Happy 57th Birthday!!!

 

So this Saturday was my 57th birthday - where does the time go?

Went along to Leeds Castle with Julia for a mooch around, walk, chat and take the odd snap with the TG-6.

We did the castle, smashed the maze (did have a sneaky look at the map though!) and had a lush dinner in the restaurant paid for by Julia 😋💓

My brother and family had some flowers delivered - have been playing with them this morning using the 50mm lens on the M50 via the adapter.

This is the image of the day I think, a lone tulip which was starting to droop so placed it on some material in the studio and took some images before starting on the bouquet itself.

This is the full bouquet before I unwrapped them on Friday afternoon when they arrived via a local florist.

Still Life with the TG-6

 

So spent today in the studio playing with some still life items and the TG-6 camera, utilising the microscope mode and built-in focus stacking.

Dug out the Chinese lantern casing and the dandelion clock seed head in the first instance and played around with these on some contrasting coloured card. The focus stacking in particular works really well depending on the subject and how close you are to it - there is a limit on depth of field achieved when you are really close.

Moved on to some "berries" from my stash that look like they have been sprayed with water - then an iridescent present bow, a small Christmas type floral piece with gold pine cones and then some feather decorations.

Really pleased with the results, all hand-held. And whilst the microscope control mode defaults to a 3:2 aspect ratio the others allow whatever you want, in my case it's usually 16:9 to facilitate slideshows.

And inspecting the difference between the microscope and microscope control mode, the only difference that I can see is that one allows for some further digital zooming - something that has never been desirable in my book. Better done with cropping during the edit phase.

But it's whiled away the day, shooting and editing ;-) Plus allows me to learn another aspect of the camera for future days out with it. Gotta say that despite my initial reticence in purchasing it, it's proved to be a good buy so far and I've not even taken it out in the rain yet 🤣

Android 12 😱

 

So after much mithering from my phone, having already downloaded the latest Android 12 software, I let it update today. My reluctance stems from the fact that the change was huge, covering pretty much every feature and for years I have been using a different GUI in the form of Apex Launcher. But having tried to do a backup the other evening and getting error messages against all manner of backup and restore options I was a tad nervous about what the new GUI would look like. I like each new phone to look as comforting as the old one and wasn't too keen to relinquish control.

Downloaded Nova Launcher instead and spent ages setting everything up to more or less match what I'd had before, following screenshots I'd done during the week. Very laborious but it did allow me to backup the new settings before switching to the built-in GUI. 

I subsequently set this up as well, which was surprisingly easy, and quicker, and then bit the bullet and let the software install. Obviously the Android GUI's have improved over the years, allowing folders on the screens although not every widget allows resizing which is annoying plus everything in the app drawer scrolls horizontally rather than vertically. There's also only one page for the dock so some regular apps have had to migrate to a more accessible folder instead.

Still it's back up and running again, things look similar enough to get me by and I've opted for one of the new tweaks to allow colour changing based on the wallpaper - something that might prove interesting.

Nova is still there, sitting in the background, just in case, but it would probably be prudent to live without it going forwards if I can, makes these mahousive updates less scary. Especially given that it's impossible to roll the phone back to a previous version of Android - certainly without rooting it.

Apex Launcher has been uninstalled, disappointed that it appears to have stopped working after all these years. No idea at what point the backups started to fail but it makes the app pretty much unusable if such a basic feature doesn't work. I'd hoped that Nova would offer an import option using a backup from another launcher, especially since it and Apex were rivals back in the day. I'd found an old backup to use just in case but sadly importing wasn't an option.

Still everything else appears to be working OK so fingers crossed it stays that way 🤞🏻

Visit with Mum

So this off-Friday saw another chilly but sunny day so headed along to the crematorium to have a "chat" with Mum and took the TG-6 along to take some snaps along the way.

This was probably one of the favourites of the few I shot, like the overall coolness of this image contrasted with the white of the leaf edges and the frost on them.

Stood by Mum's tree and recorded my natter as usual on my diary app, that way I can play them back when I want to. On the way back from calling along to the picnic site I dropped in to visit an old friend. She was just about to take a walk so we walked and talked all the way along to the Bridgewood Hotel where we parted company. Was uber good to catch up with her as I'd missed the opportunity for a chat before Christmas when she was dropping off cards as Mr Tesco was delivering my groceries at the time. Not seen her since my Dad's 80th birthday party and given she's in a vulnerable category with Covid-19 I have been reluctant to swing by just in case. But we're going to meet up again next time I'm over that way.

This was another of my favs from the morning, just about caught the road empty of cars when I clicked the shutter. Tried in Lightroom to further accentuate the warmth of the sun on the trees opposite me and the coolness of the road and my side of it. Also managed to miss the works truck which was slowly driving along the road hand washing the road signs - what a job...

Walk through the Coney Banks

 

So on the first off-Friday of 2022 I took a wander along to the Coney Banks with Tedster and the new Olympus Tough TG-6 to put it through it's paces.

It was a chilly but sunny winters day and the sunlight on these dead leaves caught my eye. Lightroom editing has enabled me to bring out the golden hues of the leaves in contrast to the cold background.

Typically I used the camera set to P mode (Av mode is a tad weird) at ISO 800 to force the camera to choose narrower apertures, switching back into Av mode for F2.8 and winding back the ISO to accommodate the extra light when necessary. The camera is essentially an F2 at the wide end of the zoom which is pretty rare for a compact and indeed of all those I looked in to none of the others went as wide. Good for low light.

Really enjoyed using the camera, even the fill-flash for a selfie of me and Tedster which an FEC of -1EV worked really well. Had to kind of point and guess where I was in the frame but it has face tracking so it found me easily enough.

All in all I was very happy with the shots I took and it's performance. definitely looking forward to using this more, especially on the less nice days.

Olympus Tough TG-6

 

As I didn't necessarily buy myself much for Christmas, I ended up purchasing the above, all weather compact after much deliberation. Had seen it in a brochure which came with a photography newspaper I subscribe to and kept looking at it online and thinking about the nuisance that comes with trying to use cameras in the rain and generally damp weather. None of my cameras are waterproof and don't have weather sealing, unlike the more expensive, professional models.

So after more research into all-weather compacts and reviews of said items Mr Amazon delivered me this little beauty 😍 Opted for the red, black being the only alternative and whilst I don't intend to test out the 15m waterproof capability anytime soon I am more confident using this if the weather is bad. It's also got some interesting modes, one of which is microscope. Limited to an aspect ration of 3:2 it's like photographing with a magnifying glass on the front!

This was my first test with it, ice on the outside of the porch window the other morning. Pretty impressed with it's 1cm focusing distance and you can still utilise the 4x optical zoom capability to get in closer still.

Of course it has numerous underwater scene modes and it has things such as focus stacking which might be worth a play sometime.

All in all as I slowly get to grips with using it I'm mightily impressed. Bring on the rain ☔

St Mary's Island with Dad!

So this afternoon, Dad & I went for a mooch around St Mary's Island to take some snaps and enjoy the unusually mild New Year's Day weather. Good to see some dry and sunny weather for a change after the very wet Christmas we've had - it's definitely been more wet than white that's for sure!

It was pretty busy walking along the Riverside Walk but there's always something to see along the river and today was no exception. 

First outing of 2022 and hoping for some more freedom to get out and about and hopefully less worry about using public transport. Miss places further afield, like Kew Gardens in London but not keen to go on a train anywhere right now or until things really settle down.

Anyways, after sitting up waiting to "ring" in the New Year last night it's almost time for bed Zebedee!

 

Camera Stats - 2021

 

So the above is my stats on the camera usage for 2021. The mirrorless M50 is still my most "goto" camera and even though Covid-19 is still with us and curtailing some of the visits I would normally make without thinking twice, I still took slightly more photos this year than for 2020 :-)

The slide above comes from the new PowerBI file created from an Excel spreadsheet propagated by myself from my Lightroom original images folder with a filter looking for 5* images and no virtual copies. Took a while to create the spreadsheet but now it's done the upkeep is quite easy. 

Opted to use PowerBI having done a course on it for work and having to re-invent the wheel each year end to determine what I used, when and how much, using Excel charts.

Being a data orientated person this sort of info I find quite interesting, especially as now I can see the transition over the last few years from DSLR through Compacts to Mirrorless. I can also see that the year of Lockdowns with Covid-19 (2020) saw my mobile phone become my 2nd camera effectively.