Saturday, January 30, 2016

A Walk In Santa Barbara

A New Camera!

I've traveled south for a few days to visit my daughter and her partner just prior to their up-coming wedding that will be held in Canada. A chance to escape the gloom of a west coast winter if only for a short time. To walk again in short sleeves and sunshine! This time also to test my new camera. A Sony with so many features...essentially the only difference from a DSLR being that it has a fixed lens and of course it's not a DSLR. I purchased it last year with little time to test it before I departed to France. I'd managed to convince myself that the limited optical zoom would be inadequate for my purposes. I decided to return it and departed with my well known and very well used Canon point and shoot, which I love. However, this past month I returned ro this camera to have a serious second look, having the time to test it and put it through its paces. Good decision, I'm delighted!! It's fully manual, with aperture and shutter priority and takes 4K images with 1080p video. There are a host of features and an articulating rear screen with a priority ring on the lense...which is a very fast Zeiss. I've tried to minimize the technical stuff, but I'm excited about this camera. More and more as I learn about it. Oh, and it has a pop-up eye viewing lense with total digital read out. Small too! The perfect travel camera. 

Here are a few images from my walk today...

The birds are pulled in with an 80% crop...so who cares about the lack of zoom!
This one isn't cropped...no more lens flare.


The blog images will loose some of the detail as usual, but the clarity is still noticeable to my aging eyes...hey, typing this without glasses! I like the panorama feature! All those views and landscapes just waiting for me!

Things will improve as I learn this camera and set it up properly, but as a first effort it promises much. Cropping the image will provide what I'm looking for...this one is about 20% of the original image.
Can't wait to take it to Spain and Portugal for a walk! Soon...