A few nights away...... last month

April 07, 2020

A few nights away...... last month

Before the Covid-19 lockdown, we were lucky to get in a few days away at Coffs Harbour.

I took away my Pentax A3 (35mm film camera) with a couple of films (Fuji Superia 100 and a Focal 100 colour). I also took along the Canon 90D, the latest DSLR acquisition.

Well, I got through the roll of Fuji but the roll of Focal is still half finished in the Pentax so, what you will see here is the product of the 90D.

My previous DSLR was a 600D, so I was eager to check out the differences between that and the new 90D. I found the 90D programme and menu slightly different but once I had determined what was where it was easy to flick between changes.

I am really liking the LCD on the top of the camera that means I don't really have to flip open the back LCD screen at all to view settings.

The one thing I was slightly disappointed in was the multi focus. I had been using spot focus on the 600D and was interested in how the multi focus mode would turn out. The photos I took using multi focus were actually slightly out of focus. Perhaps there may have been some operator error there? I do intend to persevere with it to try and figure out why it is considered useful though. Anyway, I switched to spot focus and things improved immensely. After years of shooting with many different cameras, I really am intrigued as to why we need 45 focus points!

One thing I really love about the 90D is that the sensor is almost twice the resolution of the 600D. I can tell the difference in looking at the photos on the screen. I am not sure if the larger resolution would be the cause of this but photos taken with a shallow DOF have a softer bokeh than I used to get with the 600D. This also helps with photo cropping in that a decent sized photo still remains after the original has been cropped.

We also visited some lovely small towns in that area. The most memorable being Urunga. Urunga has a long boardwalk up to the river mouth where the Kalang and Bellinger Rivers meet and flow out to sea. As we walked along this boardwalk, we saw 10s of thousands of beautifully blue Soldier Crabs in the mangroves. Urunga also has the nicest looking caravan park we have ever seen! We also visited Glenreagh, Woolgoolga, Corindi Beach and, Bellingen. So many great little towns that we wanted to check out!

We had a great time away but returned to a mad world of grocery magpies (panic shopping and hoarders) and social distancing. We did a little grocery shopping and remained home for about 12 days before I had to return to work (emergency service essential worker).

Unfortunately, due to Covid - 19, social distancing and closure of some businesses, I am unable to get any film from this trip developed and scanned as yet but, that's a story for another time. I have a few other films awaiting development too. Busting at the bit to get them developed and scanned as well!

Take care in these mad times everyone!