A blog on gardening, life by the sea, photography and wildlife

Friday 23 November 2012

November and a new PC

Well I finally had to resort to a new PC tower unit, not the monitor keyboard or mouse. I discovered that most of my old digital imaging programs were not compatible with Windows 7 which I wanted to keep as Windows 8 is too new for me. It was those programs which were causing the computer to crash. I am not loading any of those onto the new PC and will use instead Windows Live Photo Gallery and PicMonkey.
We visited my granddaughter for her 6th birthday recently for a nice family get together.
The weather has been pretty awful here in Eastbourne mostly rain with some very high winds I managed to get a couple of photos between the winds and rain.
More high winds forecast for the weekend Judi has bought some oxtail for a casserole in the slow cooker which should be rather tasty.

Holywell slopes Eastbourne looking towards Beachy Head


Gaia 6

My garden the last rose left standing


Our trusty old Swan slow cooker

Friday 16 November 2012

Graduated neutral density filter

I bought an inexpensive set up recently to help with sunsets photos as it really ought to be a standard bit of kit in the average bag, I am trying two systems the first I picture below on my camera, the second a simple screw in type on which I will report later. The idea is to get the exposure of the sun more suited to the overall exposure of the rest of the picture and to provide some interest in the sky.
The filter fitted on the camera
one of three graduated neutral density filters 1x,2x,3x stops
The effect

Sunday 11 November 2012

New ring flash

Computer glitch repaired by a good friend (too technical to explain) so have been temporarily  using my local library PC, OK but not very convenient.
I bought a low cost (£25) LED ring flash to use on my macro lens as the lens can sometimes be so close to the subject the light is blocked, the chrysanthemum were taken indoors at night using it so am happy with the result.






Thursday 8 November 2012

No home PC

My computer has experienced total breakdown so there will be no posts for a while until the situation is resolved