When Sylvia told me that she would be taking her camera to Florida, I felt the time had come to look into a DSLR.  We’ve been very happy with her Lumix point-and-shoot model, so I looked there first.  When I had narrowed my search, the DMC-FZ70 rose to the top of the list.

I compared and read reviews.  It took time, but it was worth the investment.  I placed my order and then waited.

One of the first things that I did with camera in hand was to check out the 60 to 1 zoom range.  Can you believe 20mm to 1200mm in a single lens?  I had to see for myself.

I’m over 2000 feet from this hunting blind.

A hunting blind made a good target.  They said you couldn’t hand hold a shot that was fully zoomed.  Perhaps not free hand, but I used a window sill and frame to provide two points of stability.  The lens resting lightly against the window glass provided a third.  The image stability algorithm is awesome!

Next, I zoomed out a bit to capture the surrounding scene.

Even here you can see a great zoom range.

Finally, I zoomed to a full-wide shot.  Can you see the hunting blind?

I can’t see it either, but I know it’s there center frame

When folk sing the praises of Spring, it is not this part of the season that they celebrate.  I call it astronomical spring.  The real thing, at least around here, begins sometime next month.

Last Friday night, I was outside taking pictures of the starry sky for yesterday’s Wordless Wednesday post.  The camera is a Panasonic DMC-TZ5 point-and-shoot model.  I bought this for Sylvia when her Olympus 35mm camera died a few years ago.  Since then, I probably use it more than she does.  I like the nine mega-pixel resolution.  (That’s mostly why my Canon S1-IS (three mega-pixel) camera sits on the shelf most days–and nights.)

The camera has automatic settings for various scenes (modes).  I’ve used the “burst” modes to capture the action in the pool when Briana was playing water polo.  I’ve taken lots of night time shots using the “Night Scenery” mode.  Lately, I’ve been experimenting with the “Starry Sky” setting.  This allows for 15, 30 or 60 second time exposures.  I used the 15 sec exposure for some shots of the evening sky, but it wasn’t enough to capture a good image of a particularly dark patch of sky.  I wanted to try again using a 60 sec exposure.  That’s why I was out last Friday evening.

I had taken the photos that were posted here yesterday.  While looking around the sky, I saw a west-bound plane high overhead.  I quickly repositioned the camera and captured this image:

An airplane flies through the center of this picture (60 sec exposure).

Star “trails” are visible because of their relative (to Earth) motion during the 60 sec exposure time.  If you look carefully in the center of the picture, you should be able to see the dotted line caused by the plane’s blinking collision-avoidance lights.  The clouds are illuminated by the crescent moon, which is just out of the frame above this image.

Closer view of the plane passing overhead.

How could I not be pleased with this image?  Okay, a polar mount with sidereal clock drive to accurately follow the movement of the stars would be nice.  I used to have one of those and a large telescope to go with it.  I sold it years ago, but had a lot of fun with it.  Then came the Hubble Space Telescope.  I can view the most fabulous images on nasa.gov.

When I was in High School, I was given a college astronomy text book.  That was great!  They even had a photo of Saturn and it’s rings.  The image of Saturn was as big around as the end of a pencil.  It was much better than I could see–even with my four-foot long telescope.  Now we’ve sent space craft flying right by it all–taking pictures and relaying them to us here on the home planet.  How cool is that?

I’ve told you about a recent project that I did for my pastor’s daughter.  I scanned pictures of her and her soon-to-be husband and put them into a Power Point presentation, which was shown at the wedding reception.  It was a lot of work, but also lots of fun.

Today, I’ll share (with permission) some photos of the groom, Terry.

I used Photofunia to create this introductory image.

Terry and his dad

The photo after lightening foreground and darkening background

In this photo, Terry was in dark shade and the city was in brilliant light.  Photoshop Elements helped me to correct this a bit, but the result (above) was not very good.  What to do?

After the filter

I applied a filter in Photoshop Elements to make it look like a painting.  I like this effect better.

There was also a neat picture of Terry in a heroic pose atop a large rock.  It looked like this:

The photo after minor touch up

I love this shot.  The man, the pose, the pedestal and the lake.  Yet, I felt something was missing.  Once again I turned to Photofunia.

A Photofunia effect adds drama

This was a lot of fun, but it took a lot of time.  I just wanted you to know I wasn’t idle while I was away from here.  (Perhaps you can begin to understand why I bought a new monitor after seeing these on a large screen.)

Thursday, I’ll post some pictures of the bride.  At least that is my intention.

Tuesday evening, I was sitting at the computer watching the three kittens playing in front of the barn. I love watching them play their kitten games. They got tired and disappeared back into the barn.

A few minutes later I saw two young deer come bounding out of the corn field. They came out onto the freshly mown lawn. Like the youngsters they are, they were playing on the lawn. They continued down the lawn toward a large flock of grackles that had landed there to rest and feed. Finally the deer approached too closely for the birds’ comfort. As one, the birds took to wing. The deer panicked and they ran back toward the corn field.

I would loved to have captured that scene on video. Unfortunately, light conditions in that directions were not good.

The two deer came back farther onto the lawn and a few minutes later something in the neighborhood frightened them. In a flash, they ran into the corn field and were lost from view.