Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
Palm Frond.
Taken with a Panasonic Lumix ZS-3 in St. Martin, April 2011. The tropical sunlight gives such bright colors.
Water droplets on a leaf.
Bouganvillea.
Colorful leaves.
Flowers floating in a water filled bowl.
I’ve had my RX-100 for over a year now. I originally bought it as “carry everywhere” camera, the lack of which I felt after I got rid of my Panasonic Lumix LX-7.
First a word about the type of photography I incline to. I mostly take pictures of old buildings, old machines, landscapes, flowers etc. Occasionally I take pictures, usually at family events or social gatherings. What I don’t normally take pictures of are things which move quickly (e.g. sports, people in the street, kids running around etc.) so lightning fast focus isn’t really that important to me.
For my type of photography the RX-100 has done very well. I find the autofocus to be very accurate – much more so that that of my NEX 5N, which I usually shoot using manual focus because I don’t trust the autofocus. The pictures produced by the RX-100 are very sharp and it has done very well in low light situations where I’ve been shooting without a tripod. The colors are bright and contrasty. And of course the most important thing is that it’s so light and easy to carry around that I almost always have it with me. Because of this I now shoot more pictures and consequently have more “keepers”. Some of my favorite pictures have been taken with this camera (see a few below).
It’s not without its failings though. The thing that used to annoy me the most was that it was far too easy to accidentally press the video record button. I don’t shoot much video so I didn’t really even need the button. Fortunately a recent firmware upgrade eliminated this problem by disabling the button in still mode – thank you Sony. I also find that the lens flares a lot when pointed in the general direction of a strong light source. I suppose a lens hood would help, but I haven’t been able to find anything suitable. I miss having a viewfinder and a tilt screen (but then I knew that when I bought it so can’t really complain) and I find the manual focus to be so “fiddly” that I don’t use it, which is a pity since for my style of photography this would be my preferred option if it worked to my satisfaction.
Perhaps more significantly I find the pictures to be quite “clinical” – well focused, very sharp, bright and contrasty (maybe even a bit too contrasty) but somehow a little lacking in character. I shoot a lot with legacy lenses on my NEX 5N and even though some of them can be lacking in some of the above areas, they usually have a very definite “look”, which I like. I shoot in RAW and I find that with the RX-100 I have to tone down the contrast and the saturation and even soften the image a touch in order to get the look that I like.
Still, all gripes aside, it’s a wonderful camera and I would miss it greatly if it were to die on me – at least for the 10 seconds or so it would take me to decide to get a model III with the viewfinder and tilt screen I miss.
According to its website Gilead Presbyterian Church:
… was first known as the West Church of Christ in Philips Patent, with Elisha Kent as Pastor. Its first house of worship was Historic Plaquea log structure that was built in 1743 in the area now known as Tilly Foster. From 1755 to 1834, Gilead worshipped in a building atop Seminary Hill in Carmel. The old Gilead Burying Ground is still located there, and is final resting place to patriot spy Enoch Crosby. Crosby was listed as one of the elected trustees when the congregation was incorporated in 1803 as the Second Presbyterian Congregation and Society of Carmel. In 1773, while the church was on this second site, a portion of the congregation migrated to found the present Baptist Church of Millerton, which still retains possession of Gilead’s original record book.
In 1836, the church moved to “Center City” (present-day Carmel) on the shore of “Shaw’s Pond” (now called Lake Gleneida). The congregation was later incorporated in 1893 as the Gilead Presbyterian Church and Society of Carmel. The name “Gilead” appears to have been associated with the church as well as with the nearby Lake Gilead from the time of Elnathan Gregory, who in 1760 preached with great effect on Jeremiah 8:22. From church records, it appears that a formal Presbyterian relationship dates from the enrollment of the church in the Presbytery of Bedford in 1835. Picture of old Gilead Church
The present edifice was dedicated on January 31, 1924. It is Gilead’s fifth house of worship and is the third on the current site, replacing an 1894 structure that was lost to fire in 1922. The existing building is substantially a replica of its 1894 predecessor. A modern school wing was added in 1958 and it houses the Gilead Church School as well as Carmel Nursery School (founded in 1949).
Since 1743, Gilead Presbyterian Church has had 48 pastorates, and over 100 men and women have served the community as Elders and Deacons.
A more detailed history in pdf format can be found at: A History of the Saints of Gilead: An Historical Sketch of Gilead Presbyterian Church (USA).
We were going out and I was waiting for my wife to finish getting ready. As I stood in the kitchen I noticed the late (around 4:00 pm) afternoon light streaming through the french doors in the kitchen and casting the shadows of the lattice and of a plant onto the wood floor. It seemed to me that this would make a nice black and white image. I also liked the way the the texture of the wood grain on the floor contrasted with the essentially ‘textureless’ shadows.
Spring is here and I have to engage in one of my least favorite activities: gardening. My wife is really the gardener of the family and I will admit that I like it when the garden’s all a-bloom. It’s the process of getting to that point that I’m not keen on. My usual role is lifting large objects (e.g. bringing out the 20+ heavy plant pots with roses in them that every year we put into the basement) and digging holes. Today was a digging hole day. We have a lot of bushes with white, bell shaped bunches of flowers (I don’t know what they’re called) along the side of the house. Bees seem to be very fond of them and there were a large number these insects buzzing around. I noticed that they would stay on a clump of flowers for quite a while. This was good because I’m not great at photographing things that move a lot.