Saturday, June 6, 2009

Friends and Family

On Tuesday night I boarded Amtrak's Coast Starlight in Emeryville, CA and traveled up to Seattle to visit friends and family.

The trip on the train was long, but as wonderful as always, and totally on time. When I get back to San Francisco I will post photos of the ride up and of my stay here, but for the moment I do not know how to download just a selection of photos, rather than the entire equivalent of 500 photos I have taken in the last 3 days - this includes videos.

Before buying a new camera, an idea I've been mulling over for the past couple of weeks, I thought it would be a good idea to bring the manual for my Canon PowerShot S50 on the train with me, just to see what I did not know about it. Guess what, I didn't know much.

It turns out I had read the "quickstart" guide and stopped there. On the train I learned to take videos (pathetic little videos, but videos nonetheless), BW photos, sepia tone photos, how to set the camera for sun and overcast, vivid color, and how to do manual focus. What I still can't achieve is a decent focus with telephoto, but I don't think this justifies getting a new camera. Not yet, anyway, because this did not stop me from looking at cameras at Costco here in Seattle, and noticing that they have a good deal on a Canon EOS XSi (or something like that), a camera that is highly rated on Flickr.

My friends in Seattle say "hi", from the other side of the sliding glass door right outside the living room of my brother's and his girlfriend's home.

Photos courtesy of Debra L.

3 comments:

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

That is one very cool raccoon! The PowerShot may not do all that lens stuff but it's really an excellent camera.
Enjoy Seattle, understand it's pretty warm there right now.

Unknown said...

Awww...raccoons! Cute but dangerous. Nice to have a window in between. No raccoons or skunks in Hawai'i, but I've seen some mongoose and wild chickens!

Tara Wilde said...

Oops, sent that last post from my sister's account accidentally!
Also, no trains in Hawai'i. Next time I come to the mainland I have to go somewhere on the train!