Hi all,
It's about 3 weeks until we can expect to return to our
rebuilt house, and we continue to live as boarders with a friend, on a
section that is only half civilised (hence the great piles of rocks).
Yesterday morning my bride and I were sitting outside, in the shade to
dodge the winter sun, and i realised that the view from that spot would
permit me to take a reasonable portrait of the ash tree (European ash,
Fraxinus excelsior) which dominates the back yard. The tree really is
magnificent, and is matched by a European walnut (Juglans regia) next
door. Also in the pictures is a neighbouring house dating from not too
long after the gold-rush era of the late 1800's. It is now used as a
holiday home by a family living probably about 150 miles away and who
use it about 6 weekends a year.
The sun these last few days has been
something else - daytime temperatures of around 31 °C. If I were eating
eggs I could cook them in an instant on the bonnet of my car.
The
photographs are uploaded, of course, are far from perfect. For a start I
did not need to get up off my backside to take them. That is a major
defect.
I didn't use a tripod either. :-(
The dappled lighting was
somewhat tricky, but I think the camera did OK.
However, I modified
the shots to suit my taste using FastStone Image viewer, and that is a
major no-no :-(
What's more, I left the colours more or less as
seen:-( So I'm happy with the results.
http://zone-10.com/tope2/main.php?g2_itemId=21508
The photos are
cooked, of course. I have not got around to shooting uncooked images.
But that's OK.
I 'could' process uncooked shots now - recently I
bought a 'new' second-hand camera - a Lummox, or something like that,
and Silky-pix Developer came with it on a CD. It has installed OK but I
have not tried it. Usually these 'free' programs come loaded with fish
hooks, so I'm not expecting much of it.
If you think the controls on
an Olympus M5 etc are small - wait until you try a Lummox. Some controls
are tiny.But it seems to take reasonable photos. None I have seen in the
rear screen are blunt. It seems like a good pocketable ( as described by
CB a few weeks back) camera with 16 MP. It's fitted with one of those
new-fangled zoom lenses, but that doesn't seem to be a handicap.It's so
small I can nearly totally conceal it in one hand. Some lenses
apparently have IS; the body does not. Can't win 'em all.
I haven't
seen any shots from it on my computer yet. The manufacturer insists that
only USB cables they make for it are undamaging, so, not wanting to risk
causing internal chaos I have bought one from B&H of New York. Should be
here soon. The first shop I placed an order with, a competitor of B&H,
would have charged me $147 for postage. I thought that was somewhat
unreasonable, so I replaced the quantity with a big fat 0. B&H are
charging a little under $8, which is somewhat better.
Cheers, Brian.
--
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