Thursday night we went to a Berry College concert featuring the Berry College steel band “The Berry Breeze” and the Berry Jazz Ensemble. We both thought it was very good. We were surprised by the steel band. They use steel drums (or steel pans, or just pans).

I used my new camera, the Olympus EPL7. I used the relatively slow “kit” lens, which required me to shoot at a fairly long exposure. That caused some blurring of the performers. Maybe one day I’ll get a faster lens for things like this.

My favorite piece was Paul Simon’s “Late in the Evening.” The Berry Breeze performed for about a half an hour, and then the jazz ensemble performed for another half hour. Their repertoire was mainly jazz from the ‘40’s, with some slightly more modern.

I know very little about music, but I thought these students were professional quality. One of the things I enjoyed most was seeing how much the students seemed to enjoy their performances.

The performance was held in Berry College’s Ford Auditorium, one of seven buildings constructed in the late ‘20’s and early ‘30’s in the Collegiate Gothic Style. According to the marthapedia (from Martha Berry, the founder. The marthapedia was actually a class assignment at Berry) says that the buildings were financed by Henry Ford, but were not named for Ford until after his death. Apparently Ford was afraid if they were named for him he would be expected to maintain them during his lifetime.

The Berry Department of Fine Arts gives over 40 free concerts every year. We’re thinking about attending more.

On Saturday we decided to go to the Intercultural Fest held in downtown Rome. It was supposed to offer food, music and lots of other stuff. We first attended our own Intercultural Feast at our favorite Mexican restaurant. The Intercultural Fest was supposed to go from noon to midnight. Unfortunately, it had slowed down considerably by the time we got there. A Columbian dance group had just finished when we walked in. After that there was a West African bell and drum solo, which, I have to confess, did not impress except through the soloist’s enthusiasm. After that a local Latin rapper performed. By this time there were only about 30 people watching.

The event was almost entirely Hispanic. The mistress of ceremonies would speak a few sentences in Spanish, then say a few sentences in English, and then switch back to Spanish. I don’t know Spanish but I could tell that she was not just translating herself.

The light was so dim that any shot I took required an even longer exposure than at the Berry concert. The most visually interesting thing we saw was this.

A little baby’s hand and foot. I had to put the camera in my lap and shoot for about a second.

The Intercultural Fest was a disappointment, but we’re hoping they do it again next year. If they do, we’ll go earlier in the day.

I’m afraid I might have a slight case of the new camera bug.

We have several cameras.

Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. I bought the one on the left, a little Canon Elph, to take with me when I traveled for work. The really neat thing about it is that it can fit into a pocket easily. The bad thing is that it is extremely slow. It’s slow to take a picture, which can be maddening if you want to catch a specific moment, and it is slow to cycle so that you can take another picture. It’s so maddening that we bought the next camera to the right, a Nikon S9700.

The little Nikon is still barely pocketable. It has a wide zoom ratio, and it has some nice features that make it a little more than just a point-and-shoot. It also suffers a little from slowness, although not nearly as much as the Canon. Its main drawback is that it has trouble focusing a little more often than it should.

The next camera is an Olympus EPL1, an early mirrorless, interchangeable-lens camera. It’s a decent camera, but it’s also a little slow to cycle from one shot to the next. It has a larger sensor, so theoretically it can take “better” photos than the first two.

The last one is a Nikon D60, one of the older Nikon amateur cameras. It is a very nice camera. It takes good photos and it has little trouble focusing. It’s relatively quick to shoot. Its main drawback is its size. Look at it compared to the others. We end up just not taking it with us because it takes a commitment. For instance, I would never take it into the Dark Side of the Moon bar, where we have been going for jazz Tuesdays.

Tuesday of last week I took the little Nikon S9700. I was wearing cargo pants and it fit reasonably well into the big leg pocket. I fiddled a little with it, turned it from fully automatic to manual and adjusted the light sensitivity (ISO) and took this shot.

We know the bartender, but, I’m sorry to have to say that we have forgotten his name. We’ll remedy that next time we go.

I took another shot after we left. This one is taken from the same location as one I took the previous week with my iPhone. The Nikon shot is quite a bit better.

For example, the streetlight is much better rendered.

We also found this fellow on Broad Street.

The iPhone takes good movies. So does the little Nikon.

I wanted to post this one because it shows the neat cycling colors on the liquor shelf, plus you can hear the band a little — not well, but at least it has that bar ambiance. You can’t tell how loud the band is from this video. My ears were just barely not ringing when we left the bar.

So what does all this mean for a slight case of new camera fever? And why do I have it anyway? Well, since we never take the big Nikon, there’s no reason to keep it. It takes good pictures but if we never carry it, it doesn’t take any pictures. The small Canon has great pocketability, but its picture-taking is just too frustrating. So there’s no reason to keep that. The Olympus is showing its technological age, so I think it needs to go as well. The little Nikon has that big zoom, and it takes reasonably decent pictures. It can also fit into a big pocket. But I want something a little better. A successor to the Olympus, one model older than the current model, remedies most of the old Olympus’s drawbacks and it can be had with an extra tele-zoom lens for quite a reasonable cost. It’s biggest drawback is that in its current form, with a kit short zoom, it won’t fit into any pocket in any clothes that I currently wear.

What I’d like to do, if Leah agrees to it, is to keep the little Nikon to carry around in my pocket (if I’m wearing cargo pants) and get the newer Olympus for some more serious photography. There is even a very short lens available for it that would make it only a little bigger than the little Nikon. It’s even a reasonable price, but maybe a little hard to justify for our current situation.

Leah and I will have to have a discussion of the pros and cons.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Leah and I have visited a few bars on Broad Street in downtown Rome lately, which is a new thing for us. One we visited is the Dark Side of the Moon, which is associated with a cafe called Harvest Moon. They have a regular Tuesday night jazz session. Last Tuesday was our third visit to that bar.

This shows a little of Broad Street, plus the bar.

The people at the right of the image in a sidewalk seating area are facing the jazz band.

This is the band.

The saxophonist is good, but then so are the rest. This band is known as Pollard Greens. Here’s a YouTube video of the group. We think they sound better in person; we are certain that they are louder in person.

One of the bar tenders said the same group performs every Tuesday, but not necessarily all of them show up every time.

On our first visit we sat at the end of the bar near the band. This time we were near the opposite end, but the sound was still so loud we couldn’t hear each other talk. This is a shot down the bar towards the band.

Can you see the band? Neither could we.

The bar swaps a set of 12 regional beers every week. Leah’s beer is the dark one, Burnt Hickory Big Shanty. (The brewery is in the town of Kennesaw, which at one time was known as Big Shanty. It is probably best known for two things. The first was the Great Locomotive Chase during the Southern War to Preserve Slavery. The second was when the town passed an ordinance requiring every resident to have a firearm.)

My beer is the closer one, but I can’t remember the name. On our first visit, I got a mild beer that suited my taste reasonably well. That experience has not been repeated.

This is a bar, so, of course, they offer a variety of drinks.

One thing I have learned, or at least have had reinforced, is that there really aren’t too many beers that I actually like. Maybe there’s someone else who feels kind of like me at XKCD:

Of course there are a few beers that I do like, but I just can’t get into bitter.