More about Captain Future

Further on to my Big Bang Theory post last nightthis morning, I wanted to talk a bit more about the Tomei Animation TV series from the late 70s (in Germany it was first shown in '80). For me, it was obligatory summer TV watching and it could be ever so nice outside but the neighbours' kid and I would usually meet at his (their TV was bigger and he also had an Atari 2600 and other cool electronic toys) to watch it and if we weren't watching it, we would pretend-play it (like normal kids would play Cowboys&Indians) - my first foray into freeform roleplaying without really knowing what that was ;o).

The European versions are also unique in that it had their own soundtrack. For reasons unknown, both dialogue and music were on the same track in the Japanese original so Christian Bruhn wrote a completely new score for the German version to which some people also contribute part the success of the series as it was much more appropriate to Western ears than the J-Pop original. I have this on CD and have even played tracks from it at various events.

It had various inaccuracies due to incorrect translation and transcription from the Japanese original (like Joan's last name which is "Randall" in the pulps but was transcribed as "Landor" and the constant confusion of "world" and "planet" and other terms) but it was a lot of fun for early teen me. While the pulps are set in our solar system, the series' verse was much larger and e.g. Megara was a very distant planet so they had to modify the Comet with a new fancy universe and time bending drive to be able to get there.

Photo trickery on the BBC

Many of you will by now have seen the photo of the D12 on this In Pictures page but I can't get my head around it. At first look, it looks like a fantastic photo but the more I look at it, the more it's not. The 8 is wrong, the angles are wrong, the 7 can't really cast a shadow (at least not without the opposite 6 casting one as well).

Dice don't look like that. As I don't have a direct reference shot, I'm going to try and set this up tomorrow evening or sometime over the weekend to see if I can recreate it. The setup is simple enough with a snooted flashgun.

Shame, really, because the other shots in that series are brilliant.

I'm off to Midsummer Common in a bit

to celebrate the grand tradition of British terrorism. Let's hope the weather holds because I have my camera with me.

That was quite good

Wandered from work to Midsummer Common, had a look around the fun fair and then found a reasonable spot to take photos from. First I thought I was a bit too close but the stuff didn't go that high so if I'd had stayed further behind, I would only have been able to capture the high up bursts. 28mm on an FX sensor wasn't wide enough to get the big bursts, unfortunately. Win some, lose some, I guess. There were some good layered effects and I especially liked the coloured moving bursts that were reminscent of surface-to-air missiles/artillery in arcade shooters.
I think of the 700 shots, about 20 might make it. Having a 16GB CF card and a camera that can shoot 8x bursts in RAW is a little bit too practical in these cases, so sorting those will take a while but I should be able to put up a few later.
Far too many people around the fair to be comfortable for me (or to take interesting people pictures) so I wandered over to i_am_toast's for a chat and a glass of utterly fantastic mulled wine. Thank you!
Managed to miss the bus from Mitcham's Corner so I walked home which wasn't bad

[Photo] Bonfire Night 09

  

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