Imablog

After 11 years of living in Charleston, I finally made it over to Patriots Point and the Yorktown. Went out there with a few people from the photo meetup group. It turned out to be a great day for it too. Nice and sunny and warmer than the last few days have been.
Patriots Point and the Yorktown is a great place to visit. I could easily spend a couple of full days just wandering around there and checking out all the exhibits. Spent most of the afternoon out there wandering around, then caught some cool sunset photos from the flight deck.


The first impression I got was “Wow, this thing is big”. It’s one thing to see it from across the river, but you really get a sense of the scale when you get up close. Even the planes were big. It was a lot of fun wandering around inside and checking out the different exhibit areas. Watch your step and your head going up and down some of the stairs!


For most, it’s the planes and jets that are the highlight of the museum.


For me it was the instruments. Compared with all the technology and computerization in modern instruments, you almost feel surprised that they were able to do what they did 50-60 years ago with just wires and switches.


Will definitely have to go back again to see the parts that I missed yesterday.

I’m really liking this Rebel XT so far. I haven’t figure out how to get all of its capabilities yet, but I did spend some time playing with it and using the flash to bother the dogs.
A picture of Nala scaled down from the original 3456×2304 to 1280×853

Nala again, also scaled down from the original size.

This is cropped from the original image. My FZ50 has nowhere near this clarity, even with an extra 2MP on the XT.

Simba

This cropped from the RAW image and saved as JPG with minimal compression.

Returning to SLR would be more like it. Mulling over purchasing a Canon EOS Rebel XT from one of the photo meetup members.
It’s an older camera (came out in 2005), but is in pretty good condition and doesn’t look like it’s been used a whole lot. Controls are a little different from my FZ50 but doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to get used to.
Doesn’t do video (never did much video with the FZ50 anyway) and the kit lens it comes with is 18-55mm so it doesn’t get me quite as close as my FZ50 does. It also uses CF cards so I’ll have to buy a few of those too. It does give me a wider angle though and larger range of f-stops.
There’s also that satisfying click-clack of the mirror and shutter moving when a shot is taken. Looking forward to playing with the camera over the next few days.