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No panic, I am doing just fine. I simply happened to stumble upon two quite contrary stories during my daily internet news reading. First, the “bad news”:

It should not be news that you better not switch off your brains when bidding on eBay auctions. Not all offers are truly credible or cheaper than elsewhere. There are even people who form seller organizations in order to push their prices higher, which borders on illegal activities. Most shocking are statements such as “It’s no fraud because there is no law against it in Germany.” Still, such companies have their headquarters in countries like the Dominican Republic. One German example can be found at xxlsell.com. I will definitely continue to look for good deals on eBay, but I will also be more cautious.

Now for the “good news”:

This little ball contains a camera which can shoot unusual pictures in mid-flight. The concept is called satuGO – See Aim Throw captUre & GO. It was dreamt up by two young Danish designers who are still looking for a company which will actually produce this. satuGO is nothing you really need, but here are two young people who try to build a company with creativity, skill, and humor. And one which is not based on questionable methods such as mentioned above. The quality of the product photos alone speaks volumes. One can only wish them success!

A couple of days ago, I noticed a so-called Hot Pixel on some of my pictures. This is a faulty pixel in the camera sensor. In the magnification you can cleary see that there is something wrong, especially in the blue channel (from left: RGB composite, Red, Blue, and Green channels). It is also obvious that the final image is produced by way of interpolation from the sensor data, which means that the color values of each sensor pixel are partially spread to the surrounding pixels. This is rooted in the way the commonly used Bayer sensor is constructed, which I will not explain here (see, for example, Wikipedia).

At any rate, this is not a big problem since there is a Nikon Service Center here in Dresden which can solve the problem by re-programming the camera’s firmware. The hot pixel is “put out,” so to speak, and the missing information will from then on be gathered from the surrounding pixels. It is perfectly normal for a brand new sensor to have dead pixels, they are just programmed out right there in the factory.

Amateurs worry about equipment. Professionals worry about money. Masters worry about light.

According to this quote I am still an amateur, since I still worried about my camera or, rather, my decision for the Nikon D50, despite my earlier blog entry on this topic which I wrote about a month ago. Until today.

Today I went to a big photo store and had another close look at the “competition,” the Canon EOS 350D (called Digital Rebel XT in the U.S.). I finally came to the conclusion that I had indeed made the right choice and that everything is fine the way it is. What a great feeling! No matter for which of the two you decide, you cannot really go wrong. However, I personally prefer the Nikon over the Canon in terms of handling, finish and usability, even though the Canon has a more complete feature set in some areas. In any case, above all of this one should not forget to take pictures once in a while … some of which I will show on this site in the future.

(Camera pictures based on material © 2005 dpreview.com)

I have had a certain borrowed DVD laying around for at least six months now, “Chocolat” to be precise. Tonight I finally watched it, despite (or because of?) my exam preparation stress. The subject interested me, I like chocolate very much. The movie has a brilliant cast, displays an extraordinary level of craftsmanship and offers beautiful images, besides asking important questions. However, I also want to point to a basic problem. First a brief overview: A woman, Vianne, and her daughter move to a conservative, catholic French village, where she opens a chocolaterie during lent (season of fasting). She also does not attend church, where the mayor greets each and every churchgoer individually. Vianne’s freedom (or rebellion?) is a provocation for the mayor, and when a traveling group of gipsies reaches the village the conflict climaxes.

So, basically it’s about religion and fasting, self-control and enjoying life. Later, fundamental values of society are addressed and questioned. It is exactly this questioning of values that can only be the beginning of a deeper dealing with these issues, to which I want to give a small contribution here. Take, for example, fasting: What is the motive that causes someone to fast? Is it tradition year after year, or the desire to have less weight, or voluntary surrender of rights in order to show God how earnest we are in our request? I see a problem where many words have gotten such a negative meaning now that their original intent has almost vanished. For instance, self-control sounds to our ears like renunciation and prudishness, while Galations 5:23 calls it a fruit of the Holy Spirit, along with such desirable things as love, joy, and faithfulness.

I was particularly touched by the way Vianne cared about the unaddressed problems of her neighbors and tried to solve them with both empathy and resolve. Luc, the son of the mayor’s secretary, very much reminded me of myself in the way he drew pictures so quietly by himself while not really being sure of his abilities. Vianne’s drivenness, which she inherited from her Mayan mother, struck me as strange at first, but was resolved quite nicely in the end (which I will not describe here, of course).

At some point, the gipsies arrive in the village, or rather outside the village, since they stay on their boats at the river bank. The mayor feels his village in danger and has the following leaflet distributed:

Boycott Immorality! Our beloved village rests upon a solid foundation of FAMILY, CHURCH, and COMMUNITY. To keep Lansquenet safe and tranquil, we must close our doors to outsiders whose only tradition is SELF-GRATIFICATION, whose only creed is godlessness, and whose only possible effect is the moral contamination of our village. WE MUST GIVE THESE OUTSIDERS NO QUARTER! We must make them unwelcome in our homes, on our streets, and in our places of business. Thank you for your cooperation. Lansquenet Town Council

While the movie attacks the xenophobic reaction and (allegedly) old-fashioned morals of the villagers, it simultaneously drags good and fundamental values down to the ground. What is so bad about having family, church and community as a foundation? (Even the word “fundamental” is almost taboo today due to the “fundamentalists.”) And vice versa: What is so good about immoral behavior? Of course, the territorial attitude of Lansquenet’s mayor is horrible and also discredits the good values he is identified with. (Unfortunately, many Christians react the same way when they happen to be confronted with “the world;” see 1. Corinthians 5:9ff.) Here the movie does not differentiate enough.

Similar observations can be made of the scene where the violent café owner, after the mayor has tried to re-educate him, asks his wife for forgiveness with the words: “God has made me a new man!” This, of course, is not true, since a) it was the mayor and not God, and b) the change involved only the exterior, not the inner man. Religion tries to change man from the outside to the inside through rules and rituals, but genuine life changes begin in the heart – with repentance, which is confession of one’s own sins and asking for forgiveness – and will then become visible on the outside as well. (See for instance Mark 7:1–23.)

There is much more to write, but I will call it a day. Which leaves me to say that I was especially impressed by the acting of Judi Bench and Alfred Molina. And that the beautiful village’s real name is Flavigny sur Ozerain, should you happen to be in the area.