Digital Memory

The last time I went out west with my family I had to deal with the fact that the disks in my camera would run out of space. Back then I had four 8GB memory disks, plus a couple of 1GB. Yellowstone National Park was the destination, so you can imagine that I kept running low on image capacity. I was able to deal with this by dumping the images onto the laptop computer I'd carried along and then wiping the disks clean and starting over. But I was worried that I would lose images in the process, so there was some stress involved.

These days memory disks are getting really cheap. The prices have begun to plummet. What once cost $90 are now running around $20. So the problem we encountered in 2010 are not going to be an issue. To this end I've purchased two 32 GB disks that I found on sale at rock bottom prices, plus I still have four of 8GB from older purchases. I foresee no problems in running out of imaging space with my principle camera. I also have decent memory capacity for the new GoPro video camera.

I am really looking forward to this long trip to Glacier National Park.

These hold a wealth of digital information...

...so that I can take thousands of imagines like this one.

Uncooperative Birds

I only take my cats outside when they're leashed. I don't want them getting hurt of course, but I also don't want them preying on songbirds. After I took the cats back in, the back yard was packed with birds. So I figured I could get my SLR and telephoto lens and tripod and get some great photos of some of the cool birds I was seeing out there.

And what happens? They all vanish. Where before they had been landing all around me, singing and chirping doing their bird-things, suddenly they were gone.

I got two lousy photos. I think one was a starling (an invasive species) and the other a common robin.

The robin. Always reliable for a little local color.

Starling? Not sure. He flew off before I could use the manual focus to get him in a clearer shot.

Comparison

As recounted long ago, I once dropped my then-favorite camera off of North Harper Creek Falls. The camera amazingly survived (after being dried out), but began a slow decline until finally it stopped working. It took the best photos for a simple point-and-click. Since those days, I moved on to an SLR which takes near-professional quality photographs. But I always thought that some of my photos with my old Powershot S3 IS were among the best I ever took. For one thing, it took much better Macro shots than even my SLR camera. And while it was only 6 megapixels, unless I was trying to blow up the photo to large dimensions, the sharpness of the images were exceptional. I've been told that this was the case because of the unique lens that Canon utilized for that model.

Last week, I found one of these cameras on Ebay. Like-new condition. Flawless cosmetically, and flawless functionally. I took it on a jaunt to the mountains yesterday and snapped photos with it, and with my SLR. Guess which photos were taken by which camera. One camera cost $1000, the other $39, postage paid, from Ebay.

1:

Backbone Rock Falls.

2:

The Falls.

3:

Molly's Knob.

4:

Park Bridge in Hungry Mother State Park.

5:

Raccoon track, Hungry Mother State Park.

6:

Rhododendron hell, Hungry Mother State Park.

7:

Summit area of Molly's Knob.

8:

Backbone Rock Falls.

9:

Molly's Knob.

10:

Backbone Rock.

Macro!

I have always been frustrated by the results of trying to take macro shots with my latest SLR digital camera. They never come out the way I want them to, and are rarely usable at all for my blogs.


However, I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars for a higher end macro lens. Not until I'd tried some other lenses to see what kinds of results I could get. So I ordered a very inexpensive macro lens on Ebay. This one hails from Hong Kong and cost a rich $13, with shipping included. I had to wait four weeks for delivery, but if it helps me take good macro shots I'll be happy.


If I can find the time, I want to run up to the hills and find some good wildflower spots to see what I can accomplish with this new lens. We'll see!

My new macro lens at last!

Experimenting with Macro

Still slowly trying to learn the new camera. I keep trying to get better at taking closeup photos, but my skills there have so far proven poor. I'll keep at it until I get some decent results. Among my problems are that the results end up, by and large, unfocused and slightly blurred.

I need to break down and take a couple of courses on the use of SLR digital cameras.

Firepink.

Mystery flower

Shot of new cones on the great hemlocks in my mother-in-law's back yard.

Another view of the mystery flower from a recent hike.

Another wild flower in the old growth forest.

Any expert who wants to ID the flowers, just post a comment.

Moon

I was playing around with the telephoto lens on the new camera trying to figure it out and experiment with the various settings. Finally, I found a way to take some decent shots of the night sky.

Yeah, now I'm looking in to buying some more powerful telephoto lenses and a more solid tripod for the camera.

The Moon, not quite full.

Working hard on the novel. Pushing to make the deadline.

Some great news! Lower birth rates!

Playing with the New Camera

I used the telephoto lens for this one. This bird was actually quite a distance away.

Same bird, slightly different setting, slightly worse results.

I'm still trying to figure out how to focus properly when I use manual settings. Once again, taken from a distance using the telephoto lens.

Macro shot. Until I get a macro lens there's no way I'm going to take any really good shots. Bugs and birds are notoriously busy critters who rarely hold still. This bumblebee was extremely uncooperative. And don't get me started about the huge butterfly that would freak out and fly away every time I got anywhere close to being able to take a good photo.

First Photographs

Learning to use the new SLR camera. Here are the first few photos.

This is the first photo I took with the new camera.

One of the the two hemlocks transplanted from North Mills River to my In-laws' back yard 30 years ago.

This is the first stitched photo. From two separate shots. It stitched more seamlessly than what I'm accustomed to seeing.

The storage sheds in the back yard. Our canoe on the left. The kennel on the far right. There have been no dogs in that kennel for years, now.

Took these on the Fourth, of course. The USA flag with our wonderful, precious Casita in the background. The green area beyond the Casita is where Frank used to grow his amazing vegetable gardens. If we ever move out there, Carole and I will re-start that tradition.