After about 3 years of staying with the Sony, I recently upgraded to a Canon EOS 450D with a 24-105 lens. I bought the camera about 10 days or so back, had done a few trial runs and was all set for the Easter weekend. We'd originally planned a trip to Isle of Wight, but weather turned out to be a spoilsport, so we ended up changing our plans to a day trip to Leeds Castle instead. You can find enough and more information about Leeds Castle from the net, so I'm not going to write about the castle itself here - instead, let me get straight to the heart of the article - the snaps.

This article is the first in a long series of sessions about realising a working platform for Service Oriented Architecture - using Java and open source technologies. The motivation for this series came in three separate parts:

• Myths of SOA 
• Open source SOA 
• The next step in 'my own path'

I'll describe the above in detail first, and then get to the actual article.

For those of you who know me [in the recent years], you'll definitely have a smile on your face when reading this. You'll probably be thinking 'Hmm, what else will RS start his posts with?!'

I'm a fan of Apple products in general. I consider them very thought through and extremely well designed. The best description I have come across about Apple's products is the following quote from Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead':

'It was as if the buildings had sprung from the earth and from some living force, complete, unalterably right. Not a line seemed superfluous, not a needed plane was missing. The structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realised what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the simplicity.'

When I compare snaps taken by the Sony with those taken by a Canon, I somehow feel that the Canon's snaps are better - its just a gut feel - I am unable to quantify the why. Maybe it is because of the way the Sony captures reds and blues - I dont know. Everytime I decide to upgrade to a Canon, I take a set of snaps that convinces me otherwise - and I end up continuing with the Sony!

Given below is the second collection of macro-like shots - most of these were captured at the Regents Park, London (the yellow rose was as usual captured near my home). Please click on the images for a larger version.