the REAL italy

alrighty - dinner is over and it seems we are still here. i'll take this moment to tell you all about the camera disaster that could've ruined all of my photos. The one major difference between film and digital cameras is that the part of the camera that recieves light on a film camera is the film. this means that each time your camera advances a new frame of film comes out of the film canister which is lined with a soft fabric brush so as to remove any dust that may have gotten on it while it was in the film canister. A Digital camera has a permanent sensor called a CCD . This is a sensitive instrument that recieves the light images it see's while the shutter is open and translates them into digital information. If any dust gets on your CCD it will reveal itself in all your pictures. It's virtually impossible to have a perfectly clean CCD so often you have to remove a few specs later - but its not a big deal. The other day i tried to clean my mirror in my camera (a part of the camera that reflects what you see, into the eye piece) this sits just in front of the CCD. I guess while i was cleaning it a whole bunch of dust ended up on the CCD - this is something that you can only clean with special tools that i don't have.

I ended working with stan to phone a few camera shops to see if they were able to clean it, they all said no. Stan then left and i was left to call people on my own. I had to use my limited italian and pursuade someone to help me, well after many phone calls and hack job italian conversations i found a guy who could do it that evening. So, with the help of 'Jane' our GPS and Elmer, we went to the camera shop downtown and my camera was fixed within 10 minutes. take a look below at the before and after. ISNT THAT UNREAL?!!!

before:


after: