The Porches of Mulliken

The porches of Mulliken....

The porches of Mulliken....

The porches of Mulliken....

The porches of Mulliken.... The town's best porch, methinks.

The porches of Mulliken.... I've shared this porch before , from a slightly different angle.

The porches of Mulliken.... One of the things I found attractive about Mulliken when I was house shopping was the large number of children living in the town at the time. On the day I moved into my house, the first person to stop by was a dark-haired, lanky youngster on a bike. She said hi, asked my name, then asked if I had any kids. I said no. She frowned; said she was hoping I'd brought some new playmates for her. But we could be friends anyway. I asked her name; she said "Delilah" as though it had three quite separate words. Delilah took ill a couple years later and was thereafter confined to a wheel chair; this porch was rebuilt to accommodate her. One of the interesting things was how her playmates (really, there was no shortage of 'em) accommodated her handicap: Basically, they ignored it. Sometimes they'd just sit by the road and talk, or play games; more often they'd do something active. If she could keep up, that was fine; if not, someone would push the chair for her, and everyone would just keep playing. Worked for her; worked for all of 'em. I confess to surprise, and delight. =============================== Everyone grew up, and most of 'em have moved away. Seventeen years later, there's a new generation of youngsters in the neighborhood, and I'm enjoying watching them.

We again went for a walk last July 28, and I was consciously looking for different views of the village. This ramp's a relatively new addition to this home, which is across the street and a few houses down from ours. ========== I'd been planning to review the Nikon 1 V1 on my blog in late July or early August, last summer, but distractions caused me to put it off. By the time I'd found the energy to write the review the V2'd been announced, so the review didn't seem worth my effort. Nonetheless, here's a mini review: Let's start with a hint: Turn the Display OFF. Doing so makes the Electronic View Finder faster. First off, I like the camera. It's been my primary camera for over a year, something that wouldn't happen with an unusable camera. I like the small package, and for my purposes the camera performs well, though it's quite quirky. My D300's a far better camera in nearly all ways, but for most of my purposes the V1's good enough. The camera's strengths, besides the small package, are its extremely fast autofocus ( in good light ) and its color rendering. In excellent conditions, the V1 takes excellent photographs. In poorer conditions, the V1 takes adequate to very good photographs. That's what you should expect of this system from its specs. The camera's weaknesses, besides the small sensor, are mostly software design issues; this is an unusually quirky camera. (As I noted on July 18 , burying the ISO and White Balance controls in the menu is pretty annoying. The manual focus setup's even worse.) In my usual manual-exposure-with-autofocus setup, changing the F-stop can be done quickly but large adjustments to the shutter speed take far too much time; I suspect this is backwards from what most photographers need. (Most of these complaints have apparently been addressed in the V2.) The Electronic View Finder's a mixed bag. The camera forces you to review the last image, which is mostly annoying but occasionally useful. And the EVF's resolution leaves a bit to be desired; you're only seeing an approximation of the actual image. On the other hand the EVF gives you some hints about what the photo's going to look like that you don't get from a conventional view finder. The 10-30 mm kit lens--equivalent to a 27-81 mm lens on a full frame (D)SLR--seems very good. It's a tiny thing, and I'm pretty sure the low mass of the small lens is one of the elements of the system's excellent high-speed autofocus. I'm happy with it, and it's the lens that's normally on this camera. The small sensor, and the small lenses the sensor makes possible, are the key to the Nikon 1 cameras. If you can live with the limitations those put on the rest of the design, the V1 is a viable camera. For some photographers it's a viable primary camera. Earlier in the month I discussed my setup preferences for this camera . ========== Oh, yes; the dogs (see below). The frisky fellows live around the midpoint of our usual route through the town. ========== This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps . Number of project photos taken: 18 Title of " roll :" Around Mulliken Other photos taken on 7/28/2012: For the first time in a couple weeks I managed a Daily Flower Census .

Our new porch, from the road. Exteriors of Lansing built the porch (and, in other years, installed the windows, and the siding, and the roofing ). Good folks.