Making The Switch: Olympus to Canon

My wife and I flew home yesterday from our trip to Europe. That was 14 hours of flying in one day - not something I want to do very often.


But we survived and had an incredible time over there. We spent time in France (Paris) and Italy (Sorrento, Amalfi Coast, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Milan) and are so chock-full of thoughts and visual images of what we've just seen that it will take a few days to sort it all out in our head.

I took three cameras and took over 2,000 pictures on the trip - that far exceeds anything that I've ever done before! For the first time, I am not going to be able to process each one in Photoshop due to the sheer number of them, but I will be processing the best ones and adding them to this blog over the next few weeks.


Before I begin that huge task, I just wanted to get geeky for a few minutes and talk about the camera situation. I am finally retiring my old 5 megapixel Olympus C-5060 (shown below to the right). I have been a staunch Olympus fan for years, but awhile back I had forgotten it on a trip and bought a newer 8 megapixel Canon S5 IS to get me through until I returned home.


I took both these cameras to Europe with us, and the Canon is far and away the superior camera - no comparison. That may be because it was released several years after the Olympus (May 2007 for the S5 IS, September 2003 for the C-5060), but whatever the reason I have become a big Canon fan.

The old Olympus has served me well, but it basically lost it's mind on this trip and so I must put her away, never to be used again. The electronics are behaving strangely, and I consider myself lucky to have been able to offload the pictures today. But it has now snapped its last photo.

My first digital camera was a Olympus D-400Z 1.3 megapixel and it also lost its mind one day (electronics went awry) - it makes me a little nervous that I have had two Oly cameras do that to me. When I'm on a trip, the last thing I want to worry about is if my camera is going to be reliable.

When doing in-depth comparison of Olympus to Canon over the years, I have not been able to see a compelling reason that Canon's additional cost was worth it: dpreview.com shows sample images from comparable offerings of both companies and compares their color and sharpness characteristics, and I am usually hard-pressed to see a big difference.

It turns out, it seems, that the biggest difference is in the other features that Canon offers.

There were two major Canon features that had a massive impact on the quality of the photos I brought back: low-light and image stabilization.

The Canon does infinitely better in low-light situations. This is a situation I found myself in often on this trip, as many of the museums and other places we visited did not allow flash photography. Without flash, the Olympus took practically worthless pictures while the Canon got down to business and gave me very impressive results.

The S5 IS has image stabilization, meaning it has some sort of feature that makes up for my shakey hand. Again, many places we visited did not allow tripods (and I don't bring one on trips anyway - there is a limit to my geekiness!) and thus some hand-shake is inevitable. Additionally, I had to be quick on the draw to get many shots as people were passing by and I took many shots from moving busses and trains, all of which contributed additional shakiness. I have only looked at about 20 of my 2000+ pictures, but from what I can tell the image stabilization is jaw-dropping in it's results.

To be fair, there is one area where the old Olympus outshines the Canon, at least with default settings. When adding an external tilt-flash, the Olympus correctly sensed the right flash level and never overexposed a photo. The Canon, however, is doing that quite regularly with an external tilt-flash. There may be a setting that I can adjust to get around this, but I have not found it yet (not that I've had much time to look).

The third camera I took was a pocket camera (Olympus FE-230 which also has image stabilization), so I will be closely checking the output it has given me. It was introduced in January 2007, so it should be on-par technology-wise with the Canon. I think the Olympus pocket camera will continue to make a nice companion to the Canon on those days when I don't feel like lugging the bigger camera around.


Finally, there are other features I have quickly grown attached to with the new Canon. First, it takes standard AA batteries and not rechargeable proprietary batteries like the Olympus. This is extremely handy in Europe as the Oly charger does not work with the 230 current over there. So once my Oly battery died, it was history. With the Canon, I just stopped at the nearest shop and picked up four more AAs.

Second, the Canon card can hold over 3,500 photos! That is an incredible number! The older Oly, by comparison, can only hold a few hundred. If I'm ever going to take 3,500 photos in one trip, then the AA battery vs rechargeable advantage becomes even more critical.


And lastly, it is extremely easy to turn off flash on the Canon. If I don't want flash, I simply don't raise the flash swivel - ie, flash is off by default! On the Oly, it is on my default and I must manually go through about four movements to shut it off. Not only that, but the Oly doesn't remember that I turned off the flash when the power is cycled (something I must do between pictures since the rear screen is such a power hog), meaning I have to go through the four movements all over again. Grrr.


So there you have it - much too much information on how and why I am making the jump from Olympus to Canon. Now, stay tuned for the much more fun and interesting posts coming up over the next few weeks as I process the pictures.

2008 Travel Trend: Dogs

If the travel trend of the last few years has been increased security, I have noticed an entirely new trend in 2008: dogs!

I have been traveling quite a bit lately (the reason the blog entries have been fewer and farther between the last two months), and I can confirm that many dogs are now taking to the air. On my trip to the east coast this week, I counted FIVE dogs! When I stepped off the plane in Dallas, I saw a chihuahua being walked proudly down the center of the walkway, as if he owned the place. Judging from people's reaction, he did.

A little later at the same airport, there was a second miniature dog being walked in a similar manner. When I arrived at the east coast, I saw this cute little west highland white terrier. He was all eyes as he took in the hub-bub of the airport, not a word out of him.

On the way back, I saw a larger dog in a dog carrier and one more small pocket dog. None of them said a peep - were they sedated? I just hope they were being taken on short trips, as I'm not sure where these fellows would do their business in an airport environment. The other interesting thing is that all five were being tended to by women - have men not caught on to the trend?

Not long ago, we were wine tasting in a winery on the mid-California coast when a couple walked in with a Great Dane who could peer over the bar (and order himself if he so desired). We nudged the gentleman next to us and pointed. He turned back to us, unbuttoned his coat, and revealed a little brown chihuahua in his coat pocket. We couldn't stop laughing, it was so fun! Of course, the wine helped.

Life Is A Rock

The First Recorded Voice

On April 9, 1860 a Parisian inventor named Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville was trying to capture an image of sound so he could study it visually. To do this, he invented a device called a phonautograph to scratch sound waves onto a sheet of paper, blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp.

He never intended to play the sound back audibly, but fortunately this piece of blackened paper was preserved in an archive in Paris. It is a 10 second recording of a person singing "Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit" which translates to "By the light of the moon, Pierrot replied".

This month, David Giovannoni, an audio historian, learned of the paper's existence and he traveled to France to make very high quality digital scans of the paper. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California converted the scans into sound using technology developed to preserve early sound recordings.

This month, for the first time ever, the world can hear this first 1860 recording. Don't set you expectations too high for it is in very rough shape, but here is the earliest known vocal sound:

http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/index.php

Most of us think of Thomas Edison and his phonograph as the earliest recordings, but in fact Mr. Edison recordings date from 1888. His real claim to fame is not the first audio recording, but the first device to play back an audio recording.

The fine looking woman whose picture accompanies this post has nothing to do with Mr. Scott de Martinville. I picked her photo because it was taken in Paris in 1860. She is Sarah Ellen Frances Mason (1818-1865) and was the wife of a wealthy Bostonian Robert Means Mason (1810-1879). She had severe asthma and the doctors encouraged her to travel to improve her health, which placed her in Paris in 1860.

I have always wondered what Abe Lincoln's voice sounded like...more than anything else in US History, I would love to be able to hear the way he read his famous speeches and the way he spoke in every day conversation. I have always thought that he pre-dated recorded sound. And now I find out he didn't pre-date it, he simply was in the wrong city. Sigh.

The Fascinating Story of Collyer's Mansion

 On another one of my Internet Adventures, I stumbled across a tidbit: whenever an East Coast fire department is sent out to do a rescue from a cluttered home, they call that a Collyer's Mansion rescue. Where, I wondered, did that term originate?

That sent me on a wild Google search to find the answer. I think you'll find this story very interesting, so I encourage you to stick around for this very long post. Here goes.

1880s: Herman Collyer, a Manhattan gynecologist, and Susie Frost had two sons: Homer born in 1881 and Langley born in 1885. They also had a daughter Susan who died in infancy in 1880.

Herman Collyer bought the family a 3 story (plus basement) mansion at 2078 Fifth Avenue at 128th Street in Harlem, New York City, New York. At the time, the area was semi-rural and the borough of Harlem was very luxurious and full of mansions including the estate of James Roosevelt (FDR's father). Both Homer and Langley attended nearby Columbia University and earned degrees in engineering and law respectively.

 1900s: By 1904, the subway opened about the same time as real estate crashed, caused by overbuilding and speculation. This left many vacant buildings that could be occupied at low cost, and the subway offered the perfect opportunity for the poor to flourish in the area. The neighborhood began to change and the brothers gradually withdrew from the public view.

In 1909 for unknown reasons, Dr. Herman Collyer left the family when Homer was 28 and Langley was 24.

1920s: Herman died in 1923 and his wife Susie inherited his vast collection of furniture, medical equipment and books. By 1929, Susie had also passed away.

 1930s: The brothers had now inherited the mansion, and their reclusiveness - neither brother worked - fueled rumors of valuable stashes within the house which, in turn, led to a series of break-ins. As their eccentricity grew, the brothers boarded up the windows and began booby-trapping the house using their engineering skills.

Homer, who had previously been crippled by rheumatism, went blind in 1933. Langley devised a remedy diet for Homer of 100 oranges a week accompanied by black bread and peanut butter.

About this time, the mansion's gas, telephone, electricity and water were turned off for failure to pay bills. The brothers heated the house with a kerosene heater and attempted to convert a Model T into a device to generate electricity. Langley brought water home from a park four blocks away.

This photo of Langley shows him waiting to testify at the felony trial of George Smith who was accused of breaking in to a former Collyer residence nearby. He collected the stack of newspapers on his subway ride to take them home, for when his brother regained his eyesight.

1942: After falling behind on their mortgage, the Bowery Savings Bank began eviction procedures. The police were unsuccessful in forcing their way in due to a wall of junk piled floor to ceiling behind the door. At this point, Langley handed the police a check for $6,700 that paid off the entire mortgage (equivalent to $100,000 in today's dollars).

 March 21, 1947: The 122nd police precinct received an anonymous call stating that there was a dead body in the Collyer Mansion. With no doorbell, telephone, and locked doors the police had a very difficult time getting in. Eventually a crew of seven men began pulling out all the junk that was blocking their way and throwing it on the street below.

The brownstone's foyer was completely filled with newspapers, folding beds, chairs, boxes, and an unimagineable array of junk. Patrolman William Baker eventually broke into a second story bedroom filled with a similar array of items. After two hours of climbing through the debris, the body of Homer Collyer was found in a chair wearing a bathrobe.

The only way to bring the body out was to take it by ladder out the second floor window. The medical examiner said that Homer had been dead no more than 10 hours, and that it could not account for the stench coming from the house. Therefore, the search began for Langley.

By this time, a crowd of over 600 onlookers had gathered.

 Work began clearing the rubbish from the house. In all 103 tons were removed from the house, much of it stacked floor to ceiling in each of the mansion's 20 rooms.

The search continued for days and over 30,000 books, a horse's jaw, a complete human skeleton, a two-headed baby in a jar, a Steinway piano, an early X-Ray machine, and uncountable bundles of newspapers were removed.  Note the chandelier hanging from the ceiling in this photograph - the policemen are standing on several feet of junk, with their heads touching the ceiling in these very tall rooms.

 A New York City building inspector was also called in to evaulate the safety of continuing the search for Langley and the removal of the debris.

  While the search continued in the house, police decided to close an entire block of 5th Avenue in order to keep the crowds back so the workmen could remove the debris and load it into vans or sanitation trucks, as appropriate.

  On April 1st, Homer Collyer was buried. Police were hopeful that Langley would show up at the funeral, but that did not happen. The removal of debris from the mansion continued.

 Many pianos were removed from the home during the search. On April 8, 1947, the body of Langley Collyer was found a mere 8 feet from where Homer was found. Three bundles of newspaper and a suitcase had covered his body. It appeared that Langley had been crawling through a newspaper tunnel to take food to his paralyzed brother and became the victim of his own booby-trap. His brother Homer, blind and paralyzed, died of starvation

several days later.

 Other items removed from the house included baby carriages, bicycles, old food, guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, sawhorses, plaster busts, Susie Collyer's hope chests, pickled human organs, eight cats, a Model T chassis, fourteen pianos, many musical instruments (banjos, violins, accordians, gramophones, clavicords), and newspapers that were several decades old.

 Items from the home were auctioned in the summer of 1947 for a total of $2,000. The total value of their estate was $91,000 including $20,000 in jewelry, cash and securities.

Unfortunately, the home was deemed to be in such dilapidated condition that the only alternative was to demolish it. The homesite is now the location of a park.

So there you have it, the complete story behind the term Collyer's Mansion. It is not a happy story, but it is indeed a part of American History that I was not aware of until just this week.

Elly Mae's Not Home

 Okay, one more Hillbillies post then I'll move on...I found out one more interesting feature of this property. Apparently the new owner, Mr. Perrenchio, didn't like all the tourists and tour buses stopping outside his front gate, snapping pictures. Why do I think that? Look closely at the first picture in this post...the driveway has been removed and replaced with trees and shrubs! Tourists can no longer stop in front of the Clampetts and snap a photo.

 The natural question that arises is, where is the new entrance? Well spinning the helicopter around several times, I think I see it. Looking at the first pic, notice the light brown road that goes straight up, off the top of the picture (apparently on the roof of the garage)? I think that is the new entrance road

Spinning the helo in the second pic, you can now see the entrance is up the road and around the corner! That's quite a bit of distance to move an entrance! Those tour buses must be very loud and obnoxious! The entry road follows the curve in Bel Air Rd and eventually winds up back in the Clampett courtyard.

Finally, let's flip this helo around one more time...it appears to me that they guest entrance is too narrow for delivery trucks, etc. That's probably why this third photo shows that there are actually two entrances - the yellow guest/resident entrance and the red service entrance.

Mystery solved! But wait, what is that round structure (see green arrow)?? Let me know what you think, I'm really curious.

And now, I'll move on to another neighborhood. I promise. Unless I find another interesting tidbit about the Clampett abode.

The Beagle Wins!

Yes, sports fans, for the first time in the history of Westminster Kennel Club's Dog Show, a beagle won the Hound Division. Not only that, but Uno the beagle went on to win Best of Show!

We are huge beagle fans and couldn't be happier - and judging from the crowd's reaction we are not alone.

This is the only dog show we watch each year, and unfortunately we missed seeing Uno win the Hound Division on Monday night, but we read about it. While being judged, he barked at his owner, bayed at the crowd, tried to grab his leash, and lunged at a piece of filet minon that was within sniffing distance. In other words, he was his normal beagle self.

Last night, we were glued to the TV to see if Uno would go on to take the top prize - and he did! He was in spectacular form and full of energy. As soon as he started his lap around the carpet, the audience went wild - Uno perked his ears up and looked around to see what the roar was about. It's about you, Uno! I've never seen that type of reaction from the crowd before, it was awesome.

Not only that, but when the judge singled Uno out for first place, the audience gave him a very loud standing ovation....unheard of! I couldn't believe my ears and eyes - I was thrilled to know how many other people understand the wonders of everything beagle.

We have a female beagle named Cory who is about to turn 15. She is our daughter, the princess of the family, and the undisputed lead scent detector of the house. Like Uno, she gets so excited when we head out the door for a walk that she turns her head, grabs the leash in her mouth, and tries to drag us out the door to hurry things up.

One thing that comes to most people's minds about beagles is the notion that they are very loud. While that is often true (as Uno showed), it is not true in all beagles. Cory very rarely barks and bays even less frequently. I'd say the reasons for that are three-fold: she was discouraged from barking as she grew up, she's female, and she grew up without other beagles around. Therefore, she modeled herself after the rest of her pack (us) and we don't bark. :)

Anyway, here's a photo of Cory taken quite a few years back while she was looking down the road at her 'boyfriend' Rodney (a golden retriever). Congratulations to the beagle world!