Spider Holes?

When they first reported Saddam was found in a "spider hole", I heard a commentator say he had never heard the word, and Martha hadn't either, but those of us who were in Vietnam had no trouble at all in visualizing it immediately. Of course the news shows have pretty much changed it to "rat hole" now for the masses who hate rats to better understand, I guess.

The spider holes and tunnels like those in Cu-Chi were infamous to those of us in Vietnam in 1968. The VC could pop down into these invisible holes and hide without a trace, and Americans finding them could scarcely believe a man could exist in a hole that small. The false entrances to some of them were horrible traps with sharpened barbed bungee sticks waiting.

I laughed when I looked on the internet for a picture or reminder of this, because they have made a real tourist attraction out of some of the Spider holes and tunnels. Come to tropical Vietnam, a wonderland and see actual spider holes and tunnels! Travel agents take notice. This link shows a map where the tunnels come within a couple of miles of where I was stationed near Ton Son Nhut.



I can see the souvenir shop now: Reclining GI Joe, Hanoi Jane Barbies, ant farms to simulate the tunnels?

Digital Zoom

I had to replace the Fuji camera (2mp,no zoom) I have had for a few years because it croaked. It had been a great one for me because it was easily slipped in my pocket, and I consequently almost always carried it, which I would not have done if I had to have the tourist camera around my neck routine.

It just died, and the regional repair center wanted 150 min just to look at it. Wow! As a consequence, I got a chance to study the market to see what was what at this point in time. I was either going to get (a) the best small one available out there with digital zoom that I could afford, or (b) the cheapest acceptable straight replacement I could get to replace my old one, exept add optical zoom.

I ended up getting (b) for budget reasons, (I cheaped out on Ebay, but got a great camera cheaper than a repair) but I had narrowed down high-end (a) quite a bit due to some new ideas. See below.

Sony has FINALLY, without as much fanfare on their part or reviewers, put some sense into DIGITAL ZOOM.

They have "Smart Zoom" that revolutionizes the digital and optical zoom. If they haven't patented it somehow, I predict all digital cameras will work this way soon, like they should have all along.

Regular digital zoom is no zoom at all. I will illustrate:

1. Suppose a whole house appears in your viewfinder, and you take a digital picture 1000 pixels across.
Then you use digital zoom to zoom in on the doorway, 300 pixels across.
That's all you get! A 300 pixel image, wasting all the other pixels.
It is as if you took the big picture and cropped off the fringe after you got it in the computer.
And that's what most people do, not using the digital zoom feature at all.

Enter "smart Zoom"

Simplified, this method can give you a zoomed image of the doorway packing all of the 1024 pixels into it, in reality expanding the cropped image area to fit the larger space instead of trimming off unwanted fringe.

The way Sony has implemented it, you need to have one resolution setting level above your present one to make this happen. If you have a 3mp camera, smart zoom happens at 2mp using the available ram from the higher res for the work. However, it is seamless between digital and optical - you don't have to choose - it uses the most available pixels for your picture possible based on the max setting you choose.

Talk about smart! That is the way I thought they worked when I first looked into cameras, and now, it is available, at least.

Everybody has different needs in cameras, but what was my choice for (a)?
These were MY criteria:
1. pocket sized
2. name brand
3. optical zoom
4. innovative, state of the art.
5. Best available without having features that run the price up without corresponding benefit.

Best camera available: Sony Cyber Shot DSC-V1 5.0 Mega Pixel Digital Camera (cheapest internet price 429)