Recollections of a camera addict

I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's yesterday morning. Paul and Ann were back again after a sailing holiday in the Ionian sea. They showed us some lovely photos of blue sky and ocean afterwards at coffee, a cheerful antidote to a another day's unending rain showers. 

I had a phone call after lunch from Pidgeons about a another funeral at St John's on the Tuesday morning when we leave for the Gower. Last week, I agreed to cover a different funeral at St John's the same day, but then it was re-scheduled for the following day, so I had to pull out. The one I have accepted to do is earlier, apparently the only time slot available for cremation following that day, or else the family has to wait for another week. This time is actually better, as we can have lunch before we travel in good time to take possession of our holiday bungalow.

With the arrival of autumn the number of calls on clergy and the churches for funeral services tends to increase. With Emma approaching maternity leave, in and out of hospital at the moment, and our new team Rector not yet installed I'm happy to help as needed until we go away. It'll be rather tough on Frances to start work in a completely new environment, and be faced with this kind of demand on her own as soon as she arrives. Thankfully Emma's still around on the end of a phone to support and advise her, even if reception in UHW is sometimes flaky.

Another glum day today, low cloud, bursts of rain, but I walked to St John's to celebrate the Eucharist without getting wet. I was missing taking photos, and hand't done so since since Sunday, so when I walked into town in the afternoon, I took my Panasonic DMC-LX5 camera with me, set to take black and white photos, to see what kind of results I could get in the day's lighting conditions. Although it came out nine years ago, it's still a capable camera that takes sharp pictures. I was lucky to buy this one in 2014 for a quarter of its original list price. I wasn't disappointed with the results (see here).

On reflection, I realised this was the first time in 45 years that I last took black and white photos. Clare had a Zeiss Icon film camera, and it stayed with us until we were in St Agnes Parish, when it was stolen from where it was hanging on the back of a door in the Vicarage by someone we invited in for a cuppa, or perhaps a playmate of one of the kids. It was several years before we could afford to replace it with a Praktica SLR, and by that time colour photography was more affordable, and I never looked back.

I still have an unused Praktika and set of lenses, the second of its kind, since the first developed faults due to humidity when I was travelling around Jamaica in 1982. By that time I'd acquired an excellent small 35mm half frame Ricoh which I took as well. I was developing films in a Kingston photo-shop using my travel grant money, as I didn't need to spend it on hotels. Just as well, as I discovered a shutter fault had ruined many of my pictures. The little Ricoh came into its own in this crisis, and I was able to re-trace my steps and fill in some gaps in a photo collection, which was destined to serve as an educational resource when I returned home.

I can't tell which photos were shot with the Praktica and which with the Ricoh. Foolishly, I got rid of it when I bought an equally pocketable but more sophisticated Olympus Trip. This was the only camera I took with me to Mongolia in 1999. Then in 2001, on a return visit to Geneva from Monaco, I bought the first of ten Sony digital cameras each of them increasing in power and sophistication, with three of them currently in use.

Digital Camera Odessy

Much rain, and overcast most of today and yesterday, so I occupied myself with domestic tasks and sermon writing, with a walk into town and back for shopping when conditions eased. Somehow the days slipped by, and in the evening Dan Cruickshank's series of programmes on the Land of the Pharoahs made interesting watching. He's an engaging storyteller, and the landscape photography was breathtaking.

With time to spare for reviewing my recent photographs, I have discovered that images from my Sony HX50 have all acquired a blemish, which is visible in lake photographs. Lens cleaning hasn't removed it. At first it was in the bottom right hand corner of the preview screen, and I found that if I switched from 4:3 to 16:9 proportioned images, the blemish was covered by the sensor mask. Then the blemish appeared in a new more central position. Changing back from 16:9 to 4:3 revealed that the blemish had moved to a new position, rather than a second blemish appearing. I assume that a spec of dust has penetrated the lens barrel and has settled on the sensor or on an internal lens. I have no idea if it's possible to get it cleaned, it could cost as much as a replacement model.

A quick check through this blog revealed that I bought this camera in February 2014. It has been a constant travelling companion ever since. Assuming I didn't accidentally reset the image counter in that time, I've taken eight and a half thousand photos with it. I started with digital photography in 2001. Before that, I used a lightweight Olympus trip and a Practica SLR 35mm film camera for 20 years. The Practica used DDR made Zeiss lenses, and was the start of a brand loyalty that led me to Sony digital cameras in the first place.

The HX50 was my sixth compact digital camera, the longest I've had in continuous use. I had a succession of four in nine years until I retired, a period during which digital image technologies advanced rapidly and consumer camera prices dropped, offering more for less. Its predecessor, a Sony HX5, I lost on a bike ride through orchards near Alcanar on the Valencia-Catalunya border in September 2012. I bought a replacement for it next day in Carrefour, with an equivalent ten times zoom. I still possess it, but rarely use it since I acquired the HX50.

The story of my relationship with my bulkier Superzoom and DSLR cameras has unfolded over the past five years, and evolves much more slowly. For me convenience and portability have a much higher priority, and yet, using a camera phone, no matter how good its quality may be, I regard as a no alternative, last resort. I never feel I have the same control over a touch screen device, and that's the deciding factor.
 
   

Upgrading - various

Wednesday afternoon, as I was going into the office, I bought a prime lens to go with my Sony Alpha 55. No telephoto capacity, just a set focal length F1.8, much like my old Praktica SLR film camera. In fact the 49mm UV lens filter from the Praktica fitted the new lens, although sadly it's acquired a scratch and will only be temporarily useful. This kind of lens works best for portraits and landscape. I shall enjoy exploring how to use it, having got used to variable focal length lenses on all the different digital cameras I've had over the past 15 years. I can't believe it's that long since I started to abandon 35mm film photography.

Thursday was broadband upgrade day - at some time unspecified, the line would drop, and then restart and it would all happen some time before midnight, as the TalkTalk upgrade letter said. It was a day when there were several work matters I needed to deal with and be on-line for, thankfully the old speed link was stable and uninterrupted until just after two. By then I'd done all I needed to do. It was much later in the day when I got around to unpacking the new router and installing it. 

Happily it started up quickly and was soon delivering a much smoother service in getting the household devices all on line without IP address clashes. I say smoother rather than faster, as I've formed the impression that Windows 10 computers still load programs with a degree of latency, more than one would expect for faster modern day computers. Once fully loaded the speed is obvious, but while they load an assortment of internet checks are being made. How I wonder are really necessary? I think it is presumed that people will leave computers permanently on with programs open, or else configured with a pre-load feature operating at boot time, to give you a quicker program start, but a longer wait from switch on to first use. 

It used to take four or five minutes to get a computer system up to speed. Windows 10 gets you to a login screen in under ten seconds, unless inconveniently updating at the time. This always seems to happen to me when I'm in a big hurry to get started. How impatient we've become! Loading programs and work files, brings the time from switch on to starting work down to a minute. In the early days of home computers, there were office suites of programs etched on ROM chips, were extensions of the ROM based operating system. You were ready to find the work file you wanted in seconds from switch on. The nearest matching device for speed today is a Chromebook with fast broadband, though less so when off-line. Such systems are limited in scope, but great if your needs are limited. A good smartphone or tablet always on even when charging, is also quick to get you working, though I'm not a virtual keyboard fan, and prefer a traditional computer to work on. Other devices get used mainly for media consumption.

Today is Kath's birthday. We exchanged messages and greetings in Spanish. They're staying in Toledo on their way home from Sta Pola. I've been enjoying the smooth and uninterrupted quality of broadband access. As at work, this takes a certain tension out of doing what you have to do, as well as reducing delays - except to the imagination, which works at a pace that's not time dependent. After lunch I went for a stroll to Llandaff Fields with prime lens equipped camera to see what I could see and record. I take pleasure in enjoying the bigger picture, landscapes and townscapes are what I look for. The prime lens challenges me to look at detail. Its range of focus gives you a sharp clear subject set in a de-focussed background, so you need to think carefully about what you're looking for in a picture as well as what you're looking at. 

I stopped and had a coffee in Cafe Castan. So glad it continues to flourish, ministering food and drink to park visitors. It's a real enhancement to the locality, and the staff are friendly. Then, late afternoon I went into the office for a couple of hours, and found myself with the task of completing the re-install of Windows 10 on the new Acer desktop PC. It crashed badly and had to be reverted to factory settings, Windows 8.1, then 148 updates had to be made before it could be accepted in the queue for upgrading to Windows 10. 

This dragged on for days, leaving Ashley un-confident about whether or when he could use it, so I finished the job and re-configured it, turning a short visit to talk business into a long one machine minding, so I got home late for supper, resentful that these processes don't always function as smoothly as intended. I never found out why this PC's crashed in the first place. It might have been something simple, sync or an email attachment failing to find an app to open it, locking up the system and leaving the machine useless until it drops into sleep mode. The on/off switch tell tale is so dim, you cannot tell whether it's off or in sleep. At that stage, a wrong move may have caused damage that confounded the various system repair and recovery options. There was no success in recovering settings data stored in OneDrive either, hence the need for a hugely time wasting factory reset.

After supper, we settled down together in front of the TV and watched 'The Last Quartet' a fine film about the middle aged members of a string quartet, thrown into crisis by the impending retirement of one of its members, based around the sublime music of Beethoven's last quartet. Wonderful.