February 24, 2012
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Camera Review: Beth’s ‘Canon Future-shot XL99′
Seeing Beth (Seedsower)’s latest post was ‘the geranium that finally broke my camel’s back.’ But in a good way. I mean, am I the only one who noticed that she has pictures from the Future!!? In her words: “This is what it will look like six months from now.” or variations on that theme. Clearly, she has been discretely mum for a while now on an amazing piece of photographic gear, and I had to get my hands on it.
A quick email, and she, being the kind of sweetheart only Atilla the Hun wouldn’t love, mailed it to me..um…tomorrow, and it arrived yesterday(!) Something with neutrinos, don’t ask how it’s done.
We’ll get to the gadget, which I’ve done nothing but play with since opening the package, in a second.
But first, here are the two photos from her site which got my attention, just as a reminder.
Note the time-stamps(!!) A dead giveaway, but somehow no one else caught it.
OK, the camera itself is quite heavy; as befits a device containing, in Canon’s words ‘proprietary electro-mechanical fixtures’, and about which they studiously refuse to comment. Quantum wave-function extrapolation without collapse is my guess, but who cares? Let’s take it for a spin already:
Aside from the standard F-Stop, ASA, and the like, the dial which stands out in its novelty on the rear of the camera is labeled simply ‘TIME’. and no, it doesn’t control time-exposures. It sets the TIME of the subject(!!) The middle detent is marked ‘Present’ and graduations in both directions are labeled ‘one hour’, one day’, one week’, one month’… all the way to, I suppose, 1000 years, although I’m scared to look.
And so after a couple hours in my garden, shooting plants with the setting on ’2 months in the Future’, seeing which ones will do well: peanuts, purple cabbage, azeleas (didn’t know they had such purty flowers), and which are predetermined to die (if I trust Canon): popcorn, eggplants (some wilt I couldn’t have predicted), and my precious tomatoes (might as well stop watering ‘em right now I guess), I did, finally, what anyone would do with a toy like this: shoot myself.
Yes, with trembling hands I went for the big prize; set the dial to 30 years from now.
As you can see from what the Manual calls ‘Now ‘n Later Pair’s, this is Big News! Ima gonna be around for awhile, turns out. And just when I’d been putting my albums in boxes with people’s names on ‘em. ‘Buy yer own records, suckers!’ I couldn’t stop screaming, till one of my neighbors poked his ugly head around the corner. But I was ready; shot a quick candid, still on ‘plus 30yrs’, then told him to ‘go play in traffic.’, something like that.
And sure enough, the picture shows him wheeling away in a dilapidated chair, bald, shirt hanging out, plus his house in the background looks like it hasn’t been painted since, oh, 2012.
I do have to send the baby back tomorrow, so Beth will get it yesterday(?) But it’s been an amazing day. Oh and I see that there’ll be a ton of little chicks in the hen-house starting this June. Didn’t count ‘em though. You’re not supposed to do that till they hatch.
Thanks, Beth @seedsower, I owe you one.
Comments (37)
A wonderful new take on the time machine!
Perhaps you can take a picture of your blog in the future, when the rec button is working, so I can rec this.
I assume before you send it back tomorrow/yesterday, you will photograph next year’s stock market quotes. This is the sine qua non of time travel yarns. Just tune the TV to a financial show, right? Then get yourself a yacht catalog.
I see your black eye will have healed by the time you’re 90. The patina is interesting, but according to wikipedia, it preserves the metal underneath, which may explain your extraordinarily good state of preservation.
@slmret - Yes, it’s great news for humanity, but a little scary.
@we_deny_everything - Of course. Done that. I can only advise you to sell everything before the War. Get into gold before November. And you didn’t hear it here.
@doahsdeer - Thanks, didn’t know it wasn’t working, not that I can fix it. But with ‘Beth’ in the title, it’ll probably migrate to that Page where all that fits to print dwells, on its own. Oy
@Roadkill_Spatula - What surprises me is how much I’ll look like Samuel Solberg, my gr-gr-grandfather, who died in 1901. Dead ringer, actually
@seedsower - You are about as much fun to please as anyone I’ve yet met. Thanks so much for letting me use your toy, Beth:)
@jsolberg - They don’t always break the mold. There’s big money in replicas.
Nothing gets past you!
I love this and you,thanks for making my day.
I had to laugh at your conclusion for the tomatoes.
@jsolberg - I hope everyone reads that comment with a clean mind…lol
@Roadkill_Spatula - Money… assuming we’ll need it for long. “2093.avi just shows a bunch of apes gawking at a toppled Statue of Liberty somewhere. I couldn’t watch the whole thing.
Mein Gott, yer ugly, but I’d vote fer yer.
I took one look at you
That’s all I meant to do
and then my heart stood still.
Fascinating potentials here. Snap a page to see how the bible evolves, or laws, horse races, infants (Naw, let’s try again, he’s wearing a dentist’s smock and looks a little, well, Spanish, if you get my drift.) etc.
I understand that people wanting to check themselves for genital sores next month is what triggered the search for the technology but the ad campaign for the application was buried by Big Oil who didn’t want the Greenpeacers taking snaps of their factories.
Also, you may want to ask the doc to lower the dose on the Bo-tox when the time comes.
Hehe! But your complexion looks radically pale, almost grave like… and you know the nails and beard continue to grow post mortem… so I wouldn’t count it a lucky photo. As for the chickens, I’m pretty sure the guy saying not to count them before they were hatched didn’t have a spiffy camera!
awesome post!
LOL hm can we use that wonderful time machine of Beth to have our meeting in a cell?
I’m not sure if that happened or it’s to happen.
This will work perfectly with Adobe’s release of FutureShop™ which will allow future-photags to alter the inevitable ahead of time with only a few clicks of the mouse.
I have a rebel. I’m not super into photography, but it works for me. I’d recommend it.
@twoberry - Yeah, I have that effect on folks. Working on it…
I have to agree with gnostic….looks as though you’re going to have a little work done in the future…..
@gnostic1 - All good points, worthy of deeper rumination. The spin-offs for MRI and all spectra of astronomical observation are awesome. No more looking out into the past. That’s so ‘yesterday’
@Kellsbella - I dunno. Lose the beard worked for Mel. Guess my goal is to be 90 but don’t look a day over 80.
@justfinethanku - many Thanks. Since you, from my brief visit, seem to have a good grasp of ‘awesome’ yourself. How I could not have ever seen your site is something I’ll need a couple slices of toast over which to ponder. Maybe even three.
@murisopsis - I’ll live with it, as they say. The trick I didn’t mention is to hold the shutter half-depressed and at the same time slowly turn the TIME dial. Incredible time-lapses; I watched my neighbor put on 60 pounds, lose his hair, and finally, disappear southbound. So to speak.
Everything past 2100 is black-screen though. Not sure if that’s a bug, or if, you know, bad stuff’s gonna happen, Oy.
@GingerAvenger - I had a Rebel once. Got tired of having to photo-shop out all the Confederate flags it inserts into every picture. Plus, my eyes go better with blue than gray.
Happy you stopped by/js
@xXxlovelylollipop - I can only dream about it, then pinch myself to wake up when it gets, you know, too ‘mushy’:)
@dirtbubble - I’m sure Canon and Adobe are lobbing steel balls and mud at each other as we speak. canon’s ‘Fodder’ battles Adobe’s ‘Mudder’. Least I’ll live to see how it turns out.
Ha ha ha! I loved this!
You didn’t format the card, did you? I forgot to transfer the Dealey Plaza pics to my hard drive.
@MelFamy - So sorry, I had to give it back. Now I can’t even be “My brother’s Zapruder” as had been prophesied. Damn.
So 30 years from now, you will be a bearded albino? Interesting, very interesting …
@lily_scarlet - I think, in toto, it’s better than being dead. I have said, on numerous humorous occasions:
Well I’ll be an Albanian Albino!; Be careful what you wish for.
Haha! That’s a funny story.
@beowulf222 - Great to hear. Fictional, sadly, of course, as is anything, categorically, which threatens Einstein’s continuum. Gee that’s a lot of commas.
Nice to have you stop by, friend