plonq | Subject Line

We put up the Christmas tree last night. I give it a week before the cats have traumatized it beyond recognition.

We bought this tree shortly after we were married, and I am starting to think that this might be its last Christmas with us. It has been a good tree, and it owes us nothing, but wear and tear and years of cats have taken their toll on it. Every year we find more shed parts in the bottom of the box when we unpack it.

I shot this one at 200ISO, and 1/60th of a second with the lens wide open. Even at that low of a setting, it has a lot of noise in it. I love my old Nikon, but it does not perform well at higher ISOs. Most settings up to 400 are OK with decent lighting, but longer exposures at anything over 200ISO really start to show its weakness.

Part of the problem is that this camera is showing its age. It was a good performer in its day, but it does not stand up as well in comparison to modern cameras. Also, I am probably a bit over-sensitive to image noise because I keep looking at shots taken on medium format cameras at ISOs of 16,000 and above, and they are crisp and clear in comparison.

What does not help is that the original was underexposed, and I boosted the image in software, boosting the background noise at the same time.

Tomorrow may be the day when I find out if I still have a job. I am not too worried, but I suspect there may be a bit of a bloodbath in the office around me. We are in for some interesting and ugly times over the next few months.

The company sent out an announcement about a change to our pensions today that may as well have been prefaced with, "Lawyer up and get ready for the class action suit" when they sent it. We will see how much backlash there is against this, but I know a few people who are very very unhappy about the change.