Silva sighting compass

Phil Cook said:

Here's the original (at a smaller size)
http://www.p-t-cook.freeserve.co.uk/temp/orig0104.jpg

Ta. Interesting how the processed version looks more like how I imagine
the reality would have looked.

Quoted message said:

IIRC After a fairly standard RAW conversion I used levels on the sky
(using a quickmask) to make it more moody then applied a contrast mask
(about 60% blur radius 72 pix on the 8Mpix original) then flattened
the layers and boosted overall contrast a little.

Ooh! Luvverly! That's the kind of processing that gets the adrenalin
going! None of that wimpy auto-levels nonsense!

Quoted message said:

Knowing exactly where it was taken and looknig at the map in Ozi using
the line tool actually.

Yes, the line tool is handy for that.

Quoted message said:

Plundering the EXIF tags reveals

1/80s at F7.1 (anti-shake on)

Cool. Is the Minolta the only 8MP digicam with anti-shake?

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, Gordon
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Phil Cook <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Still, it alows me to figure out what the hills are in the background
of this shot I took on last Thursday.

http://www.p-t-cook.freeserve.co.uk/temp/PICT0104.jpg (a bit big 180k)

Looking from the Doctor's Gate path down Shelf Brook towards Shire
Hill (Glossop is hidden behind it) with Harrop Edge and
Hollingworthhall Moor on the right.

We were up there having a stroll around a couple of weeks ago.
I have one planned from Mill Brook Visitor centre (Stalybridge) over
Hollingworthall Moor some time soon.

I regularly get up the Brushes valley and onto the moor (or Harridge
Pike - or both if I 'm feeling greedy) while my son swims with a club at
Copley.

--

Dominic Sexton
http://www.dscs.demon.co.uk/

Paul Saunders said:

Phil Cook said:

Here's the original (at a smaller size)
http://www.p-t-cook.freeserve.co.uk/temp/orig0104.jpg

Ta. Interesting how the processed version looks more like how I imagine
the reality would have looked.

That's the whole point isn't it? To express how the scene looked in
the processed version. There was a hole in the cloud floating about.
It was illuminating Shire Hill and the various ridges. Getting a good
shot depended on being in the right place at the right time...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

IIRC After a fairly standard RAW conversion I used levels on the sky
(using a quickmask) to make it more moody then applied a contrast mask
(about 60% blur radius 72 pix on the 8Mpix original) then flattened
the layers and boosted overall contrast a little.

Ooh! Luvverly! That's the kind of processing that gets the adrenalin
going! None of that wimpy auto-levels nonsense!

Auto? <fx spit>

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Knowing exactly where it was taken and looknig at the map in Ozi using
the line tool actually.

Yes, the line tool is handy for that.

Quoted message said:

Plundering the EXIF tags reveals

1/80s at F7.1 (anti-shake on)

Cool. Is the Minolta the only 8MP digicam with anti-shake?

Yes Minolta are the only ones to put AS in the camera body, shortly to
be available in the D7 whatever DSLR. The AS moves the sensor about to
compensate for your movements.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

Phil Cook said:

That's the whole point isn't it? To express how the scene looked in
the processed version.

Yep. Or how you perceived it to look. Strictly speaking no photo truly
looks like reality.

Quoted message said:

Yes Minolta are the only ones to put AS in the camera body, shortly to
be available in the D7 whatever DSLR. The AS moves the sensor about to
compensate for your movements.

How much is the Minolta 8MP digicam now? I'd like something like that
for travelling really light. I read a comparative review in a photo
magazine and I seem to recall them saying that the Nikon had the best
quality lens, but wasn't so good in other respects.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Phil Cook <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Gordon said:

Phil Cook <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

http://www.p-t-cook.freeserve.co.uk/temp/PICT0104.jpg (a bit big 180k)

Quoted message said:

Could that be Mottram Church on the penultimate skyline, slightly left
of centre?

Ummm

SJ 993954 or thereabouts. Yes

I am trying to figure out what the tower almost dead centre on the
same skyline is. My bro' and I reckon it is the CIS tower.

It could be. There is a tall building in the centre of Oldham which is
a landmark visible from many parts of 'myterritory', but I think that is
further North.
--
Gordon

Peewiglet said:

Quoted message said:

You don't even have to bother with routes, just put a few useful
waypoints into it, then tell it to GOTO whichever waypoint you want,
then just follow the arrow. Easy peasy.

Thanks for this - I'd not realised they were so simple to use.

Oh yes. Even more so if you input the waypoints using mapping software,
just click on the map and upload to the GPS.

Quoted message said:

Presumably by using it in that way it should be possible to avoid a
repetition of the unfortunate incident that took place earlier this
year,

Yes, unless you smash your GPS!

Quoted message said:

I did go on a map-reading weekend after that, to brush up a bit, but
it didn't help much. I'm fairly sure that an arrow pointing to a
waypoint would be more likely to get me there...

Absolutely! The two really cool things about following a GPS arrow, as
opposed to a compass arrow, is that a) you don't have to walk in a
straight line, just choose the easiest ground to walk over and keep the
arrow pointing roughly ahead of you, and b) it always points toward the
objective, if you drift off course it changes direction to compensate -
because it's not really a compass! It's more like a homing device.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Paul Saunders said:

You don't even have to bother with routes, just put a few useful
waypoints into it, then tell it to GOTO whichever waypoint you want,
then just follow the arrow. Easy peasy.

Thanks for this - I'd not realised they were so simple to use.

Yep, that simple, but with one (I'm sure totally obvious) caveat ...

The arrow is the straight line route, so common sense needs to be
applied to fit the route to the terrain.

I've seen people blindly following GPS headings with no thought to where
they were actually walking. Luckily there were no cliffs around!

--
Darren

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden]
says...

Quoted message said:

Chris Malcolm said:

2. Omigod I just happened to open it and it's got lots of pages and
words and stuff! Yuk!

I read manuals. It seems to me that many are *over* written these days,
they explain simple things in far too much detail. This results in lots
of words, thus a manual may look daunting simply because it's so big,
yet there isn't really that much actual information in it.

Many manuals these days are like help files, they mostly just state the
obvious.

An example from the troubleshooting section of my new Freeview receiver;

Problem - Scrambled channel message
Possible cause - Channel is scrambled
What to do - Select alternative channel

lucky these boys don't have to build rockets. At least yours is in
something approaching English!

--
Darren

In article <[email hidden]>, u-r-walk@p-t-
cook.freeserve.co.uk says...

Quoted message said:

Gordon said:

It used to irritate me that I had to keep my Amateur Radio log book in
GMT at all times, so I had one desk clock which I never altered.
It kept me sane. I think.

I keep my digital camera clocks on GMT (it would be better to call it
UTC) to coincide with the GPS track-log time-stamps. That way I can
tell where I was when a picture was taken.

Doh. So obvious, but it had never occurred to me. Looks like there
are a lot of pictures to be re-captioned in the near future!
--
Darren

Darren G said:

Yep, that simple, but with one (I'm sure totally obvious) caveat ...

Quoted message said:

I've seen people blindly following GPS headings with no thought to where
they were actually walking. Luckily there were no cliffs around!

Change just one word of that and it is:

I've seen people blindly following compass headings with no thought to
where they were actually walking.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

Darren G said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

You don't even have to bother with routes, just put a few useful
waypoints into it, then tell it to GOTO whichever waypoint you want,
then just follow the arrow. Easy peasy.

Thanks for this - I'd not realised they were so simple to use.

Yep, that simple, but with one (I'm sure totally obvious) caveat ...

Quoted message said:

The arrow is the straight line route, so common sense needs to be
applied to fit the route to the terrain.

Which was what I tried to explain, i.e. that you don't have to follow
the arrow. That's the big advantage of the GPS compass arrow, that you
don't have to follow it! This may seem counter intuitive at first, but
really the whole point of the arrow is to tell you where your objective
*is*, not the best way to get to it.

Quoted message said:

I've seen people blindly following GPS headings with no thought to
where they were actually walking. Luckily there were no cliffs
around!

I've seen people doing it too. It seems to be a subconscious human
instinct to walk in a straight line when following an arrow. Perhaps
this is due to many years of compass use?

Once you grasp the concept that a GPS is not a compass, the realisation
that you don't have to follow the arrow gives you terrific freedom. You
can follow paths that zig and zag this way and that, avoid boulders and
bogs, contour around slopes etc, all the time knowing how far away your
objective is and in which direction. So long as the arrow points
roughly ahead you'll be getting closer to your objective (if it's
pointing behind you, you might want to reconsider your choice of route).
Once you get close enough you'll eventually have to walk straight toward
it, otherwise you'll end up spiralling around it.

There's a useful display called VMG (velocity made good), which tells
you how fast you are approaching a waypoint. You may be walking at
5kph, but if walking diagonally you may only be approaching the waypoint
at 3.5kph. If VMG drops to zero, you're walking away from it! ETE and
ETA are useful too, to tell you how long it will take you to reach the
waypoint, or what time it will be when you get there.

If you really do feel compelled to follow the arrow though, it can be
done, provided you plan a route in great detail using loads of waypoints
to follow every twist and turn of the path. Some people like to do
this. Personally I think it's overkill. I'm happy with a relatively
small number of key waypoints, and I play it by ear in between.

Anquet is good for giving large numbers of waypoints. You simply draw a
path that follows the exact route you want to take and Anquet will
upload every single point you click as a waypoint. I suppose this is
fine if you like to follow a very rigid route. I prefer to keep things
flexible and wander around a bit.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Phil Cook said:

Change just one word of that and it is:

I've seen people blindly following compass headings with no thought to
where they were actually walking.

The problem with compass headings is that you really do have to walk in
a straight line!

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, Gordon
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Phil Cook <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Gordon said:

Phil Cook <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

>http://www.p-t-cook.freeserve.co.uk/temp/PICT0104.jpg (a bit big 180k)

Quoted message said:

Could that be Mottram Church on the penultimate skyline, slightly left
of centre?

Ummm

SJ 993954 or thereabouts. Yes

I am trying to figure out what the tower almost dead centre on the
same skyline is. My bro' and I reckon it is the CIS tower.

It could be. There is a tall building in the centre of Oldham which is
a landmark visible from many parts of 'myterritory', but I think that is
further North.

Oldham Civic Centre - the town hall, and yes it is too far north.

Manc city centre lies just to the right of the church so it probably is
the CIS but it looks a bit wide...

--

Dominic Sexton
http://www.dscs.demon.co.uk/

Adrian Godwin said:

These groups don't all have
the same requirements, so it makes no sense to shift the entire
timekeeping system for everyone to the advantage of one group.

No. BST would be the best option year round IMO.

Quoted message said:

There's a much simpler option : send children to school
earlier in the winter. This is, of course what we're doing
anyway, but we're doing it by relabelling the hours, which
is absurd.

I totally agree. The problem is that our society is synchronised to the
clock, and our synchronisation is such that we effectively get up late
and go to bed late. Working from 9 to 5 makes no sense. If 12 is the
middle of the day we should work from 8 to 4. That would be the
equivalent of BST, so there'd be no need for summer time.

Mind you, having said that, at midsummer I do enjoy having four hours of
daylight to wander around the countryside before most people even wake
up.

Quoted message said:

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought they chose 12:00 to be the time when
the sun was highest in the sky.

That's technically called "solar time", and it's only accurate for the
UK if you are over the prime meridian during GMT. I have an old atlas
which shows most of Arabia as using solar time, but maybe that's changed
now.

For many years I adopted the habit of using solar time whenever I went
wild camping in the hills for a few days. Using computer softwar to
determine the time of true midday before I left (for the location I was
visiting), I'd set the second time on my dual time watch to "local solar
time", and this was the time I'd use. It's very gratifying to know that
midday really is the middle of the day and midnight likewise the middle
of the night. 6am and 6pm mark the quarters of the day. Most usefully,
this is very helpful in determining the direction of the sun for
photography - at 6am the sun will be roughly east, at 9am it will be
roughly SE, at 12pm S, and so on. (not exactly, but close enough).

Yes, I'm a big fan of solar time. Why would you need GMT or summertime
when you're camping wild in the hills?

Quoted message said:

I don't
think there's any natural law that requires work to run from 9-5
and school 9-3.

No, my point exactly. So why don't we all wake up a 4am in the middle
of summer?

Quoted message said:

Quite so. A better system still would be alter NONE of your clocks.

Yes, but we'd have to alter the standard working times of almost every
job, and change all the standard TV programme times too. That would be
a major hassle. Far simpler to just leave BST in force all year round.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

"Paul Saunders" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

For many years I adopted the habit of using solar time whenever I went
wild camping in the hills for a few days. Using computer softwar to
determine the time of true midday before I left (for the location I was
visiting), I'd set the second time on my dual time watch to "local solar
time", and this was the time I'd use. It's very gratifying to know that
midday really is the middle of the day and midnight likewise the middle
of the night. 6am and 6pm mark the quarters of the day. Most usefully,
this is very helpful in determining the direction of the sun for
photography

When I go camping in the hills for any length of time I try and get away
from the idea that I need to know what time it is. The watch often goes in
the rucksack and only gets taken out when I need to suss out what day it is
and catch a bus back.

AndyP said:

Quoted message said:

It's
very gratifying to know that midday really is the middle of the day
and midnight likewise the middle of the night. 6am and 6pm mark the
quarters of the day. Most usefully, this is very helpful in
determining the direction of the sun for photography

When I go camping in the hills for any length of time I try and get
away from the idea that I need to know what time it is.

I agree with that on the whole, but I do need to know when the sun rises
and sets for photo reasons. For my perspective, when my watch is set to
solar time, it doesn't tell me what time it is, it tells me where the
sun is.

Time is largely irrelevant in the outdoors. There are only two times of
day, light and dark. I just need to know when the transitional periods
are.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Phil Cook <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Darren G said:

Yep, that simple, but with one (I'm sure totally obvious) caveat ...

Quoted message said:

I've seen people blindly following GPS headings with no thought to where
they were actually walking. Luckily there were no cliffs around!

Change just one word of that and it is:

I've seen people blindly following compass headings with no thought to
where they were actually walking.

The only place I've done that is in the local park, to test whether I
actually walked a straight line. there was a definite tendency to bear
off to the left. I think it was the torque from my Rolex watch
movement, so I threw it away.

Yes I know it balances out - it was a joke.
--
Gordon

In article <[email hidden]>, pvs1
@wildwales.fsnet.co.uk says...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The arrow is the straight line route, so common sense needs to be
applied to fit the route to the terrain.

Which was what I tried to explain, i.e. that you don't have to follow
the arrow. That's the big advantage of the GPS compass arrow, that you
don't have to follow it! This may seem counter intuitive at first, but
really the whole point of the arrow is to tell you where your objective
*is*, not the best way to get to it.

didn't see your follow up until I'd posted.

Quoted message said:

I've seen people doing it too. It seems to be a subconscious human
instinct to walk in a straight line when following an arrow. Perhaps
this is due to many years of compass use?

Maybe. Or maybe it's down to stupidity - I've seen many more people
with absolutely no clue as to where they are. Not that they've got lost
while on a route (we all do that from time to time) but with no concept
of their location or the topography/terrain to be expecting. Classic
examples recently have been someone heading up Crib Goch looking for the
summit cafe and later that day, the same with C-y-D (can never spell it
without checking :-)

Quoted message said:

Once you grasp the concept that a GPS is not a compass, the realisation
that you don't have to follow the arrow gives you terrific freedom. You
can follow paths that zig and zag this way and that, avoid boulders and
bogs, contour around slopes etc, all the time knowing how far away your
objective is and in which direction.

I used to do that with a compass (even when not lost). Mainly because
I'd rather be busy with the view (& camera) rather than concentrating on
walking a bearing & counting steps etc. I just used pick a landmark on
the bearing at a reasonable distance and use that as the next target.
How I got there was irrelevant.

Quoted message said:

So long as the arrow points
roughly ahead you'll be getting closer to your objective (if it's
pointing behind you, you might want to reconsider your choice of route).

LOL

Quoted message said:

There's a useful display called VMG (velocity made good), which tells
you how fast you are approaching a waypoint. You may be walking at
5kph, but if walking diagonally you may only be approaching the waypoint
at 3.5kph. If VMG drops to zero, you're walking away from it! ETE and
ETA are useful too, to tell you how long it will take you to reach the
waypoint, or what time it will be when you get there.

Never really played with the myriad of other metrics available. VMG
sounds like it might be worth looking at.

Quoted message said:

If you really do feel compelled to follow the arrow though, it can be
done, provided you plan a route in great detail using loads of waypoints
to follow every twist and turn of the path. Some people like to do
this. Personally I think it's overkill. I'm happy with a relatively
small number of key waypoints, and I play it by ear in between.

Ditto Tracklogs, though I tend to upload them as tracks, but largely as
a fallback incase I needed to get off the hill asap and didn't want to
waste time route finding. Also handy for whiteouts.

--
Darren

Darren G said:

Quoted message said:

I've seen people doing it too. It seems to be a subconscious human
instinct to walk in a straight line when following an arrow. Perhaps
this is due to many years of compass use?

Maybe. Or maybe it's down to stupidity

Now I think about it, maybe it's down to naivety? Perhaps some people
think that the shortest route is the quickest route? See VMG below.

Quoted message said:

I used to do that with a compass (even when not lost). Mainly because
I'd rather be busy with the view (& camera) rather than concentrating
on walking a bearing & counting steps etc. I just used pick a
landmark on the bearing at a reasonable distance and use that as the
next target. How I got there was irrelevant.

Yes, that's a better way of using a compass, although I've tried that
and then lost sight of my objective due to undulations in the terrain.
Not a terribly useful technique in hill fog though, whereas zig-zagging
still works fine with a GPS (which knows where the waypoint is whether
you can see it or not).

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

So long as the arrow points
roughly ahead you'll be getting closer to your objective (if it's
pointing behind you, you might want to reconsider your choice of
route).

LOL

Of course sometimes you may need to do that, to walk upriver to a bridge
for example, or to skirt around a cliff, but that presupposes that you
have some knowledge of the terrain, perhaps even looked at a map! ;-)

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

There's a useful display called VMG (velocity made good), which tells
you how fast you are approaching a waypoint. You may be walking at
5kph, but if walking diagonally you may only be approaching the
waypoint at 3.5kph.

Quoted message said:

Never really played with the myriad of other metrics available. VMG
sounds like it might be worth looking at.

Yes, with regard to walking in a straight line, which is the quickest -
walking in a straight line through thick heather/bog etc, or contouring
around on a good path? VMG can help to determine that. Try both. Note
your speed through the heather and compare it to your VMG on the path.
If the path is too circuitous, it may be faster to walk straight through
the heather. At least VMG gives you some useful data to help you
decide.

Quoted message said:

Ditto Tracklogs, though I tend to upload them as tracks, but largely
as a fallback incase I needed to get off the hill asap and didn't
want to waste time route finding. Also handy for whiteouts.

Still haven't tried following tracks.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk
http://www.wildwales.fsnet.co.uk

Dominic Sexton said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

>>http://www.p-t-cook.freeserve.co.uk/temp/PICT0104.jpg (a bit big 180k)

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I am trying to figure out what the tower almost dead centre on the
same skyline is. My bro' and I reckon it is the CIS tower.

Quoted message said:

Manc city centre lies just to the right of the church so it probably is
the CIS but it looks a bit wide...

It is a bit wide isn't it.

More careful study of the map makes me think it is a mill somewhere in
Hyde or Denton.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"