The Wise

by Countee Cullen

Dead men are wisest, for they know

How far the roots of flowers go,

How long a seed must rot to grow.

Dead men alone bear frost and rain

On throbless heart and heatless brain,

And feel no stir of joy or pain.

Dead men alone are satiate;

They sleep and dream and have no weight,

To curb their rest, of love or hate.

Strange, men should flee their company,

Or think me strange who long to be

Wrapped in their cool immunity.

Gadgets-Panasonic Lumix TS1

My last waterproof camera, a Sanyo Xacti VPC-E1, bit the dust one month past it's year guarantee. It is sitting in some Sanyo executives office in Japan. He vowed to replace my camera but I have yet to see another. I liked the camera for the conditions in which I used it, it took decent movies for a still camera and I could take it kayaking with me which was the reason I bought it in the first place. The macro mode took very good close ups, an example is the flower above. On the con side, it took very poor low light photos, did not have a built in lens cover, no optical view finder, oh and it broke at one year and one month. I have been looking at other weatherproof still/movie cameras but have not felt excited enough to replace my old one (plus I am waiting on Mr. Hiroshi Fuji and the long lost replacement). There is a new offering in this market and I am now just waiting for it's release in order to scour actual use reviews. Specs that I care about: Waterproof to 10 feet, dustproof, shockproof to 5 feet, macro 5 cm, HD video recording at 1280 x 720 hd plus quicktime and vga, 12.7 megapixels, uses sd cards (I already have a few of them, why switch?). It performs well in low light without flash. The specs are impressive. Unfortunately it has no lense cover (as far as I could see) nor does it have an optical viewfinder. I will wait, though, until it has been out a few months, to see if it performs as promised...we all know about promises. Maybe I can have one by the summer. I am excited.


1/3/10 I bought the lumix and have had it about six months and am really disappointed. Lot of distortion in the photos, obviosly the lens is glitchy, stretches out a face here, there. Color is okay but not great. Macro is not very macro, I can get maybe 2" away before it blurs. If I had it to do again I wouldn't buy it.