I Like my New Cameras So Far

I haven't had much opportunity to take many outdoor photos as the weather has been lousy. No sun and for the last few days the weather has been so warm we have had fog every day, But here are a few photos from last week when we had a couple days with an hour or so of sunlight.

The first two were taken with my new FZ300.

dead birch

an oak on neighbor's land

 These 2 were taken with my ZS50. I slitghtly enhanced the color.

Sunrise at the edge of Mud Lake

Slightly zoomed sunrise

What's Been Happening?

This is sort a catch up post, probably won't be that detailed but more of a list of things that have happened or are going on etc., whatever I can think of in the next half hour before I go to bed.

In no particular order.

Tonight one of my upper right molars, one that had a root canal and that broke a year ago and was rebuilt and recrowned by my dentist the first time it broke, fell out. Knew it would happen, just didn't know when. I have opted to get an implant because I refuse to need dentures some day. Have to pay fot this whole thing myself as we don't have dental insurance. Ah well, it's a lot of money.

Bought a used small camera last month from a guy on dpreview.com who at first had offered to just give me the same camera I already had because he saw my post about mine have dust on the senosr. Instead I got the Panasonic ZS-50 for a very good price. I haven't been able to do too much with the camera outside because of extremely lousy weather in th month I've owned it but I'll keep trying. Here's a photo I took with it.

metal chicken on the plastic tree

My younger sister and her BF and Lyra were here for 2 weeks at Christmas. We had a very good time. There was food and the men hunted and there was more food. Looking forward to their next visit.

I bought another camera Sunday night and it was delivered yesterday. This one is the Panasonic FZ300. It's almost one  f-stop faster than what I had, 2.8, is weather sealed and has been getting very good reviews. I've seen lots of excellent photos. It's not perfect but for a fixed lens camera with a 600mm zoom for the price I got it for, I'm pretty happy. The weather has been lousy of course, but I managed to go outside with it and take a few photos but they're still in the camera so there won't be any here tonight.

We're dumping DISH as our internet service provider and switching to Exede. Ever since we both got Windows 10 installed on our laptops, the only reason I can think of, we run out of bandwidth less than a week into each month and end up with our download speeds throttled down to somewhere around 128 kbps. It's ridiculous. Five, 5, GB a month? We can't watch you tubes, photo heavy sites are killers. I take photos I am a member of a photo heavy site, both Hal and I are on Facebook. Exede claims we will get 150 GB a month for barely much more. So hopefully, they come tomorrow and internet will be fun to use again.

I bought a shock collar for Ziggy. He has been bad. I won't go into the things he has done but I determined in mid December it was the only thing left to try. It is my second brand, the first was dead in the water when I got it. The new one works great. It has a beep mode, a vibration and the shock. I have not used the shock once. not once! The beep works. I've used the vibration a couple of times and now it's just hit the beep and he comes running. No more screaming my head off for him to come. He's such a well behaved boy now. I hardly even use the beep. I blame the stubborn beagle half of him for having to resort to this but it works. Now Luna is less well behave on our walks.

Okay, it's possible the satellite person could be here at 8 am so I must head to bed.

Good night and Happy New Year!

My New Camera - Panasonic ZS15

This camera was actually not my first choice. That was the very popular 2011 Panasonic FZ150, a bridge camera (more than a point and shoot less than a dSLR, no removable lenses). But my budget was limited and being honest with myself about how much I've used a camera over the last few years, I couldn't justify spending over $400 for it. Last year's point and shoot the ZS8 didn't meet my requirements but this year's replacement for it, the ZS15, has been getting fairly good reviews and fixed a couple of the problems I had with the ZS8. Plus the price was right, only $165. So I bought it to replace my Panasonic LZ8 which I've had since December 2008.

My LZ8 camera served me well enough but after the first couple of years my biggest complaints about it were the limited zoom, poor low light capability and the slow recovery after using the flash.  The ZS15 is faster both in powering up, in focusing and recovering from flash photography. Plus the zoom is 16x versus 5x. I've had it not quite 2 weeks and even with some rainy days that curtailed my outdoor excursions, I've had it out and about the swamp taking photos of everything from wild flowers to spiders, chickens, my dogs and numerous landscapes. Yesterday I even got out on Hubbard Lake a snapped a few photos though taking pictures of gulls floating on the water from a floating platform doesn't generally result in decent pictures.

And the photos have really impressed me. It's possible that it's because I'm becoming a better photographer, I'm really getting into using the manual settings which I mostly ignored though the LZ8 had them. (after it nearly died on me) so I haven't many photos to compare. But within the automatic settings, especially the indoor ones the ZS15 is performing much better. That too, is probably due to the improved focal length.

Oddly, the aperture only runs between 3.3f and 6.3f and I don't know why as I have not found a good explanation.Is it something to do with the lens optics? I have no idea. So far it hasn't bothered me but if it does I eventually may need to go to one of those bridge cameras.

But enough of my pitiful attempt at a review, there are plenty of them on line on numerous photography sites. Here's a few photos.

Luna on the sofa.



Ziggy in the morning mist.



Closeup of weird growth on the forest floor.

Macro Photography

A little over a week ago the lens on my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ8 that I bought in December of 2008. I suspected a grain of sand from the beach the day before may have gotten into the works. Since it was dead it in the water I saw no reason not to try the "drop fix" suggested on the web by numerous sources to jar loose any foreign bodies. Instead of 6 feet though I dropped it on its corner from 3 feet onto a padded carpet. It unstuck. I was able to take 36 pictures the next day before it froze again. I let it sit for a couple days while I began looking on line for a replacement, then took the back off to see if I could get to the moving parts of the lens. But there were too many circuit boards in between so I just blew on it poked it here and there, turned it on and off over and over then, for the hell of it, poked a tiny screwdriver into the hole on top above the lens which happens to be the microphone opening. Lo and behold the lens retracted and things were back to normal.

Not wanting to waste any time I decided to find my manual and start using my camera the way I originally intended. I discovered menus I'd never seen before and techniques I'd never tried.  Sepia, black and white, playing with exposure controls and white balance, etc. As I had chosen this camera for it's manual capabilities it only made sense to explore. However, I had used the macro before and because many lovely things were in bloom I started snapping photos. Here are a few of my favorites so far.

1/30 sec  ISO 100 f5.6 focal length 36mm shutter priority

This is a hybridized Black Eyed Susan. I planted them from seeds almost 10 years ago and they have spread like weeds. Good thing I like them.

  

1/200 sec  ISO 100 f3.3 fl 32mm aperture priority

Commonly known as tiger lilies, this is actually a common day lily, hemerocallis fulva that grows wild all over the country. I received these plants from a friend and planted them along my pond and the swamp under the power lines in my yard. This was a rather unusual curly speciman that caught my eye.

A different view of a different pair from another day.

1/500 sec  ISO 100 f3.3 fl 32mm aperture priority

And below are water droplets on cattail leaves the morning after a rain storm. I really like this one a lot. Those drops are hard to get into focus without a tripod.

1/250 sec  ISO 100 f3.3 fl 32mm aperture priority

(edited for redundant phrasing)

The Thaw Continues

Today was the warmest day of our February Thaw. Tomorrow is supposed to be colder and rainy. The temperature reached 53F today and the sun came out in the afternoon after the fog cleared from the sublimating snow. I was able to empty the duck pool and add fresh water which I am sure the ducks will appreciate for the rest of the winter which is returning on Thursday.

The guineas and chickens had a chance to run around all day, too. They still try to stay off the snow, they like the deck and the ground around the bird feeder since it's covered with seed husks and therefore not quite so intimidating as all that strange cold white stuff. They even went into the coop tonight without any prodding by me. I'm getting 1 or 2 eggs a day which is pretty good for young birds in winter. One of these days I'll put in the order for the other birds I want, assuming I ever make a decision.

I've been taking mini movies of my dogs and the birds outside today. I haven't tried to download them to the computer yet, but they look pretty good on the camera. It's amazing how much better these digital cameras are than the old VHS-C camera we bought years ago. I don't even need to supply extra lighting, another good point of this Panasonic. So far it's been just the perfect camera for me! Perhaps I'll download some photos for this blog tomorrow.

Christmas, Calories, Cameras, and Cinema

It's a Saturday night and I'm sitting in my husband's creaky, slowly disintegrating la-z-boy rocker watching the Empire Strikes Back on commercial TV though I have it on VHS tape (the original version, not the enhanced one). I've consumed a multitude of m&ms and a few pretzels and 2 or 3 glasses of milk. I did stop eating before 9 pm, it's my first attempt at getting back to more "normal" eating after the insanity of the holiday season.

Luna lays at my feet (under one in fact) while Rocket has retired to his twin mattress on the floor in the loft. I am using Hal's laptop which he inadvertently left at home when he left for his camp today. It's possible he left it on purpose as he has 4 new books to read, one of them by Neal Stephenson (Anathem) and rather large. I'm currently reading another of his books, The Diamond Age, a bit of cyber punk SF I'd say, very interesting.

I took the Christmas tree down a few days ago, I still have some odds and ends that need putting away as well. I do a little bit every day but I also have some housework to catch up on. Nothing like holiday chaos to slow one down.

I weighed myself on Wednesday, something I've been avoiding. I was pleased to find I'd only gained back 3 of the 6 pounds I had lost last fall. Perhaps trudging through the deep snow helped fight against the extra calories I've been consuming. I'm not going to lose them too quickly as long as I keep eating m&ms though.

I did have a wonderful time this Christmas. With my mom and younger sister here and 3 dogs, one of them being a puppy, there was plenty to do. The weather was messy so we didn't get out much, one day of shopping before Christmas and one day a few says later we went to Harmony Acres in Mikado. (The guys spent they're time hunting, we hardly saw them at all.)

Christmas dinner we had roast duck and chicken, baked potatoes, green beans, creamed corn (homemade by me and my MIL last summer), home baked bread, the ubiquitous Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce, gravy, an orange/raspberry sauce for the duck, and of course, a white wine. Or was it a pinot noir? I can't remember. My sister made chocolate cream pie for dessert. Oh, and there were cookies, too.

The photos I'll be posting from now on will be from my new camera DH gave me (with a little help from me, I did all the research and bought it so I got exactly what I wanted). It's a Panasonic Lumix LZ-8 and it's been fun learning how to use it. It has no viewfinder which is a minor disappointment, but the viewfinders on other cameras, the Canons for instance, are nearly impossible to see through anyway. Since I bought rechargeable NiMH batteries I also don't have to worry about ripping through AA batteries dozens at a time per month. My old Fuji used 4 AAs at a time instead of merely 2 and they weren't rechargeable but as I almost never used the the LCD screen (it has a decent viewfinder) they lasted a pretty long time. But after 5 or more years that camera became inadequate and a little less reliable (kayaking is not a good thing necessarily for electronics). There simply were too many negatives. I wanted an optical zoom, more manual control of things like shutter speed and aperture, things I used when I still used a film camera. It only had 1.3 mega pixels, 8 is much more impressive though I'm only using 5 of them regularly as 8 is overkill for what I do.

Star Wars #5 is almost over now, Han is a carbon cube and Luke is about to have a family reunion. I should wind this up so I can go to bed at midnight. I've got lots of things to do tomorrow.