We are off to Uzbekistan in two weeks time. I was there for a week in 2013 as part of the Silk Road trip and was very taken with it. My sister, before she retired, was a doctor in the Foreign Office and at one point went to Samarkand regularly!!! But she inspected consular staff and hospitals and so on and says she once got an afternoon in Registan Square in Samarkand. Again she was very taken with it. We are using local transport which means Uzbekistan Airways from Heathrow!! And going on an internal train!!!. The point of this blog was a slight alarm raised by the tour agent's notes on security in Uzbekistan so I wrote to them. Now there was I trying to make my mind which combination of lenses and tripods, I should be packing when the answer came back 'If it doesn't go in your pocket, don't take it'.
Alarm!! Followed by an examination of the bank balance. I had had occasion to listen to someone taking about compacts at West Dean and they seemed expensive (upwards of £1000.00). Eventually I remembered that a photographic magazine had done a very detailed critique of compacts a few months ago. So I spent sometime trying to find it and did succeed. Did you know that you can buy a pocket camera for a bit more than £5000.00. (royalty? billionaires?). However they did recommend a Canon G7 which looked as though it would do what I wanted. It arrived today. First of all, it is tiny. Secondly it is very well equipped with gizmos including a swivelable, rotatable viewing screen!! I have never had one of them before.. I have had trouble with the manual which only comes as a download, all 225 pages of it and it is laid out two pages to an A4 sheet which means it is not convenient for printing out and binding. And the only books on it are in Spanish and Serbo-Croat. Well I have it on the desktop and the ipad and will have to read it that way. I do not like that. I am old. I like a book. you can stick fingers into pages you want to refer to or if you are rich you can use postit notes. I spent several hours on the manual problem.
Meanwhile the battery is being charged and tomorrow, I will start trying it out. Watch this space for trials.
Did I say I have done a lot of weaving on the Schacht this week?
Alarm!! Followed by an examination of the bank balance. I had had occasion to listen to someone taking about compacts at West Dean and they seemed expensive (upwards of £1000.00). Eventually I remembered that a photographic magazine had done a very detailed critique of compacts a few months ago. So I spent sometime trying to find it and did succeed. Did you know that you can buy a pocket camera for a bit more than £5000.00. (royalty? billionaires?). However they did recommend a Canon G7 which looked as though it would do what I wanted. It arrived today. First of all, it is tiny. Secondly it is very well equipped with gizmos including a swivelable, rotatable viewing screen!! I have never had one of them before.. I have had trouble with the manual which only comes as a download, all 225 pages of it and it is laid out two pages to an A4 sheet which means it is not convenient for printing out and binding. And the only books on it are in Spanish and Serbo-Croat. Well I have it on the desktop and the ipad and will have to read it that way. I do not like that. I am old. I like a book. you can stick fingers into pages you want to refer to or if you are rich you can use postit notes. I spent several hours on the manual problem.
Meanwhile the battery is being charged and tomorrow, I will start trying it out. Watch this space for trials.
Did I say I have done a lot of weaving on the Schacht this week?
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