My New Camera

So photography is important to me. I take a lot of photographs, and I feel that I'm getting better and better at being a photographer. I've been looking forward to getting a new camera for a while... one with more manual controls and better performance. I want to learn more of that neat professional stuff. However, since I'm backpacking for an extended period of time, I'm very conscious of my payload. I'm trying to travel light and I'm very reluctant to get a big, proper, digital SLR camera. The cost does not bother me so much (they're not really THAT expensive), but the size and the fragility of such a device is somewhat intimidating to me given my current mode of travel. If I wasn't on this trip right now, I'm very sure that I would go and buy a digital SLR camera straight away.

But, I'm not. It's been a difficult decision for me, but I finally found a camera that falls in between the two extremes. It's bigger than your regular ultra compacts, but still much smaller than digital SLRs. It provides many of the features and manual controls of digital SLRs. It's something I feel I can really learn and expand my skills with. I bought myself a Canon Powershot G10.

There was a review posted to the Digital Photography Review website recently. It's very favourable. The Panasonic LX3 got higher reviews, however (I think this is the camera that Will Chau is eyeing right now). I think the Canon has more manual controls and that's what I'm looking for right now, so I don't regret my decision.

Hopefully, in the upcoming months, you can see the results being posted here. I know my photographs are already pretty "good" so far. Hopefully, they can now be "better".

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Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Fiji

Crazy Mario Video with Anime Soundtrack

I know that my blog is a travel-related blog and not one of those many blogs where people just post "cool things they see on the Internet." However, as I sit here in Scott Faber's condo waiting for him and his girlfriend to come back from work while sipping this Franziskaner Weissbier that I picked up at the Carrefour hypermarket in shiny downtown Singapore today while sightseeing, I just watched this 11-minute video and was in awe the whole time. Mario-related videos are usually pretty cool, but this one is just amazing! Some guy made custom levels and played them. The sounds from the game form the percussion section for the background music composed of some of the catchiest anime tunes. Just brilliant! It was so awesome, I had to post it here. After all, this is MY blog, and I'll post whatever I want!



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Rob Szumlakowski
Singapore