Photo of the day

Recently I bought a “pocket” or “travel” camera that has a great zoom, HD video and is small and compact.  So small and compact in fact that it fell out of my hands one day as I was getting stuff out of the car and it landed on the concrete.

Bad move for a digital camera, for although it works, all kinds of dirt has gotten behind the lens and all of the photos are corrupted.

I just got notification the other day that it cannot be repaired under warranty and was asked if I wanted to spend 200 bucks for a refurbished one.  I decided that since I could buy a new one for just a third more, I’d make do with what I have for the time being, my steady eddy Olympus 5060 zoom that got a little water damage last year.  I wrote about it here at the time.

Since that time, although it seems to generally be working quite well, the auto focus for very close up zoom images seemed have developed issues.

Yesterday while hiking I decided that I would try something new, and switch to the manual super close up setting and discovered that not only can I get in close, but the camera creates a magnified portion of the lens so I can really see what I’m doing.

Now this is good, since the camera has an articulating screen and I can get down on the ground without having to lay on my stomach.

I’m really pleased with the results, even if they are very very hard to get – since you have to move the camera back and forth to focus – and while in a squat, that can take serious effort.

The first image is close – but then the second is the super close.

In this next image, you can see the individual grains of pollen on the back of the bug.

Next – a crop of just the bug and the pollen.