BREAKING IN THE NEW CAMERA...

For forty-five years I have been a camera snob. I’m trying to cure myself. I’ve come far away from home this trip without the expensive Nikon camera and Nikkor lenses that I’ve lugged around the world and proudly aimed my impressive lenses at the parthenon, pyramids, and palaces while quietly laughing at the folks holding up cell phones and iPads to get their pictures.  I’m not completely reformed, but I have a feeling the cure is just around the corner.  

I’m presently using two cameras, small ones, on a road trip.  I’ve left behind the big camera bag.  These days I’m wearing a camera vest with lots of pockets in which I carry everything I need.  I use a walking stick (as an old guy, I’m allowed) which doubles as a monopod/tripod. In one of the pockets of the vest I carry the new SONY QX-100 Smartphone Attachable Lens-style camera. I didn’t make up that nomenclature.  That’s what it’s called. A 1-inch, 20.9-megapixel Exmor R CMOS sensor is packed into a small cylinder with a 3.6x Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T optical zoom with a lens construction of seven elements in six groups. The amazing camera links by WiFi to my iPhone which serves as the viewfinder.  That’s it.  In another pocket I carry a SONY DSC-HX9V point and shoot for quick candid shots.

I got the first two images with the HX9V. On my walk to the monuments around the Capital Mall today, I stopped at a big bed of tulips way over to the east of the recently repaired Washington Monument... got down on my knees and put the little point-and-shoot on the grass a foot or so from the first tulip bed and aimed up at the great obelisk.  I liked the result. I also got the tulip close-up with the same camera.  All the other images I got with the QX-100 mounted on the monopod. It works especially well in low light places like the inside of the Lincoln Memorial.