It was a busy week. Mitzi and visited the Cummer Museum and Gardens on Thursday to view a new installation by Anila Quayyum Agha, "Flight Patterns". I brought along the OM System E-P7 with the little Lumix 12-32mm zoom. (Flickr album here.) I liked that little combo enough that i've decided to go ahead and offer my E-PL10, E-PL7 and E-PL6 to KEH.

We expected company, my daughter and her family, on Saturday. So Friday was spent trying to finally get the office cleaned up. Mission mostly accomplished. Of course, cleaning the office somehow led to cleaning the workbench in the garage. That project is unfinished, but it's vastly better than it was.

We had an e-cycling day in the community on Saturday. I brought over a bunch of stuff, the biggest item being my old Power Mac G4 MDD, dual-867MHz G4 processors. Thing weighs a ton. It's a drive-thru operation, we popped the hatch and this teen girl who probably weighed all of ninety pounds grabbed the G4. I told her to be careful, but I needn't have worried, she handled it like a pro. Had a laugh when I heard another kid say, "What's that?"

A gentleman who I presumed was the owner relieved the young lady of the G4 and carefully placed it in a large rolling bin of some sort. I assume it's likely to end on up ebay in whole or parted out. I stuffed the CDs inside the body cavity.

In an effort to make room in the garage for stuff formerly in my office, I pulled a large fishing tackle box from the cabinets above the bench. I'd acquired the thing over a decade ago and have been fishing exactly zero times since. My son-in-law is a surfer and saltwater fisherman, so I planned to offer it to him. Mitzi had a small tackle box and little freshwater rig she'd acquired when she was dating another guy who fished. Likewise hasn't used it since. So that was offered as well.

When they arrived I told Pat, my firefighter son-in-law, that I had something I'd like to give him if he was interested. Figuring if he didn't want it, I'd just run it over to Goodwill today. He looked it all over and decided it was worth taking, especially the freshwater stuff. His youngest has been asking to go fishing, and they have some ponds in their community.

As we were heading back to his car, he said, "Look dear, more stuff for our garage." Apparently they'd just been through a similar effort to bring order out of chaos. I've seen their garage, so I understood the unenthusiastic look Melissa gave Pat.

We had a nice visit, but as the evening was winding down, my youngest granddaughter asked if she could look at my cameras. Not really sure where this was going, I said of course. I have about a dozen compact digital cameras. They've all seen some hard use, so I'm not inclined to offer them to KEH. The money I'd get is worth less than the utility the cameras still represent. Wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with them, but that was about to be partly resolved.

I don't recall if she asked first, or if I offered, but Alden expressed interest in getting a camera. I'd given cameras to my daughter and my son, so it was easy to decide to give one to Alden. I had two Olympus XZ-10s, tiny advanced compacts with 1/2.3" sensors. One was in rougher shape than the other since I used to carry it in my hand when I was running. Most the anti-reflective coating was removed by the sweat and oil of my hand. I gave her the nicer one, along with a little case and a USB cable, since those Olympus cameras use a proprietary connection.

Pat was with us and I asked if this was going to be a problem with Jenna, not getting something?

Hearing her name, she appeared. I ended up giving her my XZ-2, a 1/1.7" advanced compact of roughly the same vintage. It's a bigger body with at tilt-screen. It was still in good shape, but the rubber thumb grip had long since come off and disappeared. I'd replaced it with one of those stick-on silicone rubber feet or bumpers you can buy anywhere. It'd adhered well and gave some purchase for my thumb. Found a little case for it and another USB cable.

Of course, in the middle of the night I woke up worrying that they wouldn't know how to use those cameras, be unhappy with the results and lose any potential enthusiasm for photography. So I ordered a DK book that I used to own, which is heavily illustrated and explains much of the fundamentals of digital photography and had it delivered to Jenna's house. Should arrive today. Included a note to share it with Alden.

Sunday morning, I made a couple of shared albums in Photos, one from XZ-10 images, the other from the XZ-2. I sent them links and hoped they'd see what the cams were capable of. I also sent along pdfs of the manuals and suggested that they just use iAuto, Scene mode and Art Filters for now. In those modes, the camera does all the thinking, they just have to frame the shot and push the shutter release.

All you can do is all you can do. Hopefully they'll get some enjoyment from them, learn a few things and perhaps develop an interest in photography.

Meanwhile, my collection of compact cameras is slightly less insane. I sold my Fujifilm X20 to a young petty officer, Mitzi has the XQ1, I'm offering the Lumix LX-7 to KEH. (Love that little camera, but I never cared for Panasonic's jpegs.) It's still a popular little device, so I'm guessing they'll offer me more than $20 for it. I could probably sell it for 10x that amount to an individual buyer, but I don't need the hassle.

Anyway, the beat goes on. Hope to make some additional progress this week, as we have company again next week!

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:30 Monday, 27 February 2023