ouch!

It’s sort of a mystery film and now we all know who lives!

A similar thing had happened a decade ago, when a friend saw Basic Instinct before I did. I asked her what it was like and was told “really good, except you never know if Sharon Stone is really killing them…”. Oh dear.

Mark S from Monash, if you are out there you may be having a quiet laugh. I do believe after seeing The Empire Strikes Back, you and I walked out passed the queue waiting to go in. I do believe the following words were jointly spoken, out loud: “Wow, I can’t believe that Leia is Luke’s mother….”

The beauty of watching a DVD in the home cinema, is that not only do remember the movie itself, but you also think back to when you first saw it at the real cinema. In turn this triggers related memories. In my case, recently seeing two Aussie Classics on DVD, made me think of Great Movie Giggle Moments

GMGM #1. Back in 1976. The school has taken us to see the very serious Picnic at Hanging Rock. My fellow 15 year olds are quite getting into it. The film is quite tense as the girls have just gone missing. The search has not long started, when up the hill walks the great Garry McDonald, playing a policeman. The cinema erupts with “hey, that’s Norman Gunston. Norman! Norman!”

GMGM #2. Not long after. Probably 1980. Mad Max is still showing at the cinema in it’s first run. I’m sure I’m at the East End cinema in Bourke Street (100?). Don’t look for it, it’s no longer there.

Anyway, another tense scene is upon us. Jim Goose is about to be told the bad news that there’s no case against the rogue cycle gang. The music swells, Max enters, all ready to tell Jimbo that all their work was for nothing….
There, walking with Max is the actor Gil Tucker; he’s playing a legal clerk of some type. For years Gil had played Constable Roy Baker on the TV show Cop Shop. The very straight, dorky, daggy Roy Baker. Again, the cinema rings with giggles and muffled smirks..

How many Megapixels can your eyes see? In other words, if you wanted to use a digital camera to capture an image that had the same resolution as “the real world” that you see, what resolution would that camera need to be? What would be the Megapixel equivalent of a human eye?

I heard a fascinating interview on ABC Radio National last night. It was with Australian filmmaker and inventor John Weiley

He was talking about the impact of digital technology on going to the cinema. It seems like we are in for a bit of a revolution in what we see and how we see it.

John covered some exact questions I had been pondering, plus a lot more. Now, as you ponder your 4 or 6 Megapixel (MP) camera, consider this:

• Digital IMAX images would need about 80 MP.
• The Human Eye sees the world with equivalent to about 100 MP capacity.

I wondered when we would have such devices. So I grabbed a spreadsheet and assumed Moore’s Law, with a doubling of MPs every 18 months. I arbitrarily said that a ‘consumer’ camera of Jan 2004 was 4 MP.


Year: MP
January 2004: 4
July 2005: 8
January 2007: 16
July 2008: 32
January 2010: 64
July 2011: 128
January 2013: 256
July 2014: 512
January 2016: 1024


So there you go, in 10 to 12 years from now, consumer cameras should capture ‘real’ images, that are literally the 100 MP that your eye sees. I’m tipping that Digital Imax will here a lot quicker than 10 years too.