It’s a Pentax Optio W20 - a waterproof 7mp ultra-compact. Yep, waterproof.
Our criteria were (in order):
- Significantly smaller and lighter than current camera.
- Waterproof enough to survive the surf, wakeboarding and the snow.
- Good low light photos.
- No AA batteries.
- 6 megapixels or more.
I nearly bought a Fuji F20 because all the reviews say that takes excellent low-light photos but I’d have had to buy a $200+ underwater case (rated to 20m+) to meet #2. The W20 was definitely more agreeable to our budget. It’s only rated to 1.5m but that’s all we need.
Here’s a review and this guy uses his when he’s kayaking - check out the cool Sticky Pod camera mount that he uses on his kayak. Wonder if that’d work on a snowboard?
So far it’s been easy to set up. It even has a user-programmable button (the green one), so I’ve set that to go straight to the white balance menu then the ISO menu, which will be handy in different light situations provided that we remember to use it.
We’re looking forward to seeing some great action photos out of it.
Had a great day at Dad’s 60th on Saturday. Breakfast, lunch and dinner and the whole day with everyone. Some of our photos didn’t turn out very well but here are some that did.
We’re a bit disappointed that we didn’t get one of Mum and Dad, but I’m sure somebody did. When all those kids are running around the camera tends to follow them …..
The guy who wrote the article makes it sound easy. I bet it’s not!
Going White Around the Mountain
I’ve thought about doing the Australian Alps Walking Track once or twice but it’s unlikely that I’ll ever get around to it without something decent to motivate me.
At least I’m honest!
On April 15 I wrote about our decision to rip up the lower piece of decking in our garden. I’m happy to say that much progress has been made since then even though I haven’t written about it.
For a while there I wasn’t really happy with my own plans for the space (yes, I should have thought a bit harder about it *before* ripping the deck up) but I found that if I fiddled around placing redgum sleepers and rocks in weird places it helped me to understand what I definitely didn’t want. This, of course, narrowed things down considerably, and a few weeks ago I finally settled on something I thought would work.
Since then we’ve invested three or four days of hard labour and now we’re nearly done … just need another metre of sand ‘cos I didn’t order enough and then we can lay the bricks. Here are some pics.
Me thinking about it
Putting those rocks there helped to finalise things a bit
Starting to move the 1.5m3 of road base. Note the new wheelbarrow - Jaffa.
We had to back up the narrow path, lifting Jaffa up the steps.
Max can’t take a decent photo - where’s my head gone Maxy?
Just like raking a bunker
Nearly done
What it looked like 3 weeks ago
We’ll lay the bricks so that they lead out to the rest of the garden. They won’t be hard up against the sleepers, we’ll leave a 6 inch gap and fill it with fine gravel. We’re planning to plant the borders heavily so that you can’t see the edges anyway.
More photos and write-up in a few weeks when it’s all done.
The other week we sat down with a glass of wine each and talked about Muchacha. Every time we went wakeboarding or out for a cruise on the bay we had a great time but we’re fussy and we kept coming back to these “faults”, if you can call them that:
- the wake’s clean but not very big
- there are only four seats
- there’s not a lot of interior space
- the motor’s solid but it’s 27 years old
- it’s difficult to get back in the boat after a ski
- the uncarpeted floor can be slippery underfoot
- the towing cover is stuffed
Not huge problems at all, but they all contribute to the day’s experience so like I said we sat down and talked about whether or not to sell her and buy a bigger boat or keep her.
I did a bit of research regarding what you get for your money in the next price bracket but it quickly became clear that we’d have to spend more than $15k to get (say) a clean early 90s inboard. Not possible. For $8-10k we could get a clean late 80s outboard, but that’s not possible either.
So we woke up to ourselves and tried to answer the faults:
- the size of the wake can be enhanced with some weight
- other boats up to $20k only have one extra seat anyway
- interior space would be nice but isn’t really that big a deal - this isn’t the Freedom of the Seas, it’s a speedboat
- can’t do much about the motor except run it ’til it fades away
- we can add a ladder or a second step to make it easier to get back in ($5)
- we can install carpet ($300)
- we can buy a new cover ($500)
Also,
- She has a brand new spiffy trailer
- She’s in great condition
- She easily pulls out a 100kg wakeboarder
So the decision was made: she’s staying and she’s getting a makeover. We started it almost immediately by pulling out the seats so that we can fit carpet, cleaning the seats down with some special stuff, removing the steering wheel to fit one with less of a deep dish (gets in the way when sitting down), fitting a second step to get back in and servicing the motor.
In the next few weeks we’ll carpet her, touch up some paint chips and install a bilge pump. Then in Spring we’ll buy a proper towing cover and a couple of Fatsacs (for weight) and she’ll be tops! Long live Muchacha!
