I see Faces and I shot birds!

 Googly Eye Tree

Pounty Lip Face Tree

I have to admit. I am one of those odd people that see faces in things. Hah! I am not alone. Aurora does too! 

Indian Chief?

Smooshed Face. Makes me think the tree ran out to play on the road when it was a sapling, and got a smushed face.

Other news.
hot.
Hot.
Dry. I'm going to shrivel up and blow away.

Okay. I did NOT shoot birds with a gun. Of course it was with a camera.

This week was another experimental week with photography. [this IS Aurora's fault! Just kidding. But she did put the thought into my head.]

I picked up a 75-300mm used lens for my Olympus camera. Some reviews are decent some reviews hate the lens. The lens is super light weight. Mere ounces. I figured to try a used lens first to see if I'd ever really want one of the 'good' pro ones. 

Anyway.
Birds are hard! They don't stop and stay still! The lens had trouble with the clutter in the backround in the first sparrow shot. 

But this second try was pretty darned good. I can see I will need a TON of practice.

Charlie and I took a walk on Sunday morning and visited with the black bird that yells at us each time we stop by this part of the ridge.

I took this at dawn and for some odd reason, his eyes look like they are glowing!

This lens likes more light than predawn light...but...
I think I did sort of okay.

I kid you not, getting the 'shot' took several tries. I think the biggest thrill for me is getting one good shot!

I'm going to return to KVR early in the morning to do some hiking and beat the heat. I'm hoping to get near the Trumpter Swans this time with a longer reaching lens.

The heat this past week kept me from doing a lot outside. 

I did explore some new different looks for Artsy Fartsy flower photos.

They are coming up next. Extreme heat and cold drive me to extreme Arsty.

The little Red Camera

 

This dandy camera arrived December 14th 2019 and it was love at first unpacking. First off, it is heavy duty and weather proof. It's name says Tough and it is. I've dropped it from my mules, dropped it in the snow, fumbled it in and out of my coveralls and jackets, and walked with it in downpours and snowfalls.

I've worn the paint off one of the edges and basically I've been surprised by it.
It is not a DSLR camera but I've even put it up against my those cameras in some still life tests. The zoom is not something I use often but I do use the macro features A LOT.

The Olympus Menu has always been a confusing thing on cameras and this one is no different. The macro feature menu allows me to do macro, in camera stacked photos [I think this feature is the coolest. I normally can do it without a mini tripod!] With a tripod, you can also take frames to stack later in a program like Helicon Focus. 

There is a microscopic feature that is the bomb. They call it Microscope instead of Macro.

This is the mode for the following shot I took yesterday while hiking in the rain of raindrops on a dandelion.

In camera focus stacking. Wow.
Super cool Olympus feature, but this one comes in a little pocket camera.

The Olympus OMD EM 5 Mark III has it too but it only works with certain lenses.

And it works pretty well.

This feature called Focus Bracket takes several photos and lets the photographer stack them in post process. This is fine and you would want to use a mini tripod. 

I rarely do this only because I think the hand held Focus stack works well for me.

 

Super duper close. I like this for things like snow flakes and dew drops.

Check it out. I ended up getting a ring light that attaches to the front of the camera. It works pretty neat also.

Super Duper Close!

Snow flake

Caddisfly larvae encased in grains of sand.

I stuck the camera in Landscape mode and took this shot of the little gargoyle in my Forest Garden.

Easy peasy. No thinking, just point and shoot.

Other handy menu items are sunset and indoors. For great sunsets, I am not impressed with this camera. It lacks a bit of pizzaz in picking up the colors, but if that is all a person has, it does great.

However it does take pretty cool video in slo...motion! It does eat up the battery if you do a lot of video. There is a self portrait mode too which actually works pretty nice.

Does it produce the best photos compared to other cameras? I honestly don't know. I don't Pixel Peep and I don't care. I need a camera that will take abuse from me and is handy to attach to my belt.

It also has a cool feature which I used. It has a timer you can set and then ask the camera to delay the first photo and take a series of shots. That is how I got most of my 'snowy' adventure photos this year. 

Last note. On the dial menu there is C1 and C2. I've never used them. But if there is a particular 'way' you like your camera set up, you can preset your desires and set them to C1 or C2.  

I did it...

I broke down finally after saving up and purchased the Olympus OMD E-M1 Mark III. It is NOT considered a pro camera. But wow, the features it has!

It will take me a while to get used to it. I've been a fan of the Olympus camera since owning my very first Olympus Stylus in 2006. I literally wore that pocket camera out. Being one of the first pocket digital cameras, it wasn't cheap. But it taught me so much!

I learned that a pocket camera is essential because it is so easy to carry around. I've 'killed' so many pocket cameras in the past 13 years. I even used a pink ugly camera for a long time. I purchased Pink Fugly camera so I wouldn't feel bad about dropping it in snow or demolishing it by accident. It was cheap, it was ugly, but it took great photos. I even lost it once in the creek. I dried it out and it kept functioning.

It lived another few years before the lens wouldn't open anymore. 

Last year I sent my old Olympus OMD EM 5 to be converted to a full spectrum Infrared camera. 

I replaced it with an Olympus OMD EM10 Mark iii. It was Olympus's version of a cell phone camera. Easy to operate by swiping the menu on the LCD. I could choose landscape, sunset, sports, indoors, and other options easily.

Imagine my disappointment then to read about Olympus selling out? 

Seeing as that my Oly OMD EM 5 was still creeping along after 7 yrs of hard labor [the only menus that work are... Program Mode and Manual mode at this time and the LCD turns a sickly green most of the time]...I decided to go for the gold and get the new higher end version when it went on sale.

The cameras are built to be exposed weather. I have the lenses I need and if I care as well for the newer model as I cared for the old one, they will last me a very long time.

So with all that goobldy gook aside...I decided to dive into this last upgrade. Note, better gear doesn't make me a better photographer at all. Nope, not at all. I've done very well in the past years of always purchasing a DSLR camera that was being discontinued or buying a used one. I favor Olympus because they are small and lightweight. Carrying my Nikon D5200 was like carrying a load of bricks compared to the light weights.

I like hiking and I like photography, but I don't need to carry extra pounds while hiking. This new one has two new features which I really like.

It has an in camera ND filter. What? It works like a neutral density filter contained within the camera settings. Wicked cool. The image stabilization allows me to take a longer exposure shot up to a full second Hand Held.

I used to lug around a tripod almost all of the time when going near any source of water.

Anxious to try this feature out, I headed to the creek before the winds started Saturday morning.

The shot on the left is just a normal shot of the little pond between my land and the neighbor's land [f 5.6 at 1/15th of a second]. On the right is a shot hand held with a in camera ND shot at f 5.6 at 1.3 seconds. 

Another sample of a first try. On the left a normal shot, on the right .25 of a second. Not a big deal right? But I really like the smoother water. Olympus says that the filter actually merges several exposures together at once. 

Rich wouldn't let me wander around off our property, he said there were too many odd balls bow hunting on the neighbor's 500 acres of land. So I took Charlie and we headed to Tainter Hollow. Alas, we couldn't walk the trails next to Tainter Creek either!

The USDA and DNR had put out traps for the beavers who have been causing a lot of damage to the trout stream. 

Charlie and I parked and walked the gravel road down to the bridge where I thought I could try for some more hand held shots. So these are shots for fun and not for any wowzer factor. I call them learning shots.

Internal ND 8 Filter. 64 ISO, one second exposure. Better! Things look pretty good.

Looking down on the other side of the bridge. Same exposure.

I took one more short walk on Sunday and had to try this again.

I will have to actually use a tripod for any longer exposures than 1 second. But now I don't have to add a filter or even carry one when using this camera. I think that is a bonus. 

There is one more feature I am anxious to try out. It is called Starry Sky AF. But with clouds and rain for the next week, I doubt I'll get a chance to try that. 

I will use the in camera focus stacking and use the focus bracketing.

In short.
I am pleased with this camera. And it will take a while for me to take it through its paces. I think it is built tougher than my old one and definitely can be taken out in poor weather. 

One last parting photo. This was taken in 2016 at Parfrey's Glen near Wisconsin Dells. I climbed rocks and carried my gear over precarious ground to get to this place at the end of the rock gorge. A 1 second shot on a tripod with an ND filter.

Still one of my favorite photos.

The end goal is to be able to not have to carry all the gear to get a shot like this in the future. I guess we will see!

Not going there...and other stuff

I got baited yesterday while working on tomatoes and stirring things and waiting for a medication delivery.

I noticed that someone I knew stated that our state was like living under martial law because we had to wear masks and that South Dakota never had any issues with Covid-19. I simply noted to them that SD had a 10.7 person density per square mile and our state had 107 per square mile and in the cities it was something like 6,000 per square mile. 

Uff. I should have ignored it. I was ashamed that I even tried to point out to someone the difference between states. Oh well. I will smack myself on the head a few times and repeat my mantra [scroll past, do NOT comment]. Conclusion: Don't comment on Meme's that so many people post thinking they are real info.

In other great news! I got the Firestick working well for hubby. He is now getting used to asking Alexa or as he calls her Hey Alex...to find programs for him to watch.

It has been dry dry dry here. The humidity is way down so that is a bonus. It gets warm in the afternoon however the slight breeze is nice.

So with the new Firestick, I finally got rid of the ancient computer we were streaming with. Years ago one of the grands slipped an SD card into the CD/DVD drive.

So I decided to see if I could retrieve the SD card.  Have you ever taken a laptop apart? Well it isn't exactly easy, but I didn't have to take care doing it.
And I had help.

I think they were looking for 'intel' and they found it!

I went for a walk to look at the back fence, the forest ground in that area is so barren and dry. Whew.

However the moisture near the creek keeps things green and growing. I did stop and stand in the creek to admire some filtered light.

I cooked up pasta sauce and canned it yesterday. Today I am cooking up a fresh ham with instructions on how to make pulled pork.

Here is hoping for some rain and a few days break from processing tomatoes. Huh. I don't think that is going to happen!

And I did retrieve the SD card and it wouldn't work. The photos were from October 2013.

Well dang it...

I did it.

I purchased the 'Tough Camera'. Olympus Tough tg6.

And here are my first impressions with this camera.
The very first thing I did while turning it over in my hands was drop it.

Not on purpose, but because...well..., I just dropped it by accident.

I put the battery in and figured out how to charge it and got that immediately set up.

I put the Panasonic 'Lumnix' all weather camera next to it for comparison.
The Tough Camera has a lot more heft to it. Both cameras are weather sealed and pretty much impervious to snow and rain.

However the Tough camera has some exciting features that you normally do not find in point and shoot cameras.

Here is a photo of my Olympus OMD EM Mark iii, with a 14mm-150mm lens next to the Tough for size comparison.

The menus on both cameras are very similar so I will be right up to speed with the Tough camera.

The reviews said the Tough wasn't great in low light situations. My first shots were of some of my indoor decorations.

I let the camera pick the ISO in these shots and used P or Program mode to let the camera pick the f stop also.

These are straight from the camera with no adjustments.

Next I thought I'd try the 'Night Mode'. Olympus claims you can take a night shot hand held with a tiny bit of a longer exposure and NOT get a blurred photo.

Okay, they were not wrong.

I walked outside with Charlie and took a shot of the lights I put on the pine tree out front. The lights were too bright but then again, it was just and experiment. The shot was done with a 1/13th exposure.
I can easily see how I could get creative with this on a moonlit night with some snow!

I did another quick experiment with the macro mode. This camera has 4 macro modes. The white ring in the photo above helps light up what you are shooting in macro mode.
I only tried the basic macro.
There is a in camera focus stacking mode, a focus bracket mode, the plain macro mode [the one I used for the following photos], and a microscopic mode.

These are not touched up, but for the last two I laid nearly touched the flower petals with the lens. Normally that would cut out the light and the photos would be too dark. With the LED ring it lightens it up.

I'm sure I could have some fun with this and ice crystals in the creek!

One more macro shot.

This is a bead from a garland string. You can see the camera lens in the bead which is about the size of a large eraser. The white to the right is a white ribbon string which is reflected along with the other beads.

I'll bet you can't guess what I plan to do today!

Yep! Go for a hike! I'm just going to take this camera and see what I can pull off with it.
Can I take as good a photo as a full frame pricey camera? Nope. But I bet I can do some really cool things with it.

I'll experiment with the High Speed ... Slo Mo video feature along with some shots I'll do in the RAW mode with this.
The weather looks cold and dreary.

Perfect I think for taking a hike after all my morning chores are done.