Crop Corner

The pixel war is becoming more and more confusing. Ian Andrews sheds some light on the difference between image sensors and what you can expect from each. Over the past few years there has been a myriad of advances in digital camera sensor technology. New advances are still being announced at regular intervals. On top of that, sensor sizes from different manufactures vary from absolutely tiny through to offerings for medium-format backs and more, with pixel counts seeming to accelerate weekly. Each manufacturer will supply you with reams of blurb explaining why their's is better than the rest, why more is better, why bigger is better, etc. Here, we present a layman's overview of the types available and the advantages and disadvantages of each type to help you choose.

Last month I said that the weather did not seem to know what it wanted to do and in the intervening weeks it has still not made up it's mind. Despite this, the BBC springwatch website has continued to record the onset of spring with a vengeance. The Hawthorn, traditionally a perennial shrub that flowers in May, hence its colloquial name May Bush, had flowered almost throughout the UK before the month started! By May, most of the breeding bird varieties will have made their nests and will either be sitting on eggs or feeding their young. This means frantic activity from at least one, and often both parents. There are, of course exceptions to this, where one parent is left to fend on their own or the ubiquitous cuckoo who does nothing at all to rear it's young. You will still hear its call though you will seldom see it.

As mentioned in my last two columns, I am fast becoming a fan of Googles new photo editing and organizing software Picasa. Picasa 2 (available for free at http://google.picasa.com ) will help you quickly locate, organize, edit, and share every all of the pictures on your Windows PC. (Sorry Mac users, its still not for you yet.) As you may recall from my previous columns, when you open the Picasa program it automatically searches your hard drive for pictures and sorts them by date into collections and folders. You can, of course, rearrange and rename these collections and folders to make your own logical groupings if desired.