Trying out the new camera

My father brought me an Olympus C770 from the US, so I took it out on Thursday to see what I could get as we did the tourist thing in Jiji and Sun Moon Lake.

Posing in front of the train station at Jiji.

I can't say anything good about Jiji, famous for its Japanese period train station. It couldn't be more of a tourist trap if it had giant tentacles that erupted from the ground at random intervals to snatch hapless visitors and drag them screaming into the bowels of the earth.



Even my kids turned up their noses at the totally unique souvenirs.

Sun Moon Lake was a beautiful as ever, fortunately. I tried out the optical 14X Super Telephoto on the Olympus, reputedly equal to 535mm on a 35mm SLR. It was everything it was cracked up to be...

Super Telephoto...shot from across the lake.

You can see the temple on the hill in the center-left of the picture.

No padding? Oops! That should be "peddling."

Normal.....

...and telephoto. Here's a shot of that little house in the center-left of the previous pic, on Super Telephoto.

Blogger's photo management system is inferior to most of the others, and I am going to stop using it. I'm tired of eff-ups like this one above. They commonly occur on pictures that are taller than they are wide.

The Wenwu Temple, a well-known tourist stop, played host to a procession, probably to thank the temple god, or ask the temple god for its help in a court case. A statue of the god was brought to the temple...

...shown....

...and then a medium (yellow-orange) helped the petitioner. Both entered into ecstatic states, moaning, crying, singing, and dancing.

Here the medium, possessed by the temple god, chants, sings, and dances.

The petitioner kneels. While this was going on, many tourists passed back and forth as if nothing was happening. Others stood around and watched.

I'll have a large new webpage up on this day in mid-July after my parents return to the US.

[Taiwan] [Sun Moon Lake] [Jiji]