Stinkhorn

One of the advantages of my current situation is that I have had some more time to get on with dealing with my video back log. And here is a film of another of the fungi from my local woods, Stinkhorn, Phallus impudicus.

The Stinkhorn is quite unmistakable with its thick white stalk and black honeycombed cap, covered with a sticky foul smelling jelly. You will often smell the rotting flesh odour first. The jelly contains the spores and it uses flies to disperse the spores. The stalk rises from a jelly filled papery egg shaped sack. Quite common in deciduous woods in late summer and early autumn, quite inedible.

While on the subject of video, I understand that a couple of my videos on You Tube have gone Viral. When I heard that I thought it meant that the files were corrupted, but apparently it means that people are emailing them around. Work must be boring. Actually it just came to mind that if the bankers had spent more time on You Tube...

My new video camera is delighting me the more I get to use it. One of the problems with many is that the auto focus struggles to cope with obtaining a sharp focus on a flying bird. The manual focus normally being operated by pressing buttons is just not fast enough and often requires the videographer to move attention from the subject to the camera. However my pre owned Sony has a ring on the lens that makes it much better for wildlife photography. Another aspect that has pleased me is that the batteries that power the camera also fit the IR light. As these often are brand and model specific, it can cost an arm and a leg to buy the batteries. As well as adding weight to the equipment I have to lug around.

The other function that I am pleased to discover is that the camera can use a wired remote controller. This is something I have seen on top end professional cameras, and well out of my reach, but the controllers are obtainable. Again for wildlife filming this makes the camera ideal. While I did do some research before hand, even I could not have guessed that this really would be so suited to my needs.