A Sunset

Sneffels Range and Ridgway

horsefly mesa sunset

This evening I had my first real photo shoot with the Sony A900. What was almost an amazing sunset over the entire Sneffels Range turned out to be nothing too exciting. But nevertheless I put my new camera through the paces, and I must say it was frustrating!

My first impression is that the user interface sucks. Of course every camera takes some getting used to, and I probably will get comfortable with it eventually, but still I think it’s safe to say that the Olympus interface is WAY more intuitive. When I first started shooting the Oly E-420, it immediately “clicked” with me, and I loved it. Not so with this Sony, which I find has dials all over the place and strange series of button presses to make it do what I want, like a Simon Says interface. I can only hope to get better at it.

On the positive side, the viewfinder is amazing – so large and clear and bright that you can see every little thing in the composition, and manually focus by sight. It also makes it really easy to use graduated neutral density filters.

Ouray Ice

Ouray Ice Climbing
Climbing in the Ouray Ice Park.

Yesterday a sparkling new Sony A900 24mp SLR camera arrived via Fedex, with a few lenses, so today I figured I’d go take it for a spin. What better place to go on a cloudy day than the Ouray Ice Park, just a few blocks from my house? See a few more photos below.

Ouray Ice Climbing
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Ouray Ice Park

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting much recently. Indeed, I haven’t been DOING much recently, except sitting at the computer day and night for over a week straight, building websites. But it’s been good, because the weather has been so disturbingly warm and spring-like for the last few weeks that the snowboarding hasn’t been too tempting. So I’ve gotten a lot of work done, finished a couple long overdue websites, and am finally caught up and on schedule again. I still have some very busy months ahead of me, with over 10 websites queued up already. Nevertheless, I’ve been realistic with my scheduling, so I will be able to get out more regularly for some backpacking and photography again. And hopefully some more snowboarding if it ever snows again…

The last month has been so warm it is worrisome. Sure the warmth is nice… in APRIL!!! Wearing t-shirts in Ouray in February is not nice, it is disconcerting, especially when it’s like this for weeks on end. We can only hope that this is just Colorado weather wackiness, and not a deeper problem with global warming. Meanwhile, the snowpack is turning to mush, and the ice in the ice park looked positively soggy today. WINTER, WHERE ARE YOU? COME BACK!