Ox Tongue and Nikon

A slight diversion. Today I began to cut my current ox tongue, cooked by me yesterday. So good, I had it for lunch and for dinner. At just under two kilos before cooking, it will last me a while. I hope. In England, for some bizarre reason, ox tongues can usually only be acquired around Christmas time. This current one was bought by me in December and promptly frozen until cooking time came around last weekend.

But the diversion: last week I went to the municipal “tip” and threw away my old Yashica camera, plus four or five lenses. The Yashica I bought in New York around 35 years ago. It was a wrench to toss it into the trash container, but who really can cope with film cameras, and film, and developing, and printing, and enlarging, in 2015? My cameras started around the age of 14 – some 60 years ago – and subsequently embraced numerous film and then digital cameras. My latest, bought around a month or so ago, is another Nikon: a P610. I have no shares in Nikon, nor incentive to praise Mr Nikon's products. But, after 60 years, I have found a camera that fully and completely satisfies my modest photographic talents (and bank account limitations). The 60x zoom is, of course, revolutionary. But it is the camera's capacity to understand complex lighting scenes (shadow, light, bright light) and to make sense of them that enthrals me. And there is the capacity to take 180 degree panoramic shots (a facility I have yet to test) that is a first for me. Alas, in the modern world there are not too many things that get better and better (outside computers). But cameras are the exception. My Nikon P610 is far and away the best I have ever possessed, and its little on-board microprocessor works divine miracles.