With a holiday coming up I was thinking about which camera to take with us. After debating the merits of the Digital SLR against the iPhone I eventually decided on the phone- not because it takes better photos but because it's so much easier to carry with us. However, the phone has no optical zoom (yes there's digital zoom but that just loses quality) and I would have liked to be able to take a few photos at a distance.
After searching the net and reading scores of reviews I came up with a solution in a tiny set of lenses plus tripod by CamKix for £31.99. There's a wide angle, a macro and an 8x telephoto so i wasn't expecting a great deal at that price. I haven't tried the smaller lenses yet but I'm quite impressed by the telephoto.
I took this through the kitchen window on a very dull day.
Here's the 8x photo from exactly the same spot. It's not perfect but, through glass on a dull day, it's very encouraging. I'll post a few holiday snaps when I've used it more extensively.
Watching the Liverpool derby on TV on Friday I was, of course, delighted to see Virgil Van Dijk score the winner on his debut but I felt sorry for the Everton coach Sammy Lee and posted that feeling on Twitter. Appears that I was in an extremely small minority as I scrolled through scores of tweets. It seems that, in football, getting a job with another employer after being made redundant is impermissible.
We had a day out in London on Saturday.
We took granddaughter Catherine to see School Of Rock at the New London Theatre. With Stephen Leask performing Jack Black's movie role as the lazy rocker who somehow finds himself as a supply teacher at an expensive private school, the show is great fun from start to finish and had the packed audience rocking in the aisles. Catherine loved it. Possibly not as much as she loved the show that her other grannie took her to recently, but we all had a great afternoon.
The show has incredible energy. The young musicians all play their own instruments live and their performances were outstanding.
During the encore we were told that we could take photos. Sadly there wasn't enough time to set up properly but here's what I snapped.
I could have done with that telephoto lens.
