I was trying to get a picture of Sasha's teeth. Stupid camera will do what it wants goshdangit.

Guess what?

I'm really excited about this.

I have a digital camera.  A WORKING digital camera. It's at least 6 years old. It's an Olympus FE-190. It's been "broken" for at least 4 years. I fixed it with a screwdriver. There was sand in the lens mechanism.
It takes better pictures than the Fuji. (Which is still MIA)  I don't have the photoshop the shit out of the pictures to make them barely presentable like I did with the Fuji and my cellular phone pictures.
Unfortunately, the 1gb card I have for it doesn't work. I am stuck with a 256mb card. I can only take 59 "super high quality" pictures. More if I bump the quality down. (Like I'm going to do that.)

Not "super high quality" Just "high quality"

I have a digital camera. A working digital camera. I don't have to use my cellular phone anymore.
I am happy.  For now.

The Obligatory pick-nick table pictures

I have a trend. It is to post pictures of Conker sitting on a pick-nick table/bench, usually the one located in the crossroads at Cathedral Hills. When did this start? Probably the first time I ever went there, but the first ever pick-nick bench picture was at the dog park.

I can't remember who's idea it was. Probably Conker's. (Dog park)

Conker seems to like to pose for pictures, he does it frequently, and being on a table makes it better for some reason. (Dog park)

 After the first few times, he started jumping up on tables on his own. (Limpy Creek)

 Dumbass. (Cathedral Hills)

 I think this is around the time when it began to become a "thing". (Cathedral Hills)

 One year anniversary of owning Conker. (Cathedral Hills)

 Some of them are not so great. (Cathedral Hills)

 Even Sasha has joined in on the fun. (Cathedral Hills)

 Pick-nick bench in the snow is way cool. (Cathedral Hills)

A couple shots, that I don't think ever made it onto the blog, feature Conker on an actual bench. (Cathedral Hills)

(Cathedral Hills)

But for the most part, they are Obligatory pick-nick table pictures. (Cathedral Hills)

I gotta have more cowbell!

Occasionally, every once in a blue moon, my cellular phone can take a decent picture. (Limpy Creek)

Photochop!

Though this picture is quite blurry and to me, completely worthless straight out of the camera, it was made slightly better with the help of Photochop (intentionally spelled that way). The dirt was originally quite pale, nothing compared to it's natural dark, earthy look. The greens were, well, not green, and Conker was a dull tan instead of somewhat bright red.

I really could try harder to make good pictures great, but better works just fine for me. I can use photoshop quite well, I just don't like to, so I stick with the basics and just tweak the images a bit to get it slightly closer to what it would look like in real life.
Without it, pictures taken with this cruddy camera would be really terrible even with good lighting.

And yes, the greens really are that green here in Southern Oregon.

Photodump

I was retarded yesterday and took well over 200 pictures, I need to do something with them so I'm going to spam the blog with some of the better photos.  The brighter colored ones are when I had the manual mode on.  The faded ones are from auto, which still sucks like noneother.

This is probably my favorite.  Of Conker's butt.

Next up we have foamy-mouth Juneau!

Still foamy.

Notice how her expression doesn't change.

My favorite derp dog.

Sasha is hard to take pictures of.

Conker lookin good.

He decided that playing fetch was no longer beneath him.

His expression changes a little more than Juneau's.

Derp.

Juneau's ball. (notice how foamy it is)  And a Sasha nose photo-bomb.

Juneau and her foamy ball.

And that's it!  Oh wait one more.

Photo Filler

Conker and Juneau in the creek near the dog park.

Fuji

Okay... I finally bought some stinkin Fujifilm. I got two four packs, one 400 speed and one 800 speed. I loaded a roll of 400 into my old Minolta and took 13 shots today at the dog park. I was mainly just messing around, trying to regain the feel of that old camera. I forgot how heavy it is with the 75-205 zoom lens on.

A dog I've never met before came, a little brindle Carin Terrier. She wasn't there long. Then the Westies came, then Snow the Saint Bernard. Snow is fun, she looks like a huge puppy when she plays. The first time Conker met her he wasn't sure about her but this time he played with her. That was fun to watch.

I'm hoping some of the pictures I took end up alright. I can't remember if the built-in light meter is screwy or not. I was using it so hopefully it works fine.

Creek

Sometimes my stupid little camera surprises me.

Late night walk

Conker and I went for a walk last night.  I decided to try something and clipped the d-ring near the handle to the snap and let Conker drag the rest of the leash.  He did AWESOME!  He was very responsive when he got a few steps too far ahead or lagged behind, stopped when I did when we came to cross streets and didn't chase after the cat we saw across the street (I grabbed the leash then to be safe).  When crossing streets I held the leash for obvious reasons but once across I let him drag it again.
I hope Conker will continue to be an a-typical Shiba and be reliable off-leash.  The couple times I've taken him off-leash in the creek (where he can't escape) he's done really good as well.  No true off-leash excursions until he's a bit older though, I'm not ready for that.


Since I STILL haven't gotten any film (I'm very reluctant to buy Fuji) I've been relearning how to use my stupid point-and-shoot.  I still hate the bejeebes out of it and want to kill it every time I touch it.  Despite that, I did manage to get a semi-cool shot on our late night walk.

Focus on the sidewalk whoop whoop.  Not my intention but hey, it's an automatic with no manual focus whatsoever, no control over the F stop (only quarters of stops from -2 to +2 in auto setting, hardly useful), very little shutter speed control (you can set it at 1, 1.3 1.6 2, 2.5 3.2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13 or 15 seconds or full auto)  There is NO ZOOM period and it tends to not focus on the subject.  If it does, it's usually not the part I want it to.  Like a patch of fur instead of a nose.  If for some stupid reason I decide to use the flash I have to wait at least five seconds for it to decide when to go.  It used to be instant but now it takes it's sweet time and when photographing dogs you can't do that.  Because they move.

I stabbed my toe with a pitch fork

Don't do that, it really hurts.  But that's not what I'm going to talk about.


I'm going to talk about photography!
My little point-and-shoot camera is still driving me insane.  So far I haven't been able to find any film that's not Fujifilm and I DO NOT like that brand.  Call me biased, but my brand of choice isn't even one you can buy in a store that's not a specialty camera store.  Since I can't afford that film and my town lacks any sort of professional camera store anyways, I'm on the hunt for a roll of Kodiak 400 but... yeah.  Small towns and defunct technology sucks.

I took all these pictures I thought were gonna be great since the preview on the point-and-shoot's screen looked good but once they got on the computer they all sucked.

Shiblur attacks the soccer blur! But the grass looks good, like it always does in action shots.

The lighting for this one was PERFECT, and that doesn't happen often for me.  Did it come out good?  No, it makes Midnight look purple, the grass behind her is all washed out and the details of her fur are a mix of too clear and not clear enough.

This was another potential that could have turned out amazing.  But the auto lighting settings screwed it up bad.  I could have selected a certain setting in manual mode but if I do that it messes with the shutter speed and that's something I can't control... So the sky is way too washed out, Midnight's fur is way too dark but the grass looks fine. Go figure.

Okay, I'll admit, this one is kinda cool despite being out of focus and totally blurred.  But the lighting wasn't bad and the anti-shake setting was on.  That auto focus though... always messes up and does stuff wrong.  It's hard to tell but it focused on the ground in this picture, not Conker even though he's right in the middle of the whole thing.

I took a whole string of photos of Conker lying in the grass here, and this is one of the better ones.  Again the auto focus and lighting things attacked and made my good pictures bad.  Most people would say this is a good shot, but if you click and look at it bigger you'll see that Conker's head is out of focus.  What is in focus?  the grass BEHIND Conker.  Yes, behind.  Not in front, behind. 
(Off topic but OMG Conker your ears are totally huge)



It even has problems focusing on stuff right in front of it with the macro setting on. 

Sorry for the rant, but I'm a semi-perfectionist and photography is one of the few fields where I am a COMPLETE perfectionist.  I was insanely obsessed with detail in my photography class, so much so that I was scaring other students and my instructor told me to tone it down a bit.  This little digital camera is going to kill me if I don't find some film soon.

Picture FAIL

This is what happens when I try to take a picture of Conker while getting out of my computer chair which results in me crashing to the floor, waking him up and thus ruining the funny pose I initially wanted to take a picture of.

Photography.

My digital camera sucks.  When I first got it it was a huge step up from my old one.  At the time 8 mega pixels was awesome.  It was super fast, took nice shots and was a great point-and-shoot camera to have.  (Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS Digital ELPH)  However, something happened to it recently.  It takes forever to take pictures, especially if the flash is used.  They come out blurry unless you take the time to focus over and over and over on the subject of the shot.

Now in order to get a good shot I have to take way too much time refocusing and retaking the picture only to have it come out sub-par in the end.  If I resort to using the flash I loose details and wash out the subject.  I don't like this aspect of digital photography with simple cameras, but I already know I will never intentionally buy a professional digital camera, let alone a point-and-shoot one.  (All my digitals have been gifts.)

I love photography.  I love walking around looking for interesting things to take pictures of.  I've taken well over a thousand pictures of Conker since I got him at the end of last October.  Back in Vancouver Washington I took a photography class while going to school for Welding.  It was a black and white SRL film course and I fell in love with it.  I used an old Minolta XG-M that my Dad had since the early 80's and never want to buy another camera again because of it.  It's not the greatest camera out there but it works well for the type of photography I do.

I took this picture a couple years ago in downtown Vancouver.  It was part of my final project for my photography class.  The scan doesn't do it any justice as it's not that grainy and doesn't have fibers scattered all across it.

In order to get a quality shot you either need to have a really expensive digital camera (or constantly amazing lighting) or take the time to do things the old fashioned way.  Since I don't have the $500+ it'll take to get a digital camera I'd find remotely worth my time and money (not to mention the additional lenses and supplies), I'm going to stick with the old durable Minolta I've had for years.  Plus I'm a sucker for old fashioned.

Taking pictures of dogs is hard.  They move around a lot, get distracted easily and don't like to sit still for pictures.  Conker is no exception to this rule.  While he does like to have his picture taken he isn't one to stick around if you decide to take your time refocusing the camera because the last shot was crap.  That's what I like about my Minolta.  Even if his face is out of focus his butt may not be.  With my digital point-and-shoot if his face is out of focus his butt is going to be as well. 
I'm not going to ditch my digital entirely simply because it's very convenient to have around.  The Minolta requires two hands or a tripod to use, the digital can be used one-handed, like when you're scratching a dog's chest.