21st November 2009, Hobart

This picture has nothing to do with the following blurb. It was taken on Davey Street as we were leaving the Salamanca market.

Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th November 2009, Eagle Hawk Neck.

Well, the rain doesn’t ‘fall’ up.

I stayed Saturday night at Eagle Hawk Neck with a friend. It rained non stop all of Saturday. From my kayaking days I knew it was the sort of rain to bring up the rivers.

On Sunday morning we headed off, in the rain, from Devil’s kitchen to Waterfall bay. It’s graded family, meaning easy enough to do it with a class 4 hangover (class 5 being comatose) or a broken leg

It is a spectacular piece of coast which is mostly sheer cliff. Water was pouring off the rock; this mixed with the rain and was picked up by wind driving up the rock face and blowing the big drops in our faces. We could see curtains of water suspended in mid air, folding and floating like the Aurora Borealis, then rising upwards over the cliff edge.

I don’t have any pictures. It was too wet for my regular camera, and the batteries for my waterproof one have just died of old age - at the same time!

This was the start of my holiday - I’m off to Boat Harbour, slowly.

Popularity: 23% [?]

21st November 2009, Sullivan’s Cove (above) and North Hobart (below)

These seemed like similar photos, both the dog and the child being driven around by their responsible adults. And both looking at the world outside with curiosity and interest.

Popularity: 18% [?]

21st November 2009, Murray St crossing (between the malls).

I am a hypocrite!

I bought a panasonic G1 twin lens kit. This is after I complained buckets loads about how they have made it so that you can’t use the cheaper generic batteries in their cameras.

But, the camera on paper really satisfys  my photographic needs, mostly.

Shortcomings:

Firstly, it is power hungry. I have three batteries; I think I will buy another two. I paid $115 for each of the extra two on ebay - they are about $180 here. There is absolutely no justification for this price. The good news is, I have updated my camera with a version of the 1.4 firmware that apparently lets you continue using the generic batteries. So I will take a gamble and buy a couple of $15 generic batteries and hope they work. Thankyou to Steve from rangefinder forums for supplying the firmware.

Second, this camera has a useless implementation of what Canon calls Flexizone. This is where you can put the focus point wherever you like for the shot. It is so retarded on the Panasonic that I use focus lock instead.

Third, I really miss lack of macro and a narrow depth of field. Both my kit lenses are dark - the 14-45 starts at 3.5, the 45-200 starts at 4. Eventually I will buy a third lens, the 45mm macro f2.8 panasonic / leica lens. This will do for low light shooting, portraiture, and macro. It is about a $1000 au though, and not yet available in Australia.

Fourth, after all the research I did, I bought it online. Then found a review which shows that the subsequent model (GH1) handles noise at high iso much better. Since then there has been a lot of online discussion about this. But the GH1 is $1000 more expensive and it comes with a lens I don’t want (14-140mm). I’m also not interested in video.

Good points (some of them):

I had this camera for about a month sitting on the lounge floor in its box doing nothing. I was disinterested
in my new toy and was still using my powershot. Fortunately, Wiebke (the great looking woman with the camera in the photo above) has also just bought a new camera. She bought a canon eos 450 with the 18-55mm kit lens, a 50mm macro, and a 50mm prime. She has been overflowing with enthusiasm - it is her enthusiasm that finally got me using the new camera.

I haven’t been reading up on the manual or anything like I usually do. I’ve just been trying to do what I want to do, then hitting the manual to find out how to do it.

I do like the image quality. I haven’t even considered using my powershot since. I like focus tracking; this is great for following birds or people that are moving about a bit. It has its limitations, but if something is not moving too fast, it is great.

I use focus lock a lot, so that I can compose the picture how I want. On my powershot I used flexizone most of the time - putting the focus area on one of the four magic composition spots (rule of thirds).

The big zoom! 45-200mm. On a four thirds camera (the G1), this is equivalent to 90-400mm. I theorised long ago about using a long zoom for street photography, to go against the common trend of fast wide angle or prime lenses. I love it. When I’m walking around town I have the big zoom on. The shot above is at full zoom (400mm equiv).

The fold out screen and live view.  Yesterday I was kneeling above my camera photographing seagulls on the ground; Wiebke was contorting herself to get down behind the camera so that she could see to compose.

Unlike slr cameras, this camera uses contrast detection for focussing all the time. So, live view, as in a compact digital, is fast. Also, apparently with contrast detect focussing there are no front or back focus issues.

There is a lot I just haven’t looked at yet with this camera.

Popularity: 18% [?]

22nd August 2009 Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, Hobart

Plants have been flowering for months now. It always seems that the plants themselves are trying to make Spring happen - they start to flower in miserable weather.

I think the above photo shows this; Winter and Spring coexisting.

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22nd August 2009, Cornelian Bay Hobart

Visiting cemeteries is a strange thing to do. It is something I started in Gippsland with Ella, a whippet who used to live with me. There were rabbits everywhere and she would go crazy chasing them. Sometimes Saffy, another whippet, would join us and then it was really comical. They would often collide. It was like the Keystone Cops - two over eager whippets chasing a rabbit between headstones right past a group of other rabbits that would be eating leisurely and look up after the chase had passed. Then they’d go back to eating. The whippets weren’t taken too seriously.

It is also an education - seeing who were the early settlers of the area, the prominent families, and the wars men served in, their rank and regiment.

In Sale, Gippsland, the early families were mostly Irish and some English. On the Irish head stones it would say what county in Ireland they were from. That cemetery was also segregated into the various religious nominations.

Here in Hobart, there are no rabbits and apparently no religious segregation. And the youngsters and youth of old seem to have fared better - Gippsland and Melbourne had high mortality rates for babies and children.

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28th March 2009, my garden (the photo). 

It is the day after good friday, what ever that is. I’m sitting on a rock ledge, in the middle of a creek, eating lunch.

It is a beautiful day; sunny and warm.

I did have plans to go elsewhere, to walk through the botanic gardens, and check out a cemetary poking out into the Derwent river.

I am here at Sarah’s advice, ‘just keep following Augusta road, it’s beautiful’.

Not far from Wiebke’s, I found a store that sells good food - mushrooms, some ham off the bone, and weird crusty, dark, heavy bread rolls that look as though they belong in Germany.

That’s lunch.

I’m typing on my phone - it has a slide out qwerty keyboard that you use your thumbs with. I’m using micrososft word. I recommend it for writers, who want to record their thoughts wherever they are - I have known such a person, Cat Bat. Or people like me, travellers, who can compose their emails at leisure and send them all off when they have coffee at a café with free wireless internet. Or, just pay for the internet.

I’ve finished lunch.

Popularity: 19% [?]

17th March 2009, Hobart.

Can anyone guess?

It has been cold and wet in Hobart and where I live to the South. I see snow on Mt Hartz, and apparently there is some on Mt Wellington. I’ve been caught in the rain on my bike a fair bit lately. It is the first time in months that I have driven my car to work.

My thoughts are preoccupied with a holiday. I have been here for nearly 18 months, but haven’t explored further away than two hours from where I live. I’m planning a trip to Strahan with Wiebke.  It will be in the middle of Winter. Hopefully I’ll have a new slr and lenses to take with me.

Popularity: 21% [?]

10th March 2009.

This is some sort of fruit tree in my garden.

I’m in Hobart. We’ve been exploring on foot. Things like the Salamanca market, which I’ve grown pretty fond of. I don’t buy much there, just bread, falafel from “The Taste of Persia”, and coffee.

And, elderberries are ripe for picking. Wiebke can’t help herself and raids trees wherever she sees them. I have purple hands from stripping the fruit off the stems.

And the weather is really hard to pick. Two days now I have gone out wearing pants, and wished I had shorts on. Both days I’ve also been caught in drenching rain.

Yesterday we went to the market at Sorell. Lots of stall holders that only have a few things for sale - I can’t imagine they’d make enough money to pay for their time.

We also found a little wetland and a great beach with rocky outcrops at either end. Both the wetland and the beach reminded me of Sale, in Gippsland.

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1st November 2008, Salamanca Market.

It might just look like a kid on a bike, but I know this model bike was over $2,000, before our dollar took a dive. Looking wistfully at high end mountain bikes in shop windows is one of my Hobart routines (along with dslr cameras and lenses).

This kid was archetypically rich kid arrogant too.

Even his shoes….(insert smile).

I took the photo for the sake of the picture - I like it.

(c) Andrew Calder

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1st November 2008, Elizabeth St. Mall, Hobart.

I was looking through these other photos taken in the mall - it really is a friendly place. These were all taken within a ten minute period - all these people are happy and enjoying each other’s company.

Popularity: 16% [?]