Saturday 8 September 2007

A walk in the park

I was very brave today. I picked up my camera again. So far, so good. Here are some results.






These are "Punchinello", "Lemon Pansy", "Common Five-ring" and a dragonfly I have to check.

Not the big lens of course but the small macro one. Still, as the trouble and strife said, acceptable. In fact the T&S came with me and we pottered about for 2 or more hours. We bumped into an old chap who is frequently there and he uses a small (non DSLR) camera that still produces excellent results. He showed me some of his butterfly images on the screen and I was blown away. Quite coincidentally just this morning I had read a review of the new version of his camera. It is a Lumix, Panasonic DMC FZ18. It got a strong write up. Between the review and the old chap the T&S had enough ammunition to frogmarch me off to buy one straight after lunch. "Only" HK$3800 and packed full of gadgety bits. So tonight and tomorrow I have to find out how it works. The bits that swayed me were the ability to shoot RAW and a Leica Elmarit lens. At a 1/10 of the cost of my DSLR body without lens its got to be a bargain.

Now as you have been very patient, here is a bonus picture from today. Wait a minute, no birds or moths!! Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Do not adjust your set. Thank you.

4 comments:

Tiny said...

These pictures are beautiful! How can you capture that precise moment? The butterflies won't pose for you ...

ulaca said...

Nothing that a handkerchief and a vial of chloroform won't fix!

For some reason, "the small macro one" put me in mind of fumie.

Andrew said...

Dearest Tiny, I do wish they would pose for me. For each passable image you see many are deleted. A "keep" rate of 5% is considered good. For these I had to breach security at the Lions Nature Education Centre and walk into the vegetation on the edge of a dragonfly pond. For some reason they seemed less skittish there. The downside is getting a good camera angle can be very tricky and you risk getting wet if you misjudge what is underfoot. I was encouraged to do this by seeing the safe return of an old chap I regularly meet at LNEC. he had "leapt" off the bridge and come back armed with some very smart photos so I simply followed suit. Of course chloroform would also work but I prefer to keep that for the dog.

ulaca said...

The reference to the dog reminds me of a joke from 'A Prairie Home Companion', which I saw last night.

Woody Harrelson: "Why do they call it PMS?"

Non-famous other member of singing cowboys: "Don't know, Woody. Why?"

Woody: "'Cos Mad Cow was already taken."