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Here's the pattern to make a clock from a printed sheet of paper that displays the time for free.

Sundial

You could also make an origami sundial, but I can't find a pattern online.

Well Canon is comming out with some new ink tanks series called CromaLife100 campatible with the iP8600, iP8100, iP7100, iP6100D, iP4100, iP4100R, iP3100, MP900, MP790, MP770, and the new PIXMA printers. .

Computer translation: "The silver salt photograph which from the negative film you develop & print and the photograph which is printed with the ink jet printer fade, with lapse of time, gradually. This does being something due to the influence of the gas and the light which are included in the air. As holds down these influences to minimum, the photograph it is beautiful succeeding in no year making maintain, the new dye ink " BCI-7 " of CANON. It is the dye ink where beauty of of course is proud high conservation, evolved."

See the tranlation or the original

That image for those who want to know was exposed 15 seconds at f/11.0 @ 24mm and ISO 100

Gizmodo ran this story last week. Check out the sample images from the Japanese site Yikes. 16.7 megapixels is a lot! It has some other cool features too, like "The accelerated image processing of DIGIC II combines with high-speed data reading from the imaging sensor to achieve fast continuous shooting at approx. 4 frames per second for maximum bursts of 32 shots in JPEG Large (11 shots in RAW)."

Gizmodo ran this story last week. Check out the sample images from the Japanese site Yikes. 16.7 megapixels is a lot! It has some other cool features too, like "The accelerated image processing of DIGIC II combines with high-speed data reading from the imaging sensor to achieve fast continuous shooting at approx. 4 frames per second for maximum bursts of 32 shots in JPEG Large (11 shots in RAW)."

Found more stuff:

Nissan Cars
Canon's Wacky Stuff
JR's Bullet Trains
Here's the Ultimate:
Build your own IBM Thinkpad

So, I decided to go back to basics. I had an old bulk film loader around that I'd never used, so I dusted it off, got myself a 100ft reel of Ilford FP4+ black and white film (AUD $60), and a bunch of reloadable film cannisters (AUD $1.50 each). That gives me enough film for about twenty 36-exposure rolls, which would cost me over AUD $10 each at retail prices. Plus I if I only need a few shots, I can load less film into the cannisters without needing to waste half a roll, or wait till I used it up.

I picked up a darkroom starter kit for AUD$100 which included all the basic hardware to get me started, except for an enlarger (which I scrounged off a friend), safelight (bought, about AUD$13 for a magic light bulb), and some extra chemical mixing bits (jugs, etc). I built myself (with some assistance from the father-in-law-to-be) a collapsable bench which allows me to turn our poky little bathroom/laundry into a darkroom (it fits quite nicely over the washing machine and toilet), and bought some chemicals and paper (again, Ilford).

I can now load my own film, develop it in my own house in about 10 minutes, monkey with the developing (push/pull) if I want, make my own prints up to 8*10", cropped how I want, with the contrast how I want it, dodged and burned how I want (yes, dodging and burning did exist before Adobe Photoshop). It's not always fun. Acutally, the fun factor wore off after 24 hours, but its starting to creep back in. Its long, tiring, painstaking work. There's no undo button - if you screw it up, bin it and try again. It teaches you to be methodical, precise, but also lets you experiment to "see what happens".

It's also taught me that I'm not as good a photographer as I thought I was. Looking back at my previous photographic efforts I've realised that the majority of them were more about the colour than the composition, and without the colour, they just looked crappy... But now that I know this, I'm getting better. Playing with black and white in the darkroom can be a very sadisfying experience, you get to create something with your own two hands from start to end. No computer-assisted magic, just light, glass, and silver. If this posting sounds interesting to you, you should probably try it. If you get hooked, you can also do color processing in a home darkroom, but its a lot more involved.

The Canon PowerShot S series cameras are small and robust, with a metal case and a lens that retracts flat into the body and is protected by a retracting cover. They produce excellent pictures. I have an S100, which I've just replaced with an S400 because I liked it so much. (The S400 is the newest 4 megapixel descendant of the S100.)

For your situation, I'd add on the appropriate waterproof case. I imagine a PowerShot in one of those would stand up to falling from a truck, being dropped in wet cement and hurriedly rinsed off with beer, and so on.

For those still holding on to analog film, check these links out with samples taken with the Canon 1Ds.

This link are Canon's official images.

And this link is of an independent reviewer's images in the field.

The amazing thing is that this is a first-generation true-high-end digital product behaving as a latest-generation super-high-end analog product. Expect the image quality to go even higher in the coming months/years.

Get 'em while they're hot! (note - Flash required)

Canon Japan's EOS-1Ds page

I wouldn't download the raw TIFFs though unless you have a use for them, and like 38MB images :) Sample 1 has brown splodges all over the wall areas, which I don't think are artifacts from the camera but rather markings on the walls themselves. I'm quite surprised that Canon didn't use some proper studio settings here for 1 & 2. Sample 3 also appears to have artifacts though at first glance, notice all along the left-hand side on the wall, on the colour chart and below the fruit, hmmmm... strange... I'll have to inspect the full-res. versions and see what I can find. Image sharpness around the edges looks good though, I guess Canon must have found a way round the CCD falloff?

on the D30 can be found here.