It's Primal Scream Day!

Every Canadian is permitted one very loud scream on the day he/she sees the official approach of Autumn - mine was today - here is my tree changing colour:

There's the spot in the middle of the maple.  I didn't even notice, but the top of the tree is starting to yellow as well.  Too bad I've used up my scream for the year.

Perhaps my scream was a little louder than normal as I'm breaking myself in with my new camera - the Panasonic DMC ZS7.  I remember how I was instantly in love with my Canon Powershot 80(now not worth fixing sadly) - perhaps the courtship will be longer, and the romance stronger....but right at the moment things are a little bumpy.

Last night ran out and started to take some photos.

These are Golden Honey Bunch tomatoes from Loblaws - quite delicious.  Was having the devil of a time trying to get my focus right - trying to zoom and focus - no luck.  This was the best of the lot.  (Obviously using the force wasn't going to work - perhaps I should crack open the manual?)

Kevin decided he was going to watch the US Open - looked like the game was going to be a real marathon, so I grabbed little Bart, the camera and the manual.  So with some fiddling, found the zoom macro focus.  Poor Bart.

The printed manual was a sorry little affair - hardly any information, so this a.m. I bit the bullet and put in the CD - a 90-page manual popped up.  First bit of instructions "Read the whole manual."  My life just doesn't work that way.  So I went to the problem I was having and found just the section to answer it!  I started pushing buttons as instructed and NOTHING happened.  As it turns out, when I looked very carefully at the screen, I was reading the instructions for a completely different camera.  Not only have the Japanese manufactures saved paper by putting this sucker on a CD, they have combined 3 different camera manuals together - so you must hunt for your camera instructions......  Everytime my camera is mentioned a little red ZS7 appears A F T E R the instruction.  I felt at this point that I'd done my best, so I called Burlington Camera and asked for some help - apparently they were unaware that the CD contained a melange of instructions, but commiserated about the fact that many Japanese manuals are unhelpful.

So to cheer myself up I decided to take a few photos of the squished garden from the car accident last week. 

You can see where the car jumped the sidewalk and peeled off between the Watson sign and the 50k sign.  Subarus have excellent turning ratios.

Anyone know where I can find a new Abeliophyllum distichum? 

Looks I've been saved having to cut down the Thalictrum.

Now these are this morning's tomatoes - getting a better handle on things.  Who knew they were hairy, did you?

Considering the light was so splattery, and Bart was a bit impatient - thought the iA (intelligent Automatic) did a pretty good job.

Obviously, I'm a little less clever, here's a close-up on manual.

for flat dull light, I can live with this shot of the vegetable garden.  Last night I was appalled to learn that the lettuce that I've let go to seed is unbelievably sticky.  My new camera in one hand and lettuce stalk goo on the other.

Here are a couple of close-ups of lettuce flowers.

First the arty one..... and then very close:

Quite pretty actually.

So all in all, I'm getting there probably by yards rather than inches - just so frustrating, the other camera was like a well worn tool - everything just where I'd expect it.  On the good side - was off doing several homes for Kevin's business and the wide angle lens works like a charm.  Also found the stabilizer did an excellent job at low shutter speeds - focus was excellent with no tripod and very low shutter speeds. 

So all I have to do now is practice, practice, practice!