Catching light

Olympus SP-570UZ 10MP Digital Camera with 20x Optical Dual Image Stabilized Zoom

I have been using cameras since about 1960, with various degrees of seriousness about my photography, and with cameras of a wide range of sophistication and features. It seems like over the years I tended to go back & forth between simple snapshot cameras with convenience features and more advanced cameras with more options and accessories.

Often I had more than one camera at once, trying to fit my various needs.

In retrospect, I now better understand how my then undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder was manifesting itself in my contradictory needs, but also in my abilities.

My earliest "serious" camera was an old folding Zeiss of my dad's. Taking a picture was an interesting process:

• Open the hatch on the front of the camera
• Extend the lens on its leather bellows
• Set the aperature (f-stop) on the lens
• Set the shutter speed (fraction of a second) on the lens
• Set the focus on the lens
• Cock the lens
  
• Frame the shot
• Release the shutter
• Open a little shutter covering a pair of small red windows on the back of the camera
• Turn a knob on the top of the camera to either move the frame number to the next window or move the next frame number to the first window
• Close the back shutter to reduce the risk of light leak fogging the film
• Recock for next picture, having made necessary adjustments to any settings
• Or, collapse bellows and close hatch and put camera back in pocket

Over the years that followed, the succession of cameras generally sought to automate at least some of those tasks while not compromising too much on image quality or size of camera.

Sometimes I was happy to just have a compact convenient camera. Other times I wanted to be able to reach out with telephoto or spread my grasp for wide angle.

For a while in the late 1960s, I had an Instamatic with crude autoexposure and a spring-wound film-advance drive. Other times I had SLRs with various lens -- my favorite was an Olympus OM-2 with motor drive and a compact zoom (the camera body in one jacket pocket & lens in another) -- it broke my heart when that camera was stolen, and I haven't owned a feature-rich camera since.

For several years, my camera has been a 1.3 Megapixel Olympus D-450 with 3x zoom. It did what I wanted, it still does most of what I need, and I have enjoyed it.

As camera technology has moved on, I have occasionally admired and coveted newer cameras. But the truth is, these have been rough years, and I have probably been better off with something familiar and more tilted toward convenience than flexibility or features.

The cameras I've looked at might have done much more of what I wanted to do (or have wanted to do at various times), but it was still true that no one camera did it all - there was still a requirement to choose between feature trade-offs.

But lately the 450 has been hinting that it is getting tired. And then the other day I ran across a blurb for the new Olympus SP-570UZ.

At first glance, it seemed to have all the features I had been looking for, all wrapped up in one.

At second glance it still did:

• Long zoom range with true & significant wide angle, through substantial telephoto
• Image stabilization, to maximize usefulness of telephoto and for low-light conditions
• Reasonably high resolution
• Good macro (closeup/small object) capability
  
• Extended ISO range for low light photography
• Reasonably fast lens apertures
  
• Good range of shutter speeds
• Useful video capture modes, with sound
• Both built-in flash & hotshoe for accessory flash
• More modern sensor & image capture technology

[There are more features and functions than these, but that is not necessarily an advantage for me. :)]

Which is not to say that their weren't trade-offs or compromises. The image quality, even it 10 Megapixels, isn't comparable to a good digital SLR with comparable Megapixel count. The viewfinder won't compare to an optical viewfinder, and there may be some performance issues.

But the sample images I've seen, even in extended telephoto, as well as lowlight and macro, look quite satisfactory to me (yes, those web pages are in German, but scroll down to "Download der Bilder in Originalgröße" and there are a group of links to download batches of original-size image files.

So I have downloaded the instruction manual from the Olympus web site, and will be studying it to see how manageable the actual operation seems.

If all looks good, and goes well, I hope to be able to get one soon.

In the meantime, I will probably come back to this blog and look at specific features and what they mean to my photography -- for example, how wide angle plus extended resolution stand in for a shifting lens. Writing helps me think & organize my thoughts.

Friendship Pansies

Better known as Johnny-Jump-Ups or Violas.

When I was a kid, both my grandmothers had these in their gardens.

They were all over -- and for me, iconic -- at Beach Grandma's (Effie Whetstone) place on Vashon Island (actually Maury Island, but they are connected by an isthmus). She was the one that called them Friendship Pansies.

My Town Grandma's (Olga Winston) place at 70th and Palatine, had fewer, with just a scattering along the edges of some of the flower beds, but they were there and I welcomed them. When I called them Friendship Pansies, at least once she tried to correct me, but I wasn't buying.

A few years ago there was a nice batch in the parking strip of a place on Loyal Way that I often pass on walks, but last year they were a no-show -- weed elimination?

This year I will plant my own, in our own yard.

[It amuses me that the LillyMiller packet (bottom right) uses the same picture as the Ed Hume (top left). Lily Miller is a brand of Ferry-Morse (top right), while Ed Hume is a local (Puyallup) operation. I would prefer to think the seed packet photos are from their own plants, but I guess they just buy stock photos off the internet.]

Harvest

The creamer is an old family piece. We had quite a bit of this pattern in the 1950s, of which I also have a few butter-pats and a cereal bowl. I think we may have a sandwich plate around somewhere too, Maybe under a plant.

Jo found the sugar bowl, sans lid, at Goodwill a couple of weeks ago.

Fun!

That got me interested enough to track down that it is Louisville Stoneware, Harvest Pattern (sometimes known as Pear Pattern), and find a bunch of it on Ebay.

Yesterday I won a pair of mugs on ebay -- these still seem like the "proper" thing to drink cocoa from.

Most of what I see on Ebay doesn't grab me much, but it is fun to look at.

And it is something fun to look for in thrift stores. The bottoms of larger pieces have a "John B Taylor" signature in blue, while the smaller pieces just have a script "JBT."

Not something I want a lot of, but but great fun in small quantities.

Sometimes I say I was all but born in a pear orchard. Apple is closer to the truth, but hey, there were pears nearby.

There was also a pear tree on my grandmother's property on Vashon (actually she was on Maury Island & they are connected).

Pears are good things. (Pairs are too [waves at Jo].)

Woof!

Moving right along

I had a fine & quiet Christmas, with snow in the afternoon and an after-dark walk on the beach, including the recurring solstice labyrinth. Great presents too: coin books for tracking my collecting, old weights and scales, and sugar-free chocolate. :)

My mother moved into assisted living between Christmas & New Years. Jo's Aunt Kathy died during the same days - she had been such an important part of Jo's life, and all of ours. Now everyone is madly trying to clear out two houses under deadline.

I have been enjoying playing with Southeast Asian herb weights ("Opium Weights") with their intriguing animal shapes - not only are they great for the typical Aspie stimming of sorting and lining up, but the heaviness and graduated weight progression boosts the sensory impact - some of the more conventional weight sets have been joining in. It will probably be a new Cope List entry soon.

It's been interesting confirming the correlation between types and levels of coin & weight activity and stress (complication of life?) level. Graduated steps there too.

Snow

It's been snowing continuously here since midday.

Everything is white.

The next door neighbors came home in middle of heavily falling snow with their christmas tree tied to roof of their car.

Their little girls ran around playing with snow, mom & dad laughing to each other as they unloaded the car.

I stood quietly on our porch & enjoyed without intruding.

My father died this evening

If not tomorrow, then the next day, I will go down to the beach, where the tide goes in and out, day after day.

His mother died two days after Thanksgiving, in 1975, at 89.

His father died in 1948, at age 60.

Dad was 90.

Jo's mom died just over a year ago, her dad a few weeks ago.

So not that long ago, our girls had eight living grandparents and stepgrandparents.

Now it seems like a freight train - but my mom's father died in 1953, her mother in 1973.

That things seem to be all happening at once has to do with their holding off, not things suddenly going terribly wrong.

I don't imagine my mom will stick around all that long now that dad's gone, but she still has some real strengths, so maybe she'll surprise us.

A few minutes after I got the news from my brother, there was one loud crack of thunder.

I stood on the porch for a while and watched the rain.

Wooly Sheep

I've been a fan of Little Dee for quite a while, but the recent Shanty sequence (part 1, part 2) moved it to a whole new level.

The shanty is now on YouTube (or click image above) with the artist and his brother singing to musical accompaniment.

Woof!