Model Citizen

For those that love the new Blu-Ray format but think the discs are a bit pricey, why not join the Blu-Ray bargain hunting site:

http://www.cheapbluraymovies.co.uk/

There's daily news on where to look for those bargain Blu's as well as a friendly forum for asking questions and discussing discs.

If ever there was a movie to show off Blu Ray, this is it.

The film is apparently based on an old Japanese TV show that made it to the west. I dont remember it at all. It's about a family called Racer and the son is called Speed, hence Speed Racer. It's also a film about very fast race cars, but dont think of Silverstone, think more of your old toy TCR race cars with loops, twists and perhaps the occasional concealed weapon.

It's a pretty basic story from The Wachowski brothers involving race fixing and the small Racer family against "The Man".
The cast are excellent: Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox, Christina Ricci, John Goodman all looking like they're enjoying themselves playing larger than life characters. There's even a chimp in clothes and Ninjas. What more do you want from a popcorn flick!

The races though! Absolutely stunning. The colours! The neon! Just incredible and beautiful scenes. It really is a stunning showcase film for how good Blu Ray is.

I have seen a bit of controversey with the American version not having decent audio, but I bought British and it's all good.

I bought this recently after getting a bit fed up lugging my various lenses around and always seemingly having the wrong one on for any shot I wanted to take. I looked for a good universal lens that would pretty much cover everything.

The proper spec is here:

Tamron's Vibration Compensation—Blur-Stopping Power With No Annoying Motion Delay In Your Viewfinder!

With the advent of the latest 15X zoom lens from Tamron, the pioneer of high power zoom lenses, the high power zoom lens has steadily evolved from a 7.1X to a 10.7X to a 13.9X and now to the world’s largest zoom ratio of 15X by combining advanced high power zoom design technologies accumulated by Tamron since 1992. The lens covers an angle of view equivalent to that of a 28mm wideangle to a 419mm ultra telephoto with just one lens, letting the user capture once-in-the-lifetime images of panoramic landscape images or close-up pictures of children smiling, without having to get too close to the subject and without having to change lenses.

So, weather to believe all the hype or not is tricky, especially as this is £400+. Amazon have it yo-yoing in price currently from £410-530, so if you see the top end price shop around you will find it for less.

I went out recently in the frost on the way to Brecon with the lens on and took loads of shots, I was'nt planning a test of any sort but I found I had taken a set of 3 shots showing the zoom quality. I've been varying weather the vibration compensation is on or not, in these shots I think it was as I found the long zoom does need it in some circumstances. Other info: I shot at about ISO 200 with aperture about 5.6. I'm no expert so dont expect a geeky technical answer. I did'nt do much to these photo's other than add the yellow box showing where I zoomed in and lightened slightly. I'm still learning so took them a bit dark.

Ok, here's the shots:

Well, like them or not what i think it does show is that you can zoom in pretty close and still keep detail. I think it could have got closer too! but as said before this was'nt a real test, I was just out snapping.

Overall, I'm really pleased with the lens. It's a meaty beast, has a few settings for AF and MF as well as the Vibration button and a lens lock to stop it moving when walking around. It gets so long by being double telescopic and can be heavy enough to move back on itself when not in AF mode but this is a known issue I believe with all type of lenses like this, and as mentioned I found having it on AF stops it shifting.

Definatley an option for anyone else like me who's fed up of carrying around zoom's, wide angles and 50mm's and just wants a small case with a couple of spare batteries.

If you want to take a look at any more of my pics, the most recent have nearly all been taken with this lens please visit my Flickr Page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cjmorse/

I've been going crazy with the kids cameras! Every time I tried to take the 200+ pictures off that had accumalated over the year the batteries would die half way. As would all the othewrs I found round the house to try again. Just buy new ones I hear you say. Well how about this for £2!

I visited the local Poundstore and found these shops sell anything and everythin. I bought a 4 port USB hub and a card reader!

So, no more batteries for downloading :)