Well, I finally started using the new camera and took some pics of the deck pots...
I went big on Balsams and Coleus this year. Grew the Balsams from seeds and found really good cheap Coleus at Walmart. And there are a few Marigolds in there, too.
I also bought some small cheap orange Mums at Walmart for the front steps around Halloween, but I'll wait until they grow bigger...
The new camera gets the colors right. Yay! 😀
I bought a cheap camera 2 months ago and finally got around to trying to use it. It was for "children and seniors". Since the only real use I have for one is blogging and email pics, I thought that would be fine. It isn't. And it's too late to return it.
The buttons are monochromatic metal grey. I can't distinguish the buttons even with my reading glasses. It has few controls. I took pics and couldn't upload any. So I went back to the manual. Apparently, on this one, you have to format the memory card. So all the pictures I took with it were never saved! The zoom function is display-controlled and that is a real pain. And it allows for several shots real fast, but the control is hard to get at.
So I did that and took some test pics. They show up on the camera display and I can cycle through them. But they won't upload to the computer iPhoto app. So back to the manual. It says "connect the provided cable, upload the pictures". Wow, that was a lot of help. 😏. I gave up on it. A real loser of a camera! Well, it was only $50...
I'm used to researching products. So I know that price isn't always the best determinant of quality and ease of use. But in this case it sure was. $50 gets you a very bad camera!
I'll give it to a neighbor kid. They will have it working fine in a day, I'm sure. 😁
So I bought a new camera. The same model I had. The problem with the previous one was that it started favoring orange in indoor pics and I think the stabilization was failing. I tried to fix that in processing in iPhoto by adjusting color adjustment with blue and other hues, but I don't seem to have a talent for that. I routinely adjust light and color levels, and I increase "definition" in all pics, but the "hues" thing escapes me.
But I liked the old camera otherwise. The buttons are black with white cut-ins. I don't need many controls, but it has the ones I need (I'm not trying to do calendar-quality pictures here). So I went with the same one I was familiar with. At my age, "familiar" is a good thing...
It didn't take long to go through the settings. Date and time didn't want to save because I couldn't navigate to the save function a few times but finally managed it. I took a few test pics, but it it is late and I'll try processing those tomorrow. But I expect it will work fine. After all, it is the same model as the old one.
Sometimes I buy "best" and it is usually worth it (but sometimes not). Sometimes I buy "average" and it works well enough. I've never bought "cheap" and enjoyed the results. I learn from that for a few years, but then finally something cheap looks too tempting and I try it. 😞
So anyway, hoping that future pictures on the blogs show up better.
My old digital camera got to the failure point. It seriously favored making everything very orange. But I only use a camera for the Mark's Mews and Cavebear blogs. And I reduce the pics to about 300 KB anyway. That's because I keep them on my hard drive.
So I bought a really cheap one that does flash on or off and outside shots. I have to laugh; even that cheap one will take 30MB pics and has a serious zoom lens. But I don't need that. I do like the promise of improved stabilization (I have shaky hands sometimes).
But the battery died and I needed a usb cord (instead of a separate charger). I had plenty of those of various connections) laying around so I grabbed one that fit.
The battery wouldn't charge! I tried a wall outlet using the provided charger. I tried direct charging from the laptop and the desktop. No luck "battery low"... And I was ticked off that the cable kept coming loose when I checked the camera.
Read the manual once, read the manual twice, read the manual 3 times! They mentioned "the cable that came with the camera". Well of course! Wait, I was using one I had sitting around... Well guess what? I thought cables were designed so no cable could fit in the wrong port. Yeah there is.
I don't know the identification, but there is at least one that fits easily into a wrong port. It is smaller but fits. So it was a "duh" moment. It kept coming loose because it wasn't the right one! Searching around the loose cable box, I found the right one. Charged up the battery in 3 hours.
I am so stupid sometimes...
Now I can use it and learn to download pics to iPhotos. The camera display suggests the pic are true to color. I'll set the camera to the lowest resolution it allows (about 12MB I think) which is way more than I have any use for.
I still have some pics on the old camera that I will process. It does natural light outdoor pics well. But I will retire it after that. Assuming the new camera pics process well. I like to adjust the "definition" high, adjust the light level up or down, and straighten and crop the pics.
But maybe the pics on both blogs will start to look better. I'll like that and so will you.
