Greensleeves. Alas My Love, You Do Me Wrong... - Day 2 with Nikon

To cast me off discourteously... I have no idea whether American ice cream vans played " Greensleeves " as they circled around their suburbs in summer. The ones we used to have in Calgary just played Country and Western music and the trucks that used to circle around construction camps and trailer courts out in the Alberta bush were spraying smoke for mosquitos and black flies. Good times, if you were prepared to hold your breath... But here is a Good Humour van by Sun Star in 1:18th captured by the Nikon A900 Coolpix camera. There was no flash - it was all done on the modelling lights, with the camera judging exposure and white balance for itself. The " scene " setting seemed to recognise that the subjects were close up and adjusted accordingly. I moved as close as I dared and then used the telephoto switch under the shutter release to frame the subject and I was amazed at how intuitive it was. Very few focus chances were missed...even the horse shots with the nose of the subject practically touching the front of the lens. The availability of the 35 X zoom also meant that close-ups need not always be taken with heavy wide-angle distortion. You can stand off a little to let light in, but still, get a decent-sized object in the viewfinder. And I must also praise Nikon here - the image stabilising mechanism comes into play as you take first shutter pressure and the picture on the LCD screen smooths out - makes it much easier to use it two-handed. The fact that you can use the tilting screen as a waist-level finder is also cool. If you are a selfist, that screen goes up straight at 180º. 35X zoom is serious tourist power when you are bringing in animal pictures. Every bit of the image stabilisation will be needed, and I would still imagine that the shooter would have to adopt some of the classic poses to get enough steadiness in the shot. Of course, there is the tripod mounting, but so many people seem to eschew it when they imagine that they are going to take action shots. This is not wise - any firm hold on the ground is good and if the support can offer dampened laying and training it can only improve matters. Even the overkill solutions of using a fluid head or a Wimberley head are not too unreal - whatever it takes to deliver a steady still or video image is the right thing to do. As far as Neddy the horse goes, He was the subject of a really close shot at a wide aperture to see if the macro setting in the " scenes " mode would work automatically. Indeed it did, with the front of the extendable lens almost touching the nose of the model. But the good performance doesn't seem to have cheered him up all that much. I mean to say... Why the long face...?