Nikon Week, Sickly Huan, Praying I Don’t Catch It Bob!

July 27^th Nikon week? Another different camera week? Yes, the Fuji is still away on holiday! The Nikon (Keymission 170) is an action camera so there will be no zoom shots of course. To show you the immediate difference here are the balcony photos, with a fairly useless crop.

And then a selfie that, to be fair, is only terrible because of where we took it. The wide angle of the 170 ‘bends’ nearby straight objects. Nikon colours are quite good although I did have to do a little tarting up with Picasa due to the light being behind us.

Macro shots are not so easy of course and you have to crop a lot of the resulting photo. This flower didn’t turn out so bad though.

Huan had singing class today so I took a comparison photo just to check. If you go back to July 13^th you can see a panorama shot I took where the lessons are. That was taken with the Fuji. Today I took a picture in the same place. As you can see there was no need to create a panorama but the picture quality is no match for the Fuji.

Leaving Huan to her singing I headed off down to the river again, and standing in the exact same spot as last week’s panorama (July 21^st) took this shot.

Out of curiosity I tried a stitched panorama here as well, not so easy with the edges of the 170 field of view being distorted. You can see that there is some distortion in the centre of the photo but overall it certainly shows you the view.

A little more experimenting further down the river showed me that I could get quite a good panorama by stitching only two photos together. My plan then was to take a video of my walk because if I had been lucky enough to spot any lizards on the trees that would have been the only way to get close enough. I needn’t have bothered; I didn’t spot a single one. Not only that the Nikon reminded me of why I don’t use it so much these days by giving me a ‘battery overheating’ warning.

Towards the end of the river part of my walk I did spot a small lizard on a tree so I switched the camera on to take a video and got the ‘low battery’ warning. No problems I thought, I brought a spare, a quick change and we’ll be good to go. Unfortunately I brought the wrong spare battery, I brought a Fuji one! Dummy! A little later on the battery had recovered enough for me to take a few more stills, only this next collage to share though. I didn’t see any cars of note today but I did spot this bike / scooter / moped whatever. It looked big enough for Huan and I, however, there was a problem. At that size I would guess the engine would be well over 50cc and because of my age, I m only allowed to drive motor bikes up to 50cc.

That’s all the photos for today. You almost had none at all because I popped into the bakery on the way home to buy some bread for my lunchtime sandwich and left the camera behind! I noticed my error just as I was arriving back at our apartment complex so had to go back and get it. On the plus side, the additional walk took me up to ten kilometres, the first one for a while. I could feel it too, an OAP nap was needed!

PS Huan had a message from the repair shop today, the Fuji will cost ¥450.00 to repair, quite cheap really. That’s ¥360.00 to ‘repair’ the motherboard and ¥90.00 to ‘clean the glass’. I’m not exactly sure what glass they mean, the screen, the lens or the sensor. Still, that’s way less than I thought it would be, fingers crossed it will still work when we get it back.

July 28^th Off to the countryside with my boss this morning, she chose the route or most of it anyway. We started off over the ‘bridge to nowhere’, my but it looks a long way with this camera, much further than before!

Just like yesterday I used two shots to create a panorama, this one to show you that the ‘nowhere’ point has moved. Our apartments are to the right of the photo and the road now goes further left than before.

We’ll wait for more progress further down the line before showing you where the road will one day go. We went through one of the small villages, the view looks a bit different at 170º FOV, aren’t you glad our eyes don’t distort the edges of our FOV.

Today I was able to create a fairly decent B&W conversion, this chap is not a tourist hiding from the sun but a farmer tending his cows.

Of course I had to find some cows didn’t I, I had to see if the Nikon was capable of giving me cropped shots that showed them in all their glory. I’m pleased to say that it did.

With it being a glorious sunny day, the hardest part of taking any photos was seeing anything at all in the camera display. It’s very small and also old technology. I often wonder what would have happened if Nikon had not abandoned this project in its very early days but I guess they couldn’t compete with GoPro.

Cars are next but only the writing on the side. The first is quite a common message, nothing wrong with it at all in my eyes; the second is slightly more unusual. I wonder whether the owner had been sniffing some N₂O before spelling oxide!

Finally for today, I thought an arty photo should be tried, only because I saw the boots on the wall. I’ve also included a crop of a through the trees shot that Huan thought was good. There’s no accounting for taste, is there?

July 29^th “Oh God, what’s that noise?” That noise was the alarm on my phone telling me that we had to drag ourselves out of bed at the unearthly hour of six o’clock. Usually, being retirees, we get up when we wake up but today was different, we had to go to a wedding party. Mr Lù’s son’s wedding party was to be held in their village near Qióng zhōng. By seven we were in the car and ready to go, I wasn’t driving today. My seat felt rather cool and checking the driver’s seat I found I was sitting on something that had been cooled down in the fridge beforehand!

Now I am not a fan of being a passenger in someone else’s car, I much prefer being the driver. Watching our driver’s hand shake while he sorted out the A/C and noticing that the ‘infotainment’ display was showing videos with the music I was viewing the journey with some trepidation, to say the least. Before too long though I realised that the display was not distracting the driver and he was not a bad driver at all. By twenty past eight we had arrived in the village.

Being curious I wanted to know why we were the first ones to arrive and why we were so early. “So that we can have a little walk around the countryside” was the answer.

I took this next shot intending to crop the ducks through the trees but once home I realised that this in itself made for a much better picture. You’ve no chance of seeing ‘live’ what your photos will look like; the display is only 1.5 inches big, maybe that should read small.

Before half past nine we were back in the house waiting for something to happen. I made sure I grumbled enough about getting out of bed so early! The happy couple turned up at ten thirty, I have no pictures of their arrival, in fact I have no pictures of them at all. The way everything was set up not all the guests were in one place, the bride, groom and immediate family were in one room, we were in another room alongside another ten guests, two more rooms had tables of ten, and then outside there were many more tables both in the courtyard of Lù’s house and his neighbour’s. It wasn’t the right environment for me, who nobody knew, to prowl around taking photos of everybody.

By ten to twelve, we were ready to start, and what a nice feast it was.

Alcohol was flowing of course but most people, in fact all that I could see, behaved themselves. Each table had been provided with a small bottle of home made 山兰酒 (shān lán jiǔ) mountain wine, a large bottle of home made 米酒 (mǐjiǔ) rice wine and a purchased bottle of 白酒 (Báijiǔ) liquor. Toasts were offered, I stuck to beer, there was no way I was going to have a few small glasses of any home made stuff! When the bride and groom came round to share a toast with us, as is normal at Chinese weddings, I had some of the mountain wine. Powerful stuff it was too, and I will not be trying it again in a hurry.

Before one o’clock we were on our way home again, this time I volunteered to sit in the back, on the way I had been far too cold and also deafened by the music and the conversation between the driver and the rear seat passengers. Here we are entering the tunnel that Huan and I call ‘the pretty one’. You can see what I mean about the infotainment screen. Mind you, the volume was quieter for the return journey and the passengers were not as talkative.

The last photo of the day shows the back seat passengers well out of it. One is faking it of course, I couldn’t take the photo if I was asleep now could I. At this range the Keymission 170 is not the most flattering of cameras is it?

Having showed you some of the limitations of the camera I have to say that it works fairly well in doing what cameras are supposed to do, make a photographic record. If you’re worried about the battery on your phone just use the action camera. No doubt by now the results will be much better with the latest sensors and technology.

Despite dozing in the car, bed was our first port of call when we got home. Both of us were worn out but Huan was also under the weather, she hadn’t been well before we went this morning.

July 30^th Her Majesty was still not so good today, hopefully the medicine she is taking, (for pharyngitis) will kick in before too long. She was quite obviously not going to go anywhere today. Being a loyal subject and also the court jester I stayed home too to provide moral support.

Other than that we did nothing, except a little bit of Taobao ordering, coffee and Parmesan cheese. The camera repair shop also sent Huan a message saying that the rear display was not working! Obviously a communication breakdown somewhere between the goods received section and the workshop, we had sent a written note with the camera explaining the problems, including the fact that the rear display didn’t work. Another ¥300.00 added to the bill making it ¥750.00 now. That’s still a lot cheaper than a new camera, fingers crossed they won’t discover anything else.

July 31^st Her Ladyship is on the mend, not 100% yet but getting better. She decided that the market walk, plus a little extra, would be fine for today. You may wonder what happened to her Saturday singing class and why we are wearing masks. Well, extracurricular activities have been put on hold, there is some kind of bug going around Wuzhishan and a there is a resurgence of Covid in other provinces. Don’t worry; I do wear my mask correctly when required to.

How did the Nikon cope with the market? With the first collage you can see that taking pictures of the wares and then cropping the edges was fine.

However, the second collage, showing some of the now open food street shops, (I know, one is selling clothes and one is selling Chinese medicine and massage), shows marked distortion round all sides of the photos even after cropping.

On our ramble we passed another artistic creation, this time on the side of an electric moped. You can probably see why I shared this with you!

We did take a few more photos of gardens and flowers but you know how they look with the Nikon now. The walk, while short, 6.4kms, did wear Huan out a little so after lunch a small kip was needed, for both of us. Chef duties called me to the kitchen, a nice big shepherd’s pie for today, and tomorrow. Mind you, having run out of ‘real’ cheese I had to use cheese slices on top of the potato. No, I couldn’t ‘pop out and buy some’; the nearest cheese is over a hundred kilometres away. It worked well enough, we both enjoyed our meal.

August 1st Oxygen was discovered today in1774 by British chemist and clergyman Joseph Priestley. I wonder how people survived before that! He called it ‘dephlogisticated air’, I’m glad it’s now called oxygen. On topic for this week, the 11^th Olympic Games opened on this day in 1936 in Berlin. In 1965 on this day, cigarette advertising was banned on UK TV; that worked out well didn’t it.

The boss was still a little under the weather and the weather was pretty miserable today so we spent the day doing not a lot again. Huan watched TV in the living room and I worked my way through cyber movies. I found a list and slowly I’m working my way through it, skipping movies that have very little cyber in them, such as Jurassic Park, and of course I can’t find all of them free on the internet. By evening time I was down to 1995 and Hackers with a very young Angelina Jolie. If you are interested in these kinds of movies you can find the list by following this link - https://cybersecurityventures.com/movies-about-cybersecurity-and-hacking/

No walk means no photos, except of course for one of Huan in repose.

August 2^nd Huan is not better yet but she is slowly improving, hopefully another day or two and she’ll be fine. She’s half convinced herself that she has Covid but of course will not consider going to be tested. It doesn’t help when WeChat is full of misinformation (not malicious) about the symptoms which are also very similar to any other viral respiratory disease. There has been a reported case in Haikou so measures are being taken there to test possible contacts and to limit any possible spread. Wuzhishan has had no reported cases. Some places in town are being a little more careful now, asking people to wear masks and checking temperatures, but so far they are in the minority. People wearing masks are also in the minority; just like these two who have just6 finished their weekly shopping.

SWMBO ordered me to go out for a walk this afternoon, alone! To be fair to her, she is better off staying in and resting anyway. Why was I ordered out? Because my feet were swelling, no not smelling, swelling, pay attention in the cheap seats!

I didn’t go far, the weather was closing in fast, just round the river. Before heading that way though I took a video of “Our New Island Park”. There are a group of people, a very small group, with the same camera, and we do like to see the occasional video from each other. If you’d like to see it too, just follow this link https://youtu.be/2A1SdIShqLE

Taking some photos with the Nikon struck me that it’s not at all bad for advertising touristy places, the wide angle helps. Of course the quality could be better as could the choice of day.

In the previous photo you could probably see that the weather was not too good, well just check it out in this panorama. This was stitched from three photos.

On my way home I spotted two little ducklings in a cage, the same ones we had seen on Saturday when we walked through the market. Taking photos of anything in a cage is not so easy of course, whichever camera you are using, but I tried.

So that’s a week of Nikon Keymission 170 photographs completed. What do you think? It’s not so easy to take ‘art’ photos or frame your subjects well but in the absence of any other cameras it does a good enough job of providing a record of what you’ve done and where you’ve been. That’s good enough for me! There’s been no further news on the Fuji yet, I wonder if they have found something else wrong. I suppose we’ll know soon enough.

From me and the Prime Minister it’s goodbye for another week, see you next time!