Excuse me, do you have a PEN?

Ok so as you know from a previous post, Richard purchased an iPad.

Well St Albans saw the opening of a Solutions Inc which is a premium reseller of Apple products. We didn’t plan to go down but some how we ended up in the queue waiting for the “grand opening”. Within about five minutes we were in the store and taking advantage of the 10% off offer for the first 50 customers.

Ten minutes later we left the store with a new iPad case, a free gift bag which included Sennheiser earbuds and a memory card amongst other things and a 1TB Time Capsule!

I am not sure we can squeeze any more Apple tech into our house

The tech frenzy does not stop there though as I am now the very proud owner of an Olympus PEN EPL-1.

Me and my Olympus PEN

For a while I have been thinking about replacing my faithful Lumix, which was a great little camera, but I wanted to stretch my photography further. We did own a Canon EOS 300D which was a fantastic camera but we never took it anywhere due to all the kit we owned (lenses and so forth).

Last weekend we decided we would put the Canon on eBay (which ended up being bought by a friend) and I also managed to sell the Lumix to another friend.

Ultimately the PEN was a steal and thanks to Richards powers of persuasion we managed to get the 14-45mm lens pack with an official PEN leather bag and memory card.

I got my hands on the camera on Thursday evening and have spent some time taking plenty of shots around the house to test it out. Today I took it on my first road trip around the Verulamium in St Albans.

The PEN is a fantastic everyday camera with heaps of features including intelligent auto which means you don’t have to worry about aperture priority or shutter the speed – the camera does it for you. You can however use the PEN as a SLR as it’s completely programmable.

It’s about the same size (body) as my Lumix but with interchangeable Four Thirds lenses so it’s not as bulky as a traditional SLR.

The PEN is also a fully functional HD camcorder which enables you to take traditional footage in crisp HD quality alongside the all the art filters that you can use in the camera mode. Check out this time lapse footage I took whilst at the park.

A river runs through it

Of course there are lots of photo’s online from the garden, the park and of course of Miss B. Please take a look as I am especially proud of them.

Brandy's latest close up

The price of living in certain parts of the UK

Expensive St Albans

I don’t understand how things can cost so differently in various parts of this country.

We spent last Sunday afternoon browsing in Cambridge and there were a couple of items that took my fancy that I decided to wait and purchase this weekend.

Why is everything so expensive in St Albans? One particular pair of sandals was £15 more expensive – £40 in Cambridge – £55 in St Albans.

It seems you cannot get a reasonable price on anything in the city.

Maybe if people weren’t so far up their own asses and took and interest, instead of mincing around in all the latest labels they would realise how much this city rips them off.

I guess that’s the price you pay for living in some eco-friendly, yummy mummy part of the country. I am sure the likes of Brighton, Bath and Cheltenham must be much the same.

I wish whoever gets in in the General Election really does create a fairer Britain and doesn’t just make things easy for those living in the North, Wales or Scotland.