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I took a nice long walk around downtown today. All I had with me was my E-PL1 and 9-18mm lens. It was a little bit limiting, but not in a bad way. It is such a light kit compared to my usual array of lenses! I came across some very odd things during my travels today!

I got another new camera. This one is a Micro Four Thirds camera. It is the size of a point and shoot, with the same insides as my big camera. Both cameras can share the same lenses. The new one shoots high def video, too!

I’ve only taken a few shots so far, but I’m impressed:

More to come soon…

Today, I finally got around to uploading some interesting shots from the month of December:

I also took a walk around Arrowhead Lake. The ground was frozen and covered with a lot of snow. I took all of these pictures with my new ultra wide lens. It’s great to hike with because it weighs next to nothing. I didn’t really edit any of these pictures. The great blue sky came right out of the camera!

We’ve got sun today! While at lunch I finally got a chance to test out my new ultra wide angle lens.  Here is an example:

The cool thing about this shot is that I didn’t do any retouching other than resizing the image. This new lens seems to have a natural polarizing effect, and it does great things to the color of the sky. Otherwise, this is not a particularly enticing image. .. More will be forthcoming.

In addition, here is a recent macro shot:

I didn’t use my wide angle lens for this. It was taken with my 70-300mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter and a 4.8 diopter close up lens added. I hand held the camera and lit the subject using 2 flashes… One on the left bounced up, and directly from the right. If you don’t recognize it, it is a 20 dollar bill.

Today, we went to the Morton Arboretum to catch some fall color. We were not disappointed. It is a huge place. We walked around 7-8 miles. Here are the best shots:

The recording studio has been redone with new furniture. It looks great and has an improved workflow. The room is not done yet. I still need to tame some early reflections, and carpet the back half of the room. I’m also going to do something to hide the wiring from view. Overall, I’m extremely pleased with how it looks and sounds.

Nick and I hiked around Lake Katherine. It was a very hot day, but we got some great pictures.

On the way home, we stopped at Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery. It is considered one of the most haunted places in the country. I’ve never seen any evidence of haunting… It just seems like a very sad place.

We took Chris-T to the zoo! The family membership was TOTALLY worth it.

7-3-09 Niagara Falls- It wasn’t very sunny, which made it tricky to take pictures, but it was still a nice visit.

7-4-09 Rochester Zoo- This zoo was small but nice.

Rochester has a really great children’s museum. The highlight of our visit was the time I spent in their butterfly room. They also had a great exhibit of the history of arcade games. They had a huge collection of vintage machines. I was too busy playing to take pictures.