I'm Back!

Hi, I'm Back!

Hi everyone who actually gets this; I've been away from this blog site & the beach for about 2 years now.

This was due to mainly health reasons; I couldn't walk the beach; but also included many family & personal reasons.

Health issues now dictate that I try to start walking again, only on hard sand & no up & down hills etc. - going to be a problem getting down to the beach from the headland; actually it's more of a problem getting back up at the end of the walk I've found.

The secondary motive for the restart of the walking is that I acquired a new camera; bought myself 1 for Christmas as my old Panasonic FZ150 had taken over 160,000 photos & was intermittently dying on me, always at the wrong time.

New one is the Panasonic FZ300, 2 models up from the old one & I think one of the best cameras you can get for this type of photography, maybe any type.

Specs are similar - still 12.1 megapixel; but now has 24x zoom - (25mm to 600mm in old 35mm film language); difference is it now has constant f-2.8 aperture across the entire zoom range; imagine a 600mm f-2.8 lens in any other camera stable, they don't exist. This should allow me to take long shots hand held easier than the f-5.1 of the FZ150. (I'm still trying to catch that azure kingfisher in focus); its also splash & dust proof so hopefully any wayward encounters with rogue waves should not prove catastrophic or fatal, at least for the camera.

It also takes 4k video, though I haven't played with that yet, & will shoot 30 frames/second at 8 megapixel in 4k photo mode or up to 12 frames/second at 12.1 megapixel.

Have started my walks on 1st January again & will post the same positioned photos at the end of each month. Started the same as last time, taking way too many photos, but will narrow them down as time goes on.  Hopefully this time I will have more free-time to add some of my other photos as well.

That last option may not be as easy as I think as we intend to go GLAMPING (glamour/camping) a lot with our recently acquired 2nd hand Jayco wind up Classique camper-van. Just have to finish the new fittings & updates to it & my wife is then going to glamour it inside completely; new covers, new beds, complete paint job, etc. etc.

Have already done 1 shakedown trip in it, 1st week of December, to The Ruins campsite in Booti Booti NP 16km south of Forster NSW. Met our no. 2 son & wife + 3 kids for 4 days, had an absolute ball of a time & discovered a few things to change or update.

Next shakedown trip is to Nundle in NSW in early March, apparently it has an old fashioned hardware come general store that sells everything my wife could possibly want; after that our first real trip will be The Great Ocean Road in Victoria sometime in April.

Well that's enough of my waffling, will try to do some updates before the end of this month if possible, otherwise the 1st monthly installment will come at the end of this month.