Ron’s Back–New Articles Coming Next Week

Unedited JPEG taken with X10's “Sunset” Scene Position (SP) Mode

My apologies to my readers for the blackout for the this week. I've been enjoying a long overdue vacation. I spent this past week on the Big Island of Hawaii near Kona, so I’ve got lots of good stuff for the blog coming in the future.

Fujifilm X10 – I Love It Even More Now

Unedited JPEG taken with X10's Panoramic 360 Adv (DEFINE) Mode

I took my new Fujifilm X10 with me and loved it.

As you can see from the sunset shot (taken in the Sunset SP mode) and the 360 degree panorama above (taken in Adv – Advanced mode), it did a pretty darn good job for point and shoot snaps. These were handheld shots where I literally lifted my arm, snapped, and moved on. In fact, for the sunset shot I was holding a plate of food at a Luau when I took it!

My only two gripes with it - both of which I mentioned in the review - were the detached lens cap and the short battery life. I lost the lens cap at least 3 times daily which wasted time while I hunted around for it. I also got burned on two days where I couldn’t use the X10 because I ran out of battery life, so I quickly learned that you MUST recharge the battery EVERY night. I was bummed that it's only good for a day of average usage, but it is still better than the s100’s battery which doesn’t seem to last even that long. An extra battery is #1 on my next B&H order list. Those issues aside it performed wonderfully and I'll be sharing lots of good info with you about it.

iPhone 4s - The Unexpected Hero

Taken with iPhone 4s and edited using Snapseed on my iPhone

Another hero in Hawaii was my iPhone 4s. Just for fun I used it to snap some shots and I edited them directly on my iPhone using Nik Software's Snapseed. It gave me shots that were much better than I expected when posting on Facebook during my trip, but when I view them larger than iPhone size I realize that I went overboard with the saturation and sharpened a tad too much. That said, it wasn’t bad and worked great for 5 minute on the fly photo edits for my personal Facebook friends.

Taken with iPhone 4s and edited using Snapseed on my iPhone

I'll resume my normal blogging schedule next week. In the meantime thanks for your patience and I hope you've enjoyed catching up with some of my past articles found in the archive or links on the right side of this blog.

Best wishes,
Ron Martinsen

Take Photos in Hawaii for 5 Nights for only $740!!!

Copyright © Randy Hufford (Hawaii Photographer) – All Rights Reserved

My wife is a big fan of LivingSocial.com, but when she told me about a deal that offered a week in Hawaii for only $740 I thought it was a scam. You can click here to learn more, but the gist of it is that it’s a condo rental that appears to be very nice. I didn’t trust the deal so I did my own research and I couldn’t find anything negative – only glowing reviews.

I also checked out their web site which shows photos of all of the rooms (which weren’t taken by the best photographer in the world) and they seem to be quite nice. What sealed the deal is when I called their on-site representative (who has her cell phone number of the voice mail and takes calls 24/7 – personally – no voice menus). She was super nice and helpful so decided I was satisfied enough to give it a shot.

I have no affiliations with this company and I’ve never been to their properties before, so I’m only offering this up for people who, like me, are looking for a good deal for a trip to Hawaii for a week. I’ve paid the full price out of my own pocket and I do not get a commission if you take advantage of this offer. I only mention it because it is a great deal from what I can see, and if I can get 3 others to take advantage of it then they claim I may get the trip for free. I mention this because if you have group then you might take advantage of this loophole to reduce the overall cost for the whole group to travel.

Click here to take advantage of this offer. You will get prompted for an email address before it will show you the deal, but that’s only so they can tell you about Living Social. This deal expires in 2 days from this post.

Aloha,
Ron Martinsen

P.S. If you’ve used this company before and stayed at this location, please leave a comment with your thoughts. Please include your unit number and date that you stayed when leaving a comment.