Betty LaRue

I have the 80 since it came out & the 50-140. Both superb. Strange thing, one of the first lenses I bought was the 18-135. It doesn’t have the bokeh of the other two lenses & can have some CA. LR takes care of the CA. What I love about it is that it’s reasonably light & I used it almost constantly as a vacation lens. I have arthritis & have no problem with carrying it around on my camera. Wide angle to telephoto, perfect. I can stand in one spot & get two entirely different images of the same subject. I have also used it a lot for storefronts, distant to closeup. I would use the 50-140 but found I missed the wider angle. i do use the 50-140 for tighter landscapes, like this one. The 18-135

Love listening to the Sax!

Standard license for high $

This doesn’t answer your question, but I am deleting all the DNG-enhanced files once I save the jpeg for uploading. That leaves me with my original RAW with the jpeg next to it. Why delete it? I never revisit the image once I develop & submit it. Do you? Saving the DNG just eats up space, & if, I say IF, I should ever want to redevelop one, that’s a good trade off as far as I’m concerned, to start from scratch on a one-off exception.

You can’t hide a good heart, Jeff. Quit trying. I 👀 you.

I’ve only recently, the past few weeks, used Denoise with indoor images from my RX100VII. I would have tossed them otherwise. They passed QC easily & I wasn’t on the fence about submitting them. If you check, look for the little girls after choosing “newest”. Those were very noisy.

11 for $313, better than usual. Two $$$.

This one happened in late March, uploaded yesterday. This is my daughter holding her 12 pound bluecat catfish fresh caught. Debbie has a fishing boat, but it’s been out-of-action for a few years. We used to go fishing together when her boat was operational. She lives in Oklahoma, about a 3 hour drive from me in Kansas. Deb heard about a person conducting fishing excursions, it cost us $100 each to sign up. There were 6 of us plus the guide & his 12 year old son. The sun was supposed to shine, but it was cold & windy. The clouds were heavy until about noon. We started at 8am & came in at 1pm. I caught 3 nice ones, Debbie caught 5. This was her largest one. In spite of shaking from the cold, I had a blast. Anytime I have a fishing pole in my hands, I’m happy, & I never let freezing my nose, toes & fingers & nether parts stop me. The nice thing is the guide supplied the bait, baited our hooks, took the fish off the hooks & then filleted them, supplying us with gallon baggies of ready-to-freeze fish filets. The guy off to the left is one of the older gents that fished, and the boy in the foreground was taking the fish from the cooler to his dad to clean. i might add these fish were huge, hit like we had a hog on the line. Fought hard, & I thought my arm holding the pole would fall off before I got mine to the boat. Shot with my RX100VII. A story about the 12 yr old boy. I caught a smaller fish, about a 3 pound one. The boy was taking it off my hook when the other people teased me about the fish being a baby. The boy heard the teasing & threw my fish back in the lake because he thought the “baby” talk meant it wasn’t a keeper. I gasped! His dad immediately bawled his son out telling him the smaller ones were the best-eating ones. Dad carried on long enough the boy looked heartbroken. The boy was fishing, too, so I smiled at him & said it was okay, his next catch was mine, a replacement. He smiled & said ok. I then teased him in a sweet way, laughing with him, then told him it was fine, I was ok with him throwing the fish back. Once on land, when we were ready to leave, I asked him for a hug. He grabbed hold of me & gave me such a hard hug he nearly cracked my ribs. I wanted to adopt him as a grandson. This one…making pie pastry, ended up a coconut cream pie. Can’t believe my oldest Great grandchild has turned 10.

What a beautiful image. Love her deportment.

You are such a good guy. Thank you for becoming a part of the forum again.

@Colin Woods I assume you realize this contest should close today? I don’t know the status of your “busy-ness, & whether it has slipped your mind. Paulette, maybe you might need to work your magic again! 😁

I used to put my camera with lens attached in a tightly sealed plastic bag in the winter, when I went from a warm house out in the cold. I’d leave the camera outdoors for 15-30 minutes before removing from bag & all was well. This was after I saw the fogging the first time before doing this. Rather like one’s eyeglasses fogging up… it would work in reverse also, going from cool/dry to warm/moist.

I agree, there are some beautiful places here. If you ever come, I would suggest late September into early October. Although with weather changes since then (2010) timing might have shifted. The hot places won’t be so hot & the mountains will have leaf color. Timing the peak autumn color is really hard. It can vary. I anguished & researched a lot over our east coast trip before we picked a leave date & were lucky. My sister & hubs, after seeing my photos, came the next year around the same time. The day their plane landed, there was a big storm that took most of the colorful leaves off the trees. They had a week of mostly nothing. We spent 3 weeks at it in a RV using campgrounds, following the color change from Maine, upper New York State, And neighboring states.

It’s said everyone has a double. I’ve seen a few who looked very similar to me, like you saw, Edo. After all, when you think of the millions of people on the earth at the same time you (we) are, there are only so many bone structures & coloring out there. I would imagine there are more doubles, triples, etc that we can imagine. Rather boggles the mind.

I met my double when I was 7 years old. Same age within a week or two; we could have been twins. Same size, coloring, bone structure, everything. I was a bit freaked out. Okay, a lot freaked out. We tried to play together those summer days but it didn’t go well because about all we could do is stare at each other & feel weird. Her name was Yetty, mine is Betty. And no, I’m not pulling your leg. We only lived near each other for a month or so, but I’ve often wondered as I went through my life if we still looked like twins, & if she was giving birth to my children’s replicas.