I treated myself to a new Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM lens this week as a little Christmas treat after a busy year! Despite the snow and travel chaos in the UK, it arrived today rather than as expected on December 29th!
I’ve just taken the lens out for a quick test drive in the garden. Here are the first snaps! So far, I’m incredibly happy with it – it’s gorgeous!
It was my last chance to wander London in the snow today before I go home for Christmas. I headed out to St James’s Park (somewhat unplanned) for a walk. 24 hours after the last snow fall and the city still looked beautifully white! Here are a few of the photos. The rest can be seen on flickr!
It’s only one week until Christmas, and anyone hoping for a white one may just get their wish! Today saw a short, sharp burst of snow fall across the UK.
London, on the last Saturday before Christmas, would typically be full of shoppers and tourists. Today, it was surprisingly quiet, as blizzard-like conditions hit the city.
Here are a few quick snaps of the snow in Picadilly Circus!
I ventured out into the bitterly cold park for a while today, with the aim of taking some photos. After about 30 minutes I was completely frozen, but managed to get a couple of photos before retreating back to the house for a cup of tea!
The park was beautifully snowy – at least 2 or 3 inches of pure white snow. The many ponds were completely frozen over, with ducks carefully walking (and sliding) across them.
I encountered an interesting issue in Moshi today, which I think may be useful to explain to anyone else using TweenLite.
A lot of Moshi Monsters is powered by commands, and often we have many commands that run at the same time. A lot of those commands are used to manipulate display objects and move them within the playarea. Today, I spotted a bug where a tween’s callback wasn’t being called on complete, and wasn’t sure why this was happening.
My first guess was to look into whether there was some unintended garbage collection occurring. After a while, I realised this wasn’t the case and started to look a bit deeper into the commands that were being run at the time. It turned out that if you were speedy enough with the mouse, you could get multiple commands to fire at once, affecting the same target.
In the below scenario (a very simplified version of the issue I encountered) we have 2 tweens, both affecting the same target clip. One tweens the clip to a new X position, and the other tweens to a new Y. Both tweens have callbacks that affect the target in different ways:
private var testClip : MovieClip;
public function ExampleOfTweenOverwrite()
{
//Draw an initial green square on the test clip
testClip = new MovieClip();
testClip.graphics.beginFill(0x00FF00);
testClip.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, 50, 50);
testClip.graphics.endFill();
this.addChild(testClip);
doTweens();
}
private function doTweens() : void
{
//Move the test clip to (300,300)
TweenLite.to(testClip, 0.5, {x : 300, onComplete : firstTweenComplete});
TweenLite.to(testClip, 0.1, {y : 300, onComplete : secondTweenComplete});
}
public function firstTweenComplete() : void
{
//Rotate our test clip a bit
testClip.rotation = 15;
}
public function secondTweenComplete() : void
{
//Re-colour our test clip red
testClip.graphics.beginFill(0xFF0000);
testClip.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, 50, 50);
testClip.graphics.endFill();
}
So, the target clip starts off as a green square. We then want to tween it to the position 300,300. When it reaches its target x or y it will rotate slightly and/or redraw red.
Initially, I would have expected the green square in the above example to end up at 300,300, be drawn red, AND be rotated. This is not what happens.
In TweenLite, you can’t by default have two tweens associated to the same target. If you try to do this, the first tween gets overwritten. This means that in the above example, you end up with a red square, not rotated, at coords 0,300.
When you have many commands that might affect the same target, it’s important to know that the tweens can get overwritten. This is why in the code I was working on today, the callback was never getting called.
To fix this issue, I had to change the “overwrite” value of the tweens, such that neither could overwrite the other. The default value of this parameter is “ALL_IMMEDIATE” (1), which means that the overwrite is carried out immediately when any tween is created. If you want all tweens to be carried out without being overwritten, you can do so by updating this value to zero. This prevents any tween conflicts and doesn’t allow it to be overwritten.
So now, we update our doTweens function to be the following:
private function doTweens() : void
{
TweenLite.to(testClip, 0.5, {x : 300, onComplete : firstTweenComplete, overwrite : 0});
TweenLite.to(testClip, 0.1, {y : 300, onComplete : secondTweenComplete, overwrite : 0});
}
Note the new overwrite params.
Now when we run the code, we get the expected output. The square is moved to (300,300), it is re-coloured red, and is slightly rotated. 
If you have any issues with non-completing tweens, I recommend looking at the Greensock page for more info on the OverwriteManager and its possible settings.
Winter Moon
Originally uploaded by Cat Burton
I’ve been trying for a few evenings now to get a photo of the moon. On these early-winter, crisp, clear evenings, it looks fabulous!
I am both a Mac and a PC user. I like both OS-X and Windows 7. I tend to use both regularly but for different purposes: gaming on PC, photo editing etc on my Mac. By regularly using both, I often find features missing in BOTH operating systems. Most of these I can live without; others feel like I’ve had a limb removed and make it almost painful to use. Today, that missing feature was the availability of a Print Screen button equivalent on Mac OS-X.
I’ve tried a few times to figure out the not-so-intuitive key mappings on the mac so that I can do a single-button screenshot, rather than an awkward multi-button key combo. The main reason I wanted to be able to do this is for quick screenshots when testing Moshi at work.
Often, graphical glitches or bugs are only on screen for a fraction of a second. This means that entering a combo of Cmd+Shift+4, then space, then click is not entirely feasible…unless you have more than two hands and cat-like reflexes!
Today, I finally modified the keyboard shortcuts, so that I can hit one of the function keys at any point and it will save a screenshot to the desktop. Handy! Here’s how:
Hurrah! You can now take screenshots with merely two hands and standard human reflexes!
I’m getting to the point where I want a better telephoto lens. I’m also at the point where if I upgrade my lens, I’d want to upgrade the camera body too. I’m currently using a Canon 400D with a little entry level Sigma 70-300mm telephoto. After an initial glance online, the Canon 60D is what I was considering saving for. However if I’m upgrading the camera body and lens (and no doubt having to buy new batteries/cards), I don’t have to stick with Canon. The only other decent lens I have (which I do love) is the Canon 10-22mm, so at this point, I can switch easily. This is probably the one and only time I’ll switch brands.
So the question I now have is: Should I stick with Canon or make the switch to Nikon instead?
I see a lot of people using Nikons, and a lot using Canons. Now, what I’d like to know is if there’s a real, tangible difference. Is there one that’s definitely better? Is it all just a case of fanboy-ness a la the Mac vs PC debate, where the suitability depends on the person and their requirements?
I also wonder if the difference is based on the kind of photography? Perhaps one works better for portraits; one for landscapes and wildlife… I tend to enjoy many different kinds of photography (urban, landscapes, wildlife), although saying that, I don’t do any people/fashion photography.
If I were to upgrade my whole kit (to something of the level of the 60D), what would people recommend? Any suggestions/comments/guidance would be much appreciated!
I was reading BBC Wildlife magazine while on holiday in Scotland, and as it’s “Things to look for” for the month, it suggested fungi. Being surrounded by forests and woodlands, I thought it would make a fun case study. Fungi aren’t something I’d usually look out for, so it was nice to have something to try and find during the many hikes and walks.
Here are the ones I spotted:
Yesterday, I visited WWT London, over in the Barnes area of the city for the first time. I’d heard it was a lovely peaceful place with lots of wildlife, and so thought it a nice way to spend a relaxing Saturday with my camera. I was amazed to find that the place was much bigger than I expected, with plenty of different paths and hides. It’s also very, very quiet. Considering it’s located so close to the city, I was surprised that the only reminder of the location was the occasional plane flying overhead. Most of the time, all you could hear was trees rustling in the breeze and birds tweeting! The staff there were incredibly polite and friendly, and the onsite cafe does some lovely lunches! I ended up spending about 3 hours walking round, despite the bleak autumn weather, taking photos of all the wonderful wildlife: geese, a heron (which fled too quick to get a pic of), cranes, parakeets…
It was such a nice day that I’ve bought a year membership, which will give me plenty of opportunity to practice my wildlife/nature photography! Plus, £35 is a brilliant price for unlimited entry (each visit is ~£9 usually). Not only was that a good deal, but they refunded my entry cost for that day and I got a free book (worth £18) of British & European birds! That’ll be very handy for identifying species when I upload the photos to Flickr!
In Februrary, I’ll be attending a wildlife photography course there too, led by Iain Green. It’s going to be great!
Here are the first batch of photos from my day:
