I have always enjoyed moving in the nature and taking photographs, but I have never been a particularly passionate ”birder” – someone who would eagerly participate in bird observation, or learn details about bird species and their lives. Nevertheless, for some time now I have taken bird photos in an increasingly active manner. Why – what is the fascination in bird photography?
A fieldfare (räkättirastas).
I can only talk for myself, but in my case this is like combining location-based game play of Pokémon Go with my love of photography. While living still mostly under self-quaratine style conditions of pandemic, it is important to keep moving, and taking my camera and going out is as good reason as any to get fresh air and some exercise. And birds bring the important aleatory element into this: you never know what you are going to see – or not see.
A swan (laulujoutsen).
Mostly my short walks are in the close neighbourhood, and the birds I will see are thus the most common ones: the great tit, the sparrow, the magpie, a flock of fieldfares. But then the challenge is to get a new kind of photo of them – one with a nice disposition, interesting lights, great details or posture. And sometimes there will be more rare birds moving in the area, which brings additional excitement with it: how to get close to the shy jaybird, get good details on the dark dress of blackbird, or a woodpecker.
Blue tit (sinitiainen).
There is also a very nice lake for birdwatching rather near, Iidesjärvi, which means that it is possible to go there, and try getting some beautiful pictures of swans, goldeneyes, goosanders or many other waterfowl with a rather short trip. Which is important, since I typically need to get back soon, and make kids breakfast, dinner or such. And this is also why I call myself a Sunday Photographer: I mostly take photos in weekends, when there is a bit of extra time that weekdays do not currently allow.
Blackbird’s eye (mustarastas).
This Sunday was a day of achievement, when I got my first decent photos of goldcrest – the smallest bird in Europe! It is not that rare actually, but it is so shy and so skilled in hiding itself within foliage, that I was mainly able to locate it with the faint, high-pitched sounds it makes. And even while I knew the bird was there in the trees, front of me, it took a long time, c. 200 frames of missed photos and some quiet crawling from spot to spot to finally get an unobstructed view and a sharp photo of this tiny, elusive bird.
Goldcrest (hippiäinen).
Thus, taking photos of birds combines so many different interesting, challenging and purely luck-based elements into one activity, that is just perfect diversion – something rewarding, surprising, joyful that can even have addictive holding power: a hobby that is capable of taking your thoughts completely away from everything else.
Working with my Toshiba Chromebook 2, in a sunny day.
I am not sure whether this is true for other countries, but after a long, dark and cold winter, Finns want to be outdoors, when it is finally warm and sunny. Sometimes one might even do remote work outdoors, from a park, cafe or bar terrace, and that is when things can get interesting – with that “nightless night” (the sun shining even at midnight), and all.
Surely, for most aims and purposes, summer is for relaxing and dragging your work and laptop always with you to your summer cottage or beach is not a good idea. This is definitely precious time, and you should spend it to with your family and friends, and rewind from the hurries of work. But, if you would prefer (or, even need to, for a reason or another) take some of your work outdoors, the standard work laptop computer is not usually optimal tool for that.
It is interesting to note, that your standard computer screens even today are optimised for a different style of use, as compared to the screens of today’s mobile devices. While the brightest smartphone screens today – e.g. the excellent OLED screen used in Samsung Galaxy S9 – exceed 1000 nits (units of luminance: candela per square meter; the S9 screen is reported to produce max 1130 nits), your typical laptop computer screens max out around measly 200 nits (see e.g. this Laptop Mag test table: https://www.laptopmag.com/benchmarks/display-brightness ). While this is perfectly good while working in a typical indoor, office environment, it is very hard to make out any details of such screens in bright sunlight. You will just squint, get a headache, and hurt your eyes, in the long run. Also, many typical laptop screens today are highly reflective, glossy glass screens, and the matte surfaces, which help against reflections, have been getting very rare.
It is as the “mobile work” that is one of the key puzzwords and trends today, means in practice only indoor-to-indoor style of mobility, rather than implying development of tools for truly mobile work, that would also make it possible to work from a park bench in a sunny day, or from that classical location: dock, next to your trusty rowing boat?
I have been hunting for business oriented laptops that would also have enough maximum screen brightness to scale up to comfortable levels in brighly lit environments, and there are not really that many. Even if you go for tablet computers, which should be optimised for mobile work, the brightness is not really at level with the best smartphone screens. Some of the best figures come from Samsung Galaxy Tab S3, which is 441 nits, iPad Pro 10.5 inch model is reportedly 600 nits, and Google Pixel C has 509 nits maximum. And a tablet devices – even the best of them – do not really work well for all work tasks.
HP has recently introduced some interesting devices, that go beyond the dim screens that most other manufacturers are happy with. For example, HP ZBook Studio x360 G5 supposedly comes with a 4k, high resolution anti-glare touch display that supports 100 percent Adobe RPG and which has 600 nits of brightness, which is “20 percent brighter than the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch Retina display and 50 percent brighter than the Dell XPS UltraSharp 4K display”, according to HP. With its 8th generation Xeon processors (pro-equivalent to the hexacore Core i9), this is a powerful, and expensive device, but I am glad someone is showing the way.
Even better, the upcoming, updated HP EliteBook x360 G3 convertible should come with a touchscreen that has maximum brightness of 700 nits. HP is advertising this as the “world’s first outdoor viewable display” for a business laptop, which at least sounds very promising. Note though, that this 700 nits can be achieved with only the 1920 x 1080 resolution model; the 4K touch display option has 500 nits, which is not that bad, either. The EliteBooks I have tested also have excellent keyboards, good quality construction and some productivity oriented enhancements that make them an interesting option for any “truly mobile” worker. One of such enhancement is a 4G/LTE data connectivity option, which is a real bless, if one moves fast, opening and closing the laptop in different environments, so that there is no reliable Wi-Fi connection available all the time. (More on HP EliteBook models at: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/elite-family/elitebook-x360-1030-1020.html.)
Apart from the challenges related to reliable data connectivity, a cloud-based file system is something that should be default for any mobile worker. This is related to data security: in mobile work contexts, it is much easier to lose one’s laptop, or get it robbed. Having a fast and reliable (biometric) authentication, encrypted local file system, and instantaneous syncronisation/backup to the cloud, would minimise the risk of critical loss of work, or important data, even if the mobile workstation would drop into a lake, or get lost. In this regard, Google’s Chromebooks are superior, but they typically lack the LTE connectivity, and other similar business essentials, that e.g. the above EliteBook model features. Using a Windows 10 laptop with either full Dropbox synchronisation enabled, or with Microsoft OneDrive as the default save location will come rather close, even if the Google Drive/Docs ecosystem in Chromebooks is the only one that is truly “cloud-native”, in the sense that all applications, settings and everything else also lives in the cloud. Getting back to where you left your work in the Chrome OS means that one just picks up any Chromebook, logs in, and starts with a full access to one’s files, folders, browser addons, bookmarks, etc. Starting to use a new PC is a much less frictionless process (with multiple software installations, add-ons, service account logins, the setup can easily take full working days).
If I’d have my ideal, mobile work oriented tool from today’s tech world, I’d pick the business-enhanced hardware of HP EliteBook, with it’s bright display and LTE connectivity, and couple those with a Chrome OS, with it’s reliability and seamless online synchronisation. But I doubt that such a combo can be achieved – or, not yet, at least. Meanwhile, we can try to enjoy the summer, and some summer work, in bit more sheltered, shady locations.
If I’d have my ideal, mobile work oriented tool from today’s tech world, I’d pick the business-enhanced hardware of HP EliteBook, with it’s bright display and LTE connectivity, and couple those with a Chrome OS, with it’s reliability and seamless online synchronisation. But I doubt that such a combo can be achieved – or, not yet, at least. Meanwhile, we can try to enjoy the summer, and some summer work, in bit more sheltered, shady locations.
frans goes blog 
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