Close Up at Wimpole

Despite the continuing grey skies , we decided on a walk at Wimpole yesterday and I tried out a new family camera - an Olympus Tough compact which can withstand the most-adverse weather conditions and underwater work as well as dropped and otherwise abused. It has quite a few complicated close up features including a microscope setting that allows extreme closeups. I took a few leaf and lichen images (images 1, 4, 6 and 9) and generally impressed considering the greyness of the day and the small sensor size.

A Bit of Time to Catch Up on Processing etc

 I have been trying to use the Christmas break to catch up on adding galleries to my website, which replaced my previous long-standing one about 6 months ago. I am making slow but steady progress, the latest addition being some colour images from a trip in 2017 to Iceland. A good antidote to some of our recent very drab grey days!!

Greetings to All Friends Near and Far

Christmas still  holds wonder for a 7 year old - not sogood for parents and grandparents at 6 am

Visit to Welney

Since our last visit in November (https://pin-sharp.blogspot.com/2019/11/welney-floods.html), the floods did recede for a short while but all the recent rain has filled the Ouse Washes levels even higher so there is now no shallow water for dabbling ducks and waders. It was mainly Pochard plus Tufted ducks on the main area plus Grey-lag Geese flying in and out periodically.

We had Meredith with us and she had great fun identifying all the birds and then great delight in dissecting some Owl Pellets in the activity room.

CRUFC 23 Bishops Stortford 9

After all the rain, it needed a pitch inspection to give the go ahead and certainly there will be a lot of washing needed as the mud took over. A hard-fought game and Cambridge delighted with the win.

Grantchester Walk

Walked from Barton through Grantchester into Cambridge yesterday on a cold and very dull-light morning giving a rather sombre collection of images - probably suiting the mood in our household at the moment where everyone other than Matt and I (so far) have gone down with a particularly nasty D and V bug. The sun came out just as I reached Cambridge

Focus Stacking Examples

We ran a focus-stacking workshop at Scotsdales Garden Centre just before I went to Edinburgh and I have just got time to process the images. They are stacks of 60, 50 and 30 images respectively at f2.8 taken on a Fuji T2 with focus bracketing and stacked in Zerene stacker - not a perfect result as 

the floor is sprung so there was some movement between 'frames' 

Edinburgh 9. National Galleries

I completed my last day  doing the sights in Edinburgh with a visit to the 
Royal Scottish Academy Building and the National Gallery of Scotland - interesting buildings and interiors plus some great art.