Folks who’ve spent time in the Southwest will see no surprises, here. I live in northern New Mexico. Just a couple of photos from my morning walk with the dogs.

We had decent snowpack, this winter = happy yucca.

I’ve been using an Olympus C5050Z for several years. It came with the typical miniscule Compact Flash card and I bought one of the first CF 1gb hard drives. At the time, it was a deal around $200.

Ordering a cordless VOIP phone, this week, it occurred to me to check out a solid state CF card – since they’re now common. The hard drive card has served me well; but, I’m always concerned by the extremes of heat and cold you bump into at this altitude.

Cripes! A Kingston 1gb CF card was $20. I added one to the order and shot my 1st test shots, this morning.

Recording time same as the hard drive. Looks like the camera firmware rules.

In another month, we’re back to brown

We caught just enough rain in May to kick off the Prairie Feathergrass. This is about 2 feet tall in our back meadow, right now. It will add another foot in height in the next week before setting seed.



  1. BubbaRay says:

    Wow, Eideard, great shots. I just received a catalog from Micro Center with 1Gb SanDisk SD cards for $20, no rebate. At this rate, I’ll be able to get one of those 8Gb SD cards soon and shoot hours of video for under $75.

    Your backyard reminds me of the high skies in W TX. I’ll bet you’ve got dark sky at night and can almost read by the Milky Way.

  2. TheGlobalWarmer says:

    Ed, I truly envy you.

  3. Eideard says:

    Too close to town for real northern NM darkness. But, when friends come visiting, I drive ’em up on top of Galisteo Mesa about 20 miles east of town.

    Step out of the truck with the lights off – and, dude, you don’t even know what century it is.

  4. TheGlobalWarmer says:

    I’ve had the great fortune to see that kind of sky in Northern Minnesota and Wyoming. It is something.

  5. mark says:

    I live in the high desert also, after growing up somewhat on the east coast. It really is incredible the number of sunny blue sky days we have here, winter included. I used to get depressed by the long winter grey skies back east, followed by humid summers. But there is something about the drier sunnier climate that is good for your psyche. Of course, there are always people like OFTLO who think the sky is naturally grey. 🙂

    (still havent figured out how to use the smiley facey thingy)

  6. BubbaRay says:

    #5, mark, the “a” and “img” tags are reserved for the editors and won’t work for us simple folk.

  7. Dallas says:

    OK. I still don’t get this article.

  8. mark says:

    6. Bastards! I guess one of them slipped it in for me.

  9. Ryan says:

    [Double post. – ed.]

  10. Ryan says:

    Good to see! I got a canon 1da mark2 16mp raw, 4 gb is nice but 8gb is a real hoot for long shoots.

    A friend in shanghai had a handful of projects with sandisk for a few years said that CF card will be around for prof. cameras because it is the only form factor capable of seriously large capacity. However sandisk is moving away from SD, CF and etc as the company constantly has severe theft problem which undercut all their channel partners with super cheap stolen goods floating on the net. especially ebays. the irony is the genuine (stolen) stuff are mixed-up with fake ones, no one could tell them apart because the plastic cases and containers came from the same factories as the originals! LOL!!

  11. Awake says:

    One word of advice from a pro photographer: keep you cards comfortably small.
    There may be a great “cool factor” to using 8GB cards, until something goes wrong and you lose all of your photos. Card corruption is much more common than you might believe (specially for Mac users with the faulty write behind, more below)
    We stick to 2GB cards even for 14 MP cameras. Changing a card once in a while, specially if you keep track of your shots and change the card during a lull in action, is really no big hassle, and if you are shooting 800 images, it’s much better to lose 150 than all 800.
    (The Mac issue: if you fail to eject a recently read card, and insert another card in the same reader, there is a strong possibility that the FAT from the old card will get written to the new card, making the new card unreadable by conventional means. Windows knows you are on removable media so it doesn’t wait to write info, the Mac waits until convenient so it may try to update the FAT several minutes after you physically remove the card.)

  12. hhopper says:

    [Test file]

  13. mark says:

    11. You da man.

  14. joshua says:

    I’ll be so glad when I can quit this place and go home. These pics just made it harder for me to sit here.
    You live in an area like the middle and northern part of Arizona is, above the Magollen Rim.

    I haven’t been home for a couple weeks and my Dad said the wild flowers are going crazy, and everything is getting that last bloom before seeding and the really hot weather starts.

  15. tallwookie says:

    #10 – I dont forsee this getting mentioned in those stupid “Im a Mac and you’re a PC” commercials…

  16. KVolk says:

    To me there is no pretty country than N NM and S Colorado. Can’t wait to go back…..

  17. Angel H. Wong says:

    #11

    Six hours have passed and Lauren hasn’t insult you for criticizing Apple’s “features”?

  18. Angel H. Wong says:

    Eideard, the Yucca blossoms are edible, people here stir fry them with eggs.

  19. Eideard says:

    Angel – they’re the most popular spring/summer blossoms with our native bees. I like to leave them alone as long as possible. The bees have it tough enough. We’re on the “downhill” side of the county – at 6500′.

    Sounds tasty, though.

  20. Mr. Fusion says:

    #11, Awake,

    Very interesting comment. I was planning on buying another 1 gb CF card until I saw how low the price had dropped. So I got a 2 gb instead. Your comments about using multiple cards really has me thinking about getting a third card as insurance.

    Any comments on Canon compatible Li batteries?

    Our yucca should be blooming here in Indiana shortly. I’ll have to remember the stir fry thing. The most beautiful flowers around here after my irises.

  21. Awake says:

    #20 – Regarding Canon compatible batteries.
    We have a variety of SLR’s, and have tried after-market batteries with a low rate of success. The OEM batteries last a really long time (many hundreds of photos), and you probably only need one spare, so you don’t save much by buying cheapies. Buy the real thing this time.

  22. Angel H. Wong says:

    #19 Eideard

    I almost forgot, yucca blossoms are toxic if you eat them raw.

  23. Mr. Fusion says:

    #22, Angel,

    I’m really, and I mean really glad you added that.

  24. joshua says:

    LMAO….Angel….glad your not the Sushi chef serving up those toxic little fish parts in Japan. 🙂


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