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Here's some preliminary poking around and a little info from the research I did before ordering. Selfie camera on both. - 10.5MP f/2.2 20mm equivalent. Pixel 8 cameras - Main camera has a 50MP sensor with a f/1.68 25mm equivalent lens and optical and electronic stabilization. The ultra-wide angle camera has a 48MP sensor with a f/2.2 11mm equivalent lens. It uses a laser-based autofocus system. Pixel 8 Pro cameras - Main camera is the same as the 8. The ultra-wide angle camera has a 12MP sensor with a f/1.95 11mm equivalent lens. The telephoto camera has a 48MP sensor with a f/2.8 112mm equivalent lens. The tele camera also has optical and electronic stabilization. The laser-based autofocus it multi-zone on the Pro Macro has been upgraded. It seems to have cut the minimum focus distance in half. Life has been busy lately, so testing will have to wait until the weekend, but I did get a chance to browse the updated camera app and I like what I see so far. The Pro mode in the app looks promising, offering a wide range of control over camera settings. I'll post some photos this weekend. I'm pleased with the changes so far, but actual photos will tell the story. Dave Selfie camera on both. - 10.5MP f/2.2 20mm equivalent.

I'll try this again. My last post about the new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro just disappeared. I suspect iPhone people objected to their existence but that's just a theory. Anyway, I'm in the process of evaluating cameras on both of them. Will post samples and detailed impressions as soon as I get a chance. My first impression is very favorable. Fast with an improved interface and new camera modules that really feed into Google's competitional photography. Android 14 is pretty slick as well. Dave

Last week celebrated a big event in our oldest grandchild's life. This week it's the youngest's turn. Little Master Kai turns two next Monday, but scheduling conflicts moved his party to Week 40. Friends and family gathered at a favorite beachside park near his home and lavished him with love, attention and gifts. It was a very nice day. Not only for Kai, but for friends and family who don’t get to see each other as often as we would like. The weather was California costal normal with sun and blue skies until a dense fog bank rolled in around noon and the temperature dropped to about 62°. Since most of us were going to return to 90°+ later that day, we didn’t complain. Kai loved all his gifts, but I think our electric motorcycle may possibly have won the day. B-B-B-Bad to the Bone Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, October 9 and Sunday, October 15. This week will eat up the first half of October! Pictures of Hallowe'en decorations, or God forbid, early Christmas decorations would be nice to share. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

We have fall colors here in SoCal. Green and brown are colors...right? 😞 Dave

Last Friday I had the pleasure of photographing my Grandson's wedding over in the Phoenix area. The pleasure was slightly offset by 102° heat and schlepping two cameras around for 5 hours, but a pleasure it was. His bride, Alyssa, is a charming young lady with the patience of a saint where Brady is concerned. She even supports his World of Warcraft video game obsession which makes her sort of unique. Brady has worked his way up to the title of Warlord, which is a very rare achievement indeed. His father pointed this out in his reception toast and added that he has now added another achievement that is very probably unique among World of Warcraft Warlords. He met a real girl in the real world, fell in love and married her. They are truly blessed. Happily Ever After Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, October 2 and Sunday, October 8. We are now in the last quarter of 2023. If you have been putting off sharing your awesome photos, now's the time to shine! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

On Sunday morning, we abandoned a pleasant fall day in the mid-70°s and walked into the permanent winter of one of the nearby ice-skating venues to watch Matthew’s team do battle with local rivals. The game was pretty exciting, and our team quickly put a couple of goal on the board. Matthew primarily plays a defensive position and doesn’t take a lot of shots at a goal. As you see in this week's image, not a lot doesn’t mean never. Here he is diving for a shot, taking a fall for a chance to score. Have you ever heard the adage: Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted? Hockey has a phrase that means the same thing. It's called Shot on Goal. It’s what you call an awesome effort like this when an uncooperative goalie blocks it. Shot on Goal Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, September 25 and Sunday, October 1. The Autumnal Equinox is officially here. Things are starting to change in both hemispheres. Be on the lookout for these changes and carry a camera of some sort at all times! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Wildflowers are a generally happy subject to shoot. They don't look away, blink or whine about how long it takes to get the right shot. They do, however, grow outside and are subject to such things as random lighting or wind. Lighting can be managed pretty well, but unless you brought an extra tripod with one of those little stem clamps to lock it down, a windblown flower can be as tricky as a two-year-old with a sugar rush. The best way to freeze a waving flower is the application of a high shutter speed, but this flower presented itself at a time when I was armed with only a phone. Thankfully, it was a phone with the ability to take several shots in a burst and assemble a reasonably clean image from the components. Perfect? No. Pretty darned good? Yup. Flower Power Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, September 18 and Sunday, September 24. Just another week. Why not make it special by posting some photos? Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Reviews: OM System's Tough TG-7 is a Rugged Companion for Outdoor Photographers | PetaPixel OM System TG-7 Review | PCMag Spec list: OM System Tough TG-7 Specs: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) Dave

I was out surveying the damage wrought by the hurricane (we got some rain and that brings the weeds) when I discovered that our tangerine tree is expecting! We planted the little sprig about five years ago and is has been a bit of a slow starter. Last year it struggled to squeeze out a couple dozen or so small but sweet tangerines and that thrilled us since we had almost given up on it. It has doubled in size this year (still a shrubbery) and since we aren't really orchard keepers and don’t keep track of growth or fruit production cycles, we figured it was going to skip a year of fruit to go through tree puberty or whatever. Needless to say, the appearance of tiny flowers made us happy and ensured that the water supply would continue to flow for another year. Late Summer Surprise! Dave Note: For those interested, this is a stacked image I shot this using the focus bracketing feature on the new camera and the results were excellent, even hand-held at 1/125s. I'm running out of photography stuff to legitimately brag about with the cameras doing such cool stuff for me these days.

Pictures taken between Monday, September 11 and Sunday, September 17. This week starts with some very sad memories. Please offset the mood with some nice images to bring cheer. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

The weeks since we got back from Alaska have been very busy with a bridal shower, the ice-skating show and now a hockey tournament. While I have taken about 4,000 photos in that time, very few have been the sort of photos I usually choose for the Picture-A-Week. On Sunday, I was shooting hockey action from the stands and had paused when Matthew left the ice. I looked over and was surprised to see that instead of playing a game on her tablet or her Mom’s phone, Jackie was actually watching the game while unconsciously consuming her bag of popcorn. I cranked the zoom to minimum and followed the technical rule of making sure the eye is in focus to make the shot look good. Or the lovely little lady made the shot look good. Probably the second reason. Spectator Dave

This was from Last Saturday. Just a nod to the passing of one of the best. R.I.P. Mr. Buffett. Enjoy that cheeseburger when you get to Paradise! Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, September 4 and Sunday, September 10. Seasons change in a few weeks. Take some photos to remember this one. Post them here and make us smile. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

For someone who believes in keeping a photo as true to life as possible, I have found myself spending a lot of time in Photoshop lately. This week was a disaster aversion drill when Jackie's school pictures came back from the provider. Somehow, they had made her bangs too short (God forbid I allude blame to her sainted mother...), and I had to do a quick intervention correct the photographer's egregious error. Again, I have strayed from the path of photorealism but having your granddaughter clap her hands and tell you that you are magical is worth the brief flash of guilt. 😉 Dave

Week three of the Ordeal of Skating: Output. This week, I spent twenty or so hours going through not only the 3,538 I shot, but the 1,452 that Granddaughter Hailee shot from a different vantage point. The resulting 1,005 lightly edited shots were divided into folders representing the fourteen show segments corresponding to the group photos as well as folders for the opening number, intermission skits and finale. The next step was to burn them to flash drives to be delivered to the parents and relatives that pre-ordered a poster and the action photos from the show. It was a lot of work. It was also a lot of fun using my camera and editing skills for a good cause. I can’t imagine doing this for a living but as an in-kind donation to said good cause, it felt pretty darn good. Output Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, August 28 and Sunday, September 3. Well, this is it for August! The year is two-thirds over. Waiting for Fall Colors is just a reason to procrastinate! (Especially in the Southern Hemisphere.) Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Just type your words. Once done you can either upload an image ("choose files") position your cursor where you want it then click "insert". Or you can simply copy and paste it wherever your cursor is positioned. It really doesn't matter what order you do the insertion of the image or text. I just find it easier to type what I want and put the images where I want them later. You can also change a post for about 20 minutes after posting by choosing "Edit" from the action menu. Hope that helps. Dave

Having taken both on trips without really ever using them, I have given up on carrying one. I am also a Sony shooter, so in-body stabilization and optical stabilization have taken the place of 'pods in my day-to-day shooting. On small tour boats, the movement makes a monopod unusable and unless you are a big fan of stink-eye being directed at you, don't set up a tripod on a crowded viewing deck. On board the ship, a tripod could be used in uncrowded areas, but the need just isn't there for me. I do still take a little tabletop tripod and some gaffer's tape in case I want to take a timed shot with me and the Wonderful Wife in it but have yet to use it. That's my 4¢... Happy Shooting! Dave

Last week it was the posters. This week was the second half of my voluntary(?) stint as Ice Show photographer. Sunday was showtime and I rode out our steamy tropical storm in a brisk 38° environment for both showings of the program. Honestly, spending five hours in an artificial winter while warm rain sprinkled humidity from the sky was not the hard part of the day. Standing up on the viewing platform firing off shot after shot with a few pounds of high-end imaging tech for most of those five hours was the real chore. A quick scan of the roughly 3,500 images was made, and I will spend the next few days culling repeats and the surprisingly few blurries. At about 700 shots in, I found the winner for week 33. Young Jackie’s skill on the ice comes through again! Showtime 2023! Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, August 21 and Sunday, August 27. Are you having an interesting week? There's always something to photograph. Surprise us! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

I was volunteered into finding a reason to manipulate the heck out of images. Spent Sunday taking photos of the performers at my granddaughter's dress rehearsal for the ice rink's fundraiser show. Fourteen groups of cats to be herded, photographed and then placed into a movie or musical poster for sale to the parents and other relatives. Lots and lots of manual masking due to the confusing background. Next time I'm going to get a big green screen! Here's a few of the before and after: Not as easy and fun as I would have wanted but the end results were pretty satisfying. Dave