Getting old isn't all bad.

It becomes very easy to leave these sort of gold plated goods alone.
We learn about the much larger bottles for under a dollar stacked on the shelves.

Something for John the Newfie.

When it's all said and done I prefer the vastly cheaper imitation stuff anyway.
It's nice having ONE official language.

Lemons.

The Lemons at Coles look an awful lot like Persimmons.

Out and about.

Local elections today and this time I drove up to Halifax.

They still have the wreaths left on their memorial from ANZAC day, nice to see the local lasses curious.

Mystery plant.

This flowering thing appeared beside our gnome and stands about a metre high now.
This is a flower on top of it but since I have no idea what it is it'd be nice if someone could advise me, my concern is I don't want something that grows too big and it'd be way easier to lop it now if it does.

It's no fun when a mouse doesn't slide easily.

We use silicone mouse mats and they don't slide too well after a while, I've tried washing them but it doesn't do much, I suppose my tears of frustration didn't help either.
Anyway finally the light bulb in my head lit up, try some silicone spray!

At last joy again, a lovely mouse that glides sweetly again, it cheered up Grace too.
Lightning McQueen may be facing a reckless driving charge though.

Zooming with the Nikon P510.

Did I just see some colour in that tree?

Yes it has flowers.
This is a quarter frame sized crop at full zoom, I suppose that's a 4x digital zoom? 4x42=168, zoooom ;).

And this is the same quarter frame sized crop of the wide shot to make a fair comparison.
Nice to see a lovely clear day, pity it's too windy for flower shots.
I might make a note to myself to up the file quality, I just use normal but I'm seeing a bit of JPG noise here, though that may just be the compression I have Irfanview set to. It still may pay to set the camera up a notch to fine though.
I'm still consistently getting good hand held results at full zoom, I hope Nikon treated the crew who worked on the stabilisation a bonus.

A week to go.

Next Saturday we vote in the local government elections, it's way more confusing than the State or Federal elections as there's no party politics involved.

The current Mayor Pino is retiring so even that doesn't make it easier, and all the council candidates are saying pretty much the same thing. The simple rule in voting has always been "are you happy with how things are?" but even if I was totally happy, not many are running for re-election. I think I'll just vote for those who live in my area.

Another ring for Grace's collection.

With a bit more time and effort I might have even been able to get a better shot.

Ant-errupted.

I was taking yet another flower shot and this ant wandered into the scene, no problem, it made it more interesting anyway even if it wasn't the best shot.

Funny that we're getting so many flowers cropping up now that we're heading into "winter", maybe they're just happy to see the end of the wet season.

I gave up, rather quickly too.

I've had an almost unused old Samsung S630 camera lying about for too long doing nothing so the other morning I had a bit of a fiddle seeing if I could remove the IR filter and try for some of that fancy photography stuff.

Wasted my time of course, Samsung appear to have made it a bit more difficult than a stroll in the park to access the sensor so I quickly gave up and reassembled the poor molested thing.

I used the new toy, the Nikon P510 to take a few shots and in reality they were all usable but just a crop of one will do here, seriously though this new P510 is quite remarkable, I bought it simply due to seeing some samples on photographyblog.com, but I've also found it does great macros and has superb image stabilisation, I really bought it to take shots of wildlife with its massive zoom but it's far more useful than just that.

Misery.

He looks miserable and I don't blame him, that blue tractor has made our life a misery for the nine years we've been here. You can't hear it in this photo but it's nearly as loud as the aeroplanes that use the nearby airport, except it drones on for hour upon hour.
Despite the muffler corroding away it'd never cross anybody's mind to ever replace it. I suppose it's about 300 metres away here but still floods our house with noise.

It's time.

The bunnies toughened up OK from their spell in the fridge.

Underneath their blue boy and pink girl wrappings they appear the same bunny, but I suppose only other chocolate bunnies need to know the difference.

From a different perspective.

Not much of a crowd today, being Good Friday nearly everything is shut, even the pubs aren't allowed to open, despite the religious link being unconstitutional.

Grey is definitely a horrible colour yet so many cars suffer it, I must find out if I can give Artie a spruce up without breaking some law.

Don't fall in one of these when they're operating.

An old crusher for sugar cane, it makes a nice exhibit.

Yet another flower with the Nikon P510.

Wandered about a bit today, nice flower growing in a pond of filth.

Full sized crop at full zoom.

Plus a wide shot with minimum zoom, the flower's in the middle there somewhere.

Hobby.

Since the invention of digital cameras made photography a pastime even poor jobbers like myself can play with I've poured plenty of time, effort and money into enjoying it, way too much by most accounts but I don't indulge in much else these days.

Anyway I took a few shots of this Vinca flower this morning just to compare how my current crop of light gatherers compare. All taken using auto settings and macro where available, Auto because it allows us to see what the programmers wanted. All full size pixel crops of the original image.

First up the Samsung SH100, I like its bright colour, the image is good enough and it has served the purpose of a pocket camera that travels with me every time I head up the street very well. It's a wi-fi camera but I haven't found that to be of any use, maybe if I was 20 again it would be but it's a niche feature.

Next the Olympus PL-1, the kit lens just isn't suited for this, pity as it's a superb camera and is really giving me some lovely shots, but not macros. I can see myself having more Olympus cameras in future, my eyes have come to the opinion they have the best jpg look going around.

Now the Nikon S9100. Travel zooms are great when you are going to take photos but don't want to be burdened by a heavy lump, this one is as good as any and has less shutter lag than most.

And the surprise was the new Nikon P510, I grabbed one due to the massive zoom and the picture quality I saw in some early samples online, but now it looks like it's not only going to do the long shots but it's going to be the macro choice about the house too. It's too bulky to carry casually but I think I'm going to use it a fair bit when I know I'm going to take some photos. I can get much closer with this but it isn't the point of these shots, I wanted to see what does flowers better

A surprise in the mail.

From Rhonda came a pair of molten bunnies.

Grace is happy, and a spell in the fridge will toughen them up a bit.

Thanks Rhonda.

Fake.

This frog on our landing is fake, yesterday's frog was real, really.

Hiding.

But I almost rolled the recycling bin over the tiny bugger this arvo.

It's only about as wide as my thumb and would be a very tasty snack for much of the other wildlife in these parts.