More Monochrome

Again taken with the Nikon S9050 using the High Contrast Monochrome setting.


One side of the village cricket field is bordered with a line of Poplars.

As taken by the Nikon S9050 - cropped

The same crop processed with ReDynaMix in Photoshop Elements

 The cricket clubhouse in Winter

As taken by the Nikon S9050

As above processed using ReDynaMix in Photoshop Elements

Some tree bark patterns (unprocessed):

All were taken hand held with one hand. The other keeping a tight hold on Penny's lead. Unfortunately with her four years training for greyhound racing her chasing instinct would kick in if she spotted any small furry prey. Considering the grey, dull lighting conditions they came out much sharper than I expected - a tribute to the camera's image stabilizing abilities.

Penny's Family

More of a menagerie really. Glo suggested that there should be a family photo of Penny's collection of cuddly toys so here it is:



Left to right:
Sammy Squirrel
Freddy Fox
Pooh Bear with Mervyn the Meerkat
Both on top of Bella the Lamb (I chose Jan's suggestion in the end)
Last but not least, Henrietta the Christmas Hedgehog.

No hope of getting Penny in the group photo as I am not allowed to keep any of her family for very long. She will take them from me gently and put them where she wants them.

The only one she rarely takes any notice of is Pooh. He is the only one which doesn't make a sound and, being pretty solid, is much heavier. All she does is try to bite his nose off. The others are light enough for Penny to hurl up in the air. Quite often they just miss the light fitting.

What a Grey Day

Not really. It has been wall to wall sunshine and cloudless blue sky so far today. Practising more with the Nikon S9050 I decided to try out the Special Effect Mode called 'High Contrast Monochrome'. The camera also has the ability to make b/w copies of the colour photos but the test I made gave soft focus b/w. Must investigate that further.

The advantage of the High Contrast Monochrome mode is having a b/w view of what you are taking shown on the LCD. This gives an instant idea of what the result will look like. That I found very handy and helped in composing the picture, focus point and exposure point. Not that I am saying my results are marvellous - far from it but I like the possibilities. It was just a pity there was a lack of white cloud.

All these are exactly as taken by the Nikon with its highest resolution jpg (no RAW available). If the odd horizon or tree is tilted blame the hairy monster who seemed to delight in trying to turn me into a 21st Century Houdini by wrapping the lead round my legs if we stayed in one place for too long.

The variation of shading in the sky is not a fault in the camera - distant blue in the sky was much paler than that overhead.

My favourite of this batch

As an addendum - video can also be shot in monochrome.

Village Fireworks Welcome in 2013

Filmed with the Nikon S9050. Yes, it even has a firework setting. All that does is lock the focus on infinity so there is one thing less to worry about. Video is as filmed apart from cutting out some blank sessions between fireworks, hand held, shooting through the bedroom window.




Penny wasn't too happy and found a dark corner the get out of the way. Afterwards it took some persuading for her to come back in the lounge. She crept in very slowly, looking around to make sure there were no nasty whizz bangs hiding there waiting to get her.

I see that the Nikon will be on offer again on Amazon UK starting at 5.40 p.m. GMT - look for 'Today's Lightning Deals'. It has many good points. Its main failing is its poor results in low light. Also, unless you buy a different charger the one supplied will only charge the battery while it is in the camera.

Nearly There

Pop Goes the Video

This morning I had a play with the video facilities in the Nikon S9050. Last night I had a browse through the owners manual - all 200 pages of it! For a camera which cost me less than £100 it has a whole host of facilities. As I thought, the colour 'popping' facility works on video as well as stills. There are quite a few choices for video quality and speed. I set it to 720p 16:9 for normal video (it will go better but for YouTube I keep the file sizes down) There is also the facility for high speed video, in effect that is slow motion when watched.

This is normal wide screen 720p starting in full colour and then popped red. Colour cannot be changed while videoing so you have to stop, change and then start again. That only takes a couple of seconds. The camera has a 15x optical zoom. As I was using all of that the camera was fixed on a tripod in the kitchen.





The next video was shot at 4x speed. The higher the frame rate, the smaller the picture. At this speed the video is 640x480. There is an 8x speed with a video size of 320x240.
Although the video subject is clear I was disappointed that it came out very dark and needed a lot of tweaking to see what was going on. For high speed filming the camera only shoots 10 seconds and then automatically reverts to normal speed. No sound is recorded.

Pop Goes the Scenic View

Following on from my earlier post I took the Nikon with us on our mid-day walkies down the lane. There was glorious Sunshine but the wind chill made it feel raw in spite of the outside thermometer showing 7.3C. Hanging on to Penny while taking photos as she tries to join in with a couple of Spaniels which were dashing about a few feet away is quite an art but I got there in the end. Again it was to see how the in camera colour 'popping' would work.

One of the views from the end of the lane:
Cropped but otherwise as taken with the camera:

Nikon Coolpix S9050 - full colour

Nikon Coolpix S9050- blue filter

Nikon Coolpix S9050- green filter

That's got that out of my system - for now!