Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!! We don’t get fooled again………………..
Roger Daltrey of The Who?
I’ll Tip My Hat To The New Constitution
Take A Bow For The New Revolution
Smile And Grin At The Change All Around
Pick Up My Guitar And Play
Just Like Yesterday
Then I’ll Get On My Knees And Pray
We Don’t Get Fooled Again
Don’t Get Fooled Again
No, No!
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Meet The New Boss
Same As The Old Boss
One dragonfly today – Neurothemis fulvia, the Russet Percher.
These are quite skittish but by kneeling on the boardwalk for 20 minutes and keeping quite still this dragonfly continued to return to the same perch in between fending off intruders.
Neurothemis fulvia
These get quite scruffy and this one was in reasonably good shape. They don’t look as good when the wing colouring has faded. I used fill flash to bring out the colours.
My second shot is another view of the LNEC with the back drop of the hills behind. I was testing my new 70-200mm F4 IS lens today and this was one of my efforts. The only minor issue is that is it has no tripod collar but it is so light that it can be mounted on the camera body, itself attached to the ball-head and it does not seem in the least front heavy or unstable.
……….. G9.
During one of yesterday’s heavy rain showers I retreated under cover and chatted with a fellow photographer. In all honesty the conversation was fairly basic as he spoke virtually no English and I struggled with my only marginally better Cantonese. The main substance was perfectly comprehensible however. It consisted of an exchange of admiring noises as we each showed the other images on the LCD screens of our camera. Now I was at a minor disadvantage as he seemed to have several hundred images on his card and I had about 30 but I cheated and brought out my iPhone and used the image library from that.
I have to admit that his images were really rather good in terms of composition. It is hard to judge much on an LCD screen so small but when he zoomed in his shots also looked pretty sharp. And what camera did he have? A Canon G12. That is it. No DSLR, no tripod, just the built in flash capability and a very good eye for a picture.
I came home feeling rather bruised and decided I might have to break the new year resolution (again) and succumb to GAS (gear acquisition syndrome). However before lust bettered my judgement I recalled that I had tucked away in the back of the dry cabinet a G9. Several years old but it works. So I went onto the ‘net and searched for comparisons between the Gs 9 and 12. After about half an hour of reading I came to the conclusion that there was little to be gained by paying for the G12 and the IQ of the 9 should be acceptable within the constraints of a small sensor camera. It is not going to give me decent images at high ISO but perhaps I could switch to B&W in such circumstances. After all I seem to spend a lot of my time converting to B&W and adding grain to get that retro film look! I was also surprised to recall that the G9 has a macro capability down to 1cm. Not too shabby that.
Today I charged the battery and took a few images. I have two to show you.
The first is the familiar view from our house. Stop yawning at the back of the class!
And the second is the ever gorgeous Princess Lulu, she of the cold wet nose and ever (allegedly) empty stomach:
Now if PL looks a bit under the weather it is because we have had something of a drama at home over the last 24 hours. Late yesterday we discovered a rather unwelcome visitor in the form of a rat. Not a very big one but a rat nonetheless. We are fairly rural here and rats are common. Generally though they fit into the same category as snakes – better out than in. At this point the domestic help chipped in to tell us that this was in fact the second one of the day as she had found one in the laundry basket early in the day but had not thought it worth mentioning. Well you don’t do you? Vest, shorts, blouse, socks, rat……… you get the idea. Mrs. H had a minor (perhaps bordering on major) wobbly at this point and called the pest control chaps who are on contract to us. Incredibly they arrived within 15 minutes, sirens wailing, lights flashing, brakes skidding……….. (maybe not).
They discovered nothing in the house but did find two in the outside storage area. These alas met with a sticky end. Off the PC chaps went, chirpy at a job well done. But a couple of hours later the dear old helper domesticus announced that there was another rat running laps of the living room. We did not find it alas but I suspect it was inside the leather rocking chair, which I use for my Val Doonican impressions. So overnight every conceivable trap was set to see if we could catch the unwelcome jogger.
When I descended bright if not early this morning we had one small corpse to deal with. Just as we were congratulating ourselves on such a fine outcome blow me down but another one ambled in front of us. Number four. I am afraid that R4 met the same unhappy end as numbers 1, 2 and 3. Since then we have been in a rodent-free zone. No mice, hamsters, gerbils or any other form of rat-alike. Princess Lulu took it pretty much in her stride but was not happy that our attention was diverted away from her to the Rat Family. The Partridge Family was bad enough but The Rat Family was just another micro-notch over the limit of acceptability although the squeaking may have reminded you of David Cassidy.
And there we are. Hopefully we are back to normal. The house has been disinfected, scoured from top to bottom, traps set again (just in case) and if one of the small devils should appear, never fear, I shall be there with my G9 to record it for posterity.
All downhill from here 