Here it is, the last Sunday of the last week of the last month of the year 2015. The next time I write it will be 2016! I wonder how many times I will write 2015 in error.
My current desktop is a puddle on the end of a leaf.
I hope Santa was good to everyone and you got everything you wanted.
Me?
Why thanks for asking! Yes, I got what I wanted. I got a new lens for my camera. I have a 55-250mm lens that I’ve had for a long time and I was noticing that it was taking longer and longer for my shots to focus. You can wear out camera’s, why not lenses too? I missed a pretty bird on a branch shot despite the fact that he sat there for quite a while. I was mad. Well, not very mad. But I would rather have had the photo!
If you live in Lake Ozark, Missouri and you want to go to a camera store you have to go ninety-eight miles to Springfield or seventy-three miles to Columbia. We don’t have anything any closer than that. So it’s either drive or order it from the internet. As it happened, Mike was having some warranty work done on the RV in Columbia so it was the perfect time to mention that I think I needed a new lens for my camera and it was Christmas time!
“We’ll leave a little early and stop at the camera store,” Mike said.
Yes!
The guy at the camera store has never heard of a lens wearing out no matter how many photos you’ve taken (and Mike told him I took over 42,000 photos last year).
“So I’ve damaged the lens then?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he says and reaches for my camera. He put the camera to his eye, turned in the direction of the keyboard sitting on the counter and tried to take a picture. It wasn’t focusing.
Me, being helpful, said, “You’re too close. It needs to be four feet away to focus.”
He stepped back, it focused and he took a few photos. It worked fine. He looked at my settings. “You’re using an action setting,” he observed.
“I always do.”
“Well I think your camera is telling your lens to look for action and when it doesn’t find any it takes it longer to focus.”
I know how long it used to take for it to focus and it’s the same setting that I’ve been using for years! I didn’t say that though.
“Put the setting on Auto,” he says turning the dial. Then he looks at the buttons and wheels on my camera and says, “Turn the ISO to…” he paused.
“I’m never going to take photos like that!” I said.
“Peg!” Mike admonished.
I guess it was my tone that got me into trouble because I didn’t interrupt him (although I very much wanted to). I had waited for a pause before speaking up. I pretty much wear my heart on my sleeve and I’m not good at hiding my feelings, aka, I have no tact. I turned to Mike. “I’m just trying to save him time. He’s trying to give me a lesson and I’ll never take pictures that way!” I turned back to the clerk. “Most of the time when I’m taking pictures I’m carrying a dog in one arm and I don’t have two hands to change settings. I shoot one handed.”
He was professional and not at all put off by me. “You could use either the Auto setting or the P setting. In the Auto mode it will check if it needs a flash and your flash may pop up and it may or may not flash. The P mode is no flash so it may not take as long to focus.”
“And it will take either action or still photos?” I asked.
“Yep,” he says.
“And I don’t have to do anything else?”
“No,” he answered.
Well, that isn’t the way I understood the settings but I said I’d give it a try.
“Let me ask you a question,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Don’t you find that your lens is too big for shooting closer subjects?”
“Yeah, it is, but I don’t want to lose my 250.”
“You don’t have to.” He turned around and scanned through some boxes on a shelf and picked a box from the stack. “Try this 18-250mm,” he said. He put it on my camera and I was in love!
“I didn’t know they made a lens like this!” And Mike bought it for me. Now my focal length is a foot and a half and I can get much more of my subject in the frame. With my 55-250mm lens, at four feet, I might get just a face shot. With my new lens I can get a whole half a person in it!
“Are you going to try the settings he said to use?” Mike asked me as we left the store.
“Sure!” I’m not against using a different setting, I’m against making adjustments to the settings.
I was so excited to be able to take photos of objects closer to me without switching cameras or changing lenses! On the way home I played with my new lens and my new settings. I snapped a picture of the sunglasses sitting on the dash. No way could I have gotten that shot before.
I set my camera on my leg beside Ginger (she rides in my lap) and picked up the bag of my favorite travel snack.
Crunchy Cheeto’s.
I love those things and because I have no off switch with them I only ever allow myself to eat them when we are traveling. Just because our trip this time was only to Columbia and not halfway across the country I saw no reason to deprive myself. Thinking my Cheeto’s addiction is simply a bad habit of snacking I decided I would pop a big bowl of air-popped popcorn and eat that instead. And I did that for a trip or two. Well, let me just say that if you are comparing plain, no salt added air-popped popcorn to all that crunchy, salty, cheesy goodness of Cheeto’s, well, there really isn’t much comparison.
I bought a bag of Cheeto’s.
I discovered a long time ago that I like Cheeto’s with pretzels mixed in, so what if I mixed in my popcorn?
On our trip home, after buying me a new lens and having the work done on the RV, there was only about a third of a bag of Cheeto’s left. I filled it the rest of the way with popcorn and shook it and I have to tell you, I really like the combination. It makes the popcorn taste better and cuts the heavy cheesiness of the Cheeto’s. Plus it allows my off switch to kick in.
We’re driving down the highway and I’m eating popcorn Cheeto’s - Cheeto’s popcorn? - and I pick up my camera and while holding the bag in one hand I take a photo down in the bag with the other. Now there is a shot I could NEVER have gotten with my other lens.
“There!” I said after taking a few shots. “Now I can tell them about my new snack.”
Consider yourself told.
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Friday, Christmas day, I was looking through photos, getting ready to write your letter and I realized my pictures suck. The photos don’t have the depth and richness of colors that they had when I used the other setting and I didn’t like them very well. But if I’m causing a conflict between the camera and lens by using an action setting on still shots - I don’t want to ruin another lens!I got up on the internet and did a Google search but wasn’t finding an answer for my question. I decided to go to the source. I went to the Canon web site and found the Contact Us button. I filled out the information concerning which product I had a question about and then when it came to the field to describe your problem, I asked, “If I shoot all of my photos in the action mode, whether it’s still or moving, will I ruin my camera or my lens?”
I didn’t think I’d have an answer until at least Monday but no, Saturday morning I had my answer. “Shooting in the action mode will not damage your lens. In this mode the lens will continuously focus anticipating movement from the subject. If you are taking images of still subjects you may want to use the portrait mode or auto to keep your images in focus. Either way, it will not damage the lens to be in the action mode all the time,” the Canon tech support said.
Yay! I’m going back to my old setting.
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Christmas.What a Christmas this was!
We had a rare full moon and many of us who are used to having jackets, boots, scarves and gloves on at Christmas time went out this year in short sleeves and shorts.
Christmas is the time of year that you may find, tucked into your Christmas card, a mass-produced year-in-review letter highlighting the accomplishments and joys of the sender’s family.
Has anybody gotten one of those this year?
It has been a very long time since I’ve received one. Does anyone even do that anymore?
I don’t know.
Yesterday on the phone I spoke with a beautiful lady that I love very much. “This is the worst year ever for Christmas cards!” she lamented.
“What do you mean?”
“I usually get a lot of cards and this year I only got ten! TEN! A lot of people told me Merry Christmas on Facebook and I’m thinking, Wait a minute, I sent you a card!”
Uh-oh. I’m guilty, I was one of those. “Well, here’s the thing. I don’t send cards because I write you every week.”
“Oh no dear, I didn’t mean you.”
See! That’s why I think I’m special!
The last time I sent Christmas cards I did so because I sent everyone a glass angel sun catcher that I made special for Christmas. Other than that it has been a few years since I’ve sent out cards.
“What’s the point anyway?” I asked her. “They run out and buy a box of cards and sign their name, address the envelope and mail it. It almost seems like it’s just an obligation, you know what I mean?”
“Oh no! I don’t agree. I love getting cards even if all they did was sign their name in them. I love that they thought enough about me to do even that much.”
Bless her heart! I do love her so and she is absolutely right. I am not sure what had caused such a Scroogey attitude in me about Christmas cards, but thanks to this smart and insightful lady, I have changed my mind! Send me those Christmas cards! They do have meaning.
“And I love putting all my card up too!”
Me too! It’s a Christmas tradition, thinking about the senders as I Scotch tape cards all over my kitchen cabinets. When my kids were little I would let them hang the cards up. Sometimes we had so many cards we had to use the kitchen doorway to catch the overflow, you know what I mean?
However, she is right. This year sucked for getting Christmas cards. I only got three (but I know I have at least one more in the mail).
“How many cards did you send out?” Mike asked when I repeated that part of our conversation to him.
“I don’t have to send out cards. I think sending a weekly letter makes me exempt. They know how much I love them. They know I wish them a Merry Christmas,” I said.
And I thought about it. Do you? Do you know how much each and every one of you means to me? That I wish the best for you whether it’s Christmas or your birthday or just any other ordinary day?
But I didn’t say it. I didn’t say Merry Christmas.
And now I feel even worse. Next year I will be sending cards. In the meantime…
Merry Christmas everyone! I love you all!
There.
Consider yourself told.
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I’ve discovered an interrobang!
This is truly a punctuation mark that I would find extremely useful had I known of it’s existence. Many times I will write a statement that is in the form of a question but isn’t really a question and I have always been torn between using the proper question mark at the end or the exclamation point as I intended for it to be read.
Reading the definition of interrobang was a learning experience for me. I knew that glyph means picture or character like in petroglyph which are pictures carved on rocks like were used by ancient civilizations.
Superimposition is easy. Superimposed means one on top of another. I learned this word when I was a little girl and photography used film and you had to manually advance the film before you took another picture. One time my father took two pictures without advancing the film and got an awesome shot. My brother David on horseback on one side and my sister’s girlfriend on horseback on the other and the barns in the background.
“It’s one picture superimposed on another,” he said. So I heard the word and saw an example and I never forgot.
Portmanteau? I had to look that one up. A word that combines two words.
Onomatopoeia? I had to look that one up too. It’s a word that is also a sound. Like knock, knock, or beep, beep.
So it is saying that interrobang is a combination of two words and also means a sound?
I’ll have to think on that.
In the meantime, I want you to know that if I can figure out how to get one in my program and if it translates to the web log, then you will be seeing a lot more of this mark in my writings! You know what I mean?
Consider yourself told.
And with that we shall call this one done.
Happy New Year everyone!
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