Mad Times

Am I being unreasonable for wanting all the features I want in one camera? Evidently, yes.

My Pentax Optio S4 has been my almost constant companion since 12/30/2003. I obsessed before buying it too. I’d keep on using it, but a few things are going wrong. There’s some dust on the sensor that’s showing up in my pictures (shows up as a blurry smudge in the lower left corner of some pictures.) The lens extension motor has started making an ominous screeching grindy noise recently. The eensy little tab that holds the battery in is showing signs of impending failure. The door that covers the battery/memory compartment doesn’t close all the way anymore due to a dent in the corner caused when I dropped the camera on a cement floor (no other obvious damage!) There’s been a cat hair stuck inside the lens for a couple years that hasn’t caused any visible problem. Recently, too, I’ve started noticing my pictures being more washed out looking in a way that makes me wonder if there’s something going wrong with the (ridiculously complex and tiny) lens.

I’m not going to give up having a pocketable point-and-shoot camera so it’s time to shop. I’ve narrowed it down (mostly!) to three cameras.

• Fujifilm FinePix F30
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01
• Pentax Optio S6

The Pentax is really only there because I’ve enjoyed the S4 so much and could probably be happy with the newer version in spite of the fact that it still has all the shortcomings of the S4. They really haven’t done anything new with this camera but add pixels (that I basically don’t need). It still doesn’t have an autofocus assist lamp. It goes up to ISO 400 now, but the other two cameras here go to 1600 and even 3200. It gets the love because it’s tiny (4mm thinner than the Panasonic, 8mm than the Fuji) and has two features I’ve used a lot in the S4 (time-lapse movies, and voice recorder mode) that neither of the others have. It’s also the only one with manual focus though I’ve only used it on the S4 a few times.

The Panasonic has the one feature I’ve been whining about and pining for in a point-and-shoot: a 28mm wide angle equivalent. Pant pant. Not only that, it’s in a lens made by Leica. Drool. The rest of the features are pretty good, but pretty comparable to the other two. On the down side, the thing appears to be worthless for low-light picture taking. While it can go to ISO 1600, it seems you can’t take it beyond ISO 200 before noise and noise-reduction artifacts make the results hardly worth bothering with.

The Fuji’s drool-worthy feature is class-leading low-light performance. It goes to ISO 3200, and even at those lofty heights produces images that don’t make me wince. Shiny! Plus it has aperture and shutter priority modes which neither of the other two offer. That’s something I’ve missed in the Optio S4 and whose lack is a real hindrance to learning to expose my pictures in a controlled way rather than relying on the camera to get it right. All the other features are comparable to the Panasonic except for the pedestrian (36-108mm equiv) zoom. The downside here is the fact that the camera uses xD memory instead of the SD I’ve invested in for my existing cameras. Argh! Plus it’s the chunkiest of the three.

Here’s the dpreview side-by-side comparison of all three plus the Optio S4.

Anybody got any advice for me? I’m leaning toward the Fuji despite the memory and size issue. What I really want is the 28mm Leica lens with the Fuji sensor and processor in the Optio box. Will somebody make me that, please?

Can you imagine the obsessing that’s going on with my ongoing internal debate about whether to get a DSLR and if so, which one? It ain’t pretty. And I’ve barely even started to think about lenses.

I got an outrageous number of compliments on this year’s stuffing, so Becky browbeat me into writing down what I did.

“Stuffing” is kind of a misnomer cause I didn’t cook any of it inside of our turkey this time. I have done with similar recipes in the past, so don’t be afraid to pack it in there if you want. But this recipe results in nice moist stuffing even without a bird cooked around it, so don’t feel like you have to.

This recipe is loosely based on the one in the big orange Betty Crocker cookbook, so it’s not rocket science. All quantities are pretty approximate. Don’t obsess.

jeffy’s Turkey Stuffing

• Most of two loaves of bread cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 2 cups unsalted butter
• 1 bunch of celery, thinly sliced, little leafy bits included
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves minced garlic (I actually just scooped a couple teaspoons out of a jar of minced garlic. Horrors.)
• 3 teaspoons salt
• 3 teaspoons dried sage
• 2 teaspoons dried thyme
• 2-3 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper (Betty calls for 1/2 tsp. Betty’s boring.)
• 2-3 cups stock (This year I made mine by simmering the giblets from the bird in a pot of water for a couple hours (do not put the giblets in the stuffing. Yuck!) I’ve used chicken broth in the past to good effect. You could probably use a veggie broth if you wanted to.)

Melt butter in a large pan. Add celery, onions, garlic and spices. Let it bubble away gently, stirring occasionally, until the onion and celery are soft and translucent.

Drizzle that stuff over bread cubes in the biggest container you’ve got. Toss until all bread is coated.

Stuff some in a bird if desired. Pack the rest in a big casserole dish.

Pour the stock over it.

Cover and bake in a 350-degree oven for an hour or so. If you cook it too long, the outside fringes get crispy which is just an added bonus if you ask me.

This makes enough to feed eight people, plus enough to send leftovers home with them and still have enough left to put on sandwiches and leftover turkey plates until most of the turkey’s gone. We like stuffing around here.

I first read Mitchell when one of her books (End In Fire) came up on the list for this year’s Endeavour Award. I liked that one enough to pick this one up when it showed up on the shelf at the library.

The setting is a far distant future where faster-than-light travel has scattered humans throughout the galaxy. Unfortunately they haven’t been able to leave capitalism behind on the home world, so things are run by a cabal of powerful corporations and the class divide is alive and well, just morphed by space travel from the simple haves and have-nots to those who live in gravity and the “floaters,” those who have worked long enough in zero-gee that they can’t function effectively in significant gravity. The floaters are primarily working class.

The Murphy of the title is a young floater woman who has made it into the galactic police academy and excelled as a pilot. As the book opens, she competes with another student in a test with a new space ship design. She wins, but her chance to capitalize on her success is cut short when she is framed in a crime by a fellow student. And thus begins a series of plot devices that slam our heroine from event to event through the course of the book.

The plot is arbitrary and cliche, but Mitchell speeds through it with such bravado that I didn’t have time to get too annoyed with it while reading the book. There’s nothing subtle about this book, but sometimes it’s fun to read a simple adventure that doesn’t ask too much of your higher reason.

From October 21.

From October 11.

From September 15.

The Seattle Times has an article about a group of engineers working for Sound Transit on the Seattle bus tunnel retrofit many of whom bike to work and have taken to collecting the lost gloves they see on their way to work and adding them to a display in their offices.

They don’t make green-eye filters for cats like they do red-eye filters for us humans. Alice can see half the neighborhood when she’s perched up there. At least once she stops seeing spots.