January 15, 2023
Break Time
And just like that, she’s gone. Facing three days of cold, wind and rain, Susan decided to head home a few days early rather than sit around indoors for the next three days listening to coughing and hacking from the far corner of the house. A strange choice, but it worked out for her when she arrived home and woke up the next morning to a sunny, 70 degree day.
The three of us took our parting shots and then Rachael left for a walk before the rains arrived while Susan and I loaded Vivien George into the back of the Raven and headed off for the Tucson airport. After dropping her off at the Departures curb, I looked around at the rapidly darkening sky and decided to take the long way home and stop off at a few spots for photos. It’s quite a dramatic change to the vistas we’ve enjoyed since our arrival.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_S-3_Viking
1 year ago
It doesn’t look like any biking is going to be happening for the next few days, and while Rachael will undoubtedly slip out for walks in any breaks in the weather we get, I’m going to stay indoors and concentrate on recovery. It’s as good a time as any to take a few days off, so don’t expect any updates for a few days at least.
Before intermission though, we should include this fine selfie I captured last night. It’s an excellent portrait of course, but some explanation is needed. After Susan returned my zoom camera loaner to me back in France, she went home and bought one for herself - exactly the same model as mine. She’s been quite pleased with it so far, with one exception - the flash function doesn’t work correctly and most of her flash shots have a dark, ruddy tone to them.
She brought the camera out last night so we could compare settings on the two cameras. Nothing obvious showed up so she took a photo of Rachael and I to give an example. We were almost blinded by a bright, intense red light instead of the normal flash; and indeed, the resulting image was quite dark. Very strange.
I took over her camera while Susan packed for departure, looking for an explanation or fix. Examining the two again turned up nothing new, so I studied the online manual to see what I might learn there. The manual doesn’t explicitly describe what’s happening, but it’s apparently a flash enhancement function that activates in unusually low light conditions. Frustratingly, there’s no description of how to trigger or disable the function. It looks like it’s automatically activated and can’t be suppressed other than by disabling the flash function entirely.
So maybe she has a defective camera and needs to return it? I couldn’t find any troubleshooting questions from people with the same problem though, so that seems pretty unlikely. It’s a puzzlement.
Finally, I experimented some more by taking selfies from both cameras. I was surprised to find that both worked correctly when I shot them at myself, until finally I got the red effect - but this time with my camera, not Susan’s.
What the hell?? After several more shots, it finally sunk in - it’s a problem with hand position. If you hold the camera improperly, your finger blinds its light sensor so it thinks the light conditions are very dark and flash enhancement is required. I’m surprised the manual doesn’t say anything about this, but it was satisfying to figure out.
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1 year ago
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1 year ago
You got a ZS also? Good luck with it. It really does seem like the ideal pocketable camera for my purposes. And thanks for letting me know. I feel like an influencer! I’m going to contact Panasonic and see if I can get a commission or other benefits.
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