Fly along with me, I can’t quite make it alone

I was distracted from my work for a few minutes by a couple of pigeons on the railings outside my office. When I first heard the tweets, I was expecting a sparrow or something. I gently pried apart the blinds to reveal a pair of pigeons (probably) discussing the best way to exit the atrium. One of them was clearly a squab, and was mainly responsible for the bulk of the commotion. 

The image on the right is a 100% crop from the image on the left. Impressive stuff!

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You're doing it wrong

Mother (I know nothing of pigeon parental rights) was trying to nudge her offspring off the railing. That's what the fuss was about. The squabbling squab, clearly annoyed at mum, tried to call her bluff by pretending to fly into the balcony instead. After much heated debate, they were off.

I wonder if they made their way back home when he learned to fly? ♬

Fluttering by

I noticed the briefest moment of sunshine during my lunch break, and took the opportunity to get to know my camera a little more. I took a number of photos in the vicinity of my workplace, including the above butterfly photograph. As I baked in the sun like a komodo dragon waiting for prey, this little guy fluttered by. At no more than 2cm long, I thought I'd test the native macro capabilities of the RX1. Deftly turning the focussing element until the 0,2m - 0,35m (it's got German Zeiss markings, thus a comma represents a decimal), I held the camera out at arms length and took the above snapshot. Below are two 95% crops. I'm simple astounded by the performance of this camera. The difference from the NEX-7 and SEL24F18Z is night and day.

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I am not used to shooting at f/8 unless nearly blinded by the sun. Even in strong sunlight, I am not used to using ISO levels above ISO200. ISO800 used to be my own personal "upper limit". The above two photos were at ISO400. Two ~95% crops! I am still in awe of this sensor/lens combination. At f/2 it is pin-sharp. Bokeh is gorgeous, throughout the entire range. Sharpness and pixel-level performance do not make a good photo, but it certainly is nice to lose oneself in the creation of a photograph, rather than concerning oneself with technological limits. 

Mantis

I saw this little guy scuttle up to the top of a bollard. Only around 1inch (2.5cm) long, I crouched down and made use of the "touch-focus & capture" ability of my new Nokia Lumia 920. I'll do a review of the phone after I've had a little more time with it, but so far I am finding a lot to like. The camera is obviously pretty decent, as there's good detail on the mantis, and a pleasing out-of-focus background.