Balloon Fiesta

[gothick]

PICT5666.JPG
Originally uploaded by gothick_matt

My favourite balloon at this morning's launch was the monster.com balloon, I think.

It's been a good day all round, really, despite getting up at quarter to five to get showered, dressed and up to Ashton Court. This was the first time I've dragged myself out to an early morning launch, and on reflection, I think I prefer them to the night glows, which are crazily packed and noisy. There were still plenty of people around this morning, but nowhere near as many as at the night glows. It's definitely more civilised, and it seemed to put me in a very good mood for the day.

I went this morning because the plan for tomorrow morning fell through due to last-minute rearrangements by one of the near-infinite number of Nicolas that I know (second only now to the apprently-actually-infinite number of Cla(i)res I know.)

Anyway. Pictures from this morning here and here for anyone interested.

In related news, I'm most definitely feeling limited by my camera now, so I should probably upgrade sometime soon. I fancy a decent "bridge" camera, rather than jumping straight to an SLR, but I'm still trying to figure out whether I want the Fujifilm FinePix S9600 or the Panasonic Lumix FZ-50, or something else. Ho hum.

Comments

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

Ta for t'input. That nicely balances out the really positive stuff I just heard from an FZ-50 owner I asked recently :)

The other thing the Lumix wins on for unsteady-handed moi, is the image stabilisation, but then the Fuji give better results at higher ISOs, which would combat that in a different way.

Hmm. Think maybe I'll download the manuals for both of them and see if I can figure out which one would annoy me less. (And that's another thing; apparently the Fuji has the irritating feature that it goes to sleep and won't wake up unless you turn it off and on again, thus resetting some things, but I bet they don't mention that in the manual...)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Yes, the power-off thing is a bit annoying, but it can be turned off. And you can also set it up so a half-press of the exposure button wakes it up.

The other Good Thing, to me, that the Fuji has over the Lumix is using bog-standard standard AA batteries, not custom ones.

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

Ah, but just to combat the battery thing, what it _doesn't_ use is SD cards, when I already have a couple of high-capacity ones _and_ a portable reader for the laptop.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

I use SD cards in my Fuji - by using a CF adaptor! So I can use CF, xD, and SD cards, as and when!

[gothick-matt.livejournal.com]

Ahhh -- I didn't even know you could do that. Ta.

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

The CF/SD adaptor was about 7 quid from Maplin. The only small drawback with it is that it doesn't play nice with the xD slot - you can't have the xD slot occupied when using thr adaptor, in the way you can with standard CF. Which could be either the camera, so may be fixed in the 9600, or it's the adaptor, and they may not all be like that.