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No, the darling stepson hasn’t suddenly reappeared*. This is for an unpaid bill from Anglian Water.
The only flaw in their evil plan is that I paid it. Weeks ago.
I’m going to have an “interesting” conversation with them tomorrow, I can tell you.
* Although now I’ve mentioned the little sod …
At Kitten’s suggestion, I headed over the border to Suffolk to test the new camera.
The village of Dunwich was, at one time, the largest settlement in East Anglia but the vast majority of it is now beneath the North Sea, having succombed to the coastal erosion that is rife along the east coast of the region. As proof of the ever-present danger (if proof were needed), during the past 10 weeks the shingle bar between Dunwich and Walberswich was breached by the sea on the 1st of this month, making the whole of the (formerly freshwater) Dingle Marshes nature reserve tidal. According to the warning notices that had been posted hurriedly at both DUnwich and Walberswick, 1.5 kilometres of shingle was wiped away - that’s quite a breach! I’m not sure how this is going to affect the wildlife - I was pleased to hear a bittern booming out from deep in the reedbed in view of the Guardian’s article on the breach - but it does mean that it’s no longer possible to walk between the two villages.
Related winks: Dunwich, Walberswick
Now for those photographs More »
Ok, hands up who believed me for a minute when I wrote:
I don’t even have the £480 for the basic (body plus 18-55mm lens) kit
?
Anyone?
Well, it’s true. I can’t afford it. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to go out and get one, though, does it? It is, after all, almost a year since I splashed out on a “big” camera which means the Kodak P850 (5.1MP) lasted longer as the main camera than the Kyocera Finecam M410 (4MP).
It helps (me) if I think of it as a bout of retail therapy to take my mind of the state of my innards.
I was served by young “Gnomy” who, as I mentioned to her, is younger than my first Canon, an AE-1 I bought when I was, ooh, fifteen or so, I think. Amazingly - truly amazingly - in spite of her working in Jessops (who have a pricematch deal, even with suspect internet sites, btw) she actually knows about cameras. Yes, I know. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Especially in view of my previous dealings with the chain (there was no sign of Buffoon Boy).. She’s hoping to get a Canon 30D as a combined Christmas/Birthday present so I can only hope - for her sake - that Santa has deeper pockets than I.
A recent(ish) study of births reported a mean birth weight of the sprogs involved as 3210g (or just over 7 lbs).
According to the scales in my bathroom (which I suspect are not 100% accurate), this means that I have, um, passed 2.4 babies in the past week. Seventeen lbs of, well, you know.
I’ve been to see Dr Quack and he was equally sceptical about the scales’ figures but was concerned enough to take a sample of my B rhesus negative for testing.
Although I may well have lost over a stone in the past week, there’s still a fair way to go before I get worried by being too light.
“Yes, but I’m not prepared to go through another five weeks of that.”
“Fair enough.”
His interim diagnosis was a bad bout of IBS and his advice was to take some loperamide as required.
The Gadget Show on Channel 5 has recently looked at Norwhag’s new free WiFi pilot and, following this, are running an online petition cum vote to promote the widening of this scheme to other locations in the UK:
This week on The Gadget Show, Jason explored a pilot scheme which supplies the city of Norwhag with free WiFi internet access for its people.
A great idea, but not enough. We want to see free WiFi in every major town and city in the UK; for business, for tourism, for the future, and for anyone and everyone who relies on the internet.
If you agree, please sign up to our online campaign here, and we’ll take it all the way to the top.
If you’re in the UK (and, presumably, not in Norwhag), go to the Gadget Show site and cast your vote.
Once again (and all too often for my liking) my immense stomach is conspiring against me and is unilaterally imposing a crash diet on my system (if you know what I mean).
This offers a number of drawbacks over and above the feeling like crap and drained (no pun intended).
One of these is the ready access to the internet with its informative sites and access to online shopping. After Huwge’s useful insights, especially concerning apertures and the like, I’ve been looking - purely for information purposes, you understand - at proper SLR cameras with a decent aperture range.
Huwge wrote:
f8 isn’t a great deal when you consider what a D-SLR offers
and he is quite correct - f8 is very much a “middle” setting on SLR and D-SLR cameras. Unfortunately, it’s the smallest aperture the Kodak P850 has on offer and is, as a result, having quite an effect on the depth of field I have available to me.
Looking at my photographs, it’s exceptionally unusual for me to go beyond a focal length of 60mm (that’s approximately 100mm in SLR terms). In fact, the vast majority of my shots are taken at the wide angle end of the scale.
As a result, a “proper” digital SLR camera with a decent wide angle zoom lens (giving a range of, say, 18-55mm) would allow me a lot more flexibility as far as lighting conditions and effects are concerned. Take, as an example, the new Canon EOS 400D with the 18-55mm lens kit that seems to come as the basic kit would meet most of my needs.
Given the choice (and the money), a EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM would be lovely instead but then this is all academic anyway as I don’t even have the £480 for the basic (body plus 18-55mm lens) kit, let alone the additional £824 for the 24-70mm lens.
Anyway, I’ve an appointment with Dr. Quack on Thursday morning to solve the more pressing issue of my Vesuvius impression.
I’m reposting Huwge’s comment on my “Experimenting” post (below) with my replies.
Em - I’m assuming you shot this in manual mode, …
I did
… so you should have been able to stop down and adjust time - …
Yes, I did
did you also set ISO to the lowest value.
Yes, ISO 50
Also, which ND filter do you have?
It’s a x2 filter
Are you using a circular polariser?
Yep
At the tail end of the day, at this time of year I would have expected you to get away with a 1 sec. exposure without it being overblown. f8 isn’t a great deal when you consider what a D-SLR offers.
I think that’s where I went wrong (apart from the location) - it wasn’t the tail of the day. Also, I don’t have a proper DSLR. 
Also, can you bracket exposures?
Yes, I can but didn’t,
Finally, do you use the histogram or the camera’s auto function to determine / understand exposure?
I used the exposure meter rather than the histogram, adjusting the shutter speed until it told me the shot wouldn’t be overexposed.
The key thing is to take as many shots with as many combinations as possible and then make a note of the settings captured in the file info - should record ISO, aperture and shutter speed as well as any exposure compensation. Still not sure the effect you were trying to achieve, ND and slow speeds are usually used for moody shots that blur / freeze running water in the image. If colour saturation is your goal, a low ISO and polariser should deliver good results.
I was actually looking for a similar effect, but having the leaves blowing in the wind blurred instead of water. That’s wise advice there and I hope it’s as helpful to others too. Thanks again, Huwge.
I’ve been out and about this morning, to Weeting Castle via the amusingly named Two Mile Bottom in fact.
The first photo, though, comes from one lunchtime last week and is of the rear of St George church, Colegate near the orifice. I’d been reading (in Outdoor Photography) techniques for getting interesting photos in low light conditions so I picked up the P850, and ND and polarising filter and my trusty tripod. The technique I was going for involves opening up the lens as far as it’ll go (although that’s just to f8 on the P850) and using a long shutter speed (hence the ND filter) combined with a polarising filter to bring out the colours. I’m not sure it worked too well but then it was a little too bright today to really test things - even with those filters, I coiuld only slow down the shutter to 1/15s for the first shot rather than the 5 or 10 seconds I was hoping for.
The colours are, of course, down to post-shot manipulation in Picasa rather than my having happened across a bizarrely saturated part of Thetford Forest. It was rather blustery at Weeting, which is a shame because the yew berries were being nicely photogenic. At 1/4s they just wouldn’t stay still long enough to avoid being blurred.
I’m quite pleased with the photo of Weeting church from the castle, though, even if some fat bloke did spoil one shot.