Times are tough over at Canon, with sales of dSLRs in decline (the market MUST be saturated by now, from what I’ve seen when I’m out and about), the organisation have just published their quarterly sales reports and apparently it doesn’t make for good reading (according to some, though they may be being facetious). The poor mites have only made a measly $908 million dollars operating profit… $908 million… I’ve lost more change down the sofa than that in one evening (okay, I haven’t.. it was a cheque for that amount and I’m praying no-one finds it and tries to cash it.. it might come up a bit short!). Their turnover for the whole quarter was a staggering $10.3 billion – I’d be more than happy with an 8% return on my money but I guess I have slightly different business values to the corporate giants – that’s probably where I’m going wrong, if I am going wrong that is. I am rather astounded with both values, I know I’ve complained about pricing at Canon, and I know they make more than just cameras but $10 billion is a huge chunk of change in anybody’s books. Actually I’ve figured it out, why their numbers are down… it must be at least two years since I last bought a lens and they’re starting to feel the pinch now!
For those who have seen the photo I use for my avatar on my blog (or facebook, or flickr) you may have noticed I wear glasses. I’m short sighted (myopic rather than lack of imagination/vision) and without my spec, things more than a couple of feet away start to lose their clarity which as you can imagine can be a bit of an issue when photographing wildlife (only if i have to remove them of course). I had one such occurrence today, though I didn’t have a camera of any shape or form on my person at the time. I took my son to a leisure pool (as opposed to a swimming pool, difference will be apparent shortly) as his school had already broken up yesterday for half-term whilst the majority of the surrounding area were still going. We’ve never been to the pool before as it get’s incredibly busy, especially during the school holidays, so we thought it the perfect opportunity to test the waters (literally) and we were right to do so as when we jumped into the water we were one of only half a dozen there. The pool has numerous water slides, fountains, and what can only be described as water cannons (“spare some change for a corporate profit scheme, guv’nor?”, oh, different spelling) hence the description and we had great fun “messing about IN the river”. I’m used to being in the water and not being able to see properly, however I my frustration began to build when we explored a channel within the pool that went.. well, without; the pool has an outdoors section you can swim out to through two openings in the building. With the cold weather outdoors, water vapour was escaping from the pool creating an atmospheric scene, especially with slight drizzle from the sky. The perimeter of the pool was surrounded by high, densely packed trees, the leisure complex and once out in the circular lagoon I hear an unfamiliar bird call and started immediately trying to scan the treeline, something that is second nature to me these days. I don’t have to tell you, Dear Reader, how frustrating not even being able to clearly see the side of the pool, let alone the wooded area was. Now if Canon produced some telephoto sight correcting goggles, I’d buy them without question… and their profits might just go up as well!
Andrew Skelton: 
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