Maybe I was expecting too much from this film, but boy was I disappointed :o(

The first 15 minutes is painfully slow, and the rest of the time isn’t much better. However, things do start to pick up, but the handheld camera work is vomit inducing.

To be fair, its an interesting way to shoot a film, but to be honest we’ve seen it before in “The Blair Witch Project” and this time isn’t much better. The monster was actually quite well done, but seems to shrink dramatically in size from being as big as a building, to being only about 3 times the height of a man at the end.

To describe this film as “Terrifying” is pure fantasy, and the secrecy surrounding the film has resulted in it being over-hyped by the lack of hype if that makes any sense.

The best way I can think of to describe it is a cross between Godzilla and Blair Witch Project.

If you want to see this, save yourself money and get it from Blockbuster when its released on DVD.

I know that J.J. Abrams of “Lost” fame was involved, but does “Bloody Great Monster appears from nowhere with no explanations” sound familiar?

Today, I attended the Sensor Cleaning workshop organised by EOS Magazine. I’ve been using a blower to get rid of dust, but compared to my 18 month old 400D, the New 40D was absolutely FILTHY.

This took place at the EOS Magazine HQ at Tackley in Oxfordshire, which is an absolutely beautiful Cotswold village with plenty to photograph in the immediate vicinity (I wish I worked here).

It turned out that this was actually mostly a seminar on how to clean your sensor, but it did a god job of reassuring me that the sensor, whilst fragile, isn’t THAT fragile. I came away having purchased a cleaning kit consisting of sensor brush, blower, and most importantly sensor swabs. When I got home, I used the brush, which didn’t remove all that much, as most of the muck on my sensor was grease, so the sensor swabs came out, and two swabs later, the sensor is significantly cleaner.

Its still not perfect, with a couple of persistant smears, but its one hell of an improvement on what it was.

If another of these demos is run, I’d wholeheartedly recommend it.

Two words describe this film “Bloody” & “Brilliant.”

I was a little sceptical about going to see a musical, but then I thought that Moulin Rouge was brilliant so I thought I’ve give it a go, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The combination of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton worked out brilliantly, and even the inclusion of Sacha Baron Cohen (which I dreaded) was well done and didn’t let the film down.  Alan Rickman plays a very good Judge Turpin, and there is even a cameo by Tony Head who congratulates Benjamin Barker at winning the competition.

The biggest surprise to me was that Johnny Depp can actually sing very well, I loved the performance he gave when crooning to his razors in “My Friends.”

Although Depp does a good cockney accent, I have to say that being a Pirates of the Carribbean fan, I kept expecting captain Jack Sparrow to pop up when he was talking.

I would highly recommend this film, its much more worthy of you time than Cloverfield.

I was a bit gutted when I got into Paddington, only to find that the Hammersmith & City, Circle & District lines were closed, that’ll teach me to check before I leave.

Anyway, that meant that I had a bit of a tedious journey down to Piccadilly Circus on the Bakerloo line, then onto the Piccadilly line to Hammersmith.  The bus to the Wetlands centre is the 283, and leaves regularly from the bus station, and takes you right to the front door.

The weather was great, clear skies, with just patchy clouds, but it was COLD.

The collections of captive birds in London aren’t as large as at Slimbridge, but I still had great fun trying to get a shot of a diving duck poised in mid air as it dives, unsuccessfully I might add.

There were however impressive flocks of Shoveler which were doing some kind of baitball thing that I’ve never seen before.  Lovely views of little grebes and the highlight of the day was seeing a great crested Grebe hunt and devour a small perch at close proximity near the Peacock Tower.  There were some good views of the very noisy Ring Necked Parakeets, but I finished off the day with excellent views of a snipe, thanks to the kind Canon Photographer who loaned me his 500mm lens and 2x convertor for a few minutes.

Trouble is that I now want one, but at £4k, its more than my car cost :o(

I hope to have my best images up on the website soon.