Playing With My New Camera Again

I hope everyone likes birds as much as I do. I know that is all I seem to be taking pictures of but I am still playing with my camera. Birds are great to take pictures of because everyone knows what they look like and how big they are so when I say I took the pictures from 40 feet away you can visualize in your mind what the bird would look like from that distance.
I caught two Blue Jays in a tree about 40 feet away. All I did to the pictures is crop them and two of them I lightened a little because of my angle and the dark sky (it was a rainy day) two of the pictures came out a little darker than I like.

My New Camera

Any of you long time followers may remember I was saying I really needed a new camera. Well, it finally came yesterday (Merry Christmas to me!) and today I wanted to check out the features on it as well as the zoom lens. This one is a "real" camera that I can take a picture and it is on a memory card, not like my old one where it went to a disc that had to be finalized before removing each time you wanted to "get" one of the pictures.
It is a challenge learning these new settings (It is a Kodak Max Z990 with 30x lens) and what button does what but here is some of my results.

For normal pictures in the house....I don't remember if I had it set on Kodachrome or what but the color is very true to life. That is the color of the blanket and the couch is the right color too.

Picture taking advantage of the "Photo Booth" Setting.

And of course I had to check out the zoom lens. This is a small bird in my neighbor's tree. (No, the tree was not real close, the zoom lens works good).

Here is a female Cardinal in my neighbors apple tree.

Needless to say I am so happy with the new camera although I do have some concerns about the battery life. It is too early to tell but I already went through a set of regular batteries and now have the rechargeable in. I will need to pick up another set so one can be recharging while I am using the other. One set just won't cut it with me...LOL.

Pictures of Long Ago

I came across the box I had packed after the fire. I am so glad I came across it as it is still soot covered and I need to get these pictures out of it before they are lost forever. The first one I came across is of my mother and father on their wedding day having drinks. I am not sure if this was before or after the ceromony and I don't know the names of the two other people but I do know that is the Best Man and Maid of Honor. My father was in the Air Force and I know they are on base (somewhere in FL).

(Inspired by Fiskateer Judith 7733.)