The price of Canon lenses

I'll be visiting the US again in a month or so - a good opportunity to do some photography shopping. I've made a list of a subset of EF-lenses by Canon and looked up the prices at local webshop verkkokauppa.com, the German ac-foto.com, and compared these to bhphotovideo.com. The conclusion from the histogram below is something I sort of knew beforehand, but I'm still a bit shocked by how big the price difference is.

Compared to Finland, it's (10 +/- 7) % cheaper to buy your lenses from Germany. And it's a huge (38 +/- 9) % cheaper to get them from the US! (I've used the current dollar/euro rate of 1.3)

(click image above to download a pdf)

Check this out: EF-135 f/2.8 SoftFocus, 71% cheaper in the US, or look at the EF-28/2.8, 63 % cheaper!

disclaimer: this is not the complete set of EF-lenses, prices checked from the corresponding websites 26.1.2009, your mileage may vary.

Heater fix: SSR replaced

The heating elements on this heater just kept on heating and heating independent of the temperature. I first checked the thermocouple that measures temperature - but that seemed OK, so the next thing I suspected was the solid-state relay that turns on/off the heating. Turns out this initial guess was right, and I was lucky we had a replacement on the shelf, so now the heater works again. The picture above shows the broken SSR on the right.

New SSR in place.

Wave goodbye, wish me well

FIN-43, my current Noux-design IOM, is packed and ready for shipping to its new owner next week. I made a holder for the bulb from tube-clamps, and disassmbled the rigs today. Everything fits nicely into my 110x30x26 cm boat box.

The plan for 2009 is to cnc-mill plugs and make moulds for a variant of Pikanto, Graham Bantock's latest design. It's important to use time and effort on good design and good moulds. I want the boat and the components to come out of the moulds almost ready to use. Keep it simple stupid. CAD-design time and time on the cnc-mill is cheap, hours spent moulding and hand-building are expensive (for me anyway). More about that later. It also looks like we will be milling a new set of bulb, fin, and rudder moulds in December-January. We're happy to mill moulds for other people too, but most people don't answer the second email where I tell them a fin-mould costs 500 euros (which we think is reasonable).

Thinkpad T40p

Verkkokauppa.com:s 199 euro offer for a 2-year-old refurbished Thinkpad T40p proved irresistible, and I was lucky to pick one up after queuing outside for 35 minutes. The place opens at 9, I arrived around 8:55, but some people had apparently been outside the doors waiting already at 7:30! The 19 euro mobile phones sold out before I made it inside.

A quick look inside, tightening some loose bolts, and dusting it off with compressed air. Should make a nice second laptop (autoguiding for astrophotography, chart-plotter on a boat, or similar)

IOM sail camera videos

Looks like the mast bends to leeward at the middle, while the top of the mast stays in place. I don't think that's a good thing. Should try lower shroud attachment point and maybe shorter spreaders.

Remember to turn up the sound so you hear the wind, water, and the RMG winch! Also try these in higher quality by going to youtube and clicking "watch in high quality".

Here's how the camera looks on the foredeck: