Only iPhone 6s Photos This Morning

I have posted some photos on this blog when I first bought my iPhone 6s last year. I did an experiment before that and sold my iPhone 5s then went to the 'old fashion' flip phone, just for phone calls. It had other email, texting, smart phone features but I only wanted the flip phone for phone calls.

After 10 months I realized I missed some of the features of the iPhone and one of those was a good camera. I was not seeing the same quality with my old Nikon Cool Pix 3100. So I bought the iPhone 6s last year for the other missed features but to also have a new camera for inside shooting. Yet, I have rarely taken blog photos with it. This morning that changed.

I was reading Al's post over on the Bayfield Bunch last night about his first trip into a retail store that sold smart phones. You can read his story at the link above "Al's post" but basically he was wanting a smart phone for their camera feature. That lit a bulb in my brain where I asked myself why am I not using the iPhone camera for my blog photos? How does the quality compare to my Nikon D3200 DSLR camera?

So today you get to see what I found on our first walk of the day. After looking at my two choices in size of photos for the blog, the size I normally use is x-large but with the vertical iPhone photos that makes them almost too big. The large size made the photos look to small. So excuse me if the x-large photos are messed up on your phone or tablet.

I only adjusted a couple of the photos with one being cropped and two of them enhanced for color, depth etc. All the other photos are exactly as I downloaded them from the phone to my computer and then to the blog.

Besides it being another beautiful day here in 'the tropics', I found the colors to be better on the iPhone compared to my Nikon D3200. For me I have seen the photos I took when i first bought the Nikon D3200 in September 2014 to be much much better than the photos I take now. I am still searching for the reason for that.

The iPhone 6s camera also took sharper images than the Nikon D3200. I did not have to make any adjustments for the sharpness like I have to at times with the Nikon D3200.

With it being about 10° cooler today after 12 noon it was much nicer to walk today. While local towns were having severe thunderstorms within 25 miles of us last night, we only had hard rain for 15 minutes.

I see now that I should have changed the setting on my iPhone to take "square" pictures instead of the default "photo" setting. If not cropped a lot of these photos are too tall.

I found out today that Stella was the one that was sick in the middle of the night last night while I was sleeping. I found a wet roll of tall grass by the door, so she did try to go outside before she got sick. I didn't hear a thing.

I could have cropped these pictures to cut away some of the ground and sky out of them but as a test I wanted to see just what the iPhone would give me. I was shooting blind basically because with the bright sunshine I could not see what I was taking a picture of on my screen, unless I used my body to block out the sunshine.

This camera is a 12-megapixel, autofocus, optical image stabilization, true tone flash, panorama up to 63 megapixels, timer mode, burst mode, f/2.2 aperture, 5x digital zoom, IR filter, auto image stabilization, noise reduction, face detection and photo geotagging. It will also shoot video which I may have to try sometime once I figure out how to post a video on this blog.

Not only Al's blog post last night but also the new iPhone 7 tv advertisements led me to try the iPhone camera today. I'll not buy a new iPhone for quite a few years but the photo advertisements are pretty good for the iPhone 7.

There are a lot more features on this phone that I don't use. I don't mind learning the ones I don't know but basically I like only certain things on the iPhone or any smartphone and use those.

What do you think of the pictures so far?

I do know it was much easier to carry than the light Nikon D3200 but like I said, in the bright sunshine I could not see what I was taking a picture of.

I have my settings where these photos don't automatically go to the iCloud because I don't have enough memory and I refuse to pay for 'cloud storage'. They will automatically load into Google Photos instantly. I will load them into Flickr manually like I do the photos taken with the Nikon D3200.

My weather app that comes with the iPhone shows this kind of weather for the next 10 days with two to three days of possible light showers. We know those rain days are always flexible and may not happen.

Stella may wander on her own while Sadie and I walk but lately she has been veering toward the return path to meet us as we walk back.

It was another day where it looked like she is gaining weight. You can see some ribs there but her chest is filling back in and looks much bigger than it did just a month ago.

Even as we get closer to the house, that doesn't mean the hounds are in a hurry to get back unless it's above 90°. Even then, Stella is never in a hurry to get back home.

With breakfast being served much later today the hounds will not have their 2nd meal until later this afternoon, a time that I would prefer anyway. I'd like to split their meals 8-10 hours apart but they usually want food again 3 hours after their first meal.

After seeing these pictures I think I will try more with the iPhone on our afternoon/early evening walk today. I am going to change the setting to "square" to see if that makes a difference in size and presentation.

With only 2 days to go until I start a new HughesNet billing cycle and a new 20Gb of data, I am still about 1.5Gb's of unused data off of my daily pace. I'll be using that up by looking at more YouTube videos from fellow bloggers and a trailer that I am looking at.

As many of you do, I follow Tioga George's blog on my sidebar and noticed recently one of his followers that comments a lot seemed interesting. So I added his blog on my sidebar today. If you like adventure you might want to take a look ... it's called Point To Zero.

I also added Gone With The Wynns. I use to follow them years ago but deleted them from the sidebar during one of my past cleaning periods where 53 blogs went to 28 blogs on my sidebar. They use to RV, have lived off grid, but are now in traveling on their sailboat.

Another blog I have been following for a while is JD Finley. He is in the process of converting a large passenger bus into a RV. Some great ideas and he documents all of his work with pictures on his blog. Very talented.

Not much is going to happen today. I might have to head out for some grocery shopping as my food supply is low. I sure wish I had online delivery available for groceries out here in rural America or maybe that Amazon drone delivery idea. Even a maid or personal assistant hire might not be a bad idea. I'm not sure if I am really joking about that last idea, doesn't sound like a bad one.

Nothing is going to be purchased for a while but lately I have been back to looking at trailers, trucks, converted cargo trailers and cargo vans ... I'll continue that research today while staying cool while drinking iced tea.

My internal GPS has calibrated itself ... today feels like a Saturday.

All is good today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Have A 'Tornado Watch' Issued

I have to admit it's pretty nice to have the windows back open with the sound of birds singing outside. I wasn't sure how much we would do today since rain was all over the radar.

Once again we woke up before daylight but I was able to convince Sadie that we were still retired and nothing takes place until after daybreak. With Stella snoring away, there wasn't much to discuss. We still got outside early though and the rain was so light you can barely hear it. Sadie and Stella stopped in their tracks to decide what their next move would be.

After a couple of cups of coffee, the reading of all of my sports sites, it was time for our first walk of the day. I was hopeful to get it completed before the rains came. Intellicast radar was showing rain about 6 miles to the west of us. Yet, when we took off there were blue skies and sunshine to the east.

I guess I didn't need the 25' retractable leash after all and could have brought the camera on the morning walk.

Right after lunch we tried again to do something outside. I needed to pick up some sticks in the yard and thought about moving the Z4 out of the way so I could pull my ladder out of the shed and get up on the roof. With rain in the forecast I decided the roof could wait another few days for me.

We have 7 acres behind our yard and neither hound wanted to go any further away than the chair I was sitting in. I found out soon after why ... it started raining again.

Yesterday afternoon, for the first mow of the year, I fired up the lawn mower without any problems and cut just part of the lawn ... the area where the grass was taller than anywhere else. It looks like crap now after the winter and mole damage but it will fill back in and look good after the spring rains. I am thinking about installing some kind of edging between the yard and driveway this spring/summer.

You cannot tell but I did a couple of laps down the edge of the yard and the driveway, then a small triangular section to cut the high grass. Heidi seems to produce some pretty strong fertilizer over the winter.

Speaking of Heidi ... I think her coat and skin look the best it has since September 2014. That next month in 2014 is when her skin issues went ballistic and out of control with loss of hair, all paws and legs were bare and at times sore and raw. She has been on nothing but straight kibble this past year, no meds or supplements.

It has been 32 days since I switched her to SPORTMiX manufactured by Earthborn Holistic Pet Foods. It is strange because the first ingredient is lamb "meal", no lamb. That is followed by brown rice, peas etc ... she has gained her weight back and hasn't looked this good in a long time. All of this improvement has happened in the past month.

Besides her picture, I took these next pictures with my iPhone 6s yesterday. I forget sometimes that it does have a good camera and in some cases, I think it takes a sharper picture than my Nikon D3200 does. These next 3 pictures were posted without any editing. You can see how tall the grass was in that section before I mowed yesterday afternoon.

Stella looked down about the time I pushed the button to take the picture. It's hard to tell but she does have both of her eyes open.

I am still undecided what to do about the weeds growing in the driveway. It seems like they have actually multiplied in number since I was on my hands and knees for four days in August 2015 pulling out weeds one at a time.

I am thinking of spraying a mixture of water and vinegar this year as my weed killer on the driveway and the river rock in back. Anyone have something that works to kill weeds from non chemical homemade brew?

Can you see any difference in the sharpness of the iPhone pictures compared to my edited Nikon D3200 pictures?

After all the hounds and I came back inside due to the rain by 1pm it was sunny and blue skies outside. It was hard to believe we were to get severe thunderstorms with possible tornado activity later tonight. During the light rain I played around a little on the blog and changed the page fonts, the post title fonts to PT Sans.

Since we could not tell if it was going to rain or not because the weather 'up there' was moving at a fast pace and different directions ... we decided to take our 2nd walk of the day.

This first picture is taken toward the SW.

I could tell that Stella was going to lag behind and I was going to let her do whatever she wanted. I had the 6' leash for her in my back pocket just in case it started to pour rain and we needed to get back to the house fast.

This was taken toward the north. The camera doesn't pick up the fast movement of the clouds going in a left to right direction.

Shocked to see Stella was headed our way. What concerns me a little is last year she would have been running full speed to catch up and the past few months she hardly runs at all.

It was only 3 minutes after that first sky picture that I aimed the camera in the same southwest direction to see sunshine and blue skies ... 3 minutes!!

Sadie was oblivious to strong winds from the southwest, indicated by the blowing hay. It takes a strong wind to blow her tail from the upright position she normally carries it. All she knew was she was on 'her' walk and that is all that mattered.

Stella stayed fairly close and didn't veer off too many times.

7 minutes later I pointed the camera once again toward the southwest. The wind was now strong enough I had a hard time keeping the camera steady.

Stella walked slowly all the way back to the house. She was sound to sleep minutes after going back inside the house after the walk. That seems to be the norm for both bloodhounds.

We were not finished with the walk yet, but this was the sky in the west, 11 minutes after the first sky picture in this post was taken.

At 3:07 pm they issued a Tornado "Watch" until 10pm tonight. The new stats show there is a 50% chance for two of them and 20% chance of 1 strong one. All through central Indiana, but my county is colored in to be included. Possible lime size hail with wind gusts up to 70mph.

A month ago or so, it was a 5% chance one night and we had two funnel clouds touch down 70 miles away. Never lost satellite internet connection that night and was able to track live radar to tell if the hounds and I needed to head for the center of the house since we do not have a basement.

So in preparation the iPad and iPhone are being charged to 100%. I've never had damage with these warnings but have had some close calls. It's always best to have a plan and be prepared just in case.

I imagine the old storm windows will be rattling and making a little noise tonight while all three hounds sleep in their normal spots in the living room. Sadie will be in her large leather chair while Stella and Heidi will share the couch. A seat for me is always optional.

The windows are open today here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana .. it smells like Spring.

Some Sunday Rambling

{Warning: Long and lots of photos}

Every day starts the same. The hounds are fed their breakfast somewhere between 7:30 - 8:30am. At times we may start our day then or later, depending on what I do.

Today ... it started really late. I guess that is what happens when you are watching college football at 2am eastern time. Both were great games and hard to turn off ... so I watched them to their finish. That added up to around 14 straight hours of college football ... flipping to check on other games when a commercial came on during the 'main' game.

During those 14 hours of college football viewing, the daily routine of the hounds does not change. They get their two meals per day, their two walks per day, their normal siestas in their different spots throughout the house.

All three of them go outside the very first thing in the morning. While they are outside I pour out their breakfast kibble. They never leave the yard when they know they are about to be fed food. Then while they are eating I am making my coffee.

After they finish eating, and as the coffee drips ... we head out for my first photos of the day. Some times they will wander the field but recently they don't do much but check out the area I cut just last week, explore the yard and then return to the house for a morning nap.

We took our first walk of the day after their lunch. Even with overcast skies, it felt warm ... like t-shirt warm. Checking when I got back, it was 75°. It is preparing us for three straight days in the 80's starting tomorrow, before the steep drop to 66° on Thursday.

Speaking of the warm fall weather, Ed answered my post about leaf color and why some years they are bright and other years they are dull. It explains what I was wondering about.

His info:

This may be what you are looking for: "A warm period during fall will also lower the intensity of autumn colors. A warm wet spring, favorable summer weather, and warm sunny fall days with cool nights should produce the most brilliant autumn colors."

While on the walk this morning I thought about not his answer but why does he have the inclination to look up something like that on the internet and I don't. He also answered my question a few weeks ago when I wondered why don't farmers here cut their corn shorter than they normally do, compared to other areas of the USA or Canada.

As long as I can remember, which is back to when I was approximately 5 years old ... rocks, leaves, bugs, exploring, etc ... didn't interest me. Sports did. I remember drawing up football and basketball plays on a piece of paper. I had a scrapbook of baseball and football cards ... but I never had a bug collection or leaf collection.

It's too bad I glued those baseball cards to scrapbook paper because some of those cards were worth thousands of dollars, if they didn't have that spot of 50 year old dried glue on the back of them.

Of coarse back in the 60's growing up, sports were not on tv 24/7 but you had the "game of the week" during baseball which was the New York Yankees every Saturday afternoon on CBS. While living in the Indianapolis television area, the weather man for the CBS channel in Indianapolis was someone by the name of Dave Letterman. Funny stuff, even if you didn't care about the weather.

As far as football games on Saturday, I can't remember seeing any more than one game per Saturday and Sunday's had one NFL game on each channel ... CBS and NBC. For me that included the Chicago Bears most of the time on CBS and the Cincinnati Bengals on NBC.

Later when something called the AFL started, some of those games could be watched on Saturday nights.

I guess I am getting off track here but what I am trying to say ... growing up, sports were what I was most interested in. Sixty years later it's still the same thing. I will go on Google to search for sports statistics or sports information but rarely will I go on Google to search for a name of a flower, a bird, or anything I don't have the answer for dealing in the subject of nature.

As far as driving, I've always enjoy 'road trips' but have never been able to stop and enjoy the scenery ... everything seemed to be drive straight through. Those 'road trips' included more than a few trips from San Diego to Indiana and some from Seattle to Indiana. Or the time I took "The Loneliest Highway in the USA" ... US Hwy 50 ... from Sacramento to Indiana. I still drove that non-stop ... stopping for only gas or a gas station to open so I could get gas ... drive thru's for food ... a couple of short 1 hour naps.

I commented at the time on this blog, I thought that might be the reason I enjoyed the driving as much if not more during our one week trip to Utah in June 2015.

I have a pretty long list of blogs I follow over on the left side of this blog. Some of those blogs moved back and forth, off and on that list ... so if there is a blog you use to read that is no longer listed and would like to see it again ... let me know the the name or what it was about and I'll add it back to the list.

As I read those blogs there are fantastic photos of places they are traveling ... I have found I have been to a lot of those places, although not RVing and in some cases I lived in places they blog about. I admit I have lived in some pretty amazing places and some of those are blogged about by other bloggers ... it's quit different compared to the lifestyle here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana with the hounds.

Iv'e looked back through this post and see that I have only talked about one thing I was planning to write about when I started to "ramble" ... and now can't remember what I was planning to write about ... lol ... typical for getting older.

I'll let this post sit here and simmer a little to see if my brain cells can go out and gather up what I was going to write about. I had other things I wanted to ramble about that would not include religion or politics.

Photos info ... all the photos up to this point were taken by my Nikon D3200 camera with the Tamron 18-200mm lens and none of them were edited, just straight photos with any flaws they may have.

Photos from this point forward were taken by my iPhone 6S. Their new photo program will let me edit them just like I do on my computer but I will keep the original photo format just to so we can compare.

Their football positions.

Hang on ... may memory is coming back!

Why do I have an interest in trading my FJ for another FJ, same year, maybe different options, just to change color to silver to match my silver Z4 ??? Crazy isn't it?

     Or it might be that sound I hear while driving that I cannot determine if it is a maintenance problem, tire noise or just my imagination.

If all my research on dog food over the years, visits to four different vets in 15 months for Heidi's skin issues and discussions with all of those vets about allergies that hounds have ... show there is only a 3% chance those allergies are caused by dog food instead of the environment ....

     Why don't I move to a different location instead of changing dog food to eliminate allergies Heidi has, Sadie licking her leg or Stella scratching where no fleas are present?

Will there ever be a way to get away from Directv or Dish Network's high prices and still see the same number of ballgames that I watch ... without "streaming" those games to my tv? Streaming movies or games is something I cannot do because of my monthly data limit on my home internet service.

     I'm sure there will be. I am getting teasers to try Sling TV to watch certain games but not all games. Apple TV keeps making improvements, does that use internet data? I'll have to check.

Will my location always keep me from the latest in technology ... or does that even matter?

     If there isn't a game on I want to watch or an occasional movie I want to see ... my tv is not turned on. Still, will I be 'squeezed' out by new television technology getting television signals in the future due to what services are available in my area?

Why do I have a 'check engine' light on my FJ dashboard and some other lights here in Indiana but those same lights disappeared while traveling in through Kansas, Colorado and Utah in June 2015?

     I've check that issue with Google searches, FJ forums and tried all of their suggestions to fix the issue. I even talked to the service manager at the Toyota dealership about it. The other day I saw something new .... the gasoline I am using may have too much ethanol in it. Once this tank of gas is used I am changing to a 'top tier' gas station and go back to 91-93 octane instead of 89 octane I've been using.

Deer Highway - Major Traffic

I still wonder at times what keeps Purina dog food in business after 85 years if their dog food is as bad as it is rated? Are all of those positive reviews online just fake?

     Is everything just over analyzed now days ... and I mean everything.

While holding the iPhone camera horizontal I found out if you press the volume adjustment button, the camera will take the photo.

Even with a different camera, Stella still likes to hang back and take the walk on her own pace.

She also still likes to try to sneak off in the neighbor's direction if I am not looking.

She also is not happy when I catch her trying to sneak off and decides it's best to follow Sadie and I home.

Interesting results using the iPhone on the 5pm walk. Depending on the light, the iPhone takes great photos, but I didn't see anything here that would make me want to replace my Nikon D3200 as my main camera.

The iPhone camera is a good camera to substitute for a smaller camera and taking photos inside.

One a final note ... as of today there are only 9 of 32 NFL teams with a winning record.

It's been a great weekend here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana (except for that Hoosiers loss against Nebraska)