Saturday, July 9, 2011

Fourth Day Observations



Between the third and fourth days of my vacation I switched from using a 7-year-old Fuji Finepix 3100 camera to using a new Fuji Finepix 3300. The new Fuji has a lot more features and was actually cheaper (even before adjusting for inflation). The main difference: An optical zoom of 26x instead of 6x.

The down side is that I didn't really learn how to use it until after I returned home. Oh, well. Many shots still turned out better than they would have had I been using my old camera.




Morning... and the three biggest rocks on the east side of our beach are almost completely buried. It was spooky the way things kept changing overnight.





Afternoon at the park... and the waves have acquired a bit of a snarl.





The Vermilion lighthouse - or a replica - just outside the Inland Seas Maritime Museum. The Museum will be closing this year and then moving to new digs in Toledo. Even though it was obvious that things hadn't been kept up the way they used to be, I still enjoyed my visit. (Why in the world did local leaders allow this one to slip away? Seems to me to be one more example of being penny wise and pound foolish.)



The following five shots showed me just what a 26x optical zoom can do:












None of those boats were very close to shore.

That's Huron, Ohio in the background of the last shot. Those utility poles beyond the boat were at least 6 miles away from the spot where I was standing.

Just off to the left is the southernmost part of Lake Erie. You can't see it from Vermilion but it's there all the same.








One more dramatic sundown in an unbroken series of them. The daily storms proved to be a dependable source of enchanting light effects. I never saw a cloudless sunset but I'm betting that they're pretty boring in comparison. (Well, until the sun hits the water and it all boils away, anyway.)






That's Cedar Point (Ohio's version of Coney Island) in the distance as seen from our lower deck.





Here's another view of Cedar Point. If my calculations are correct, it was at least 15 miles away.

Had I known that 26x optical zoom cameras were this much fun I might have been tempted to steal one years ago.


3 comments:

  1. You can see rock cliffs hundreds of feet tall across the harbor where I live.
    I tell people this and the response is typically pity. "Deve, you stupid moron, the cliffs you're talking about are over 20 miles away. You can't see something that far away."
    A lot of them believe in God, which they've never seen.

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  2. Welcome to the wonderful world of zoom! Of course, now I have to go out and get a much longer zoom, myself, as mine *only* goes to 18 optical zoom. When I was a little kid, there was an amusement park in Cleveland called Euclid Beach, where my cousins took my sister and I on the twin roller coasters that splashed through the water! It was thrilling! Looks like Cedar Point has even more thrilling rides....

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  3. My senior class made a senior trip to Cedar Point. My favorite "ride" was the Magic Fingers mattress in the sleazy motel we stayed in. 25 cents for 15 minutes. Of course you could get a pretty good sized candy bar and a pack of gum with the change from 25 cents back then.
    We had to sleep four to a two-queen-bed room and the boys weren't allowed to bunk with the girls. How gay is that?

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