The life and photography of Mr Bunny Chow

This week I’m going to talk to you a little about technology, which was the suggested theme for this weeks project 52 post.

Things may get a little geeky at points and I apologise for that I’m passionate about a number of geeky things though so you’ll either have to skip this one or put up with it, you never know you might learn something that will be useful in your life. Actually I doubt that you will unless you are slightly geeky.

I mentioned recently that I’d managed to buy an old Canon EOS 650 film camera but wanted to borrow a lens to ensure that it all worked before investing any further in it, well I put out the shout and an old friend who I’ll call Mr Falkland came through and has leant me not only three of his lenses but his incredibly beautiful Canon EOS 10d semi professional body so that I can have an idea of what the lenses to before wasting valuable time and money on film and shooting blind. I know he’s an occasional reader so thank you Mr Falkland, I am hugely touched that you trust me not to break it. I plan to make the most of your incredibly generous loan and learn as much as I can.

Going into a little more detail about the picture contents included we have my trusty HS20EXR which looks dwarfed in this company, I still love her though, she’s a great camera and hugely flexible. The strap is obviously not original and is a retro look GoTo strap purchased for me by Mrs Bunny Chow as a 4th anniversary present.

Squashed into the middle and barely visible is Mr Falklands EOS10d fitted with a Sigma 30-100mm (I’m working from memory here so could be wrong) lense.

and then finally my Canon EOS650 in this instance fitted with Mr Falklands Sigma 18-30mm wide-angle lens and another GoTo vintage strap bought again by Mrs Bunny Chow.

I’ve not had much opportunity to play with either the loan or film camera as yet but will endeavour to get some shots done over the weekend to share with you all next week. (longer for the film stuff I suspect)

moving on.

The rather poor quality picture was taken with my new phone a HTC One X running Android in its latest Ice Cream Sandwich incarnation then skinned with HTC’s own sense interface. As many of my longer term readers will know I have been an iPhone user for a number of years now and decided to make the switch for a number of reasons which I’m going to list.

1. I’m a geek and no self-respecting geek is entirely happy with how iOS locks you into doing things they way they see as being the right way.
2. I couldn’t see enough of an update between the iPhone 4 that I had and the iPhone 4S to justify making the swap but wasn’t prepared to wait for the theoretical iPhone 5.
3. 3. I wanted to see what all they hype about android was all about and if I’m honest just fancied a change.

So what do I think so far?

Pro’s so far:

• The huge 4.7inch screen is beautiful to behold and the colours really pop, the iPhone’s retina display still has smaller pixels and deeper blacks though.
• It’s different, I had an iPhone 3G followed by an iPhone 4 and other than the semi regular iOS updates which were evolutionary not revolutionary I’ve had the same basic concept for four years now or an eon in technological terms.
• Widgets and live wallpapers are an amusing/fun thing even if not much more useful than a red circle reminding me that I have more emails to check than I have time for.

Con’s so far:

• The camera on paper at least should offer superior performance to the iPhone with an aperture of f2.0 (smaller number means more light hitting the sensor) and 8mp as opposed to the iPhone 4’s aperture of f2.8 and 5mp. The reality is though that the picture quality from the iPhone’s sensor seems to offer much lower levels of noise (sparkly bits) in low and even medium light levels. This noise is obvious and apparent on the phone’s screen never mind when blown up to its full size on a computer screen. As a camera guy this is a big deal to me and time will tell if software updates and improve this major flaw. 
• The 4.7 inch screen despite being a beauty to behold is just a tiny bit too big for my hands to comfortably type on single-handed. Not a big deal 90% of the time but if you have lady like hands something to be conscious of before considering one of these.
• The screen is not as sensitive or as accurate as that of the iPhone, I’m sure that I’ll get used to this one as my friend who’s always been an Android man thinks it’s fine but to me at least it’s still a niggle, the difference is subtle but still there.
• Despite its quad-core +1 processors, the fact that apps etc continue to run in the background unless you force them to stop means that it’s no faster than iOS the majority of the time. 

I’m still happy with the phone and realise that a lot of my niggles are more things just being different from what I have become accustomed to. Time will tell if they are things that affect my next phone upgrade and whether I go back to iOS or stick with Android in the future, but that day is at least a couple of years away so we’ll have to see how things unfold and where technology has gone by then.

If you’d like to see more of my pictures there are plenty available through my Google+ account, be sure to introduce yourself as not everything is posted publicly.

Next week the suggested theme will be in the Kitchen so as well as taking some pictures for you I may even make an effort to revive the fortunes of www.mrbunnychowcooks.com

Until then

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow