Digger

I am stunned! What a fantastic response to my balloon day yesterday. Your hearts, comments and good wishes are deeply appreciated. What an amazing community this is.

Yesterday was definitely a true red letter day. Not only was it the 200 and my first day of shooting with the D70, but I also won the fishing competition in the afternoon with 82Lb of fish in 3 hours, with my nearest rival some 37Lb behind me, a lifetime best for me.

As I write this, it is 04:45am, I was just dozing and could not really sleep. The first call to prayers from the mosque has just finished and the faithful will be donning their sarongs and making their way down to the mosque for prayers on the mat, they will be carrying umbrellas too, as it is pouring with rain, most unusual at night.

I would love to do a session in a mosque, but not so sure this would be acceptable. I guess I will have to ask someone, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. The first call to prayers is my favorite, as it consists of three distinct and different tunes, for want of a better description. I know very little nothing about the meanings, but the atmosphere created by all the mosques within ear shot, all sounding off at the same time but out of synch, is something that has to be witnessed.

I got out of bed to have another play with the D70 and learn a few more features in preparation for today's blip. This is a definite upgrade from the Olympus E10. For a start, the auto focus actually works and I suspect the tight focus zones are going to make manual focusing unnecessary even when doing insect macros.

One of the big problems with the E10 was waiting time, it took about 5 seconds to switch on. If you took several shots in rapid succession, after the fourth shot, you would have a lengthy wait, not good when you are having to bracket your focusing. The D70 switches on and is ready to go to work, with no startup time wasted and I was able to shoot as many shots as I wanted without any down time.

The ISO range of 1600 is going to open up a whole new range of photo opportunities, as is the aperture range and the ability to do long exposures, which is something that I have really missed since my Canon A1. The D70 even sounds like a real camera, with a clunk click every blip, as the late Jimmy Saville would say.

Moving on, when things are going well, they seem to happen in multiples. Now would probably be a good time to do the lottery, but I don't want to be greedy. Even the blip monster got on board and delivered today's blip to my door! As I slid open the shutters to hunt down a blip, this is the sight that awaited me, a large digger had pulled into my forecourt for minor surgery.

I did have other plans but when the monster presents, you do not thumb your nose at him, the other idea can wait anyway. You will have to excuse the grain, I forgot to switch the ISO back after playing earlier on, oops!

Dave