Two Beers and a Pretzel

is may not be interesting update for most people, but don’t fret, on Thursday my uncle and I are likely going to Gramado (gra-ma-do), a Bavarian (as in German) village in the coastal mountains of Southern Brazil, plus some surrounding areas for hiking, wine tasting, and possibly river rafting.

Originally, my return flight to Buenos Aires was scheduled for the 22nd.  That’s not happening.  I checked the airline, and they said to try the place I booked it.  So, I called Expedia and they said the airline will not modiify the data because I bought a round trip, and the 1st leg was already done ($180 down the drain).  They said I can buy another fare for $250.  Nope… I’ll probably take an overnight bus to Montevideo, Uruguay for $70, see the town, and then catch the $10 ferry across the Rio de la Plata to Buenos Aires.

Today I went to an Arabian restaurant for lunch, then basically watched Obama-palooza today on CNN while playing with my cameras a bit.  So for the camera buffs out there, I did a comparison at sunset in the preset scene modes of both of my cameras…

Olympus 1080SW in “Sunset” mode – auto everything

GOOD = decent color and a fair amount of shadow detail in the city.

BAD = Hard to Focus and a lot of overexposure around the sun (well, it is the sun)

Canon G9 in Landscape Scene mode with ISO set to Auto

GOOD = Focus, color, exposure of the sun, decent shadow detail

BAD = Lens flare (green circles in he clouds to the right of the sun), some vertical banding in the blue sky – I think due to the auto ISO.

Next time I’ll set the ISO to 80 or 100 and experiment with full manual control of the white balance, aperture and shutter speed.  Shooting farther off center should eliminate the lens flare.

Finally, a really nice shot with the Canon a few moments later… again, in landscape mode with auto ISO.

Sunset Verdict…  The Canon G9 wins on pure photo-geek criteria.

The problems visible in the Canon images are correctable with better technique and utilizing the manual controls.  The Olympus works fairly well for sunset snapshots, but for a printable image, it’s hard to compete with Canon’s top of the line Point & Shoot that has many SLR like controls.

Still, even the G9 pales in comparison to what you can do with even a 3 year old Digital SLR…  like say, the picture I used for the website banner (taken July 2007 in King’s Canyon, California with a Canon 20D).

The biggest limitation on the G9 versus an SLR is that you can only stop it down to f/8 where many SLR’s will go down to f/22.  I think that’s more related to the smaller sensor size on the G9 and optical diffraction becoming an issues with small apertures.

Right now, the combination of the G9 and the Olympus is perfect for me.  I can get all the snaps I need with the highly portable / nearly indestructible Olympus regardless of weather, and the underwater capability has proven to be priceless.  The G9 satisfies my desire to take artsy and large print size images.  It’s not as nice as my SLR rig, but has 90% of the functionality, weighs about 15 pounds less and still fits in my pocket (barely).

If I had to take just one camera on this trip, it would be the Olympus.   It’s decent enough at everything to get by, and incredible when you go snorkeling or playing in the pool.  My only complaint is the paint peeling off.