This is the right answer. Too many haven't been around long enough or far enough from urban life to see what you've captured. Yeah, it takes awhile to see what it is, but it's real as is. No PP needed nor wanted. You done good.

Got to agree, the last shot is super. Also not a position you'd ever mentally picture for a seagull. Also, if it weren't for the other photos I would think the last one was proof that gulls had retractable landing gear. I cannot see any trace of legs/feet.

This black Abert squirrel found himself a patch of sunshine and was about to drift off.

Sony HX200V
minor color adjustment in PSE

Aboout time for a nap

(Download)

Another shot from my walk in the park the other day.

I cropped off the upper part and had to do some dabbling to get rid of some reflected highline wires that I didn't even see when taking the photo. Guess I'll learn to notice that sort of stuff as it took me well over an hour to get rid of them.

Sony HX200V bridge

Tree reflections in standing water

(Download)

We have several "bird" feeders. Nobody is kidding anybody - they are really squirrel feeders and all our neighborhood squirrels know they are welcome to partake. There's no telling how much $$ we've spent just to feed these little critters (and we don't regret a penny of it). Too much fun to watch their antics.

In the summers we do the same for the chipmunks, golden mantel ground squirrels, Abert squirrels, Chickarees, rock squirrels, and all the birds that come around. All we put out is black oil sunflower seed and most everyone seems to be quite happy in their freeloading. We didn't realize at first that the black bears also love the sunflower seeds so we don't put any out after mid afternoon. That gives the little critters time to gathers everything up before the big guys show up.

Great shot. I know what lies beyond.

Lotsa dust.

I have to agree that #2 is super shot, but I keep coming back to #1 because it's so unique.

Danged good shooting!

Ya gotta admit, there's some imagination still out there.

I'm seriously considering a Sony A6000. I notice most of the Minolta lenses in eBay seem to be A-mounts. Do you simply get an adapter? If the Minolta is autofocus does it also autofocus with the Sony?

thankie

That first shot looks like milk rolling in.

Nicely done.

EXACTLY! We got to assert ourselves.

Cool. So if I check everything in "Newest Topics" I'll be seeing all new photos?

Here's my take on this. I'm almost in the same position, having moved from a point&shoot Canon to a Sony HX200V bridge. I was blown away with how much better and more capable the HX200V was than anything I had experienced before. I just knew it was the last camera I would buy. Photos looked great and on auto the camera simply rocked. Or so I thought.

It DOES do an excellent job, and the 30X optical zoom allowed me to reach out and touch animals and birds I only dreamed about earlier. It can double that 30X with some Sony magic that looks pretty good too, and then you can go into pure digital zoom up to 120X (with a LOT of image degradation). In good light it takes super landscapes I think. At low ISO's it takes really nice photos (again, I think). Above ISO 400 they begin to get a lot of noise.

I've discovered a few things it won't do that I'm now wanting. It will not do RAW. It has no provisions for a remote shutter release. The tracking focus would seem to be a farce, or I'm simply still too inept to use it right. The multishot choices are 2/sec or 10/sec for 10 shots total, then it takes the camera a loonng time to dump those shots (small buffer??). Single shots are slow due to processing time, so I seem to spend a lot of time wishing it would finish so I can take another shot (not real good when shooting animals and birds). No way to set up a back-button focus. While it does let me have manual control, I find it very frustrating to get it to whatever aperture or shutter speed I want and it simply won't go beyond whatever limits Sony has set up (and these seem to vary with conditions). I can manually focus to selectively isolate the object I want, but it's not slick and the magnified image never does seem to really sharpen up, and there's a lot of movement involved as I try to zero in on proper focus. I'm sure there are numerous other things I'll wish it did, or didn't do, that I simply don't have enough experience to know about yet.

However, it still is the best thing since sliced bread for me at this point. If nothing else, I'm getting good shots that I like (and even got in our local calendar), and it's letting me discover what I want in my NEXT camera. See, it wasn't the do-all to end-all I thought it was. I'm thinking my next camera will be my last, but who knows. I will say this - the bridge camera's zoom lenses will really spoil you. I'm wishing the mirrorless/DSLRs had something with those capabilities, but I'm reading enough to just begin understanding the physical limitations of lenses with the larger sensors. So, I'm not expecting to find anything once I move up in sensor size (which I'm really wanting to do to get away from this itty-bitty sensor in my trusty Sony).

Still, for $400-$500 range, the bridge superzooms offer a lot of capabilities in one package. Not having to buy and carry multiple lenses is great. But, the more I look at my images the more I want better IQ.

Sorry about the long windiness. Hope my ramblings may help you in some small measure. If not, their easy to skip over.

Ha! I had to go back and look again. That branch would seem to be quite the collector of fishing line.

Absolutely beautiful. I don't know how anyone could want their tack any sharper. You nailed it perfectly as far as these old eyes could tell.

Before retirement I used to pass a creek on the way to the office. That creek would have fog hanging over it in the fall when the air temps dropped well below the water temps. I always wanted to get a good photo of that but never had even a sorta-so camera. Should have gotten one with whatever I had. Excuses, excuses...

You done good, man.