Spring

Spring comes to the Monadnock region not slowly and gently, but more like a bowling ball dropped on a foot. Suddenly it is just irrevocably upon us.

Hmmmm, if I hadn't lost my wildflower book I could tell you what these are...probably some non-native, invasive species. They are pretty though.

My new job, while fabulous in most ways, has been wearing me out a bit lately. Add to that a business trip to CA a few weeks back, the Bride's upcoming opening and its attendant stresses, and the expansion of the house, and, well, Spring *really* snuck up on me this time.

I should really know what this flower is. I don't however.

So one day, after noticing that the tree all had leaves, that I was covered with black fly bites, and that for some reason it was 97 degrees in my office, I decided to stop and smell the flowers. The ones without bees in them anyway.

Bumbling

Ferns coming up by the cabin

The sledding hill. Sans snow.

I think most people consider this a weed and buy stuff to kill it. Our lawn is full of them. I just mow them along with the grass when they get too tall. A chemical solution seems excessive.

Cute rodent. Less cute when he lives in your attic.

Crab Apple blossoms.

The Bride ambles down our busy road. Sadly, the few drivers that do come blasting down it clearly should stay home and wait for DiRT to be released.

No clue what these are either.

The Really Old School. This is 'downtown' in my town. Seriously.

Not much else to say this post. 1 pic == 1k words and all.

Hope your spring is as nice as ours. Unless you live in the Southern hemisphere. Then you are SOL. And if you are in one of those places that has no seasons (San Francisco) then I pity you :-P

ptb

D200

The king is Dead. Long live the King!

The old (lower-case 'k') king in this case was my wife's Nikon CoolPix 950. The new (capital 'K') King is her Nikon D200 digital SLR. The Coolpix was actually a decent digital camera -- for shooting anything that was well-lit, didn't move, and if the camera was mounted on a tripod. It's startup time was slow. The shutter release delay was slow. The only thing fast about it was the rate at which it chewed through batteries. It was even too big to really be useful as a convenience camera, you could stuff it in a back pocket, but, well, your ass would be huge as a result. And likely the batteries would be dead when you went to use it.

A crappy picture of a great camera. Taken with the now deposed Coolpix 950.

The Coolpix's reign has always been in jeopardy, but it's demise became certain two weeks ago when Scorpion1 stormed up from the studio after trying to shoot some shots of her recent paintings and declared, "That's it, I want a good digital camera! I DON'T CARE WHAT IT COSTS!!! And I want a new tripod too!"

Good Lord woman, don't ever tell a technology loving nerd that new hardware is needed and price isn't a consideration. It's a recipe for Pentagon levels of spending.

A decent picture of a great cat (Moby) taken with the D200. If you ask me he's named after Melville's whale, but my wife insists his namesake is Mr. Hall. Given the Hall-Melville connection I think we're both right :-)

In the end I exhibited some restraint, I resisted the siren call of Nikon's D2Xs, but finding a good deal on a D200 kit with a Nikkor 18-70mm 3.5-4.5 lens we did max out the prosumer level.

Nikon Coolpix 950

While comparing the D200 to the 950 is unfair and makes about as much sense as contrasting an Aprilia Tuono 1000 R Factory with a Honda Metropolitan, they are both digital cameras, just like the Aprilia and the Honda are two-wheeled conveyances...

Nikon D200

...I won't pretend to give a in-depth review of the D200's technical merits, I'll leave that to the far more qualified, or wait until I at least have some more time with it. But I can say simply that it makes taking pictures easy and the D200 is everything the 950 wasn't. If you can't take a good picture with it it's you, not the camera. In fact that's the only real drawback (other than price): I can't blame the gear anymore :-P

ptb