Quantity Vs Quality

'I miss your good quality photos.'

...was a recently posted lament from an anonymous reader. And let me just say: I'm with you on that.

This being a photo-essay type of blog, sharp clear pictures are pretty important. Now a couple of years into this and thousands and thousands of shutter clicks in the bag, my take on photography as a hobby has progressed from cool indifference to mild disdain to growing curiosity to sultry obsession. And to feed that hungry monkey it's seemed neccessary and more satisfiing to try to improve my skills and knowedge as I go, and pass any improvement on to you, oh, faithful readers.

My blogging gear is still at budget- bottom rank amateur level, but has progressed from raffle-winner Kodak point and shoot, to Canon Powershot with image stabilization, to entry level Nikon DSLR and a modest harem of low-end lenses. I'll probably keep on this trajectory until that fateful day where I gulp down my conscience and with sweaty trembling hand fork over an abused credit card to pay for a $2800.00 f1.8 400mm tele, in order to get a better shot of that chickadee.

But (for now anyway) high end gear isn't what it's all about. It's about enjoying taking pictures and more than that, capturing our happy travels in this happy valley. And 'travel' is the operative word here. My trusty Nikon D40, which is probably the smallest DSLR available, still has to be slung over the shoulder or carried in a camera bag. I love that camera but really miss the convenience and discreetness of being able to pocket it when not in use.

So in that respect the iPhone I've been experimenting blogging with of late kind of brings me back around to the beginning; and allows me to take the quick, odd pic without having to lug around a bunch of stuff. Even better, the pics can be post-processed and zipped right out into the blogosphere right then and there, if need be.

Take Sunday's walk about Thornes with the kid for example, taken with the phone:








Sure, not exactly tack sharp or even focused too well... and the kid's not complying with my angry demands to stay still for God's sake and let me post his face all over the web... but you get the gist of the image, and it's a fair representation of where we're at and what's out there.

Or later at Raven Books, where I sent a couple pics off to Facebook and Twitter in just a couple minutes, while standing on the sidewalk outside.















You can't do that with a DSLR.

But the trusty Nikon will still be along on our travels as much as possible, rest assured. In fact I just recently got a new sling-type camera bag to facilitate things. But my posts will be interspersed more and more with the lower megapixel, higher processed pics from the iPhone. I'll try to keep things balanced with the camerawork, but no matter what you can be sure we'll always be doing the best we can with the equipment we've got at hand during our travels...








That's our quality assurance guarantee; over here at 'in the valley'...