One of the neatest features of the new Nikon D90 is the ability to capture up to 5 minutes of 720p video. When we were planning our trip to China and selecting our equipment, we ultimately chose the Sony Z1U HDV videocamera. One of the limitations with the Z1U is the lack of interchangeable lenses. While there are expensive options to attach film and digital camera lenses to the Z1U, they are all bulky and difficult to work with. Since most of our clips are under 5 minutes in length, I wonder how things would have been different had we had the D90 with us during filming. The large sensor size and the ability to get shallow depth of field would have been very useful for certain shots.

Rob Galbraith notes that the camera can shoot a maximum of 5 minutes before needing to cool off. I wonder if it could last one of our all-day film shoots. Except for the interviews with the scholars, we rarely shot for longer than a couple of minutes for each take.

Of course, we would have to have recorded audio separately, but I’m just dreaming at this point. It’s already begun, but I envision the next few years will see further blurring of the lines between videography and photography.

Finally, one of the other cool things about the Nikon D90 is the inclusion of built-in Eye-Fi support. I helped design and build Eye-Fi’s corporate website. They have a great product to help get your photos off the camera using Wi-Fi.

Nineteen years ago, when I was just 14 years old, I ran the San Dieguito Half-Marathon in a time of 1:43, which translates to a 7:51/mile. I remember the weather was rainy and cold… I fell shivering into my Dad’s arms at the end of the race! Until yesterday, that was the first and last half-marathon.

On Sunday morning, inspired by all of these fantastic Olympic performances we’ve been watching in Beijing, Rae and I completed our own self-supported half-marathon. We ran our normal neighborhood route, to Wolfe Road in Cupertino, back to the house, and again our neighborhood route. Going at a fairly leisurely pace in perfect running weather, we completed the run in 2:04, or just under 10 minutes per mile. We stopped twice at the house to resupply our water bottles and were delayed at stop lights just a few times, bringing our total time out running to about 2:12.

I’m pretty happy with our performance, seeing that our longest run to-date this year has been 6-7 miles. Normally, we just do our 3-mile neighborhood run, so it was definitely a stretch to go 13.1 miles. The actual run went by a lot more quickly than I remember, but that’s probably because I had someone to talk to. That said, my legs today are a bit sore, so I won’t be running consecutive half-marathons any time soon!

I’m off to WordCamp 2008 in San Francisco tomorrow. Should be good to meet up with the crew from Automattic and other WordPress users and developers.

The August meeting for the Camera Owners of the Bay Area (COBA) user group will be held on Wednesday, August 13, 2008, in Cordura Hall 100 at Stanford University from 7:30-10:00 pm.

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This couple took their passion for Star Wars to the next level. And, I thought our Jabba the Hutt wedding cake was unique:

I’m at iPhoneDevCamp2 in San Francisco this weekend.