Looking towards snow - and looking backwards

Twigs

Wet

Blocked

Swamp

Flow

Lake

Flood

Pier

It seems that we will be getting a lot of snow early next week, on Monday and Tuesday. Can't wait!

Today it was colder, and during the night we had got a little bit of snow, about 1 mm, and frost as well. I went for a walk in the Luukki forests, going around three lakes (Mustlampi, Väärälampi and Halkolampi), enjoying the landscape which even a little of snow had changed.

Year 2011 was such a mixture of surprises and usual things that it is hard to say whether anything really happened, photography-wise.

Well, one thing is always the same, namely the fact that gear is what brings a lot of readers to this blog, at least in the statistical sense, as the top-3 postings for 2011 were all about gear: An informal comparison of Panasonic LX3 and LX5, Is Olympus XZ-1 finally the one? and Flickr vs. Google Plus - what is the deal?

Of these the first was personally important, as my LX3 broke in a thunderstorm and I bought the LX5 as a replacement. And I have been as happy as one can be with a piece of photography gear, with over 41,000 photographs taken with the LX5 so far.

There are some little things which I would like to be fixed on the LX5, but otherwise it is about perfect for my purposes, and even the jpeg quality at ISO 500 is good enough for me. Even though one or two stops better high-ISO performance would be welcome, it isn't really that important.

During the dark winter time the LX5 has been rather good in comparison to the LX3, as I have been able to take handheld photographs in situations where it just wasn't possible earlier. With the superb image stabilization of the LX5, I'm able to take reasonable sharp photographs at 0.5 second exposure.

There is one worrying thing with the LX5, though, and that is the occasional trouble with the zoom switch, which gets sometimes stuck in one position and won't operate normally. But this is happens only once in a while.

Anyway, I look forward to 2012, hoping for the best. As long as there is time for photography I think things will be all right...