Tag Archives: camera

First time out with new camera

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We are giddy with our new camera – a Nikon D90! I haven’t even read the manual yet but today we took it for a ride to town, bought a case for it, and then took a little drive over to the Canso Causeway to look for seals.

We saw several! The first one was a dead road kill on the side of the road :( We saw 3 dead ones by the end of the drive.

The Causeway connects mainland Nova Scotia with Cape Breton Island. It is less than an hour from here. One side of the causeway is frozen and the other is open water. On the ice side there were a number of seals all spread out over the ice. Exciting! I hadn’t seen so many seals!

There isn’t a place to stop on the Causeway, but just past it there is a little pull off. From there we saw a seal that was close to shore so we tried out the new zoom lens and snapped away. It was very frigid – the winds there are so cold it feels like they’re trying to take a bite of your flesh.

Speaking of taking a bite of your flesh, we didn’t want to get too close to the seal because they have big teeth and will bite! Another woman was stopped taking a photo and she was getting close enough to make him growl. Jeff warned her to not get too close but she said she was sure she could out run the seal.

(Have you seen how fast these guys can move? I was impressed)

Here are a few photos.

Seal

Seal

Seal

Seal

Seal

Seal

Seal

We think that she/he was trying to get up and over the Causeway to get to the water so I hope it wasn’t the next roadkill seal. We left so we didn’t have to watch that happen.

Beautiful Birdy Day

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Beautiful day out. My tulips in the front are open and so so beautiful!!

The birds are having a FEAST at my feeders. They can finish off a feeder full of niger seed in 48 hours! I have an entire flock visiting right now – I think they are some sort of warbler – yellow rumped maybe? There are easily 20 of them out there at a time.

Be sure to click on the photos to see the larger image. This Kodak Easyshare Z740 zooms in so well! Of course the birds were having such a feast I walked up closer too and they didn’t flinch!

Tulips

Tulips

Warblers<

Warblers

July in April?

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It’s just unreal! I’m sitting on one of my new deck chairs with my wireless laptop. It is 25-26 degrees Celcius out here! It’s April! In northern Ontario, Canada! It wouldn’t be surprising to still be receiving snow on this day!

Such a warm dry streak. My Manitoba maples (Acer negundo) flushed yesterday. The grass is greening up. (Normally it doesn’t need a cut until long into May) My tulips are quickly sprouting up – but the beds are so dry, who has ever had to water tulips? Hopefully we get the rain forecasted tonight and that’ll dampen the bush enough to put off fire bans until much later in the year.

I’m grabbing my Kodak Easyshare Z740 right now and I’ll update soon with some pics of the day!

Okay here are some pics! Ahh this cold beer I’m enjoying while sitting on this new deck chair sure tastes good. haha.

The first one of the sky – I think I’d like to retry that with the backlit feature on the camera and see how it turns out. The second photo is a clump of tulips in the front bed that are showing their buds already. The last is a bud that has flushed on a Manitoba maple tree.

Spring Flowers Update

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Well my wonderful father has filled me in on how to take a good shot with your digital camera of a flower close-up. He said to try take the photo on more of an angle. I took a mess of photos around the yard trying things out this afternoon. There are some more crocuses coming up in my back flower bed, and I tried approaching them on an angle with my Kodak Easyshare Z740 and it worked!

I can’t believe my icicle pansies survived the winter and are full of blooms again! I mean there is still some snow in the shade across the street! I’m the first one in the neighbourhood to have flowers!

First Spring Flowers

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These are my first spring flowers – my crocuses – they came up a week ago. Spring seems so early here this year!

I took a few photos using the flower setting on the Kodak Easyshare Z740. It’s a macro setting for photos that are within 70 cm. Unfortunately I wasn’t too happy with the result – I autofocused on the grass behind the flowers so the flowers themselves aren’t crisp and clear. This is going to take some practice!

I’ll share two of the photos here anyway so you can see what I mean.

Still Love It

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Well I’ve had the Kodak Easyshare Z740 for a couple of weeks now. I love this camera. Now keep in mind that it is my first digital camera. Before this I used a big bulky SLR camera and carried a big heavy case full of lenses and camera accessories.

What are my favourite features?

This camera is so light. It comes with a neck strap and because the camera is so light it doesn’t dig into the back of my neck. I’m just crazy about the whole idea of digital photography. I can take so many pictures, and if I don’t like it, well then I can always delete it later! I’m using a 256 meg SD memory card and it fits over 150 photos on it. I have yet to use the Kodak Easyshare printer that came bundled with it other than to use it as a camera base to charge the batteries and transfer photos to my laptop. I love the sound effects – sci-fi is still my favourite. I also really like the ability to switch between using the LCD display or the viewfinder. In the bright sun like today’s photos, I mostly used the viewfinder.

What don’t I like?

I haven’t found a case yet and I’m so scared of scratching the back LCD display. I actually keep the camera in a big ol’ sock sometimes in my carry bag! I find it really easy to knock off the lens cap. I’m not sure of how it could be designed better, but it is attached by string so it really isn’t a problem. I also need to dig back into the user manual because I haven’t figured out how to tell how much battery power is left, but I’m sure there must be a way.

Respecting People’s Privacy

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It’s a shame sometimes that I have ethics. I took some really nice close up photos on Thursday of some co-workers during our afternoon team building session. Unfortunately I don’t feel it is right for me to share their pictures on the internet with out their permission, so unless I get that permission, I guess I won’t share! It’s a shame because they really show the zoom capabilities of the Kodak Easyshare Z740. I did forget to use the red-eye reduction feature (hey, I’m still learning!) but it wasn’t a problem as the room had plenty of natural light.