New Camera Time

After some ponderings and techno-geeking it was time to upgrade my camera to a newer Nikon body and comparing the features and prices it came down to the D3300 or the D7200. Both being the latest (or nearly) version of the various "streams" of camera and after reviewing the features I decided to go for the D3300 and swap out my sigma zoom lens for the same nikon lens.

Only a couple of weeks in and I'm very impressed with the focus speed and exposure of it. It's a 24MB vs 6MB max image size although have been taking some comparison file size shots to see how much difference you can actually see.

Excited to keep trying out different options and scenarios but here's a few to start and especially liking the auto ISO capability and how good the shots can look even up at 6400.

Getting ready for the Elora parade

Flash turned off with these few shots to test its low light ability.

Some macro tests

Logan and Simon (the British bush baby)

Frozen roof tile textures

Early frosty morning

Logan actually staying still for a while. 

And while I'd like to claim I took that last photo, it might have been Janice..... just proves how good the "camera" is ;)

Local Leaf Peeping

If you're thinking I've taken up some weird cult, then read the blog post from Maine for more on leaf peeping.

Over the last few weeks we've concluded that you don't really need to travel outside of Ontario to see some great "fall" colours and it's still a fascinating process to see, especially after years away from any real seasonal changes. This last week has brought the real colours out where you get the rich reds as a great contrast to the yellows and greens.

High Park in Toronto

So it was great timing to go into Toronto this last weekend (to meet up with some friends from PEI) and I took the chance to snap some photos while Logan was playing in the park.

Great shadows and light filtering through the trees

Then like most outings with Logan at the moment we had to get our "game face on" and this time it was hunting for "decepticons" as that is clearly the prime directive of all Transformers (which is the latest craze for him since we acquired the Optimus Prime outfit for Halloween!).

Any high vantage point is good for the "vertically challenged" transformers

The Arboretum in Guelph is also a good spot for some colours and wildlife. Which is a handy local spot for us to go for walks and in this instance after picking Logan up from daycare as it's in the grounds of Guelph University.

Frog spotting was in the plan for this afternoon which we accomplished quite well.

But we didn't bargain for the "eagle/hawk" (still to be identified?) that seemed to follow us on the last half of the walk as it flew from tree to tree along our exit route.

Figured he/she was a local as not bothered by people at all

And while not technically correct I'll finish with my version of "leaf peeping".....

Fall is here

Thats "autumn" for the non North Americans, I haven't tripped over or something.

How do I know you ask? Well two reasons.

1. It was 4 degrees (feels like -1 according to weather app) this morning.
2. It's bountiful fruit and veg season here with a prime example being the honey crisp apple (a Janice favourite). And look at the size of this sucker we got from the farmers market (that should be reason 3) at the weekend...

You can tell it's huge by the size of my big manly hands!

First Blue Jays Game

We have taken Logan to a few smaller arenas/grounds before to see some games (Storm playing at Guelph arena) but he hadn't been to a major game like the blue jays at the Rogers Centre (skydome for the old school in the audience).

The plan was for Bob's birthday to buy him a ticket and take Logan for the game too. Unfortunately, bob couldn't make it last minute as a fishing trip was changed that he couldn't get out of and so I took his place. As you will know I'm not a major sport fan but was glad I could go in the end especially being Logan's first time. Mike, Christine and the kids managed to get the seats next to us and they turned out to be great seats (good choice Janice) at the front of 200 level. Which for the non-Ontarians means about half way up the stands with a great view and we were roughly inline with first base.

Logan was very excited and slightly overwhelmed with it all as unknown to us when we booked the tickets, the jays were about to have the best season they've had for around 20 years. So there was 47,412 people there and the games always have a lot of music and show pieces going on to entertain you (because the baseball sometimes struggles to....).

And knowing that lots of people take kids they have all kinds of "stations" to entertain them (and you) before and during the game and Logan and I took a couple of "walkabouts" around the ground. You can cover quite a lot of ground going up and down the levels and seeing the game from different vantage points, whilst hunting for some drinks, snacks and getting tattoos!

Sporting my jays T-shirt and tattoo

Kinda wondering what is going on!

And although they ultimately lost the game it was an exciting one in-between our wanderings and that meant Janice could get to watch most of the game, so everyone was happy.

And then we avoided the rush of traffic going home by grabbing coffee and dinner around the waterfront in Toronto with Louise, and Logan managed about 2 minutes in the car before passing out on the way home, so good day had by all!

Tree Identification

After a year tending to our garden and trying to understand what plants we actually have I saw an evening session about Trees and shrubs at the Arboretum.

Now the first thing you might think is "has Phil finally lost it or turned 60" as evening tree IDing isnt perhaps that exciting. But I am a home owner now (Yes, I have accepted it just dont mention the mortgage....) and I'm deciding to embrace my local Guelphitism now we've been here a year or so.

Anyway, off I popped with clippings to see what we have and find out we have a version of a crab apple and a type of tree called a "serviceberry".  This one especially interesting as its a native North American tree, hence I've never heard of it. And we can eat the berries. So seems my "dont eat any berries Logan as they are for the birds" was a bit misplaced.

So next spring if you come to the Duffy house expect some servicberry muffins... if I can convince Janice to make some.

Road trip to Maine

We took a trip to Wells, Maine and didn't realise it was in a line of three very tourist "towns" which now makes sense being only 1.5 hours north of Boston. And thought setting off on the trip on the Labour day long weekend here in Canada was good to give us the Monday off, not realising we were driving into the Labour day weekend in the US too. OK, everyone else in North America knew it except for us....especially the 52 million people who were there from Boston.

13 hours into the road trip and thrilled to take another 30 mins for the last 3 miles!

Was a good drive overall though, through four different states and some fantastic countryside and we took the scenic route on the way, hoping we might see some of the "New England in the fall colour". But were a few weeks early to see the real colour changes in the leaves, so not quite leaf peepers yet!

As you can imagine I was loving being somewhere with hoards of other people..... but can't blame everyone for being there as it is a lovely spot with nice white sandy beaches and countryside.

And speaking of beaches I also had to chuckle as we went to one beach on the Sunday and I thought I was in a bad movie, where you could just about see the sand in-between the people.

Are you kidding me?!?

But then we found some other beaches were we could enjoy some more peace and quiet and get the kayak in the water.

Ah, much better

Then thankfully everything got much quieter from the Tuesday but still not thrilled to be charged US$20-25 to park by a beach!! So we found some ways around it (like "locals" beach above) and managed to enjoy a few hours here and there as we are never very good at staying in one place for a whole day!

Being in that part of the world it was a requirement to eat lobster so I reluctantly took on this challenge and advantage of some of the many take-away (lobster rolls) and eat-in joints (lobster and seafood pie).

We had some fun in the first few days and Logan was a bit manic which was out of character for him. But then after talking to him we figured out he was thinking we had moved house (again) as he hadn't quite got the "holiday/vacation" idea! Poor confused thing. So after we convinced him this was just the "holiday home" things went more smoothly.

We took a trip midweek to Portland being the main city in Maine (but not the Capital) which had a very nice seaside big-town feel about it (similar to Halifax) and all had some fun in the children's museum and wander around the "old port" area.

And a new blog post wouldn't be complete without a related picasa album.