Wednesday 22 July 2009

On Top of a Hill!

Today my family and I decided to go on a nice ride through the Worcestershire countryside, as we had done on the same date last year.

To remember the day I took my new point-and-shoot digital camera, an insurance company's replacement for one that had been stolen in Newquay last September. I say new because it only came into my possession a couple of weeks ago due to a number of reasons albeit primarily my own disorganisation about getting it sorted.

Of course, through losing the camera in its case, I also lost the memory card that was inside it, as well as a mini tripod i was housing in the case. So this Sunday just gone I made use of an awesome offer at Morrisons of one 4Gb SDHC memory card for just £7, which I was delighted to find, after I'd put it into the camera this morning, gave me the ability to capture and store about 1500 images at a 10 Megapixel quality or 70+ minutes of video footage. Also at one point today, when we stopped in Worcester to buy some birthday cake, I was able to nip into Jessops to buy a replacement mini tripod.

Later on, the opportunity arose for me to climb up the Herefordshire Beacon (one of the Malvern Hills) where I had taken some nice pictures on my old camera the year before.
There was one I remembered I had taken last year which I thought was a particularly scenic photograph [see below] so I thought I might try to recreate that with the new camera to compare the image quality, but without my laptop with me I had to rely on my memory to orientate myself correctly. Also, whereas last year it was a beautiful sunny day, today was drizzly and blustery. However, with a little cropping and resizing the photos line up pretty well. (Click to expand)


As an exercise in comparing cameras, it was rather fruitless! Today's photo seems less crisp but then the lighting conditions were not as favourable. However, the resolution is slightly better so hopefully, given comparable weather, the new camera will outperform the old one in quality.

What strikes me as most interesting when comparing the two images is, firstly, the very distant scenery near the horizon being more distinguishable in the damp, gloomy conditions of 2009 as opposed to the summery haze of 2008 and, secondly, how this photo shows the rotation of the crop fields in the foreground between harvest years and fallow years...

Well
at least I found that interesting!

Of course, despite the fact I was alone on the hill, I couldn't leave without taking a phoney tourist photo to use on Facebook using my tripod and a self-timer. It's me trying to be inspired by the landscape which inspired Edward Elgar to compose some of his most famous and beautiful pieces, including the Enigma Variations, when he lived in Malvern and used to walk the same routes over a century ago.

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