Yellowstone pix part 1

[Bill]

As I have posted elsewhere, my wife and I spent two weeks in Yellowstone this spring. We arrived on May 28, in a blizzard! There was lots of snow in the woods, and quite a bit on the roads as you can see in the first pic. But the second pic shows that we were comfortable anyway, thanks to the fireplace mod I did in the TM living room.

BTW, our arrival on May 28 was good timing. A week earlier, a lot of the roads were closed. And if we had arrived later, the mosquitos would have been thick before we left.

Anyway, I am just getting around to posting some pix. I will avoid the standard shots of geyers and so forth, and try to post some highlights that I thought were fun. I will do this in two groups. Hope you enjoy them - and that it persuades some of you to go there! By the way, we are not quite as daring as some of the pics would lead you to believe - our camera has a 12X zoom!

Bill

Originally Posted by Bill

But the second pic shows that we were comfortable anyway, thanks to the fireplace mod I did in the TM living room.

Bill, I love your fireplace mod! How much did it add to the weight of your TM ?

Great pics though! If you don't mind my being nosy, care to share the brand/model of camera you used? I'm in the market for a camera myself and it's always nice to see what cameras can produce!

[tucsoncarol]

How did you do that? I would love a fireplace. When we were in Yellowstone two years ago, it was stunning. I never did finish my stories about our trip, maybe soon. Oh well, don't care about that now, how did you do a fireplace? Please share.

[Bill]

Sally wrote

If you don't mind my being nosy, care to share the brand/model of camera you used?

My wife and I are both amateur camera floggers - very much so, in fact. Years ago, we bought a simple digital camera as a "teething" experiment. After using it for a few years, we learned what we REALLY wanted a digital camera to do. In fact, we learned that we had two conflicting sets of requirements.

Since we spend a lot of time in the west, where things are often spectacular but often far away, I insisted that the camera have a LONG lens (also known as Optical Zoom - digital zoom is a fraud, by the way, ignore it). I insisted on at least 10X.

My wife is a close-up freak. She wants to be able to get INSIDE a flower, or between the little stones in her engagement ring. She insisted on a MACRO capability that would let her fill the frame with something less than 1/2" across.

We were resigned to buying two cameras, one for her and one for me, and weren't thrilled with the cost of that. So I did quite a bit of on-line research on digital cameras. The best site I found for thorough and unbiased testing of MANY cameras (and no manufacturers' hype) is

http://www.dpreview.com/

In the end, we discovered the Panasonic Lumix product line of digital cameras. It looked like the model DMC-FZ3 would meet our particular needs, so we crossed our fingers and bought it. We have liked it a lot. It has a 12X optical zoom for me, an incredible macro capability for her, image stabilization for both of us, and a SIMPLE mode that is a joy to use. It has only 3.2 MP, so the megapixel freaks will pooh-pooh it, but we don't print pictures at poster size, so it meets our needs quite well.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz3/

Like most digital cameras, the manufacturer discontinued it and introduced a new model, almost as soon as we opened the box. We've had no problem from that. We recently bought our daughter a DMC-FZ20 as an anniversary present. Similar camera, more megapixels, a few miscellaneous improvements - but basically very similar. She's loving it, though it is bigger than the shirt-pocket Canon (or whatever) that she had been using.

If anyone is interested, I'll email some of the close-close-close-ups that my wife has taken. None of them are relevant to TM, so I won't post them here.

Bill

[tucsoncarol]

Just looked closely at your fireplace pic. Now you have me lusting after an unobtainable addition to my TM. I feel it is incumbent upon you to figure out how those of us lost in lust after your suggested mod can actually achieve it. Great pictures, by the way.

[Bill]

Ha, I love it, Leon! Yeah, I have to admit that my "TM fireplace" is actually in the Park Ranger Museum near Canyon Campground. A beautiful spot, by the way!

Bill