I want a cool camera that is smallish and shoots good. I’ve narrowed things down to 2. The first is the gold standard for prosumer compacts, the Panasonic LX-3. The second is its latest challenger, the Canon S90. Bear in mind the former is over a year old. The latter came out in August this year.

Looks wise, the S90 wins for me. Clean, cute, simple, old schoolish and smaller. The LX-3 though, you can attach the Ricoh LC 1 lens cover and suddenly, it becomes super awesome. Check out the video!

Performance wise, they’re both prosumer compacts. Both come with exceptionally bright and fast lenses that go down to f2.0. The LX-3 comes with a super wide angle, 24mm lens. Which makes it very unique. The S90 though, has greater range, 28-105mm compared to 24-60mm on the LX-3. The S90’s sensor is slightly smaller than the LX-3’s but I’ll assume the difference is negligible for my purposes. Apparently, the S90 reduces more noise but loses detail whilst the LX-3 is noisier but more detailed. Macro mode wise, which is the main reason why I would want a new camera, the LX-3 wins hands down with its 1cm macro focusing. That’s just insane. The S90 is 5cm in comparison. The S90 comes with 3.8x optical versus the LX-3’s 2.5x zoom. But I don’t think it really bothers me. I want to shoot up close, not from faraway and then zoom in.

The only reason why I think the Canon would be good is because it also comes with a control ring. In fact, it’s got 2 control rings, one customizable to whatever you want. Kinda like a DSLR, which you can set to make it change various functions, from aperture to focus to ISO etc. Pretty nifty, even if it smells like a gimmick.

I’m still leaning towards the LX-3. Price wise, at the moment, they’re pretty similar. I reckon the LX-3 would cost me a little bit less after I fix a Ricoh LC1 on it and ultimately, it seems more like the camera that I want for my purposes, even if I think the Canon looks much better. It’s also got a hot shoe and you can get a super wide macro lens for it. Which seems to have made my mind up I guess. God, am I actually sacrificing form for function? Well, I suppose I could get the Leica D-Lux 4, which is basically slightly improved over the LX-3, just in a much sleeker and sexier body. It also fits the Ricoh thingy! HAHAHA, best of both worlds! Pity, it’s about $400 more than the other 2!

No one died I think but even at home, I can feel this dustyness in the air and my castle’s all closed up as well. There’s been this immense dust storm in Sydney that’s blanketed the city in a red haze. It’s like someone exploded Uluru or summat. Check these beautiful if eerie pictures from the Sydney Morning Herald’s online edition. IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!

So how come I watched a pseudo post apocalyptic film with a red overcast filter? OMG! I can tellz da futur!

BoO has this new photoshoot for their F/W 2009 collection with Jason Schwartzmann hamming it up as a Godard character.

Leica introduces the new M9, the first of its size to come with a full frame sensor, available at like USD$7000 or something ridiculous like that. A joint release is the X1, far more affordable at a measly USD$2000 or so. Alternatively, buy the new Panasonic GF1 for USD$900! Looks shit tho.

Pics stoled from Gizmodos.

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I somehow came across this image. You can see a guy wearing a jacket that has New Order, Bauhaus (the band) and OMD patches on it. There’s also a Factory Records logo in the background and I’m pretty sure that’s the cover to Joy Division’s Closer on the left.

I somehow was completely clueless that it was an image from a Raf Simons book. Or that he had full access to Peter Saville’s work for his AW 03/04 collection.

I have not posted someone else’s blog here before but this one deserves it. Dessert First (a notion I can easily concur with) is Pastrygirl’s blog about everything sweet. Great writing combines well with some awesome photography as well as some seriously tasty lookin’ treats. Some of the stuff she does herself, as exemplified below.

Black Sesame Panna Cotta with Five Spice Peanut Brittle

8/8/8 was a big day for China, as it shrugged aside criticisms about its human rights records and the recent Tibetan crisis and the Szechuan earthquake. That was the day that everyone put aside their misgivings and concentrated on the sporting spectacle that is the Olympics. China, on their part, played up to expectations, with their ambitious building projects, matched by an elaborate opening ceremony.

The following pictures are testament to that.

Sydneysider Adam Pretty with a pretty shot for gettyimages.

Joe Klamar for AFP.

Mike Hewitt for gettyimages.

Streeter Lecka for gettyimages.

Ceremony pics robbed off The Big Picture.

This I got off the back of a reader’s digest. Michael Kai is a Melbourne based photographer who used to hail from Germany. One of his photo series involves manipulating photographs to force them into a 2D, isometric sort of world. A touch Escher-esque but wholly modern in its approach.

On all the fashion forums, there’s always the what are you wearing today thread, where you post your own fits and check out everybody else’s. Lookbook.nu is all about encapsulating that idea and making it in a clean, searchable index sort of format, where registrants can log in and rep people. Another nice feature is the ability to link the items in your fit in a clean manner on the pic itself.

Its a pretty good resource/style guide and I’d say a lot of the fits are quite good. Most people on the site seem pretty fashionable but you can easily pick out the gems. Some of the photography is excellent and also most importantly, at the end of the day, there’s some hot chicks there hehehe.