Invisible Webpage Redux

Okay -- website-wise we're still not back up. You're still going to pull up an annoying extinct domain advertising thing every time you try to reach Mel Keegan OnLine or DreamCraft itself ... and yes, it's already BEEN FIXED ... but there's a third-party registry agency which takes 48 hours to cycle its business. We won't reappear till something along the lines of the old monster, InterNic, finishes cycling.

Has anyone out there been on the Internet for long enough to have gone through the process of registering domains ten or twelve years ago? What a question. DreamCraft has been around that long, and when they registered the domain for the first time, it was done through the old monster which in those days ruled cyberspace with a rod of iron. In that far off era, there was ONE place you could go to buy a domain, and they were extremely expensive! These days we're spoiled: $5 domains, and you can buy them down at the magazine shop.

That's all well and good, but for domains which were registered back in the Paleolithic era, the rules turn out to be different. (You learn something new every day -- stay with me here, just a moment longer.) Those domains still fall under the influence of the creaking old registry agency which has been holding them, and their "parking pages," for longer than a decade. It's fine and dandy, if the domain never lapses (ie., you have the credit card number hiccup we experienced a few days ago). But if the domain has lapsed for some reason --

The fun begins. And you have to manually shift the domain and its parking page to a new, modern, up-to-date server. All this time, for registry purposes, DreamCraft has been "parked" in a Lower Jurassic formation, where the computers are fossilized and the dinosaurs are so sheeted in cobwebs, they can't see where they're going.

DreamCraft is now on its way to Tucows. But apparently the process can take 24 - 48 hours. The new system is automatic and instantaneous; the Lower Jurassic system functions at the pace of an arthritic, myopic, dyspeptic sauropod.

And the worst part of all this is, nobody -- either at DreamCraft or iPower -- can do anything to make it go faster. Running in circles, screaming and bashing your head against the walls doesn't help.

I know. I've tried.

So -- patience turns out to be even more of a virtue than we'd previously thought! In any case, we're still waiting on the proof copy of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE ... if it doesn't get here next week, I shall need to be tranquilized. And the proof copy of DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT has only just begun its epic journey to Australia. Rats.

So, let's get off onto happier subjects.

A new blog is launching, and I'm playing tag-team with a group of people you've probably come to know from this blog and DreamCraft itself. This one is a photo blog, and for the first time in years I get to flex my muscles as a photographer rather than a writer:

It's been a long time since I was able to cut loose and think like a photographer -- which is to say, worry about the text later, or even leave that to someone else entirely. Digital Kosmos will be a lot of fun. We're still working on it, there will certainly be changes before it's "launched," but you can help yourself to the sneak preview here: http://photographyfan.blogspot.com/

There's a dozen or so posts (images with 100-250 word captions) online at this point, and we'll launch it when we have thirty or forty "up." But it's already very nice ... and the novelty factor for Keegan is immense. (The Jade quoted in the blog's header-bar is my cover artist; you all know Dave -- as in Alaskan Dave Downunder, whose antics have become infamous). Doctor Mike, you'll be meeting for the first time at Digital Kosmos. The impending PhD is in archaeology. Indiana Jones territory.

Last note for today: folks don't seem to mind the inclusion of Infolinks; I managed to redesign them, so they don't jump out of the page so obnoxiously ... and for what it's worth, they actually get a heck of a lot more clicks than the Google ads. Please do let me know what you think of them! Trying to keep the bills paid is one thing -- getting right up readers' noses is something else!

Ciao for now,
MK

Keegan's Day Off

Today's post will be a little anomalous ... various domestic crises are going on in the background, and have eaten up the time I'd usually spend posting, so -- today it's "rock hopping at Seacliff Reef," or "the best shots from Keegan's day off yesterday." Welcome to this neck of the woods!

The camera is the Fuji FinePix 6500 at 6.3MP, with a 10x optical zoom, and a 10x digital zoom on top of that; shots processed through IrfanView (see the link below).

Click on the pics for a larger view: I've uploaded them at 1000 pixels wide.

The road to the sea ... in this case, Jetty Road, Brighton, with the Arch of Remembrance at the landward end of the jetty itself. Lovely day; hot in the car.


Just before you get right up to the Arch, you reach a traffic island and hang a left. Drive about a klick down the foreshore with the dunes on your right (and the beach beyond them), and the millionaires' mansions on your left. (Wonder who you have to kill to get into their income bracket?!) At the end of the Esplanade -- the foreshore road -- you reach the parking lot of the Seacliff Yacht Club ... it's empty on a weekday, so go ahead and park there. There's no marina: this is a boat club for trailer-sailing craft (see below), which you bring to the beach on your trailer and trundle onto the sand down this here concrete ramp. The car parked at the head of the ramp has, incidentally, just offloaded the little boat you see below...


If you look to your right as you wander down the boat ramp, you'll be looking back the way you drove. There's the Brighton Jetty, at the landward-end of which is the Arch of Remembrance. Note the staggering crowds on the beach. Glorious day ... eight people were out, including yours truly.


Turn your back on the hustle and bustle of Brighton Beach and look in the other direction, toward Seacliff, and ... this is how the other half live. You would not believe some of these mansions.

And here's the view out to sea at, or close to, this point -- low tide on the Seacliff Reef. It's a rocky reef with kelp beds ... good fishing. Crabs, lobsters, King George Whiting, squid and what have you. Not that I'm a fisher-person, but a lot of people are. When something is "running," about 250 yards off shore there'll be a whole flotilla of small fishing boats, most trailerable, some professional -- these latter having come down the coast from the marinas at Glenelg and Port Adelaide, which are both to the north. A lot of people fish off the beach; you see them at dusk when the tide is in; and I should think, at dawn ... but I'm never there that early!



This guy was on the horizon -- tacking more or less due north, either making for the Port itself, or the marina at Glenelg. Biiiig guy. Couldn't get this one on a trailer. Maximum digital zoom, as well as optical -- you can get away with it because of the super-bright lighting conditions. Manual focus. The automatics couldn't get hold of the glittery sea and featureless sky.

Here's your trailerable vessel -- actually, a small example of them. You'd be amazed (I always am) at the size of boats they can tow ... and I'm constantly amazed at the places people tow them from. You can be out on the hills, almost at the top of Heart Attack Hill, and there'll be this monstrous fishing boat with the massive aerials and the huge outboards, and all, on its trailer, halfway up a driveway that looks like the north face of the Eiger.

One of the local gulls ... pint-sized but pretty. The local gulls are very small for gulls -- I'd guess they weigh in at a kilo, wet. Less than half the size of the whopping great gulls you see in Alaska, and the North Sea herring gulls with which I grew up. But these guys are friendly ... especially so if you happen to have brought your lunch. Share it with one, and fifty show up as if your little lunch companion had telepathy.

And this is cool: a sparrow hawk hunting for mice, hovering right over the gabled roof of one of the mansions on the landward side of the Yacht Club parking lot. The house is up on the hill, with sandy slopes and trees below. It's been a good season for mouses, so far. The cat's caught several, both in the house and in the yard. This little guy spent about ten minutes catching his lunch, then vanished, presumably to gorge on rodent.

That's all for today, guys: got to go and take take of domestic crises!

Ciao for now,
MK



See also:

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/digital-cameras-which-is-best-and-for.html

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/digital-photography-kind-of-magic.html

http://www.irfanview.com/

Rites of Spring: gay turtle doves. Seriously.

It was one of those times when you wished you had a camera and enough space on the Flash card to shoot video, because it's entirely possible no one will believe you. But I swear to any deity you care to mention -- how about Marduk, the Babylonian god of war? -- that this is absolutely true.

Turtle doves, right? These birds, which flock in anybody's backyard in this part of the world and eat -- well, anything:

Turtle doves. Not to be confused with these critters, which are your actual, genuine Murray River turtle, and don't flock in backyards anywhere at all:


Okay, turtle DOVES. Birds, very common everywhere, so everyone around here knows their courtship behavior. The say "croo-croo, croo-croo," repeatedly, ad infinitum, and the male sidles up to a female (or tries to; the females usually fly away) and bobs his head up and down rhythmically while he says "croo-croo, croo-croo," which, translated literally into English means "Hi, Cutie-pie, how'd you like to come back to my place for a pile of bird seed and a bit of nookie?" The female's normal response to this pickup line is to walk away with a disgusted look on her face, and if the bastard persists, to exercise the capabilities with which Mother Nature endowed her, and fly away in a snit. (Females don't bobs their heads or say "croo-croo." They just eat, make little turtle doves, and fly away from the head-bobbing bastards as often as they can.)

Trust me: everyone has seen this behavior about a gazillion times. Nobody would waste Flash Card space on it.

But try this one: gay turtle doves. Seriously.

Two males in the backyard. One sidles up to the other and bobs his head up and down and says "croo-croo, croo-croo." The other turtle dove walks away a few steps; turn around and bobs his head up and down and says "croo-croo, croo-croo." The repeat this over and over, and then, uh, cozy up. Then they repeat the head-bobbing and the "croo-crooing" over and over, and then, uh, cozy up again ... presumably taking it in turns for who's going to be on top.

Gay turtle doves.

So there you go: when anybody tries to tell you that there's no gay side to Nature, tell 'em they're dead wrong and they need to get out more. Sheep, seagulls, penguins, dolphins ... and turtle doves, as seen in Mel Keegan's backyard.

Like I said, one of those times when you wish you had a camera handy.

Ciao for now,
MK

(Photos are by yours truly: turtle dove in the backyard; turtle in a pond at Worrowong Earth Sanctuary.)

Halloween memories

This time of the year is always a little odd and a lot nostalgic for me. It's change of season ... in the northern hemisphere autumn (fall, if you prefer) is sliding down into winter; downunder, spring is drying out and heating up toward summer. In the north, it's Halloween (or Samhaine, if you're of the pagan persuasion), and no matter how long I spend in the southern hemisphere, the week which includes Halloween, my birthday and Guy Fawkes's Night still feels like it ought to be cold and dim, with possible early snow showers...

I guess, spending the first twelve years of your life celebrating your birthday while you scrape candle wax off the cement in the yard, and counting your fireworks, hoarding them against the big day -- November 5th -- makes so indelible an impression on a kid's brain that, 37 years after leaving the north, I am still haunted by thoughts and sounds, smells and impressions, of a time ... and a place ... that don't even exist anymore...

Small town England has been vanishing steadily as the cities conquer the landscape. Three or four villages collide with two towns and ... you've got a small city that swiftly expands. It was happening when I was a kid, and that was a long, long time ago. I remember the new housing estates (subdivisions, if you prefer) going up on every parcel of land that wasn't actually under the plow. But even so, small town England was never far from Nature, and when the seasons turned, when the land itself began to close down its branch offices in preparation for suspending business for the winter, you -- the human, even if you were only eight years old -- felt it...

In fact, you felt it keenly. All at once, you were looking for the biggest turnip or pumpkin you could find, to make a lantern (turnip lanterns were much more common in our part of the world; in those days, and in that place, pumpkins were close to unknown. I don't think I'd even seen one before landing in Australia in '71), and you were wearing your heavy coat, and the scarf, and the gloves. The days were shorter, not to mention colder. The shops were lit up by four in the afternoon -- and the display windows were full of fireworks...

Now, in almost every part of the world these days, fireworks are illegal. But in those days ... kids stood in line at the counter at the magazine shop to buy them ... 6d for this one, 9d for that one, and the others were four for a shilling. They had a fascination about them that belonged to this exact time of the year -- and also to this place. The US, Canada, Aus, Europe -- nowhere else in the world associates the smell of cordite, brightly-colored little cardboard cylinders, and the smell of raw turnips, and sizzling sausages, and woodsmoke, and cold, misty evenings with the first stars beginning to show...

Halloween and Bonfire night went hand in hand. The shops were full of fireworks for a couple of weeks before Guy Fawkes's Night, so one celebration overlaid itself on the other -- which was just as well, because Halloween itself was not the three-ringed circus it is today. In those days (and in that place) it was an excuse for a party for the adults, and a major romp for the kids, who would dress up as witches and goblins ... in home-made costumes, because the night was not (yet) commercialized, you didn't buy this stuff ... and have a turnip lantern bash in the back yard, with a sausage sizzle on the side. Talk about fun...

Winter was coming in, and in the back of every kid's mind was SNOW, and CHRISTMAS, and TIME TO GET OUT THE SLED (which in our part of the world was known as a sledge). Autumn, and Halloween, is a time every little northern hemisphere kid has to love, because you can feel the world changing, and you know Christmas is close. And for us, in a few days, on November 5th, there was going to be a ten-foot-high bonfire on the village green, where people would bring their fireworks and let them off, and it would be GREAT. There was no giant sky-show, as you see today (though, full marks go to the local County Council -- think city hall -- for organizing the biggest pyrotechnics show in the region, to replace the big bonfire and "b.y.o. fireworks," which were discontinued only a few years ago...

I feel myself privileged to have been there for the real thing: dwarfed by the bonfire, eyes watering on the woodsmoke, full of sausages and onions, watching my father set off rockets and Roman candles and Catherine wheels and what have you ... while forty other kids were doing the same. Guy Fawkes's night -- bonfire night -- was sheer magic, and also the day after my birthday ... made the celebrations go on and on, and you had the time of your life. Of course, it all began with Halloween, in a time and place where "Trick of Treat" was a phrase which was heard only in American movies. We had no idea what that was all about, couldn't make head or tail of it...

We lived in a particularly "haunted" part of the country, at a time when people were a lot more "sensitive" to the other, paranormal side of life. The past was all around you, in the form of streets that had been there since the time of Dickens and churches that looked like something right out of the Middle Ages. And some of them had great stories attached. Like the one above. It's ruined now ... vandals burned it to a shell. They also tried to burn the tree that stands in the foreground, but the tree ... wouldn't burn. Locally, it's been known as the "Witch Tree" for longer than anyone can tell. The legend says, a young woman accused of being a witch was been pursued by a rampaging band of Christians in a murdering mood. She fled to the church to beg for sanctuary, protection, but the priest denied her. To prevent the mob from burning her, she turned herself into a tree. And that tree will not burn. Eventually, after the church itself was abandoned, young vandals burned it, but still, the tree wouldn't burn, though God's House went up like a torch...

The place and time time seemed "haunted" by otherwhens and otherwheres. I was always a little bit psychic (not very; that, I left to my mother, who inherited it from her Irish grandmother), and I suppose I was half-aware of the other times, places and people that seem to come in close at Halloween -- if you can divorce yourself from the commercialized American kiddy-fest and remember the age-old night of Samhaine. The Celtic tradition, several thousand years old now, holds that on this night the "veil between the worlds" is so thin, it barely exists at all. The dead can and do walk; you can talk to them, be visited by departed loved ones -- and also by those who might have a grudge against you, so beware! This is the essence of Halloween, and when I was a kid, one had this half-awareness of it, which was the product of growing up in a very big, very old Irish community where the Catholicism was a paper-thin veneer laid over traditions which are so old, they were around when Christ was still swinging a hammer...

So, this was Halloween, for me: standing in line to buy fireworks, with the nose full of the sharp smell of gunpowder ... carving out a turnip lantern, inviting friends over for a bash in the backyard ... collecting twigs and sticks in the ancient church yard that dated back to the Napoleonic Wars, to make a backyard bonfire ... feeling the crispness in the air, smelling the woodsmoke of the bonfires which were bring lit all over the countryside as the "hedgers and ditchers" cleared out the byways before the snows came ... wondering if I was going to get for my birthday what I really wanted ... wondering when the first snow would come ... making some kind of costume to wear for the Halloween party ... all with the thoughts of Christmas in the back of the mind, and the much clearer thought that the 4th was my own big day (good golly, I'm in double figures this year!), and then it would be off to the village for the massive bonfire, and let off the fireworks I'd spent my pocket money on for the last couple of weeks...



To this day, chilly mornings, skeletal trees, mist curling in the shadows, the smell of woodsmoke (albeit, now, from the chiminea), the smell of sausages and onions sizzling, the whoosh!! of small fireworks, the smell of raw turnips and candle wax and toffee apples (think candy apples) -- it all brings back memories of a time, a place, which I don't suppose exist outside my own mind. Right now, we're making preparations for having miscellaneous kids knock on the door come twilight, yelling "trick or treat" and expecting candy ... only the pre-wrapped variety and no fruit, because in our lamentable era, one can't trust people not to put poison or razor blades in the mandarin oranges and home-made goodies. Kids aren't safe, knocking on doors ... some of them don't even dress up in costume, they just knock, yell "trick or treat" and expect candy ... and almost none of them know anything about the essence of Halloween -- Samhaine, when the earth is settling down to hibernate and the veil grows thin, and the dead walk.

Happy Halloween, 2008
MK

(Photos for this feature are by Mike Adamson, a writing partner of mine who was fortunate enough to visit the area in 2006, and brought back the evidence on a couple of flash cards.)

Blog search or web search? Taming the Google monster!

Next time you go to Google to search on some topic, spend 2.3 seconds thinking about whether a web search or a blog search would give you better results. Seriously. The difference between the two is amazing.

Google Blog Search is still so new, it's in Beta. To find it, on the Google search page, look in the top left corner and click on "more" ... a menu drops down: "groups; books; scholar; blogs." Aha.


There's plenty of reasons why you'd choose a web search instead of a blog search: you're shopping, the credit card is in your hand, you know exactly what you're looking for, the only question is, which store you're going to order it from.

Then again, there's plenty of reasons why you'd choose a blog search over a web search. The inescapable truth is, advertising has turned the Internet into one enormous catalog. Ads are in your face everywhere you go ... I mean, there's even Google ads on this page! Sheesh.

(In fact, there's a pretty good reason for having a modest little box of Google ads: its presence on a page gets the googlebot, the spider, out to index said page PDQ. You can wait days, even weeks, for a new page to get spidered ... unless you stick a few ads on it. With ads on there, the spider will be along momentarily. And this goes a long way to answering why a great many pages, my own among them, sprout ads like fungus.)


I have to confess, I'm rather "ad blind." I've seen so many of the damn jumping, flashing, jiggling things, in every way, shape and form, I've either become very adept at ignoring them ... or else they've burned out the neurotransmitters that convey commercial information from my eyes to my visual cortex. The more obnoxious the ad, the less I see it.

The other day, when I was writing about digital cameras and photography (which was fun; I need to do that more often ... and incidentally, guys, those posts were written in reply to a reader's question, so when something's on your mind, don't hesitate to post a comment here ... you never know where it till lead) ... where was I before the mind wandered? Oh, yes. I was writing about cameras and wanted to be able to give a ballpark guide on what the little fellas cost these days (it's a year since I bought one).

So I googled "digital cameras."

And 95% of everything was a commercial. Now, this suited me fine on the day, because I was only looking for a price to paste to a blog post to give prospective shoppers half an idea of what they can expect to spend.

But consider the person who wants to know how to DO digital photography...


Or oxy welding. Or knitting. Or painting and decorating. Pruning begonias. Writing a novel. Changing a fuse in the car. Building a model kit. Bricklaying. Home brewing. Breadmaking.

No matter what you type in as the search parameter at Google, you can be dead sure you'll get 15-19 commercials for every page offering you free advice, the thoughts of an enthusiast, a hobbyist's page full of explosively exciting info about thing like yeast and glue and yarn and grammar.

You've reached a point in your life where you don't want to buy anything. You're not even entertaining the idea of even thinking about the remotest possibility of perhaps going shopping at some later date. All you want is a snippet of info. You go to Google, and what do you get?

Page after page of commercials.


So, try a blog search instead.

Now, you're still going to see commercial pages, and some enthusiasts' pages do carry ads. Go ad blind like me. Just don't see them: focus on the information ...

And on blogs, at least you GET information, and it's free, and there's plenty of it.

A popular Google search that brings loads of people to this blog is, not surprisingly, POD publishing. I talk about it a lot because a lot of my work is involved with the physical aspect of taking fiction, shoving it through the meat grinder process and having a book pop out the other end of the patty-making gizmo. To me, it's interesting (it had better be, or I'd have been driven bonkers by the aggravating vagaries of the process long ago!) so I blog about it, and I've been astonished by the number of people who are reading those pages.

Same difference. A web search on POD publishing is slightly more rewarding than a web search on digital cameras, because at this point there are only maybe a dozen major businesses selling the service (I talked about this to a degree yesterday). So you find a more equitable "commercial to social ratio."

But if you were actually looking for people's own personal experiences -- in other words, enough "word of mouth" vicarious feedback to let you decide for yourself if you want to get involved with POD ... do a blog search.

(Part of the reason for the confusing and often daunting search results for "POD" is that the industry is so new, it doesn't even have a firm name yet. Print on demand; publish on demand; limited printrun; short run printing; self-publishing; vanity press; publish yourself; whatever.)

Writing is another field that has become hyped to hell lately: it's catching up fast with the commercial market. Not quite there yet, but, alas, hundreds of people seem to have cottoned on to the fact that new writers are desperate and will pay money for "quick fix" courses that purport to turn one into a best selling author, in 150 easy-to-read pages. A Google search on "how to write a bestseller" is incredibly depressing for a writer who's been around the block a few times, and knows how the industry really works. But the sad truth is, increasingly tough economic times make everyone, everywhere think, "Gee, if I could only write a book, I'd earn pots of money!" If only.

(Incidentally, if you're laboring under this delusion, go here:

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/publishing-series-read-it-in-order.html

...and search this blog on "writing" and "publishing" ... I guess I've spilled the beans on a subject that has been a kind of taboo for a long time!)

So, Nostrakeeganus, he actually recommending blog searches, unless you actually have the plastic in the hand and are ready to go shopping. With eighty million blogs out there, it's odds-on that an enthusiast somewhere has already written and uploaded what you need to know. It doesn't have to cost you a dime ... and you gotta like that!


Cheers,
MK

Digital photography ... a kind of magic

When you're thinking about buying a serious digital camera, it's a good idea to do some research first -- not just into which camera to choose (which comes down to price, features and availability), but into digital photography itself. It's an art form which is similar to optical, but by no means the same!

It's very true that a good digital camera makes it much easier to get good shots (put another way, you'll get fewer real stinkers!) ... but to get very, very good shots with a digital, you do need to know a bit about photography itself. A little theory goes a long way.

It's also very true that a good photographer will get better images from a poor camera than a poor photographer will get out of a good camera. And when you're thinking about laying down maybe $250 to $750 for a digital which is not even an SLR (they're a lot more expensive), you owe it to yourself to do your "due diligence" beforehand.

Yesterday I talked about a couple of cameras which I would recommend ahead of the rest for folks who don't want to go the whole hog and drop thousands on full-professional gear. After years as a professional photographer, I took the switch to digital as a mixed blessing. It's cheaper to take pictures, because you save to flashcards, not film ... but the cameras are much more expensive. And when you're used to having 100% control over every little thing in the camera (I'd used a couple of Pentax K-1000s, plus an Olympus OM-10 and a wide selection of lenses that fit all three bodies, for a loooooong time), well, digital cameras can be infuriating. You'll be paging through menus and beeping your way through lists of lists, to change settings, for godsakes -- by the time you get the bloody thing set, the kangaroo has hopped off, the fullback is at the other end of the field, the goalie has not only headed the ball out, but he's dropkicked it into the other end penalty box, the Ferarri is two states away ... the flying saucers are back on Mars. Right?

Okay, that's the ultimate downside of ANY digital, and as someone recently said, "Deal with it." It's a fact of digital life, and ain't gonna change any time soon. So, get your head around clicking and beeping your way through pages and menus, and ...

Take a closer look at the theory of photography, as it applies to digital cameras.

I'm uploading a number of photos here, each (hopefully) illustrating some point, as well as being a damned nice, and/or interesting photo. Click on each to get a larger view. All these images were captured with the Fuji FinePix S6500fd, at six megapixel resolution. Wish I could show you images by the Panasonic Lumix, but alas -- no can do at this point. Maybe later.

The first thing you want to look at is "normal conditions" ...

Bright, sunny day and no zoom to speak of. Auto exposure and manual focus. Around noon, so there's no wide shadow areas to contend with. This is the raw image, no enhancement. (Summer, 2008; the South Australian Museum of Natural History).



Same day, but much more difficult lighting conditions. Auto focus and auto exposure here, with the photographer standing in deep, deep shade at the tram stop, shooting out into sunlight that was extremely bright. Notice that the camera's auto exposure mechanism is able to capture good detail in both bright and darker areas. (North Terrace tram stop, end of the line, opposite the casino.)



The war memorial in Angaston, in the Barossa ... in eye-destroyingly bright conditions. Sun is on the shoulder, so you get a good blue sky, though not quite the rich, dark blue you'd get with a polarizing filter on an optical camera. Don't fret about not being able to polarize efficiently with a digital: you can get the same effects with software, when you get home. Auto exposure, manual focus. (Summer of 2007.)




A bright sunny noon in mid-spring. Good sunlight but not too bright, with the camera position in patchy shade and very difficult lighting conditions right ahead -- patches of light and dark. The camera made a good job of averaging the whole thing. Manual focus keeps a tight, sharp image. (Belair National Park, South Australia).



The next thing you're thinking about is the quality of the zoom...

Top of the optical zoom -- no digital zoom here. Koala asleep in a tree, in extremely bright light. The tree was actually moving quite a lot in a decent breeze, but the virtual shutter and aperture were small enough to stop it completely. Auto exposure on this one -- manual focus. On auto focus, the camera repeatedly focused on the bough slightly in front of the koala, and the bear was fuzzy, out of focus. (Belair National Park, spring/summer.)



Again, top of the optical zoom, no digital zoom. The Australian coat of arms, crest, national insignia, whatever you want to term it ... very good lighting conditions, bright sunlight, but shooting close to the sun. Notice the whited-out sky. The sun is close to overhead in this picture, and I'm impressed with the detail and color the camera captured. A government building on North Terrancem Adelaide, S.A.


Top of the optical zoom. A close shot of a pair of million dollar legs. (High wow factor there...) Lighting conditions were not so brilliant; late afternoon shadows in the lee of a massive building. The camera kept great focus and color -- everything on auto in this picture. (The Tour Downunder, at Glenelg, 2008.)


The next thing on your minds is, "Okay, what about the digital zoom?"

Top of the digital zoom ... a butterfly in the brambles, quite a long way off -- and this is the whole frame, not a crop from the middle of it. Very good lighting conditions -- good and bright, but not too bright (which can be a problem in Australia). Good color and not too much noise in the image ... but this is a photo captured in good light. As a rule of thumb, the lower the light, the worse your digital zoom shots will become. (Morialta Falls, South Australia.)


Camera doing duty as telescope! Maximum digital zoom -- and manual exposure as well as manual focus. Without manual control, your chances of getting a digital camera to give you a great moon photo are not so good. You can see quite a lot of noise (grain) in this shot, but it's not too bad at all, when you think about what the camera was asked to do! (Shot from the backyard.)


Close to the top of the digital zoom, but in perfect lighting conditions. The picture shows a little noise, but nothing you'd complain bitterly about. This little guy was waaaaay off; the sun is on the shoulder -- the bear is actually in a tiny patch of shade cast by the canopy of the next tree ... and the trees were swaying about massively in a very lively wind. Such shots are pot luck -- but I did manually focus him. Auto exposure. (Belair, 2008.)



Having looked at telephoto, you're thinking, "what about closeup shots?"


This one is a telephoto closeup -- stand way back and zoom on your subject, and tweak the focus manually. Auto exposure -- and somewhat difficult light. It's been raining ... it's about to rain again. (Handorf, South Australia, 2008.)






If you can actually get close to your subject, the camera does quite well. The minimum lens-to-subject distance is about 8", so you can just get in close, before you even start to look at macro work. However, focus is a bitch when you get in close. If you didn't have the option of manual focus, you'd be sunk. (Wellington, Murray River, S.A.)



To get closer yet, go to the macro setting ... again, you'll want to use manual focus, though the auto exposure is very reliable on macro shots. If you need to get still closer...


The 6500 has a super-macro setting, too. You can virtually sit the lens right on top of your subject. It's inclined to pop the flash when you're this close, so be sure to deliberately turn OFF the flash. Also, in super-macro, manual focus is prerequisite ... I don't think I ever got an auto focus on this setting. Fortunately, manual focus is just too easy.


So, you're thinking, what about poor lighting conditions...?

It was almost dark in here -- a Barossa winery open for tastings. The same rules apply here as with optical: you'll have to hold the camera VERY still, or mount/sit it on something, to avoid shake and blur. Also, the camera is inclined to set the virtual film speed sky-high, if you leave it on automatic. The higher the ISO ratings, the more noise (grain) you'll get. Take control: set your film speed (which sounds Irish, I know), and practise your "nitro fingers."



The light is almost nonexistent ... the shot was an experiment, to see what the camera could make of a Tiffany lampshade in a gift store in Handorf, SA ... the results are great. Auto exposure ... I think I used manual focus, though I couldn't swear to it.


Here's the ultimate headache: get the camera to stop adjusting the exposure, and "correcting" your sunset shots back into normal daylight! Take it OFF the auto exposure setting, and but it onto the "N" (for normal) setting. Then, the camera records exactly what it sees, without getting smart. Also, set your ISO rate in 100 or 200, and do the "nitro fingers" thing again. Shot from the backyard.



Very nasty lighting conditions. It's actually quite dark in the Adelaide Railway Station ... as witness, the blur on the folks going by. The camera is on auto, and captures the color extremely well; focus is very sharp, but you're susceptible to shake and blur, so hang onto it.



The camera is sitting on the top rail of the balcony, or this shot would not have been possible. Very late twilight ... manual focus on the crescent moon, manual exposure control too. Shot from the backyard.


So, just how far can you go with this manual focus thing?

You can pretty much get back to the kind of shots you enjoyed with your optical SLR! This shot is an exercise in digital manual focus ... pick the wild flower out of a chaotic background ... and do it in a breeze, with the flower bouncing around. Auto exposure -- the lighting conditions were fair. (Morialta Falls, S.A.)



Same story: getting tack-sharp focus is difficult for even the best digital cameras. So don't leave it up to the mechanism: take control. Check out these feathers. (Juvenile Australian magpie; Belair National Park.)



The absolute other side to the coin on focus is depth of field. That is, how much of the subject is in focus, as it slants away from the camera? The rule is, the smaller the aperture, the greater the depth of field. Take control: manual exposure. Small aperture gives depth of field -- with a loooong virtual shutter speed as the tradeoff. Hold the camera very steady ... the same rules apply as for optical cameras, you just find yourself clicking, paging and beeping through menus to get what you want! (Retired steam loco in a playground in Nuriutpa, Barossa, S.A.)



Cheers,
MK