f5.6  55mm(x 1.5)

This was November, and the water was freezing; dogs have no sense, especially when cute…

I’m becoming lazy and lax, I can’t decide which of these shows the scale of the minihound best, or for that matter the scale of Jay’s lap..

Just in case you think my confession of affection for this chien par excellence is exaggerated, here is a shot someone took of me inflicting my guitar playing and nearly-but-no-banana singing on the household after breakfast. I was genuinely trying to sing when Harry climbed on to my shoulder to clean my left ear for me in a remarkably successful attempt to stop the noise.

That’s all folks. Aren’t they gorgeous portrait victims.

Leaving Fort William:

The rail bridge from the “soldier’s bridge” leaving Fort William with Ben Nevis behind:

It can be hard to explain why you like certain pictures, but for me the juxtaposition of what looks like ex-council housing with the mightiest mountain in Britain and Scotland fascinates. The path you walk is clearly visible on the right:

The view of Loch Linnhe from Caol near the start of the Caledonian Canal. Fort William just visible on the left:

Still on day 1 of the walk you encounter the amazing “Neptune’s staircase“. This lifts or drops boats 20 metres in 8 huge locks. It was a Thomas Telford creation:

This is typical of the Caledonian Canal between Fort William and Gairlochy where we finished day 1. Starting a 10 mile stretch at 4pm left us dangerously late for dinner:

Catherine knackered but undaunted after the first (painfully flat) 10 miles. There’s something about flat walking that shows every painful bit of your boots in a way that hillier ground doesn’t. It must be because the same part of your foot takes the same stresses every step whereas angles change all the time in hills. Anyway on-board flash used on a low setting here to counteract the growing twilight:

At the same time Gerry who hasn’t had a blister in his life was showing off his wafer thin business socks. Swine!

Day 2 now and you start immediately on Loch Lochy (unimaginative name! The loch that’s a bit lochish?). The main feature of the way makes itself apparent now. You had better ready yourself for the challenge of photographing forests, because that’s what you’ll be walking through lots of. Here’s an attempt to catch the amazing and sometimes overwhelming presence of the trees:

This trunk was just plain confused, but eventually it got the hang of “up”:

Getting out your macro lens can just bore your companions so when all three toddled off to visit some featured small church I indulged my perverse needs and started with a dandelion that must have thought it was safe from photographic molestation:

Then some Gorse:

Then a lochside primrose:

The party reunited we walked on and saw this grouse that insisted on watching us from behind thickets of  twigs. My 70-300 gave me a shallow enough depth of field to isolate it from its dense refuge. It still led me a merry dance to see even this much of it:

A moment later these tiny wallflowers distracted me. You can’t be a fast walker with a camera. I think they are blue violets; they were growing on an embankment:

Who could resist photographing this Loch Lochy scene:

Here’s Elisabeth taking day 2 in her stride with a sensible sized camera at her waist, unlike my Canon 40D on my waist:

Just as you approach the Laggan Locks at the head of the loch you see this copse of trees and a thoughtfully placed tractor for passing photographers. I owe this farmer a pint:

We were glad to see the lovely Laggan Locks and the dying light I think helped the atmosphere:

More of the locks:

With 21 miles under their belts, two tired kittens contemplating how little working life prepares you for long days on your pawsies:

Enough for now, more shortly……

To my shame I didn’t actually know it was an Eider. I wondered if it was a black and white duck? I suppose it is a kind of black and white duck. This is a male, the females are brown. A snatched shot from the Gourock to Dunoon ferry just before it left yesterday morning.

I know it’s a little pathetic, but I’m very fond of our little cat, Pepsi. Like all cats, she’s a little selfish and wicked, but she’s also very affectionate (when it suits her). The problem is twofold, she won’t look at a camera, no seriously she won’t, and she’s so black that you need just the right lighting. Black cats just reflect the light if it’s too bright like a flash, if the light is too low then the picture is just a black shape. Yesterday I noticed that the sunbeam she was standing in was giving the right amount of soft light, and my LX3 was at hand. I tricked her into looking at me, brought the Panny up close and luckily she looked at me just long enough for the autofocus to work. I then tried for a full 5 minutes to get her to look at me again but as soon as the camera pointed at her she would look at her paws or anywhere else. Any cat psychologists know why she does this? Do cats believe we’re stealing their souls?

Aww!

Among this mass of photographs, which I think are my best work from last year, must be one or two that I think would represent the very best of what I have tried to do. Scott Bourne has challenged us/me to choose the one that I feel represents my best work. Why is it so hard to select your one favourite, I have tried but failed. My compromise has been to choose my favourite portrait, Landscape, Animal and Flower since these are probably my favourite categories.

Now come on, think back yourself, what is your favourite picture, or at least your favourites in different categories? Perhaps identifying these will help us to set a target or a benchmark for next year.

Portrait:

Landscape:

Animal:

Flower:

Perhaps next week I’ll look back and decide that I have got this hopelessly wrong, but I hope I’ve learned something from the exercise of analysing what I like? I’m going to print these and hang them somewhere, why not do the same to remind yourself of this year’s standard.

Here are some comparisons with a Canon Ixus 850

So what of the LX3? It is a little smaller than the Canon G10, but still a little larger than a true compact due to its permanently protruding lens. The bottom line is that it won’t be comfortable in an inside pocket, but most jacket pockets will be fine with it. It is small enough for most of us, but if it must slip into an inside pocket, look elsewhere.

Features:

24mm to 60mm zoom

720p HD video

RAW files

Full manual control possible

Flash hotshoe

The next thing I have strong feelings about are the the controls on the Panasonic. They are a mixture of tiny switches and a little fiddly joystick and they are just north of horrible. The camera feels like it is cast in solid steel and feels like a quality mini-rangefinder, but the controls are pure “Toys’R'Us”. You get used to them, and although you can mis-hit the joystick even after practice, they generally don’t get in the way, they just don’t inspire confidence. This is a problem for Panasonic because the user interface with its rotary dial on the G10 deserves awards, it’s brilliant, simple and solid. Overall though, it is a pleasant camera in the hands mainly due to a really good clear screen and a really solid weighty feel. The menus are simple enough, clearly laid out and won’t cause any of us any great problems.

In use, the Panny is pleasant and fairly responsive (quick to respond to controls like the shutter), but it’s not capable of instant response; as a reviewer said elsewhere, it never feels like a problem; I would go with that, it would not be a choice for sport photography, it would be too slow, but for other uses, street, landscape, portraiture it feels fine. At ISO 80 and 100 it gives gorgeous results with real detail and no noise, by ISO 400 there is noise but in my view it’s totally useable, but by 800, you are hitting the buffers, you will get some useable shots, but it’ll depend on them not having a lot of black areas and low light patches that tend to show noise. When you look closely at ISO 800 in jpegs, the noise reduction has taken a sledgehammer to the fine detail, but from a more normal viewing distance it looks OK. 1600 ISO is as poor as you would expect on a compact camera with a little sensor.

The wide lens is really nice, it is surprisingly wide in use, and would certainly delight landscape and street photographers. It could have done with a little more at the telephoto end but again you buy the Panasonic to indulge wide to normal angle photography like landscape and street, and for this it is a great camera. Now that Adobe have released a compatible camera raw version and Lightroom 2.2 also supports it, I have tried RAW files with it. It is certainly a luxury and they do give a little more latitude for adjustments than the jpegs, but for many users of the little panny it won’t be worth the bother, the exposure and internal adjustments of the jpeg make the pictures really nice straight out of the camera. I am using RAW and Jpeg together because I don’t need the speed and I never want to be stuck with a picture that I can’t adjust as much as I want in Lightroom. So as A DSLR user’s carry about camera, this ticks the right boxes and is nice below 800 iso.

So my first impressions: I have had this for about 2 weeks, and have carried it with me a lot and it has been easy to have in a pocket or my work bag So it scores well for it’s primary purpose, always being handy. It is pleasant to use and has decent noise performance for a small sensor camera if you don’t have unrealistic expectations. Overall I’m happy with it, but I’m always aware that you need to live with a camera for a whiloe to really know for sure, so I’ll post an update or two as I go along.

Some pics:

ISO 80. Wemyss Bay Victorian Station

ISO 800 Rothesay Ferry Leaving in Darkness

ISO 800: An Eagle Owl from the Loch Lomond Bird of Prey Centre

An unidentified Shark-Like fish lying on the viewing tunnel of the Loch Lomond Sea Life centre. Very low light!

ISO 80: And finally an HDR of the foredeck of the Gourock-Dunoon ferry in good light.