Showing posts with label Sony H400. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sony H400. Show all posts

Sunday, 10 June 2018

Camera talk with Amanda

There were nine of us at St Catherine's this morning, when I celebrated the eight o'clock Eucharist. Clare went to the ten thirty service, so I had a quiet morning to myself at home. In the afternoon we drove to Bristol. It was Clare's anthroposophical study session, and after I dropped her off in Stoke Bishop I went to see Amanda. Clare got a lift and came and joined us an hours and a half later. In the meanwhile, Amanda and I talked photography. 

A couple of months ago she bought the same Sony H400 as Rhiannon got for her birthday, and since then, she's been out in her wheelchair with her carer, taking photos in the city museum, on College Green, around the Harbour and St Mary Redcliffe Church, and she's taken it to church with her. What a difference it's make to her, now that she was a care package geared around taking her out thrice weekly, for shopping, or just to visit places that take her fancy.

Handling the camera is quite a challenge given her physical limitations, but thankfully her working muscles are strong enough to hold a camera without shaking. I was able to show her how many of camera features work, that she hasn't yet got to grips with, and how to upload pictures, set up web albums using Google Photos, and make a start on learning to use web editing tools. She's got a good eye, and is quick to pick up things. This, I believe, will bring her much reward for the effort she makes in taking on this new challenge.

Over the weekend I've started working my way through a Belgian crimmie box set on the 'Walter Presents' channel called 'Rough Justice', focussing on the cases handled by a female commissario de police in Antwerp, so it's in Flemish for a change. Interesting due to her effective but questionable methods of bringing suspected perpetrators to account, and the whiff of corruption and blackmail that seems likely that its may all end in tears. Sure, it's all be done before, but we'll see if it all pans out any differently by the end of a thirteen part series.
  

Thursday, 22 February 2018

BIrthday camera

We were up early this morning for a celebratory birthday breakfast with Rhiannon, before she set off for London with Kath and Anto for a visit to Madame Tussaud's. Her Big Pressy was a Sony H400 camera, which several of us clubbed together to buy for her. Naturally, I'm delighted to think she's taking an interest in photography, and wanting to make the step up from small pocket camera. 

Apart from the prohibitive high cost of a DSLR as a first step up the camera ladder, Sony superzooms offer a lightweight alternative with a long lens and body of a similar size. It takes a while to get used to carrying around something which doesn't slip easily into your pocket, and getting the most out of a 50+ zoom. If using it regularly catches on with her, it may see her through the rest of school. 

As she seems headed towards an artistic career, a time will come when a high quality camera upgrade will be necessary, and by then she'll be more motivated to manage the added weight and size. One step at a time however. It's very pleasing to see her preference doing design work on paper, rather than with a digital device. Who knows, she might even take to old fashioned film photography? There are plenty of bargain antique cameras around. Pity about the cost of using film.

Our home journey after breakfast was relaxed and uneventful. The roads were fairly quiet, perhaps because it's half term. Later in the day, Kath started sending us funny family photos of them mixing with celebrities in wax on What'sApp. The problem for me was recognising who the celebrities are, as well as knowing anything about them. The same was true, watching last night's Brit awards. It's another universe I don't belong to. That's the trouble with getting old.