Week 363-365B - Trinidad California - 08-11-2013

Trinidad, California

Trinidad Bay is home to a number of moored boats.

This photogenic seal was a long distance from the shore. But our new camera with its 30 x zoom lens captured this shot. Doubtful he could tell we were shooting his photo, but he did pick his head up for this picture.

Donnalee, with Mandy in tow, head down to the beach at Trinidad Bay.

Ellen captured this shot of the new pier which you will see further along in this travelogue.

All the girls on the beach. Mandy is always ready to pose.

This is the nicest pier we have ever seen. The last wooden pier fell down a few years back. This one is solid concrete with aluminum railings.

Commercial fisherman use this pier to access their boats and bring in their catch.

This seal was barely visible alongside the pier.

The ocean side road just south of Trinidad has more gorgeous views.

From the road looking back at Trinidad Head (the hill on the left) and the pier where Donnalee bought us a great clam chowder lunch. Thanks Donnalee.

This brave soul managed to get her toes into the frigid water.

The next two photos illustrate what a terrific camera we have. This wide angle shot shows Trinidad Head in the background, a group of girls enjoying the beach in the middle and the tree in the foreground.

Using the 30 times lens and you can see the girls close up. This was about 20-25x as we still wanted to capture some of the surroundings.

Our camera is the Sony DSC-HX200V We think this is a best camera you can purchase short of using a professional DSLR. A DSLR, like our professional wedding photographer daughter Melissa uses, is large and requires lens changes. Our camera fits in a coat pocket and has a 30 times optical zoom. It also works well in low light. The Intelligent Auto setting works from just 1/2 inch away in wide angle to miles away in telephoto mode. There are dozens of other settings that we learn about everyday. E.g. A pet setting. We have no idea what it does but Mandy never looked so good. It has smile settings, for one to three smiles, to not shoot the photo until they all smile.

It is best to use a viewfinder shooting photos. On our last and also incredible Sony DSC-H5 camera, you had to push a button to move from viewfinder to LCD screen. Push the button, shoot, push the button, review, push the button, shoot, push the button, review . . . This HX200V automatically changes to viewfinder when you bring it up to your eye; neat! You can also be shooting HD video and at any time press the shutter button to capture a still photo without disturbing the video. You can also shoot panoramic photos left to right, right to left, top to bottom or bottom to top. The camera will stitch together the separate photos into one panoramic. We previously purchased $100 (cheapest available) Panoramic Factory software to do this with our older H5 camera and it took a lot of minutes of your time and the computer's to create the photo. This camera does it in seconds.

Other companies Nikon, Fuji, Olympus, etc. all make similar cameras. We did an thorough analysis and think the Sony is the best. But, if you get any of the "prosumer" cameras, you will be happy.. The Sony was $349.00. Wow! We just went to the Sony website to look up the price. They have replaced the HX200V with the HX300 for $429.00. 50x zoom and other new features. The best just got better!!! Just try to keep up, we do.

Photos from Aug 2013