Digital 'oldies' revisited

A change of pace and subject today after yesterday's stated intention to chronicle a year in the life of he River Deben as it passes through Woodbridge, but as I mentioned then, the title Daily Walk does not imply that there will be an entry every day, but will be determined by the weather and my  state of health, which will probably mean about once or twice a week.


Now, raking through my toy box of forgotten or neglected cameras I have rescued these two which are not exactly collectors' items but I was reluctant to part with them because you never know when an extra camera might be needed in an emergency!

The Nikon Coolpix P50 is a nice little camera about eight years old, which I still use occasionally because it is easy to use with one hand, but the Olympus Camedia is a different animal altogether. Although advanced for its time in the 1990s, it is painfully slow in operation and heavy on battery consumption (4x AA cells) and with a meagre 1.3 mp sensor is now kept only for nostalgic reasons as it was my first digital camera.

Just for fun, I challenged these two relative 'oldies' in the digital world to photograph each other, and here are their results in a collage created with Google's amazingly versatile editing software, Picasa, which is not only free of charge but also allows free-form editing and layout of individual images and text in any size or orientation.  I enjoy using it because it feels more 'hands on' than ready-made grids and templates and takes me back to the days of real scissors, real paste, and the collection of knives, brushes, paint pots and sheets of 'Letraset' transfers I remember using for printed layouts in the pre-digital years.

But now I am showing my age again.  There is no doubt that photographic presentation has gained enormously from the digital age, and am perhaps just a little envious of the opportunities now available to all.