More sunbird photos

Beautiful sunbirds

You will seldom catch, if ever, sunbirds in highly urbanized places. Unlike the ubiquitious house mayas, sunbirds are somewhat shy, unless they are intent on feeding on flowers. We have cordias in our home province and the long orange flowers ensure that sunbirds will not have competition for the nectar. Here are some photos I took last Saturday, with my trusty HS50EXR camera.

Wifi cards are getting cheaper, are they worth the hassle?

I do not like to remove the SD card from the camera and attach it to the card reader slot of the PC to transfer photos. I also do not like attaching the camera usb cable. Such "mechanical" procedures can damage the sdcard or worse the delicate microusb port. I already experienced a damaged 32 Gbytes FUJITSU SD card! These high capacity cards do not come cheaply. The thin plastic sdcard body covers can get brittle from too much handling.

Yesterday, I bought a 16 Gbytes Transcend WIFI sd card. It costs me P2,500 at Perfect Shot, SM Annex, SM North. The lady promised me that if it will not work, then I can buy equivalent cost goods from the store. Our HS50EXRr camera is listed as compatible with the SD card and in fact the MENU of the camera includes an Eye-Fi transfer selection!

You need a smart phone (iPhone or Android) and the Tanscend WIFI SD card app to make it work. You will also get a dedicated special "free" card reader when transferring the contents via a PC usb slot.

It is simple to use but we will post instructions here later.





And here is a photo I transferred yesterday using my Starmobile smartphone.

A curly twisted beautiful luhang-dalaga pedilanthus tithymaloides

I was lucky to shoot this this beautiful cultivar?/hybrid?/form? of pedilanthus tithymaloides plant at Quezon City Memorial Circle. I noticed some of the leaves and the stems look like those of luhang dalaga, so I am guessing it ia a pedilanthus titymaloides. My camera which is now my favorite when not shooting the moon(Canon SH50SX beats it for that unusual subject) is the relatively heavy superzoom Fujifilm HS50EXR digital camera.




With internet searches, I found the following candidates as descriptions of this form: marbled jacobs ladder splish-splash and bizzare contorted twisted .
I hope in time I will know the exact matching tradename or cultivar name.

How to ensure Flash is ready to fire

I am sometimes surprised why the flash does not work when I am in program mode and the built-in camera flash is released for firing by depressing the button beside the flash bulb unit. Cconsulting the Internet gave the following guidelines in Program mode:

1. The camera must be set for STILL IMAGE shooting, i.e., not in VIDEO mode.
   
2. The camera must not be set in macro mode.
   
3. The camera must not be in movie shooting mode.
   

By ensuring the above conditions are satisfied, the camera flassh will be always ready to fire. Be merciful when shooting people with flash. The camera is speedy enough even in low natural light conditions. Practice holding the camera steady when you desire NOT to use the flash. Have two photos for insurance, one without flash, and the other with flash.

When it comes to moonshots, the Canon SX50HS is very much smarter than the HS50EXR.

I also have the Canon SX50HS superzoom camera. It has an opptional 4x digital zoom setting so the zoom range can go up to 200 times instead of the maximum 50 times optical zoom. That is so much powerful than the the HS50EXR camera which with 42 times optical zoom and 2 times digital zoom can go up to only 84 times maximum.

Now you might think that the digital zoom feature of the canon would give it a useless grainy look. Yet this light camera can display the craters of the moon. See photos in our other blogs. (Link will be provided later). This shows that Canon has a high IQ (image quality)

But the amazing thing about the Canon is that it can take moon photos without any manual settings! Compare this with the Fujifilm HS50EXR. Shooting the moon in Auto mode will give us a glaring white object. We have to manually adjust the settings.

Here are some photos taken last July 13, a Sunday with the mon past the fullmoon phase.

The above shot was obtained with 1s0 400, 1/2 seconds, f4.5. Here is what we obtain with the auto mode setting for which the camera selected 1/20 s, f5.6, iso 400. 0 EV.

Much better is the following photo, this time taken with 1/100s, iso 100 and camera automatically selecting the fstop opening to f5.6, .

Now unless you align the lens with the subject, you might obtain a lens flare, a fairly common problem with Fujifilm cameras.

The metering system of the camera is fooled by the darkness of the background and the brightness of the single moon. It overexposes so set camera manually to shutter priority mode, use the following starting values: low ISO 100 value and 1/100s shutter speed and experiment.

A major change: a new blog name

Our Me and My Hs25exr camera was just renamed Me and My HS50EXR mirroring the fact that we are not using our waterlogged and unusable old hs25exr camera and instead we are using the SX50EXR as its replacement.

Boasting a 42x maximum optical zoom, this camera will hopefully provide a long service life for general photography.

A bad thing about the rubber strips of the HS50EXR in a tropical country.

Before I lost my HS25EXR due to water entering the camera last year, I experience the leader strips at the front and back of the camera coming off due to loosened adhesion of the white glue used by Fujifilm.

Now that I have the HS50EXR camera I was expecting a more solid higher quality workmanship and better materials. Instead the leather strip at the back of the camera loosened again from frequent use. The white glue is simply of poor quality. One can blame the heat and humidity of a tropical country, but we suggest Fujifilm do away with the fake leather strip to provide friction and instead texturize the plastic casing to provide non-slip grip on the back of the camera.

My Canon SX50HS camera simply does not suffer from this problem because it does not use leather strips for added grip. It does feel and look cheap however.

Fujifilm introduces new cameras.

I visited a camera shop in the basement of SM North and I was surprised of the new offerings from Fujifilm. Here is a list of the cameras(both new and old) and their prices.

X-T1	body-65,990, with 18-55mm kit lens- 85,990, with 18-135mm lens - 90,990
X-Pro 1	body-54,990, with 18mm/35mm- 68,990
X-E2	with 18-55mm-68,990
X-E1	with 18-55mm- 55,990 with 35mm- 53,990
X-M1	body- 35,990, with 16-50mm-39,990
X-A1	with 16-50mm-29,990
X-100S	with 23mm, f2-60,000
X-20	with f2-f2.8 4x zoom lens- 32,000
X-Q1	with f1.8 4x zoom, 21,990
X-F1	with 23mm, f1.8 4x -14,990
Finepix S1	with 50x zoom - 26,990
Finepix HS50EXR	with 42x zoom - 27,999
Finepix SL1000	with 50x zoom - 18,990
Finepix S9400W	with 50x zoom - 18,990
Finepix S9200	with 50x zoom - 17,990
Finepix S8600	with 36x zoom - 12,990
Finepix S4900	with 30x zoom - 8990
Finepix S4800	with 30x zoom - 8490

To be continued....

I am disappointed that the HS50EXR camera still costs very much. But I think it is a testament that this camera is a good value for the money.

The camera store dropped the price of the HS50EXR by 10,000 pesos. I was able to buy it at a price of 17,900 pesos and been using the superzoom camera for more than two months already.